On Tuesday night, Grammy Award winning producer Kerry “Krucial” Brothers and ThinkTank Digital hosted an intimate listening session for singer-songwriter Mateo’s latest effort, “Love & Stadiums” (a mixtape). The Krucial Noise Entertainment artist kicked off the evening by displaying his talent for tickling the ivories with a live performance of “Get To Know Me,” one of the highlights of the project. Appearing slightly overwhelmed and humbled after the impromptu concert, Mateo expressed his gratitude and offered a sincere thank you to everyone that turned out. His obvious nervousness endeared him to the crowd even before the first track of “Love & Stadiums” was played.

The audience of industry taste-makers, press, and media outlets was then moved to the neighboring room where the actual preview took place. On one occasion, an unpretentious Mateo (dressed in a beanie and hoodie) got up from where he was sitting to provide commentary for “Right Thru Me,” his version of Nicki Minaj’s hit song, which he recorded using a vocoder (in my opinion, the low point of the evening; the combination of the volume of the music and the vocoder was deafening). The rest of the mixtape is an impressive mesh of samples that run the gamut of musical genres, from rock and roll to hip-hop. Perhaps my favorite track on “Love & Stadiums” is “Don’t Shoot Me Down,” a duet with talented west coast based singer/songwriter, Goapele. On the strength of that track alone, I encourage you to be on the look out for “Love & Stadiums, but in the meantime, check out pictures from the event below:

Kerry “Krucial” Brothers introduces Mateo...

Mateo treats the crowd to a performance of “Get To Know Me.”

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