Music Review // ROKI "Hands Up"

The power of music is revealed with ROKI.   "Hands Up" begins as this blues type song with these guitars that just make you feel as if you're walking into something somewhere between a blues club in New Orleans and also somewhat like a night club where someone like Jessica Rabbit would be singing.

As the verse has a certain sound, the chorus can come in with these horns which makes me feel like this is a slower ska song or even something from the older No Doubt discography.   In a modern sense I'm reminded of artists such as Adele (when she did that "Rumor Has It" song) and Amy Winehouse, though there isn't anyone out there right now that I know of creating music quite like ROKI.

The idea of this song being "Hands Up" and those words being in the chorus just gives this an overall vibe as well.   When I hear songs like this I have a certain way of thinking, like Dick Tracy, and so to have those certain type of hats with suits and tommy guns... that whole idea is just what this feels like this song is from.  So having the coppers come in and say "Hands up!" to a bunch of gangstas just feels so fitting.

Whether you can get into those days of Al Capone or not, this song has a way about it where you can just groove with it.  It's at a moderate pace, so to playlist it between something slower and something faster to bring the pace back up would be ideal.   This is just that type of sound which covers so many genres it begins to have no genre even though it feels like it very much should be easily placed.