mixtape maestro (2.0)

On his Hockey-sampling and Chiddy Bang-assisted/ produced Finally Famous Vol. 3 mixtape highlight “Too Fake”, G.O.O.D. Music signee Big Sean checks off the increasingly requisite “re-tool an indie-pop fave” rap sub-genre box to relate the pleasures of living the good life. He’s rocking blinding bling, enjoying dinners made up of nothing but “lobster, shrimp and calamari” and “grabbing the fattest asses” with nary a complaint from their owners. Things couldn’t be any better right?

Maybe…if he didn’t have to deal with the constant street gab going round nailing him as some kind of sell-out just because he’s come up.

“He ain’t no hometown hero/ He on that LeBron James shit,” Sean hears them saying, heightening his own insecurities towards his newfound lifestyle (“I’m too real to be living this fake,” he moans early on). But even if their hateration cuts deep, he refuses to let them know it, shutting them up with a simple “Suck my dick then choke on a nut” before turning towards his reflection for a lil’ Stuart Smalley self-affirmation session: “The realest nigga I know is in the mirror, bro”.

Don’t let them get you down, Sean; keep doing what you do and eat your calamari proudly. We know we would.

Pick up the entire Finally Famous Vol. 3 set here. Sean’s official debut Finally Famous is slated for a September release.

Big Sean – Too Fake (feat. Chiddy Bang & Hockey)

If Kanye calls you out as having the potential to be the second G.O.A.T. (behind Eminem, of course), best believe when he calls upon you to bless one of his tracks, the “it” better be brought.

So with that said, it’s no surprise that Nicki Minaj would attempt to drop the best verse of her still young career on the much-talked-about Kanye & Friends posse cut joint “Monster” (from the newly announced upcoming West and Jay-Z EP, Watch The Throne); what is shocking, however, is that she would end up making the rest of her brow-raising trackmates (the song rounds together not only ‘Ye, Jigga and, in a laughably brief cameo, the BAWSE, but indie god Justin Vernon of Bon Iver is employed to play hook man) seem completely irrelevant.

Using West’s sludgy fuzz-bounce as her own personal playground, Minaj adopts like seven different voices and three different flow tempos to slice-and-dice those lesser than (“Let me get this straight/ Wait I’m the rookie?/ But my features and my shows ten times your pay?/ 50k for a verse, no album out!”) and teasingly flaunt her maybe-faux/ maybe-not bisexuality (“Besides ‘Ye, they can’t stand besides me/ I think me, you and Am should menage Friday”), in the end, bringing all kinds of truth to her early boast of “Watch the queen conquer”.

Sure, Kanye earns Runner-up Prize with his naughty-clever “sarcophagus”/ “esophagus”/ “swallow-ship” rhyme, but in her wildly animated contribution, Minaj easily steals the show, re-igniting hope that when her Pink Friday solo album does finally drop this November, it’ll feature more of this playfully raw side…

…and less of the questionable bubblegum tendencies that dominate second recent leak “Check It Out”, a will.i.am production/ duet that unnecessarily twists The Buggles’ early days of MTV hit “Video Killed The Radio Star” into a typical BEP electro-hop jam for the Top 40-loving teenybopper crowd (and will likely become one of the biggest, most inescapable, radio hits of the fall season).

Sigh, Minaj. You’re so promising, yet so frustrating.

Kanye West – Monster (feat. Rick Ross, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj & Bon Iver)

Nicki Minaj & will.i.am – Check It Out

As if to remind the public that he’s good for more than just over-the-top sex jams, R. Kelly steers in a Sam Cooke-inspired vintage soul direction on fantastic new single “When A Woman Loves”, a classy, “grown folks R&B” ballad that finds him showering praise on his woman’s undying devotion towards him, even after all those times he’s been a pure knucklehead and failed her.

With the backing arrangement taking on the dramatic orchestral flair of his parents’ favorite slow-paced two-steppers, Kellz digs deep into the supper club soul-man persona, paying tribute to her allegiance with an award-baiting vocal performance filled with hand-wringing intensity and sincere passion.

Yeah, lines like “She’s got more, more faith in me than a beach got sand”, his repeated bellows of being “forever indebted” and a slight chintzy feel to the production come close to edging the song into hokey territory, but the track is moving nonetheless, easily one of the best Pied Piper creations in years.

From his forthcoming thirteenth (!!) album, Love Letter.

So far, Brandon Flowers‘ (sudden) solo career has launched with a couple of whimpers rather than the bang we assumed it would. Yeah, Flamingo previews “Crossfire” and “Swallow It” bear a certain broody, low-key charm (especially the latter, with it’s mesmerizing prancing melodies and nudging inspirational lyric), but we anticipated something far more…well, lively (read: hooky and heavily synth-adorned) as kick-off for The Killers frontman’s detour away from his bandmates.

Thankfully newest album leakage “Was It Something I Said?” has arrived to assuage our concerns over this whole solo project a bit, as it finally finds Brandon bringing some energy (and hooks-Yay!) to the table.

Putting on his best Elvis impersonator quiver, Flowers rides a perky ’80′s keyboard bop to invite us in on the exhilaration of he and his “honey love” Valentina hitting the Vegas streets in search of a chapel so they can take their union to the next level. Too bad his bliss is short-lived; after catching something off in his future bride’s eyes, he’s horrified to learn she’s already put plans in motion to desert him, forcing him down on his knees in a restaurant’s parking lot, begging to make right whatever he did wrong.

“Was it something I said or did?/ Was it something that I should have kept hid?”, he pleads on the chorus, capping off both lines in desperation-pierced falsetto shrieks, “If you leave me hanging I don’t know what I’ll do”.

Despite the backing arrangement’s on-going sunniness hinting that things are about to turn for the better, Brandon’s appeals fail to bring her back around, and he’s left alone to be tortured for the rest of his life by the sound of chiming bells echoing around in his head, forever taunting him of the happiness he came so close to achieving, while Valentina ends up hooking up with a dealer and having the new beau’s baby.

It’s a sad story, but a great pop song with tons of replay value, which is all we were asking for in the first place Brandon.

Peep an Australian radio rip of the cut below (courtesy of Some Kind of Awesome); Flamingo drops September 14th.

Brandon Flowers – “Was It Something I Said” (Radio Rip)

When this whole Bieber/ Raekwon/ Kanye collaboration was first hinted at via Twitter (following a string of posts of Kanye giddily expressing his love for the pop tyke’s My World 2.0 album cut “Runaway Love”), we, like probably the most of you, were left a little discombobulated, unable to wrap our minds on how the three could successfully merge on a single track, all the while heavily intrigued by what, yes, epic-ness could result from the musical mind-fuck.

Well this morning, HipHopConnection premiered the joint (a hood-edged remix to “Love”) and, not so surprisingly, it’s a keeper.

The harmless/ menacing juxtaposition of Bieb’s pre-pubescent yearn for the whereabouts of his one and only and those twinkling teen-pop keys against the minimalist cinematic spookery of the Wu’s “Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing Ta Fuck Wit” instrumental achieves a neat ’90′s underground mixtape vibe (with Justin interestingly sounding more than a bit “Someday”-era Mariah Carey-ish here), but the track is honestly more of a showcase for ‘Ye and The Chef as they re-live old Wu-inspired memories, with West reminded of the days when he was a “young youth/ Rockin’ the gold tooth” to the sounds of “C.R.E.A.M.” and Raek referencing his old “Freek’n You (Remix)” verse with that “You got stacks like the International House of Pancakes” intro line.

Justin Bieber (feat. Kanye West & Raekwon) – Runaway Love (Kanye West Remix)

BONUS DL: Jodeci featuring Raekwon & Ghostface Killah “Freek’n You (Mr. Dalvin’s Freek Mix)” (alt)

Yes, co-signing with what everybody else with Internet access this past week has already screamed at you probably a million times over now: Cee-Lo‘s “Fuck You” is brilliant/ genius/ amazing/ the true song of the summer we’ve been waiting for/ one of the greatest records of not only this year, but, perhaps, all time.

An expletive-laced diss at an ex-flame/ gold-digger and her big ballin’ new man packaged as a cheery ’60′s Motown-pop romp and delivered through Cee-Lo’s heaven-sent soulful belts? With all of these elements involved, of course “Fuck You” was going to stir some deafening Web buzz; but for us what makes the song’s near-instantaneous universal embracing even more special is that, just like with the similar viral explosion response to that early leak of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” waaaay back in 2005, it re-positions Cee-Lo as the hottest pop and soul star in all of music land, an awesome reality to digest when you look at the comparably insignificant assembly-line bots most of the major labels are desperately pushing to have in those roles these days.

Fingers are crossed that when “Fuck You”‘s parent album, the Cee-Lo solo outing The Lady Killer, drops on December 7th, it’ll feature more of these modern classics to keep him perched atop that throne where he rightfully belongs.

Cop the single over at Cee’s website, then after the clip, snatch up Emynd‘s killer B-more club remix as well as an old Cee-Lo-featured fave.

“Fuck You”:

BONUS DL: Cee-Lo x Emynd “Fuck You (Emynd Baltimore Club Edit)” (alt)

BONUS DL: Dungeon Family (featuring Cee-Lo, Andre 3000, Big Gipp, Backbone, Big Boi & Sleepy Brown) “Trans DF Express” (alt)

Featuring nine non-sappy “dedicated to the ladies” cuts coolly baked in a summery, ’90′s neo-soul & boom bap chill, To…From…, the debut project from Cali-based hip hop trio Tomorrow, Yesterday, arrives just in time as salvation for those concerned over where they’ll get their new new-Native Tongues fix post-Slum Village’s recent deterioration.

Most recommended? The Pharcyde-meets-Dwele mid-set joint “Fight”, which makes good use of the umpteenth sampling of Michael Jackson’s tender Thriller ballad “The Lady In My Life” for members Yep and T.i.E’s playful look at how silly relationship squabbles can lead to the most intense make-up sex sessions (“We can yell loud now/ Yell loud later/ Two different ways/ But they both wake the neighbors”).

Hear the cut below, then download the rest of the excellent To…From… (for FREE) here.

BONUS DL: The Pharcyde “Runnin’ (Phillipians Remix)” (alt)

As a jump-off cut for second album Kunst, The Tings Tings could’ve easily simply Xerox’ed the irresistible funk-pop guitar grooves and ridiculously catchy cheerleader-esque hooks of their debut album’s singles/ advertisements for everything (“Great DJ”, “That’s Not My Name”, “Shut Up and Let Me Go”) and been totally fine. But nooooo, the UK duo just had to go and switch up for new single “Hands”, ditching the guitar for a sleek and synth-ed out disco frame, and concocting a chorus that doesn’t instantly jump off as something one will be obsessing over for the next six months.

Repeated listens do eventually unveil the record’s brain-sticking powers: it’s endlessly churning new wave strut (nicely mixed by none other than Calvin Harris) exuding an intriguing air of seedy, 1980′s-era nightclub, and the main hook-”Clap your hands if you’re working too hard”-grasping onto a state of mind that plenty of exhausted 9-to-5 drones can relate to; but here’s to hoping that the rest of Kunst doesn’t see the Tings deviating too far from their previous winning formula, because we could do with a few more doses of those addictive pom-pom chants to amp up the dreary fall and winter seasons.

Hear the cut below, then snatch up another Calvin Harris-enhanced treat of the Summer of ’10.

The Ting Tings – Hands

BONUS DL: Kelis “4th of July (Calvin Harris Remix)” (alt)

If there was one inescapable 2010 summer jam entry that could retain it’s massive airplay love well into the New Year with nary a gripe from us, it would be Gyptian‘s reggae-crossover smash “Hold Yuh”. We’ve probably already heard it a billion times now already, and still, the sound of Gyptian’s patois-thick horn-dog warbles atop producer Ricky Blaze‘s rinky-dink piano-based riddim manages to bring a smile to our faces.

We’re assuming Wale feels the same way, since after months of “Hold Yuh” enjoying ubiquitous radio hit status, the rapper has just now opted on using the track’s instrumental as support for his latest top-notch freestyle freebie, this one boasting nearly two and a half minutes of non-stop, off-the-dome mic fierceness (love the “A Different World” references).

DL: Wale “Hold Yuh (Freestyle)” (alt)

BONUS DL: Gyptian featuring Nicki Minaj “Hold Yuh (Remix)” (alt)

King Most has the right idea.

If Andre 3000 persists on only dropping these random, one verse teases instead of the full length solo jams we’ve been begging for for damn near ever, why not just merge a few of them together into something longer than sixty seconds so we can at least pretend like we’re getting a full Three Stacks joint.

On this satisfying mix, Most takes the sixteen and instrumental from recent snippet leak “I Do” and attaches bits of Andre’s work from Devin The Dude’s “What A Job” and the DJ Drama/ Outkast cut “The Art of Storytellin’ Part 4″.

Much appreciated, King. Your move now, Dre.

Andre 3000 – I Do (King Most Mix)