Even if Jazmine Sullivan‘s 2008 debut, the Gold-selling and Grammy-nominated Fearless, wasn’t littered with strong, neo-classic entries like The Best Lauryn Hill Song Not Recorded By Lauryn Hill first single “Need U Bad” or the melodramatic Broadway-soul ballads “Bust Your Windows” and “Lions, Tigers & Bears”, the newcomer was destined to be a standout anyway, her throaty and rasp-tinged alto offering a pleasant throwback to the similarly distinctive-toned R&B divas of yester-decade (Toni Braxton, Anita Baker, the aforementioned Hill) and an appreciated change of pace from the high-pitched, caterwauling sirens that surround her these days.
On new single “Holding You Down (Goin’ In Circles)”, the first taste of her upcoming sophomore collection Love Me Back, Sullivan further proves why she’s needed now, reminding one of the pleasures of ’90′s R&B as she strains her deep, husky pipes in the frustration of unrequited passion (“Its a shame that you don’t care enough to even give me half the love I give to you/ I live for you baby”) to an ever-evolving smorgasbord of that era’s best-of urban contemporary sounds (the latest nostalgia-fueled production from Missy Elliott).
Can (relatively) slow-burning hip hop-soul joints like these please start making a comeback into radio playlists? There’s only so much fist-pumping one can do in a day.
Hear the Fat Joe-aided remix of the track, as well as the Stonebridge Club edit of her Daft Punk-sampling “Dream Big” (hey, fist-pumpers can still be good…on occasion), below.
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”.
On “None of Dem”, the latest enticing leakage teasing Robyn‘s highly-anticipated first-of-trilogy release Body Talk Pt. 1, the Swedish “Fembot” bristles with all kinds of irritation at the un-inspiring sounds and people flooding her small town: The boys can’t dance (therefore can’t get her sex), the girls lack style, and the beats…? By the icy tone she dishes out “None of these kicks go boom/ None of dem basslines fill the room”, let’s just say she’s left a bit underwhelmed.
If by “small town”, Robyn means Top 40 radio and the pathetically weak assortment of male and female “pop stars” it feels the need to push on us over and over all day, we’ll gladly back her up with an outcry of “Chuuuch!!!!”…that is when we take a break from trying to master our own otherworldly boogie to the “None of Dem”‘s eerie, backwards-flowing tribal stomp (y’know, the kind of left-field production a naughty-tongued Missy Elliott could freak with ease before she went on extended hibernation).
Hear the Röyksopp-assisted track over at Robyn’s website, or simply cop it, alongside Body Talk Pt. 1‘s other pre-release treats, “Dancehall Queen” (previously known as “No Hassle”) and “Fembot”, below.
Body Talk Pt. 1 is expected in June.
***As a super special bonus treat, raise your hands if you remember Robyn’s late 90′s success with Robyn Is Here singles like “Show Me Love” and “Do You Know (What It Takes)”? Alright, well how about when she was earning spins on BET (!!!!) with the “Urban Mix”/ QD3 Edit of that album’s third single, “Do You Really Want Me (Respect Me)”? Whether you do or not, enjoy this flashback to 1998 when Robyn was trying to compete with the Brandy’s and Monica’s of the world.
With Nicki Minaj being hyped from several corners of the Inter-Webs as the Great Female Hope of Hip Hop’s (Immediate) Future and currently enjoying major airtime as a featured collaborator on successful singles with Usher, Ludacris and her Young Money crew, you would think that for her first solo single, a stronger effort would have been made by her backers to make sure her transition from hot guest to solid lead act went over as smoothly as possible.
In other words, the last thing we would’ve expected hearing as Nicki’s intro LP jump-off would have been the extreme WTH!! that is “Massive Attack”, a Sean Garrett co-production that’s blatantly gunning for a left-of-center Missy Elliott club banger vibe but ends up landing as a confused mess.
Nicki really isn’t the problem here, actually managing to stay somewhat interesting over the first two sixteens with fierce-ish Barbie spittage like “So call me Simba little mama/ Cause Mufasa couldn’t stop a bitch/ I fly in on that choppa just to buy Balenciaga”, but what’s with all that busy clatter she’s rhyming above (A cacophonous massive attack against the eardrums with it’s militaristic/ tribal drumwork and Transformers-transforming-sounding siren synths exploding every which way but on a beat you can comfortably rock to) or the odd-patois-inflections Garrett adopts on a hook that bears little actual hookiness (and starts us re-wondering why we were ever supposed to care about this cat) or the weird detour the production takes in the bridge, suddenly deciding that it wants to be sensitive with the jarring addition of bedroom R&B pianos?
It’s a potential grower (with the Hype Williams-directed accompanying clip slightly making it go down a lil’ easier), but for now…we just don’t get it.
In which Lady Gaga reminds us of the old days when a “World Premiere Music Video Short Film Event” (as well as corded land-lines) really meant something.
We can’t help but think (or hope) that somewhere Missy Elliott has just finished watching this awesomely WTF!!-to-the-infinite-power (and obviously Quentin Tarantino-influenced) smorgasbord of mass murder, girl-on-girl kissing (and prison fights!!!), bizarro fashion sense (where does one buy still-lit, half-smoked cigarette butt shades?), early Madonna eyebrows, purposefully flat acting, shared Honey Bun snacking, vogueing boy dancer chefs, future Twitter-hyped one-liners (“Once you kill a cow, you gotta make a burger“) and…erm, Tyrese, and has immediately got her record label on the phone, demanding that they get her a music video budget big enough to include James Cameron as director and the actual Moon as a set location, just so she can end up besting GaGa’s “Telephone” as the owner of 2010′s best clip.
Eve kicked 2010 off with the announcement that she was parting ways with long-time label Interscope and re-entering the studio to start piecing together a new new incarnation of her long-delayed fourth LP; in response, we couldn’t even muster up the mildest of shrugs.
Why, you may ask? Let’s just say it’s hard getting excited anymore over the potential release of an album that has been promised to drop every year for the past three years now (let’s not forget that the project’s one-time lead single, the still-amazing “Tambourine”, arrived waaaay back in 2007).
If the set (now entitled Lip Lock) does manage to make it’s way to stores sometime before we have to start shopping for 2011 calendars though, we hope it follows through on the somewhat intriguing idea of her going after atypical soundscapes (like the Salaam Remi/ Benga dubstep beat she pasted her vocals on on the ’09 leak “Me N My”), rather than feature ho-hum repeatings of the tried-and-true, a category in which the newly leaked “Fire” falls.
Don’t get us wrong, as far as re-igniting the interest of faded-away audiences, “Fire” does a decent job: Its backing beat gives a sleek, Southern(-rap)-fried spin to White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” instrumental; the hook (“All y’all can spell my name/ E-V-E, ain’t nothing changed”) carries a certain double-dutch chant charm; and, in Eve’s rhymes, there’s a flicker of that old “pitbull in a skirt” we first fell in love with over ten years ago as she coolly dismisses grapevine gab of her retiring from the rap game (“What, you thought I gave it up?/ Like I was done and over?/ Guess I done fucked up your luck/ Better throw out your four leaf clover…”).
It’s just that, in our heads, we’d much rather have this street buzz-ish banger be the jump-off for a comeback-themed mixtape collection, where it could help build excitement for an official LP full of true game-changing efforts in a similar vein as aforementioned delights “Tambourine” and “Me N My”.
Just like the rest of us, Estelle has probably grown tired of waiting around for Missy Elliott to emerge from whatever studio she’s been secluding herself in to bless us with a new crazy club banger. Here’s the difference between us and her, though: whereas we would have simply…well, just kept waiting for “Misdemeanor” to re-emerge with some heat, Estelle has gone one better and decided to simply unleash a Missy-esque track herself…and boy are we happy she did.
Rocking an immediately grabbing hook chant (“I can be a freak-every day of every week”) and a taut, B-more-styled fashion house strut (helmed by the increasingly everywhere David Guetta) that’s damn near impossible to sit still to, Estelle’s new single “Freak” finds the singer/ rapper boldly expressing her S&M-loving side while pushing the rest of the female population to embrace their inner-naughtiness as well.
“Don’t be scared, don’t be shy/ Yes, you gotta let it breathe,” she preaches, assuring the ladies that “he wanna see you handcuffed up/ he wanna see your leather gear” and using an interpolation of Soul II Soul’s deathless “Back To Life (However Do You Want Me)” to stress her bedroom-spicing ideas further. Repping for all men everywhere, featured guest Kardinal Offishall can only respond with a major case of the byoing-yoing-yoings (“I pitch a tent with an XL Magnum on the cover!!”).
Missy, we DEMAND you make an appearance on the inevitable remix…
Purchase the track through Estelle’s website. Expect Estelle’s third album, All of Me, later this year.
British electro-pop singer/ songwriter/ producer Dan Black shook up the music blog scene back in 2008 with his mash-up-to-the-next-level “HYPNTZ”, a half-sung cover of Notorious BIG’s “Hypnotize” backed by an entrancing beat that merged bits of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” with parts of the soundtrack to John Carpenter’s 1984 sci-fi flick Starman. In short, the aural patchwork was utterly brilliant, the kind of stop-you-in-your-tracks introductory record that instantly had you eager to hear more of what this genre-blurring newbie (a sort of modern-day Beck) had to offer in the future.
Two years later, on the eve of the U.S. premiere of his all-originals debut UN (due February 16th, and featuring the Kid Cudi-featured remix of his non-Biggie-”borrowing” “HYPNTZ” rewrite “Symphonies”), Black has put together six more of these dope mix-and-match creations for his new (and free!!) mixtape Weird Science.
You can fnd the entire set here, but check out a couple of our highlights, the Madonna & Kate Bush-fusing “Gimme Into The Cloudbusting” and “Slave To Paper” (a gorgeous synthesis of some hazy 80′s pop number, Dizzee Rascal’s “Stand Up Tall” and a teeny-weeny drum snippet of Missy Elliott’s “Beep Me 911″) below:
Jack Splash has quietly made a name for himself over the past few years in his roles as singer, rapper, songwriter and producer.
Besides drawing raving acclaim for his contributions to Plantlife, a wildly entertaining, three-albums-deep funk outfit based out of L.A., he’s also hooked up some of the brightest talents in modern-day R&B (Alicia Keys, R. Kelly, John Legend, Raheem DeVaughn, Solange, Estelle, Jennifer Hudson, Jazmine Sullivan) with these amazingly lush sounds and classic-tinged romantic scripts steeped in the always-rewarding luster of yesteryear soul (credits include throwback-seasoned singles like Keys’ “Teenage Love Affair”, Legend’s “P.D.A.” and Solange’s “T.O.N.Y.”).
This year has the potential to be Jack’s true breakout year though, thanks to the premiere of his much-delayed solo debut, Technology And Love Might Save It All. But just in case you’re still not yet completely sold on why it should be a necessity for you to circle the May release date of the project (or, hell, are still scratching your head trying to figure out who dude is), we’ve gathered three previously unleashed cuts for your listening pleasure below. Promises you’ll be an instant fan after hearing them:
“I Could Have Loved You” featuring Missy Elliott & Jazmine Sullivan
-leaked to high praise last summer, this infectious four-on-the-floor delight finds the ladies and Splash in the midst of a flirtatious stand-off. “I could have loved you,” they tease in a buttery smoove R&B hook, but because they’re both already attached, they can only offer a naughty twirl on the dancefloor. With their mates nowhere in sight though, Jack isn’t fully convinced they’re telling the truth, inquiring in his best Prince voice, “If you gotta man at home/ Why you got them high heels on?”.
-here, Splash is once again on the prowl (“Baby I just wanna get with you/ In a most familiar way/ I don’t wanna cause a spectacle/ I just had to stop and say…”) and being flanked by a supporting cast of A-listers (T-Pain drops a rap verse, an Auto-Tuned Kellz provides the chorus); but the track’s most noteworthy element is it’s oddly meshed groove, a surprisingly effective combination of synth-R&B quirk and acoustic guitar sunniness
-Splash’s latest leakage, from the forthcoming mixtape King of The Beats (due this week), re-teams him with The Heart Attack partner Cee-Lo, for an exquisite dishing of needly guitar funk, golden age mic braggadocio (“I ain’t talkin’ bout a gun/ My .38 special, I spit from my tongue…”) and the kind of soul-stirring Gnarls Barkley-ish hooks Cee handles so well.
While we would have been perfectly fine with Eve re-entering the game with something on par with her brilliant 2007 single “Tambourine” (from that never-released Here I Am project), the once-self-proclaimed “pitbull in the skirt” has curiously opted on bringing her lengthy hiatus to a close instead with “Me N My”, a dubstep (!!!) record jointly helmed by Salaam Remi and genre beat-crafter Benga (it swipes the backing track from the latter’s Diary of An Afro Warrior album cut “E Trips”) that never quite gels into the left-field mind-blower it seems to think it is.
To be fair, “Me N My”‘s faults don’t necessarily fall on it’s fierce beat (a juttering riddim that grabs hold of a creepy, “creatures stalking you in a dark alley-way” type of menacing club vibe), but Eve’s inability to bring much to it. Soullessly rapped musings about how her and her bitches get down at the hot nightspot might work for a hook, but when stretched over two verses and choruses that numbingly meld into one long lyric, her contribution completely bores, making us long for a cameo from Missy Elliott, MIA or Santigold to help color the production with their own respective weirdo-chant pizazz.
We’re all for American rappers trying to experiment with different styles (especially long-missed female ones), but when it sounds like your heart’s not really all that into it (both the track and re-entering the game), we say step aside and let an actually hungry emcee have the honors.
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!)
Even if Jazmine Sullivan‘s 2008 debut, the Gold-selling and Grammy-nominated Fearless, wasn’t littered with strong, neo-classic entries like The Best Lauryn Hill Song Not Recorded By Lauryn Hill first single “Need U Bad” or the melodramatic Broadway-soul ballads “Bust Your Windows” and “Lions, Tigers & Bears”, the newcomer was destined to be a standout anyway, her throaty and rasp-tinged alto offering a pleasant throwback to the similarly distinctive-toned R&B divas of yester-decade (Toni Braxton, Anita Baker, the aforementioned Hill) and an appreciated change of pace from the high-pitched, caterwauling sirens that surround her these days.
While we would have been perfectly fine with Eve re-entering the game with something on par with her brilliant 2007 single 
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