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Uphill Battles

Dizzy Spins

Label: Ring Music Group
Released: 2024
Views: 341

Personnel

Album Description

Uphill Battles, the independent studio album by American producer Dizzy Spins, erupted onto the scene on December 6, 2024, under Ring Music Group. Entirely self-funded and crafted in his home studio, the project is a 47-minute avalanche of 50 tracks—Rumor has it Spins assembled the whole thing in one sleepless night— a flex, a myth, or both. Released just 91 days after its twin, Downhill Travels, the project made history—charting on both Contemporary Jazz and Hard Bop lists, earning Spins the first Platinum jazz certification in Bulgaria by an American artist, and breaking ground as the first sample-based album to penetrate traditional jazz charts. The music industry is a rigged casino. Literally. Odds of sustaining a career here are worse than beating high-stakes poker—a world of ruthless rejections, all-or-nothing bets, and careers buried in silence. Hard Bop, a jazz subgenre declared dead after the moon landing, embodies this tragedy: its pioneers often died young, vanished into obscurity, or were lionized only after their graves were dug. Yet Dizzy Spins dragged Hard Bop into the digital age, weaponizing guerrilla marketing, algorithmic savvy, and financial independence to prove the genre could not just survive, but dominate. Upon release, Uphill Battles was met with widespread acclaim, now hailed as the most significant Hard Bop album by a living 21st- century artist. Spins’ DIY empire has magnetized a cult following of listeners and producers obsessed with his sound, his hustle, and his unapologetic self-determination. His manifesto to artists? “The house always wins— unless you build your own.” An instrumental odyssey that mocks categorization, Uphill Battles ditches dance music’s 4-on-the-floor dogma for the dusty, Dilla-esque swing of a beat tape, closer to The Avalanches’ psychedelic plunderphonics than Daft Punk’s polished house. Yet beneath the chaos, it’s unmistakably Hard Bop—raw, spontaneous, and alive. The album’s whiplash eclecticism is its genius. Track #7? A bluegrass banjo solo shredded with virtuosity. Track #8? A brass-knuckled funk explosion. Track #9? A synth-percussion duel that bends time. Track #10? Sun-soaked boom bap, grinning through the chaos. This isn’t just eclecticism—it’s genre satire, weaponized disobedience, a middle finger to purists who think walls mean integrity. Critics have fumbled for labels: a DJ set? A producer’s sketchbook? A museum of stolen sounds? But Uphill Battles is more than its fragments. He welded jazz’s improvisational soul to club music’s body high and called it inevitable. Uphill Battles sounds like a 9th Wonder beat tape if it snorted Lee Morgan’s discography and dared you: "Go ahead, try to rap to this shit." These instrumentals dodge 4-on-the-floor like tax evasion—swinging like Dilla’s MPC, collaging like Avalanches, yet punching with Hard Bop’s brass-knuckle swing. Critics call it "a DJ set on amphetamines" or "jazz’s answer to plunderphonics," but really? It’s Spins laughing as you struggle to label it. Spins proved Hard Bop could thrive in the digital age, not as a museum piece, but as a weapon. His cult following—producers and jazz heads alike—isn’t just obsessed with the sound. They’re addicted to the hustle. The refusal to kneel.

Album uploaded by Alec McGreevy