New York singer-songwriter/ The Knocks road dawg Samuel has long been touted as a future pop sensation in the making amongst the music blog scene (we hyped him here two years ago), and later this year we’ll finally get to see if those predictions prove correct once his Columbia/ Startime-backed debut Trains To Wanderland arrives.
Current single “I Heart NY” (from Samuel’s new EP, available here and here) hints that mainstream success shouldn’t be that tough of a hurdle, its sugary ice cream truck plinks, infectious “da-da-da”‘s and charming lyrical snapshots of growing up amongst the “street lights” and “golden summers” of the Big Apple all adding up to one hard-to-resist summertime soundtracker; but if that’s somehow not reason enough to keep your ears tuned to what Samuel’s cooking, you might at least get a kick out of hearing him tweak Drake’s Top Ten ballad “Find Your Love” into a fuzzy, lite funk-pop groove.
On the original version of Jeezy‘s latest banger, the Drumma Boy-produced “Lose My Mind”, the Southern rapper and guest star Plies celebrate the end of a long and hard work week by getting as boozed and random vagina’d up as possible; and as nightmarish as their party-mode at times sounds (thanks to Drumma’s hauntingly slo-mo crunk crawl, Jeezy’s talk of being so drunk he feels “schizophrenic” and Plies sounding…well like Plies), the duo do well at making their weekend feel like a can’t miss event.
So it’s a shame that a verse by Drake on the remix (premiered at this year’s BET Awards) sort of dulls everything down. Not only does Drizzy sound nowhere near as delightfully deranged or super-intoxicated as Jeezy or Plies (the latter of whom he unfortunately replaces here), but his lyrical contribution is entirely forgettable, leaning far too heavily on his self-important signature (“Half a million in a week/ It’s only right I do”) when one or two doses of woozy wit would of sufficed.
We get Jeezy may have wanted to show Drake some love after being added to the Thank Me Later guest-list, but Mr. “Find Your Love” just proves an ill fit here.
These days, if you’re a new rapper looking to stand-out amongst an ever-growing crowd of up-and-comers, the trick to quickly make your way to the top of the heap is to pick a indie favorite to rhyme over. Past blogosphere successes of this practice have included Drake, Kid Cudi, Thelophilus London and Chiddy Bang, though in recent days, much attention has been placed upon Long Island newcomer Hoodie Allen and his flip on Marina & The Diamonds‘ self-encouragement anthem “I Am Not A Robot”.
Chopping, dicing and “chipmunk-ing” Marina’s voice to fit the re-imagining’s light upbeat shuffle, Hoodie’s “Robot” (from the upcoming, all-Marina-sampling mixtape, The Diamond Cuts) doesn’t really offer anything too profound lyrically, but it’s a likable enough “let me introduce myself”-type-of ditty that not only nails the “fun rap” niche acts like B.o.B and the aforementioned Chiddy are currently winning with, but ultimately accomplishes it’s duty in piquing interest into what else Allen will be dishing out down the road.
Catch the track below or here, then peep Hoodie’s excellent updating of the Pharcyde classic “Passin’ Me By” (from last year’s Making Waves release).
We know, we know (get off Drake’s sack already!!!!!), but it’s not our fault hip hop’s current Boy Wonder is attached to so many noteworthy projects right now.
Added to that list is October’s Very Cold, a Drake/ Coldplay mash-up mixtape helmed by producer Chi Duly, which is not only great because the two acts it’s mashing-up actually sounds like an enticing musical marriage on paper (Drizzy and Chris Martin both have that whole e-mopey thing going on), but the ten-track results are all songs we wouldn’t be embarrassed to blast in our cars…with the windows rolled down (Special props to Duly and his expert chop/ blend work).
Grab our two favorites below, the sublime “Money To Fix” (“Money To Blow”/ “Fix You”) and the addicting “Forever La Vida” (“Forever”/ “Viva La Vida”), or simply cop the entire thing here.
DL: Drake & Coldplay featuring Birdman and Lil’ Wayne “Money To Fix” (alt)
DL: Drake & Coldplay featuring Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne and Eminem “Forever La Vida” (alt)
If the releases of official lead singles “Over” and “Find Your Love” and the seemingly endless stream of leaks that littered the Web in the weeks after taught us anything about Drake‘s Thank Me Later, it was mostly that the Canadian rapper’s much-anticipated debut wasn’t going be the instantaneously-heralded classic many had prematurely hyped it to being. If anything, it felt more and more like Later was going to be a grower, one of those albums whose true greatness wouldn’t be uncovered until one had had the chance to sit with it for awhile.
Following the “Internet premiere” of TML in it’s entirety last week (fourteen days ahead of schedule), we can now see that we were correct in our assumption, because on first listen, the album doesn’t register as anything all that special.
Chalk that initial reaction up to the album’s overall sonic dreariness. A little too over-reliant on darkly-textured soundscapes and drowsy R&B hooks and verses, even the set’s attempt at “bangers” are handicapped by an adherence to such moody detailing.
Continue to give Later spin love however (and recall that Drake’s breakthrough mixtape So Far Gone followed a similar nocturnal vibe), and it eventually becomes easier to appreciate what’s actually a solid set, impressive in it’s avoidance of typical modern rap LP hodge-podge manufacturing for a focus on cohesiveness, where all the songs follow a singular musical style and concept (strikingly intimate, diary-like accounts of the celebratory highs and heart-bruising lows of life post-fame), and the featured guest stars and producers compliment rather than steal attention away from the overall theme.
Of Later‘s many highlights that are not singles, we recommend the chilled knocker “Unforgettable”, which gets grand assists from an Aaliyah vocal snippet (via her cover of The Isley Brothers’ “At Your Best”) and Young Jeezy’s always welcome, floating-in-mid-air rap flow magic (special shouts to that “His and her firearms” line), and “Fancy”, which features Drake and T.I. throwing props at independent women (“Well aren’t you a breath of fresh air/
From all these superficial gold digging bitches in here…”) atop a hypnotically swirly, Swizz Beatz soul sample beat.
Check out the tracks below (along with a couple recent Drake remixes), and try to peel the money out of your wallet on June 15th to cop the album. Promises, while you may not immediately take to the album, odds are you’ll end up doing exactly like the man says and thanking Drake later for crafting such a strong set.
Aside from it being a well-crafted fusion of pop, soul and funk, most of the appeal in “For Days”, a new cut by NYC indie act Francis and the Lights, undoubtedly lies in the “Spot the 80′s Influence” game you’ll no doubt be absorbed with when listening to the hypnotic tune.
First off there’s frontman Francis Farewell Starlite’s voice, a soothing hybrid of Peter Gabriel’s, Phil Collins’ and Steve Winwood’s respective blue-eyed soul tones; then you have the funky guitar licks in the fade-out bringing to mind Prince’s “Kiss” and a striking bass and keyboard groove that recalls early Madonna (or, to be more obscure, Bernard Wright’s 1985 R&B Top 10 “Who Do You Love?”). Even the lyrics feel rooted in decades-old scripts, as Francis’ spooky stalker antics (in which he admits to following a woman around for days, in the hopes that an “airstrike” or “natural disaster” could occur and somehow force them together) seem ripped from The Police’s similarly creepy “Every Breath You Take”.
After hearing this much-appreciated retro trip (found on their latest album, It’ll Be Better), we’re now super-intrigued by what these cats plan to bring to the table on their so-far not-yet-leaked Drake/ Thank Me Later collaboration, “Karoake”.
Eight months after all that “Swiftgate” drama took both the Interwebz and watercooler/ Twitter gab hostage, Kanye West re-emerges on the freshly leaked Good Ass Job lead single “Power” sounding just as “divo” as ever, declaring “In the white man’s world/ We the ones chosen” and “I don’t need yo’ pussy, bitch/ I’m on my own dick” while embracing the “screams of haters” as his own superhero theme song and proving he (still) can’t take a joke (“Fuck SNL and the whole cast/ Tell ‘em Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass”).
Oh, and as far as being looked as the “abomination of Obama nation”? Yeezy could care less, quickly brushing off any slight tinges of remorse concerning that role with this typically egotistical line: “At the end of the day/ Goddammit, I’m killin’ this shit”.
Honestly, as much as one might want to hate Kanye when he’s on one of these power trips, dude is right: “Power”, taken in as a whole, is an epic shit-killer.
Try to peel your attention away from the intensity of his lyrics, and absorb all the other ambitious going-ons happening here: the main beat, a pummeling tribal-rock stomp weaved together with a sample of King Crimson’s 1969 prog-rock classic “21st Century Schizoid Man”, soul claps and wordless chants, feels like an event all on it’s own; then you have that coda, an amazingly beautiful dynamic shift which offers pretty piano tricklings and funereal synths as West and an out-of-nowhere-appearing Dwele trade off suicidal thoughts (“Now this would be a beautiful death/ I’m jumping out the window/ I’m lettin’ everything go…”).
Throw in the jaw-dropping fact that the version of “Power” currently making the music blog rounds may not even be the final version (yes folks, it could get even better) and what you have is the beginning of Kanye West about this run this town all over again.
And y’all thought 2010 was gonna be The Year of Drake…
In an effort to prove that we’re not completely out of the loop when it comes to what’s been making waves within the music blog scene in recent weeks, enjoy this quick run-through of some of the more high profile new videos/ releases we’ve missed out on commenting on due to…uh, we’ll just say “real life” (and a few WordPress issues) getting in the way:
Sleigh Bells “Tell Em”
Anything you’ll ever read about this Brooklyn boy/girl noise-pop duo (vocalist Alexis Krauss and songwriter/ guitarist/ producer Derek E. Miller) is bound to note the band’s love for insane volume levels just as much as it’ll hype how crazily infectious the tunes hidden beneath all the ear-punishing distortion are.
Believe these words on both accounts.
“Tell Em”, the first single from the Sleigh Bells’ debut album Treats (due May 11th on Mom + Pop/ N.E.E.T.), may lead to one having early deafness, but bet you won’t be able to resist repeat doses of it’s rat-a-tat drum, turned-up-to-eleven guitar riffage and laser sound effects assault, nor Krauss’ pureform coos sweetly encouraging today’s young’uns “you can do your best today” betwixt it all.
Last summer’s chillwave/ glo-fi movement taught us the glories of music that was meek-sounding, of shitty quality and awesome; expect the upcoming warm weather season to be all about start-up bands/ acts co-signing the equally awesome louder-than-loud and shitty quality formula of the Bells.
We’ll politely decline from adding to the increasingly tiring “Is she copying Gaga?” rattle concerning Aguilera‘s new (meh) one, and just say this: when it comes to desperate slutty Christina, we’d rather give “Dirrty” a re-spin.
Is it bad that we wish we could just fast-forward to the next Aguilera album era already?
Christina’s Bionic drops June 8th.
Ciara featuring Ludacris “Ride”
Looking to get her career back on track after the commercial fumble that was her last album (2009′s Fantasy Ride), Ciara smartly hearkens back to a previous career highlight on new single “Ride”, re-heating the winning, “seductive ‘crunk & b’ crawl + Ludacris cameo” formula of “Oh” with an extra slathering of naughty sex kitten on top of it.
“I can do it up and down/ I can do circles/ To him I’m a gymnast/ This one is my circus,” she sings, nicely illustrating such bedroom talents with a slew of eye-popping body gyrations (amongst other “I’m not a little girl anymore” visuals) in the accompanying video.
Yeah, the hook claims it’s the “beat” that she’s riding “like a mother-[bleeping] freak”, but a ten-year-old could figure out what she’s really talking about.
Eminem “Not Afraid”
Capping months of track-owning guest appearances on joints alongside Drake & Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne and B.o.B (not to mention the killer freestyle track “Despicable”), Em‘s “Not Afraid”, the first taste off his next full length Recovery, lands as another lyrical stunner, with him surprisingly coming across as equally compelling when preaching positive about living a “clean” lifestyle as he does when he’s flexing his more loony and murderous-minded material.
Only problem is, while we’re excited to hear he’s become aware of how awful the various “accents” and pop star/ tabloid staple-spoofing had become, “Not Afraid” feels less and less interesting with each successive listen (maybe it’s that ’80′s arena rock-styled hook), and we’re not necessarily sure we’re ready for an entire album of Eminem getting all uplifting on us.
Surely Kim has done something scandalous in recent years to inspire at least one Recovery song that throws back to his bat-shit crazy rhymes.
Josh Ritter “Another New World”
From the critically-acclaimed folk singer-songwriter‘s newly released sixth set So Runs The World Away (currently streaming in full over at NPR.org), a seven-minute-long story song set atop beautifully sedative acoustic guitar pluckings and dreamily sirenic muted horns about an Arctic explorer and his crew and the tragic horrors that befall them in the midst of a voyage in search of the “new world”.
Doesn’t sound like your cup of tea? Take a chance and hit ‘Play’ and you’ll be surprised how misty-eyed you get once it gets to the part where the protagonist is forced to set fire to his beloved ship in order to stay alive.
Most attention concerning this final single from the nearly two-year-old I Am…Sasha Fierce will more than certainly fall on it’s strange, but definitely sexy, retro-themed video (with Bey once-again rocking the Bettie Page ’50′s pin-up look) rather than the song itself; but the cut (co-penned by sister Solange) manages to be somewhat fascinating in it’s own right with the steely-voiced diva turning herself inside-out trying to figure out why a man would choose to willfully bypass such a catch (especially one with “beauty”, “class”, “style” and, most importantly”, “ass”) to a tightly-wound ’60′s soul strut.
“Find Your Love” is the latest leakage to spew from Drake’s forthcoming Thank Me Later debut, and if you’ve been anticipating a new reason to hype up the Canadian rapper’s mic skills, you might as well go ahead and let out your groans now because, as the title hints, the track once again finds the guy rocking his sleepy emo-R&B guise.
Produced by Kanye West, “Love” offers a somewhat classier adult-soul slant on the haunting, glitch-soul atmospherics that, for better or worse depending on your stance, framed 808s & Heartbreak (think if West and Sade were to hook up on a record), with Drake hoping beyond hope that after opening himself up to a girl, his romantic feelings are reciprocated: “I better find your loving/ I better find your heart”, he repeatedly croons on the hook, each echo creepily evolving the line from a playful threat to “If this doesn’t work, I’m gonna never be this vulnerable to a chick ever again” desperation.
Without a rap verse included to break up some of it’s moody monotony, the track can register a bit underwhelming on the first (second and third) listen, but with repeated exposure to that mesmerizing chorus and intriguing piano/ mechanical drum strut combo (not to mention the emotional power it will wield when the listener is cycling through their own “Does he/ she like me?” drama), “Find Your Love”‘s likability should rise.
Let’s not forget, “Over” didn’t sound so great initially either.
Monica featuring Missy Elliott & Notorious B.I.G. “Everything To Me (Remix)”/ “Blackberry”
While most other mainstream R&B artists are too busy trying to keep the kids’ attention by sounding like malfunctioning robots and wannabe rappers, or awkwardly straining (and usually failing) to inject as much soul as possible in between club-happy house thumps and electro bleeps and bloops, Monica aimed to keep it simple and just saaang on her Missy Elliott co-produced lead Still Standing single “Everything To Me”, a vintage-hugging, Broadway-sized tribute to the “perfect man”.
Though the back-to-basics move has proven successful (the track is currently spending it’s third week atop the R&B/ Hip Hop singles chart, making it Monica’s first #1 in seven years), the song falls a bit on the bland side, mostly making us wish to hear the tune it samples (Deniece Williams similarly theatrical, albeit far more dynamic, ’81 classic “Silly”) more.
Slightly better is the summer jeep jam-styled remix, which again lifts it’s musical foundation from the ’80′s R&B world (this time, Rene & Angela’s “I Love You More”), as well as a completely unnecessary re-heated Notorious BIG verse from the Life After Death number “I Love The Dough” (tie-in for the confused: both songs sample the R&A joint), though we should note that the best song we’ve heard from Monica so far in 2010 was one that didn’t even officially make the album. That would be “Blackberry”, a midtempo cut that brings back the dual joys of both snap & b and Monica’s sassier side as she hits the roof after breaking the code to her man’s titular cell phone and finding out, through texts and voice mails from another chick, that he’s not being on the up-and-up. Oh, the drama.
It usually takes a good month or so for us for a new T-Pain single to make the transition from being just plain dumb to severely addicting (but still dumb), so it makes sense that right about now, after weeks of the Auto-Tune soul-man/ walking spoof’s latest bringing about all kinds of raging “What’s wrong with music today!?!” and “Why his this guy still around?!!” tantrums, we would start coming around to admiring “Reverse Cowgirl”.
Of course, like all the times before when it came to taking a liking to this guy’s solo material, we were drunk and “slow-dancing” (read: dry-humping some chick on the dancefloor) when we reached this epiphany, but admit it: there’s something awe-inspiring about the way T-Pain excels at making the silliest lyrics/ concepts (in this case, a certain sexual position and bleats of “Giddy up girl” and “Yee-haw”) sound SO DAMN DEEP with just a sprinkle of his yearning, “studio-sweetened” vocals.
Plus, we kinda dig the “artsy” moves of it’s video (see it below), where, especially under the influence of things we don’t feel the need to mention, watching T-Pain shake his dreads in slow motion is on par with seeing Avatar in 3-D for the first time.
More surprising than discovering that Next, the late-’90′s/ early-00′s hit R&B boy band who turned a song about getting erections on the dancefloor into a five-week #1 US pop smash, are still together and making music?
Finding out that their recently dropped cover of Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone”, done in the synth-bedazzled Euro-R&B style of the inexplicably currently popular Taio Cruz/ Jay Sean/ Jason DeRulo (we know they’re different artists, but deep in our hearts we think they are all one person), is kinda-sorta not all that bad.
Faith Evans “I Wanna Rock (Snoop Dogg Freestyle Cover)”
The Former First Lady of Bad Boy peaks her head out of hibernation (really, where has Faith been)…with an unfortunate alter-ego tag (“Fizzy”)…to drop some boasting “rhymes” about her flow over a 2009 Snoop instrumental…and then some cat named Deuce Hanna (who?) raps.
Yeah, we don’t know what to say either…but here you go:
Foreign Exchange-affiliated singer-songwriter (and former Erykah Badu vocalist) YahZarah previews her forthcoming fourth album, the enticingly titled The Ballad of Purple Saint James, with “Why Dontcha Call Me No More”, a song that finds her going through the blues over a cheating beau (“Obviously you never had a broken heart/ Or you would’ve known better than to play with someone else’s”).
Don’t think that the song is another one of those depressing slow burners though. In fact, it plays more like a mood-lightener thanks to punk-ish kiss-off dialogue like “I hope you’re happy or whatever/ On second thought…not really” and a boppy, new wave-inspired backing beat that, in our heads, would be featured as the walking-down-the-aisle soundtrack for the wedding of Prince and Janelle Monae.
Newbie girl group, and latest Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins find, Purple Reign position themselves as ones to watch in the two-thousand-and-dime on this R&B twist of Timbaland & Drake’s “Say Something”. Of special note is the acapella intro, in which they both introduce their solid three-part harmonies and give a shout out to the inspiration behind their name with a melodic swipe from Prince’s “Purple Rain”.
Head here to hear the ladies tackle Drake’s “Fear”, Waka Flocka Flame’s “O Let’s Do It” and Young Money’s “Bed Rock”.
As nice as it is to get free music, think of how much better your soul would feel if you purchased it the old-fashioned way.
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(MP3 posts are for promotional and/ or previewing purposes only; if any artist or their representation wish to have the links removed, contact me and I will happily comply!)
New York singer-songwriter/ The Knocks road dawg Samuel has long been touted as a future pop sensation in the making amongst the music blog scene (we hyped him here two years ago), and later this year we’ll finally get to see if those predictions prove correct once his Columbia/ Startime-backed debut Trains To Wanderland arrives.
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