The Dream releases free album 1977

Today Terius Nash, aka The Dream, dropped his free internet-download album 1977 under his birth name in advance of the release of upcoming album proper, The Love, IV: Diary of a Mad Man. The 11-track album, featuring guest spots from Pharrell and Big Sean and introducing Casha, is available direct from his official website. Earlier Nash tweeted in regards to the album: "this one was done with no politics and Pressure. Its Free literally and figuratively." Check it out for yourself, just click HERE for the free direct download.

Def Jam, who Nash is signed to as The Dream, are unsurprisingly unhappy about Nash defying them and going ahead with a free release, and he even announced that he's filming videos for the album too. 1977, which is also the birth year of Nash, is an introspective downtempo album mostly made up of breakup songs, so if that's your kind of thing you'll probably dig this. Here's the tracklist:

01 Wake Me When It's Over
02 Used to Be
03 Long Gone
04 Ghetto (feat. Big Sean)
05 Wedding Crasher
06 Rolex (feat. Casha)
07 Silly (introducing Casha)
08 1977 (Miss You Still)
09 Wish You Were Mine
10 This Shit Real Ni**a (feat. Pharrell)
11 Form of Flattery

Spotlight On: Ash

I recently saw Ash for the first time a few weeks ago with Russell from Bloc Party playing guitar for them in place of the departed Charlotte Hatherly. I used to be a huge fan of theirs when I was younger and seeing them live really rekindled my appreciation for them so I've been listening to all my favorite Ash songs this week. In case you didn't know Ash are an Irish grunge rock band that formed in 1992, taking their name from the first word they liked out of the dictionary. They have sold over 8 million albums to date, and are probably best known for their song Burn Baby Burn from 2001's Free All Angels. If you'd like to get more acquainted with them I highly recommend acquiring their debut mini album Trailer and their first album proper 1977 (my personal favorite), or if you prefer something more pop-friendly and accessible then Free All Angels would be a good place to strart. Most recently they released a 2 volume collection entitled A-Z of 26 new singles that were put out one by one every two weeks from May 18th 2009. Below you can see the video for Petrol, the second single from Trailer.