Blog: Mixtape Maestro

Yummy Bingham , and her distinctive soprano coo, seemed to be on the verge of really big things with her slicked out 2005 single "Come Get It" , a ready-made summer banger pairing her divine cartoon-y chirp with a brassy Rockwilder-produced R&B street-knock, but the cut failed to generate much of a pulse beyond being a momentary mixtape jam. Fast-forward seven years later and Bingham's bubblegum-soul has lost none of its sweet-to-the-ears appeal, easily stealing the show on Cam'ron 's newest leakage "So Bad", the rapper's latest tune to expose his weird admiration for girly-pop-flavored sonics [...]

• Cam'ron - So Bad (feat. Yummy Bingham)

After a lengthy wait, the release date of Chiddy Bang 's much-delayed debut full-length Breakfast has finally reached around-the-corner status (it drops February 21st in the U.S. [pre-order it here or here ], everywhere else March 5th), so it only makes sense that the alt-hip hop duo have already begun making promotional stops with today finding them in BBC's 1Xtra Live Lounge studios where they performed current single "Ray Charles" and, as their cover pick (our favorite part), opted on taking on Big Sean's Summer of '11 jam "Marvin [...]

It seems "Purple Swag" has become the new "Somebody That I Used To Know", with folks coming out of the woodwork to put their own spin on the cut eighty thousand months after it's initial release. Yesterday we had Wale spitting flames on the A$AP Ty Beats -produced banger, today we get the great Twista blessing the beat, tricking us with a more regular speed first verse before sounding like his lips are about to fall off on the 100mph flow of the second. After all these years, it's kind [...]

We know it's been said in every blog post or review mentioning 21-year-old London-born/ Ireland-raised newcomer Maverick Sabre , but still, it's something that must be repeated: What an odd little voice this dude has! Cue the eye-rolling music crit math: Sabre's nasally, near-spoof-of-funk-vocalists croak sounds as if Mike Posner and Amy Winehouse had a baby (alongside siblings Daniel Merriweather, Plan B and Eamon) who grew up listening to nothing but Cee-Lo and Cameo records (in our minds, his first word was probably a Larry Blackmon-like "Owww!"); as annoying as this combination may sound on paper, it [...]

Wale 's official studio output may tend to be a bit hit or miss, but plant the MMG soldier behind a mic in freestyle beast mode and what results is almost always guaranteed to be the hip hop highlight for the day. For his latest beat-jack, the recent R&B/ Hip Hop chart-owning "Lotus Flower Bomb" rapper hops on the instrumental track behind A$AP Rocky's "Purple Swag" , its woozy, blunt-hazed swirl of a beat inspiring him to drop energetic, wit-spiked braggadocio lyrical winners such as "Probably sick of n*gga livin' how a n*gga livin'/ Even better, come [...]

While most everyone else has celebrated the return of D'Angelo by raising their arms sky-ward and letting loose super-loud "Thank you Laaawwwddd" exclamations, James Blake has taken the far simpler, and much less crazy-person, tactic of remixing an old D cut in a BBC Radio 1 mix session. Taking the bare-bones soul-funk of Voodoo single "Left & Right" , Blake twists the jam into a mutant-like glob of experimental R&B-tribal freakiness that sounds like something Andre 3000 would use as background jam material while bedding some ridiculously [...]

French/ English indie five-piece The Lanskies dub their sound-a mixture of Brit-Pop, post-punk and new wave influences-"Hot Wave", and while we can't help but find their enthusiasm in branding their music with this made-up genre tag questionable, there is no question in how much we're digging their new single "Romeo". The first taste, and title track, of their North American debut EP , "Romeo" serves a jubilant blast of early-MTV-era jangle with Liverpool-born frontman Lewis Evans yelping his heart out, urging for a halt to "all the violence and fighting" and throwing shade to [...]

Following the large wave of critical acclaim, international commercial success and top accolade-garnering that met his last album, 20102s Troubador , and it's mega-huge (and endlessly remixed) global anthem single "Wavin' Flag" , Somali-Canadian hip hop musician K'naan makes his return to the new music section with new EP release More Beautiful Than Silence , a five-cut set boasting appearances from Nas and Nelly Furtado, and a stand-out track in "Coming To America", a catchy, but most importantly compelling , narrative tracking K's venture across the [...]

• K'naan - Coming To America

Fourteen years after playing tug-o-war over a shared guy on "The Boy Is Mine" , a major R&B event at the time that resulted in a thirteen-week-long Number One Pop smash and Best R&B Performance By A Duo or Group Grammy score, the now-thirty-something divas Monica and Brandy leave the cattiness behind to lean on each other over new boyfriend woes (though, thankfully, with different dudes this time) on new duet "It All Belongs To Me". Equally fed up over partners who just aren't satisfying their relationship needs ("Loving you is hard/ [...]

"Don't play the stupid game/ Cause I'm a different kind of girl/ Every record sounds the same/ You've got to step into my world," sings Madonna on "Give Me All Your Luvin'", the Queen of Pop's bajillionth single and first preview of forthcoming album MDNA . Alas, while this line would seem to hint of "Luvin'" being some sort of epic Top 40 game-changer, the record is really anything but, the "world" the one-time "Material Girl" is inviting us to simply consisting of a surprisingly underwhelming hybrid of pleasant back-to-basics tactics combined with some [...]

The appeal of Yelawolf 's freestyle dig on Young Jeezy's "I Do" is simple: it marries one of the best new voices to emerge from the hip hop scene in recent years with one of the top Southern rap productions of the season. Who could ask for anything more? Returning to producer M16 's soul sample-based beat a hungry bite the track first had on the Andre 3000-only snippet version of "I Do" that was leaked way back in 2010, then was curiously lost on the strong, but somewhat anti-climactic, Jeezy & Jigga-added final [...]

Brooklyn experimental pop outfit Young Heel first caught our attention with their winter-cool, chillwave-y take on the Ready For The World booty call jam "Love You Down". The band's new EP Falls sadly doesn't include any new '802s R&B covers, but the five-track (plus a two-minute outro) mini-set does a fine job further establishing the benefits of being submerged in their glacial blue-eyed soul-meets-synth pop pulses. On "Knowing", the four-piece trace a relationship's slow dissolution ("When I look into your eyes, I don't see myself") with a wide-screen-worthy broodiness, [...]

"Visions" , a non-single from Stevie Wonder's 1973 Grammy-winning opus Innervisions , may not be one of the musical genius' most oft-referenced cuts, but like nearly everything else Stevie put to tape in that decade, its hard to argue against its status as a classic with everything from its gorgeous R&B simmer to Wonder's still-poignant pondering over whether the idyllic, hate-free utopia that exists in his dreams could ever be achieved in real life helping rank it high as one of his many great creations. In honor of Lauren Abramson, the late sister [...]

• Nite Jewel - Visions (Stevie Wonder Cover)

Life growing up would have been so much better if we had had a chill uncle like Big K.R.I.T. around to drop jewels of thick Southern accent-laden, inspirational wisdom in our ears every time we felt like we couldn't handle the world. On "Boobie Miles", the self-produced first leak from K.R.I.T.'s upcoming mixtape 4evaNaDay , the Mississippi-based underground rap superstar sets his mic skills to uplift; but don't think this is some sappy, watered-down bid at Top 40 attention, K.R.I.T.'s delivery remaining as hood-cool and slick-tongued as ever as he dishes out some pretty thought-provoking [...]

As ubiquitous a presence as Jack White has had in the music scene the past decade or so, it does come as a surprise that not a single one of the rocker's eight thousand projects within this time span has included a solo effort. Until now, that is. Blunderbuss is the name of the album (it's due April 23rd), and the first preview of it comes in the form of "Love Interruption", a rough-hewed acoustic blues-rock number housing a vividly bitter take on love. "I want love to roll me over [...]

Part of the fun in R. Kelly announcing a brand new album is trying to figure out which one of his many sounds the new collection will be revolved around. Will we be getting sexy groove 12 Play Kellz, retro-focused Love Letter Robert, soap opera drama "Trapped In The Closet" R. or the hip hop-informed XXX goofball Pied Piper that gave us the remixes to "Ignition" and "I'm A Flirt" ? "Share My Love" is [...]

So you're a DJ, is seriously digging Childish Gambino's Camp stand-out "Heartbeat" , but find it a little bit too "mellow" to spin for the club-going sect. What on Earth do you do? If you're Washington DC's DJ Geometrix , you simply work your remixing magic and give the electro-rap cut the right amount of fist-pump pizzazz to make the half-drunk, nightlife crowd go insane. This is your result. Enjoy! ( DL )

One wouldn't think there would be a point to hearing a version of "Tightrope" stripped of Janelle Monae 's glorious pipes, Big Boi's rap and that joyride of a funk-fest groove the late, great James Brown would of shook a good foot to had he been around to hear it, but Finnish/ French indie rockers The Dø prove otherwise with this fantastic cover. Clocking in at an epic nine minutes-plus length, The Dø do the damn thing and more on this flip of the 2010 jam, spending the first three minutes by slowing [...]

An "aural wonderland treat" is probably the best way to describe the shimmering goodness Kansas City-based four-piece Capybara pull off on latest track "Neighbor Crimes". Don't believe us? Slap on a pair of high-quality headphones, press play and within seconds of being immersed in the song's heavenly escape of hazed-over male harmonies that drift by with gorgeous weightlessness and a sunny indie pop churn in which every new instrumental element adds another shade of depth to the fantasy suburbia they're sonically illustrating, and you'll definitely co-sign the hype. [...]

To honor the tenth anniversary of their first release as a band, Australian funk/ soul eight-piece The Bamboos hooked up with fellow Aussie singer-songwriter Megan Washington for this lovely remake of James Blake's "The Wilhelm Scream" . Recasting the skeletal electro-soul ballad into a retro-laced slow burn beautifully seasoned with horns, organ and strings and Washington's entrancing vocal smokiness, their version feels tailor-made to soundtrack some somber scene in a '702s blaxploitation flick starring Pam Grier, or a quiet Sunday afternoon spent figuring out if you should or shouldn't call that ex you [...]