Young Jeezy 's "R.I.P." may have been birthed on the mixtape circuit, but all it really took was one listen to the somewhat surprisingly potent combination of Young Jeezy's signature rasp against DJ Mustard 's ominous, bass-honking West Coast G-funk to know that it was going to be a serious radio monster for the season. With it making some major airplay strides as now an official single, the time has come for the obligatory posse cut remix, this one boasting appearances from YG , Chris Brown and, in an extension-of-sorts [...]
"You Only Live Once" may not have managed to make much of a radio impression when it was released as the official third single from The Strokes ' junior set First Impressions of Earth (it peaked at #35 on Billboard's then-named Modern Rock singles chart), but damn if the record doesn't still stand up as one of the band's finest servings of their signature garage-pop cool and expert song-craft abilities all these years later, from its casual swagger forward in construct-following up one great musical or lyrical great hook with an even [...]
Sure, we need another dance-pop act in our personal playlists like we need a hole in the head but there is something refreshing about what newcomer York, UK pop duo PartyClub (Thomas Banks and Alex Belvoir) have been cooking up in their own particular brand of the culturally dominant form, folding many of the formulaic sonic traits that anyone who has turned on a Top 40 radio station in the past year or two have grown accustomed to with the softer, warmer and more intimate textures that fueled the genre in its 802s and 902s forms. [...]
New album lead singles from big pop stars tend to be treated like summer blockbuster events, so of course when Beyonce , arguably the biggest pop star in the world right now, decided to go ahead and preview her next LP with a two-song-in-one snippet combo, everybody, their mama and the their house pets raced to find the stream and hit play, anxious to smother their ears in the first places King Be would be heading artistically post-Super Bowl shutdown. As an A-list spectacle, "Bow Down/ I Been On" didn't disappoint on the attention-grabbing front, raising plenty [...]
Reason No. 4,762 why Dev Hynes simply needs to go ahead and put his creative stamp on everything: his 'Blood Orange'-revamped spin on Phoenix' latest single "Entertainment " which not only gives the now video-accompanied track a surprisingly convincing transformation from classic upbeat Phoenix romp to soulful midtempo ballad, but finds Hynes treating the remix like some special, awards show event-like spectacle complete with faux-Prince guitar theatrics and the lush, three-part harmonies of reformed original Sugababes lineup Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhán Donaghy (now known under the name MKS ). [...]
Etched firmly on our "one to watch" radar following the left-field delights of debut single "Plastic Utopia" , a perplexing, yet oh-so-smoove bridging of 802s-era art rock and blue-eyed soul, three-piece Brooklyn indie Japan Soul (Jason Paul, David Rozner and DaVe Lipp) succeed in furthering our intrigue with follow-up "Transparent", a stunning, retro-pop-hued masterwork of disco, funk, new wave and Latin rhythms that seems to answer the question of what would happen if one felt the need to mold together the DNA of Miami Sound Machine, Wham!, The Power Station and Ready For The World with some [...]
In theory, no one should really like Future 's half-drunken, overdosed-on-Auto-Tune, R&B shower singing ramblings: it's tonally abrasive, often off-key and really, just plain weird; yet there we are anyway, hollering along with his glitched-over croons whether croaking about waking up in Bugatti's or the glorious benefits of a "good kush and alcohol" combination or tapping into our inner sensitive thug to yell "TURN ON THE LIGHTS!!!" at the top of our lungs as if it's the deepest four words ever put to tape. For the DJ Spinz [...]
Back in 2011, Portland-based remix/ production giants RAC offered a "thank you" for fans helping them cross over the 10,000 Facebook friend mark with a pretty nifty cover of The Smashing Pumpkins' timeless "19793 . In celebration of that number now exceeding 30,000, RAC have gifted their followers with yet another cover song freebie pulled from the '902s hit singles vault, this time taking on The Cardigans' "Lovefool" . Now, as most us who've spent a large chunk of the past seventeen years endlessly spinning the original without any guilt know, "Lovefool" is one [...]
Even when firing on creative tangents that found them playing within genre flavors of folk, psych-rock, jazz or krautrock, soothing shadings of a soft rock vein have constantly managed to creep up in the varied work of Swedish three-piece Junip , even if only heard via the soft-focused crooning of frontman/ solo singer-songwriter success José González. Rarely have the band sounded as soft rock (or as pop-polished) though as on "Your Life, Your Call", the second single from their self-titled sophomore set. Baked in a driving churn of synths, fuzzed over bass and drum machine [...]
With the upgrade of attention and love Kendrick Lamar has been receiving in recent months post- Good Kid , one could imagine the peak levels of excitement currently brewing within the Top Dawg Entertainment circle and the many ways they're looking to work their now-mainstream-pierced profile to their benefit when it comes the team's other acts. Schoolboy Q is up next to bat on the TDE release schedule front with his major label debut Oxymoron , and previewing the album is "Yay Yay", a track that finds the L.A. rhyme slinger keeping up the [...]
We're pretty sure that at some point MNEK is probably going to want us to focus on his original material, but if the teen-aged singer-songwriter-producer opted on releasing a couple more EP's (or, hell, LP's) worth of his amazing R&B diva "re-fixes" until that time, we wouldn't mad at all. After offering up his own slant on cuts from Kelis , Sade and AlunaGeorge , among others, for this latest cover, MNEK turns his focus to the one and only Janet Jackson's Grammy-winning '93 jam "That's The Way Love Goes" , [...]
You know what a great musical pick-me-up is? Rich Boy's 2006/ 2007 smash "Throw Some D's" . Put this slab of post-millennial Southern rap perfection on when you're in the worst of moods and by the time the song ends-right before you rush to hit the replay button-whatever was making your day sucky is bound to be a forgotten memory. Such is the power of a glorious '802s R&B/ Switch sample that's been sliced and diced into a hypnotic, energetic loop and could go on for eons with no complaints, but also Rich Boy himself, distilling [...]
The A-list white soul scene in 2013 is about to get realllly interesting right about now. With all the gab of Timberlake's most recent work on The 20/ 20 Experience nabbing more than a few pages from the Robin Thicke Playbook, of course the arrival of something new from Robin is bound to draw all types of attention, with folks at the ready to start up some kind of feud in which of the falsetto-loving blue-eyed-soul crooners does the style the best. Beyond our own low-key amusement at the possible [...]
While there's a neat idea floating somewhere in "Pour It Up"'s aim in being an "unapologetic" R&B diva slant on the dark n' sleazy (and highly popular) strip-club trope sans the usual male hip hop suspects, and some interesting things come out of Mike Will Made It 's tense, apocalyptic-soul frame and Rihanna 's deliciously iced delivery bringing a vivid, sinister edge to the lyric's snippet-like scene details, the track in its original album version never felt worth the longer-than-interlude-length ride and basically came across as nothing more than a placeholder for the inevitable overly-crowded remix pushing Rih [...]
Those still left scratching their heads over Snoop Dogg's sudden, random transformation into Snoop Lion may probably just wanna give up: the reggae alter-ego isn't going anywhere, for one album at least, and with the arrival date of that debut release ( Reincarnated ) growing ever so close (hitting outlets April 23rd), Snoop has gone ahead and peeled off another preview of the curioso project in the form of "No Guns Allowed". Produced by Major Lazer and Ariel Rechtshaid with Dre Skull , with vocal assists from Drake and [...]
Some weeks back we hyped up Chicago indie act Sunjacket via their rustic alt-rock-flavored and gorgeously harmony-laced "Grandstanders" ; since then the five-piece band have released the three other album-ready demo recordings birthed from the same fifteen-hour studio session that produced that first taste, giving listeners a greater sense of what they can bring to the table creatively. Of this newer batch, "Alligator" sounds like a good choice for a future official single, the potent juxtaposition of a creeping bass-driven churn against the lead vocalist's plaintive crooning on the verses providing an inviting [...]
2013 has already been host to some pretty fantastic returns and comebacks, and making this year in music even more sweeter for many, beloved indie rockers Vampire Weekend returning with their third album Modern Vampires of the City in May and previewing the set with yesterday's premiere of double A-side single "Diane Young"/ "Step". The boppy, energetic "Diane Young"-a rumination on aging with a title that cleverly plays on the phrase "dying young"-fits in place with the varied sonic influences and love of speed that have brought about some [...]
For all those still endlessly grooving their tailfeathers to the thumping house kick of Kaytranada 's remix to Teedra Moses' "Be Your Girl" , the producer has cooked up yet another winner rooted in the best of '002s female R&B, this time tackling Jill Scott's '04-birthed slab of inspira-soul "Golden" . Re-shading the number's feel-good neo-soul shimmer with some neck-snapping drums, alien-esque R&B textures and funky bass work that basically demands one put on the "stank face" when hit with the power of those rubbery groove lines, Kaytranada raises the freedom-celebrating anthem to a whole [...]
While there remains many reasons to have fallen in love with Lykke Li's "Little Bit" on initial meeting, one of the main grabs of the arresting indie Swede-pop ditty was how it made Lykke seem just a tad bit off, the singer's cutesy, kooky delivery paired with the otherworldly allure of that minimalist tribal production shading her brow-raising crush confessional (who could forget the line "And for you I keep my legs apart"?) with a certain creepy darkness that made it sound like a restraining order was due her way any second. Updating the [...]
For hip hop veteran Fat Joe , the rap game struggle has been MIGHTY real in the past twelve months, with not one, or two, but three singles with pretty strong line-ups ( "Instagram That Hoe" featuring Rick Ross and Juicy J; "Yellow Tape" w/ French Montana, Lil' Wayne, A$AP Rocky and DJ Khaled; the should-have-been last summer jam "Pride N' Joy" featuring...well, everybody) failing to make the jump to hit status, leaving his still-untitled eleventh studio effort both buzz-less and lacking an official release date. The newly dropped "Ballin'" [...]
Mixtape Maestro
“Is Burial actually Four Tet?” hoax resurfaces online
Song : Porcelain Raft : “Think of the Ocean”
The Postal Service – “A Tattered Line of String”
