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Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

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School Lunch: Weekend Playlist by Smyth Knight

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Every Friday night, RVA Mag brings you a truly fantabulous playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

This week brings us a jam-packed list of bangers from Smyth Knight, an up-and-coming local rapper who’s developed a buzz among quite a few veteran local heads. Knight released his latest mixtape, North Chesterfield, at the end of July. On that release, he tackles the experience of graduating high school and going from youth to young adulthood in the year 2020. This project, which comes to us from local label Kidz At Play, is an essential listen for this crazy year.

Much the same could be said for this playlist, a heaping helping of hip hop, soul, R&B, and funk flavors brought together into a delicious gumbo of sounds by Smyth Knight. You’ll get a preview of what his North Chesterfield mixtape has to offer, along with some great tracks from other RVA locals, some classic old-school jams, and a whole lot of killer head-nodding beats.

Get down with it, Virginia.

Open this playlist from mobile in your Spotify app HERE.

Never Created, Never Destroyed: Weekend Playlist by Opin

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Every Friday night, RVA Mag brings you a truly fantabulous playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

This time around, we’re bringing you a great list of tunes from Opin, the Richmond band formed from the ashes of White Laces and Navi, among others. Their second full-length album, Media & Memory, will be out next month on WarHen Records, and will be accompanied by a remix album as well. The first single, “Ezprt,” is out now, and you’ll be able to check it out as part of the playlist Opin have assembled for us.

Their playlist has plenty more to offer as well, everything from ambient shoegaze to hard-hitting hip hop, as well as some groundbreaking early influences and a whole bunch of local friends and peers. According to Opin’s Landis Wine, “It’s a mix of what we’ve been listening to during quarantine, tracks that influenced the record and folks we either worked with on the album or played with in the past year or so.” If you want a varied, unpredictable, but always entertaining listen for this cool, cloudy final weekend of summer, you can’t do better than this collection of tunes brought to us by Opin.

Soak it in, Virginia.

Open this playlist from mobile in your Spotify app HERE.

Hustle Punk: Weekend Playlist by James Seretis

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Every Friday night, RVA Mag brings you a truly fantabulous playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

This week, we have a playlist from James Seretis, who is probably best known to readers of this magazine as one of the cohosts of The Hustle Season, a weekly podcast you can catch here at RVA Magazine every weekend, as well as on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Seretis and his Hustle Season co-host Gabriel Santamaria also run La Cocina Studios, and play together in The Flavor Project, where Seretis’s guitar plays off Santamaria’s bass and the excellent work of the many other band members to create a pleasing mix of funk, rap, soul, jazz, Latin sounds, and much more.

This week, though, James is getting back to his roots with a mix of punk rock classics that will give novices an excellent tour through the fundamentals of the genre, while reminding the more seasoned punks among us exactly what was so great about all those records we loved as teenagers that got us into this genre. A few picks are a bit… edgy (that Fear song, James?) but if you love punk rock, the Hustle Season, or both, that won’t be too surprising. Just don’t play this mix around your parents, and you’ll be fine. On this rainy weekend, sit back and let James Seretis add some punk rock spice to your weekend with this killer mix.

Turn it up, Virginia.

Open this playlist from mobile in your Spotify app HERE.

RVA 101: History Of Richmond Music Weekend Playlist

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Every Friday night, RVA Mag brings you a truly fantabulous playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

This time around, it’s a follow-up to last week’s 100th playlist, in which we celebrated with 100 currently active Richmond bands. We’d originally planned to combine that playlist with the idea behind this one — a history of Richmond’s music scene over the past 60 or so years — but we got so far beyond the 100-song idea that we just split them into two.

So here’s the other half, which starts in the mid-60s with some garage rock, moves up through jazz, funk, early punk, the coming of hardcore, the postpunk 80s, the pop-punk early 90s, Richmond hardcore’s move toward world domination, the post-Y2K indie revolution, the city’s huge doom phase of about a decade ago, and a lot more that doesn’t neatly fit into a linear narrative.

This playlist is arranged more by chronology than sound, so if it jumps all over the place with lightning speed, please understand. Also, don’t get too upset if your favorite Richmond band of all time isn’t here — a lot of local music, especially stuff that was recorded in the pre-internet era, has never made it to Spotify at all. We’re just as bummed by this playlist’s lack of White Cross, Death Piggy, Superfriends, Fudge, and Single Bullet Theory (among many others) as you are. But there are still over 75 songs here for you to delve into, and you’re guaranteed to find an excellent bit of local music history that you never knew existed — if not several.

Study well, Virginia.

Open this playlist from mobile in your Spotify app HERE.

Top Photo: E. Broad St. at 7th, July 1960. By Adolph B. Rice, via Library of Virginia/Flickr

A Trip Through Richmond: RVA Mag’s 100th Weekend Playlist

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Every Friday night, RVA Mag brings you a totally rockin’ playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

This week, we’ve taken the reins ourselves once again, in celebration of the fact that this is the 100th RVA Mag Weekend Playlist! We never would have figured that an idea we had on the spur of the moment would have lasted nearly three years like this, but since it has, we figured we’d use our 100th time around to celebrate the full spectrum of Richmond music, from all genres and all areas of the river city, by presenting 100 songs by (at least) 100 different currently active Richmond artists.

Now, this isn’t an exhaustive list of people and groups making music in our wonderful hometown — to do that would take something closer to 500 different songs, and even then, we’d be hampered by how many aren’t even on Spotify yet. Instead, you should look at this as more of an overview, a guided tour through everything from indie rock to hip hop to jazz, metal, punk, folk, and a lot more, including some things that are all but impossible to categorize. This playlist amounts to over six hours of music, and is sure to contain at least a few things you’ve never heard before, so dig in and appreciate the wondrousness of our city’s music scene.

Listen close, Virginia.

Open this playlist from mobile in your Spotify app HERE.

Jump To It: Weekend Playlist By Summer Starved

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Every Friday night, RVA Mag brings you a totally rockin’ playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

This week’s playlist comes to us from Summer Starved, a project of local musician and producer Kevin Burtram. His latest single, “Off Brand,” brings him together in collaboration with Richmond rapper Baraka and Afro-Cuban percussionist Hector “Coco” Barez to create a sparkling summer jam that’ll bring plenty of sunshine into your life, even if the weatherman is right and it keeps storming for the next week.

“Off Brand” leads off Summer Starved’s RVA Weekend Playlist, but it’s just the beginning of the tasty treats you’ll find inside. If you love soul, jazz, funk, and hip hop, Summer Starved has plenty of all those genres in store for you, including a variety of local leading lights. Put this playlist on, and the thunder and lightning won’t even begin to touch you.

Have a smooth summer, Virginia.

Open this playlist from mobile in your Spotify app HERE.