To listen to Stevie Hawkins’ take on "A Song For You" is to have a conversation with a ghost in a dimly lit room after the show has ended. Hawkins, long the rhythmic engine for the song's originator Leon Russell, steps from behind the drum kit to the microphone, and the space between these two roles compresses decades into four and a half minutes....

You know that exact moment when you realize the people clapping the loudest are the ones hoping you trip? That is the exact energy Mista Crook captures in his latest single, "Dream Big". 'Dream Big' does not waste time pretending the road to success is all champagne and confetti. It gets straight to the gritty reality of what happens when your ambition outgrows your current...