Being that jazzy R&B newcomer Avriel Epps is also credited as a model and actress, it makes some sort of sense that when hit with a vicious attack of the nerves while courting a smooth-talker who makes her feel like “the center of his attention whether we’re in his room or up on the moon”, the only way she can calm herself down is by imagining that they’re actors playing roles on a soundstage. Then again, she might also want to spend a few sessions on a shrink’s couch to deal with these internal issues if she plans on giving this seemingly promising relationship some real length.
All that psychoanalyzing aside, “Be Cool”, the first single from the Cali singer/ songwriter/ producer’s forthcoming EP Liberation is a luscious one, wrapping Epps warm coo in a silky swirl of dreamy synths and gentle bass-line funk (shouts to producer Cook Classics) that refreshingly reminds us that not all modern-day R&B is distracted by the poppy flash of European clubs and Auto-Tune.
Liberation is due for a late July/ early August release, in the meanwhile though you might also wanna check out Avriel’s “Bouncer” from Cook Classics’ super-nice new compilation album,Recharged.
Sandwiched between several colorful ATLien-funk boogies that should keep house parties pumping well into the next year, Sir Lucious Left Foot standout “Be Still” finds Big Boi slowing things down a bit to reflect on relationships, ceding much of the spotlight for another bravura vocal performance from his always-stunning “Tightrope” partner Janelle Monae.
Here, backed by a beat that’s anchored with a Prince-esque drum machine loop and set a-flight with starry-eyed synth prettiness and twinkling piano, Monae sets her delivery to relaxed and tender with a slight overcast of sorrow as she speaks on the long-lasting damage a failed romance has brought upon her: “I love being in love/ Then you let me down/…Giving up on love/ Makes my ocean drown”.
The theme may be a tad somber, but when you have Janelle slinking her way into your eardrums with the loveliest lullaby melodies, the threat of getting a lil’ teary-eyed for a couple minutes never felt so inviting.
The second cut from Janelle Monae‘s The ArchAndroid to get the Wondamix remix treatment, this re-haul of “Cold War” tosses out the apocalyptic futuro-funk/ rock gallop of the original and attaches Monae’s emotional crumbling at the hands of public scorn (“I’m tryin’ to find my peace/ I was made to believe something’s wrong with me…”) to a more subdued electro-soul shimmer.
It’s nowhere near the exhilarating sonic trip that was the original (a sort of sibling record to Outkast’s equally bold and genre-blurring “Bombs Over Baghdad”), but hearing Monae’s dramatic belts bathed in meandering New Age synths and romantic Spanish guitar manages to grasp a certain soothing preciousness that makes this 2.0 take an ideal chill-time accompaniment.
For Florida alt-hip hip duo After The Smoke, a “Typical Weekend” sounds like it involves a whole lot of kinky fun.
Here, as producer Speek cooks up an enticing beat that juggles skittering drums, mourning organs, handclaps and bits of electro glitch, lyricist/ songwriter Whuzi uses his skeevy soul vocals to color the low-simmering groove with all kinds of erotic gab, including horny lines likes “I’ll give you a beating/ But don’t throw in the towel” and “Now that I got you tied up/ What’s the safe word?” amongst references to melted bodies.
Hypnotic, sexy, left-of-normal, and a bit Outkast-ish? Goes without saying that we’re SUPER down with this intriguing debut effort.
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”.
Atlanta-born Cody ChesnuTT made quite an impression eight years ago when he unleashed his rave-reviewed double-LP debut, the lo-fi funk/ rock/ soul/ pop homemade brew The Headphone Masterpiece, especially after one of the album’s tracks, “The Seed”, was re-spun by The Roots a year later, emerging as one of the hip hop band/ current late-night TV highlight’s most beloved creations ever (that would be “The Seed (2.0)”). Frustratingly though, he’s since failed to really follow through on all that initial momentum, making the curious decision to cruelly tease fans in the eons since with a couple of sporadically released one-off singles rather than the full-length follow-up they truly desired.
Perhaps as an attempt to keep from completely falling off the edge of our memories, ChesnuTT has returned with a new “tease” in the form of the recently released “Come Back Like Spring”, a far-too brief (it clocks in at just under two minutes) acoustic concoction that beautifully captures his excitement for the new season’s arrival.
Softly crooning atop soothing guitar pluckings and his own delicately layered harmonies, ChesnuTT brings a smile to your face as he vividly illustrates the perfect day unfolding around him, noting the scent of “Honeysuckle on the wind” and the sounds of lawnmowers revving up down the block. Not even the stings of nibbling ants and mosquitoes or the threat of pollen to his allergies can ruin the moment, nor his upbeat mood.
Disappointingly, just as one has been overtaken by a similar sense of bliss through the song’s gentle soul sway, Cody rudely snatches it all away, fading out the song after a single serving of it’s chorus.
Damn C.C., the least you could do after all this waiting we’ve had to endure is entertain us with an entire song. Oh well, guess that means we’ll have to give “Come Back” double the multiple re-spins to achieve satisfaction, while keeping our fingers and toes crossed that it’s out-of-nowhere arrival is an early preview of some soon-to-drop sophomore album.
Grab the track, and a bonus (Cody’s original “The Seed”), below.
If somehow you’ve never managed to come across the eccentric soul-funk-rock dynamo that is Janelle Monae, boy do we feel sorry for you that your life is so lacking.
A super-heroine born out of the wedded universes of Stankonia, Broadway and whatever the hell alternate dimensions Grace Jones, Nona Hendryx and George Clinton and his P-Funk crew came from, Monae rocked music lovers in desperate need of something truly new to their core a few years back with her debut EP Metropolis Suite I of IV: The Chase, an awe-inspiring mini-set based around fanciful sci-fi concepts and genre-blurring production schemes.
This year marks Monae’s much-anticipated return, she’s set to drop sophomore collection The ArchAndroid in May, and she’s kicking off this brand new era with the unquestionably excellent “Tightrope”, a Big Boi collaboration basically encouraging listeners to follow her lead by doing themselves and doing themselves well with nary a thought given to the opinionated gab of others while pumping out their sweatiest jig in line with the track’s tightly wound, JB-inspired gaiety.
“I tip on alligators/ And little rattle-snakers/ But I’m another flavor/ Something like a terminator/ Ain’t no equivocating,” she breathlessly spews in a vocal performance that’s just as wildly infectious as “Tightrope”‘s rapid-paced mix of tumbling drums, funked out bass, Spanish guitar and sultry horn blasts. And while we would’ve gladly appreciated Andre 3000 gracing the cut with his presence (maybe for the remix?), we can’t easily dismiss his Outkast partner Big Boi’s slick, threat-soaked contribution: “See why you don’t want no friction like the back of a matchbook/ Daddy Fatsacks will fold you in your MacBook…”.
Add this single (available for purchase through Monae’s website) and the May-set release of The ArchAndroid as two more reasons why 2010 is shaping up to be a great year for music.
“Tightrope”:
Below, snatch up the cut that made us first fall in love with Monae: “Lettin’ Go”, a breezy tribute to Off The Hook-era MJ from 2005′s Got Purp? Vol. 2 compilation, that somehow makes getting fired from your job sound just as fun as winning the Lottery.
A year after topping the Pop and R&B single charts with “Oh Shelia” (a tune so heavily smothered in The Purple One’s “Minneapolis sound”, that, to this day, many people still mistake it for being an actual Prince ditty), six-piece Flint, Michigan outfit Ready For The World managed to hit the top of the R&B lists a second time with the release of “Love You Down”, a sophomore album slow-groover about freaking up some cougar (“It never really mattered that much to me/ That you were just too damn old for me…”) that likely set the mood for plenty of prom nights in the mid-80′s.
Over twenty years later, it’s hard to deny how cheesy it all sounds now, partly because of it’s cheap-ish production quality, but mostly due to the fact of how laughable frontman Mevin Riley’s lead vocal is. Full of nasally whines, orgasmic moan-hiccups and teeth sucking noises, listening to him now makes one wonder if he could even make it five minutes into the evening without completely exploding all over himself, let alone the “all night” sex-capades he was endlessly promising.
None of that “kids pretending to be grown-up stuff” can be felt on Me’Shell Ndegéocello‘s spell-binding rendition of the song, though.
Found on her latest album Devil’s Halo, Ndegéocello slightly flips the P.O.V. (it’s still directed towards a female, but here, she’s the older woman courting a younger girl), and that mature perspective can be felt all throughout her cover’s every erotic pulse, from the crashing cymbals and throbbing basslines to the languid synth squelches and Me’Shell’s hushed, “only for my lovers’ ears” vocal performance.
Hell, it’s near-two minute instrumental outro of steamy industrial soul/ rock sludge noise alone should inspire some serious boot-knocking.
Radiating a neon glow even before one’s pupils is set on it’s vibrantly-colored video clip, Idle Warship‘s “Bedroom Lites”, a highlight from their new mixtape Party Robot and the first single from their forthcoming debut album, sees the undie-supergroup aligning themselves with modern music’s over-obsession with everything ’80′s as they utilize a boxy, synth-lit electro strut to support a tale of two friends lusting after eachother in the late-night.
Res and Graph Nobel breathlessly purr their way across the tense erotic throb of “Bedroom”‘s Eurthymics/ Paisley Park-ian soundscape, convincing in their shared role of a woman on the verge of implosion as she anticipates the rings of a booty call (“The lion’s outside of the cage/ And, oh boy, I need petting, dear”; “My head is on a pillow/ And it’s getting lonely in my habitat”); Meanwhile, on the other side of town, an equally horny Talib is torn over whether or not he should even phone (“I don’t want my interest to be taken for a sex fetish”).
Will the hook-up ever happen? Despite all the heated panting on display throughout, it sounds like it won’t; but that’s okay, the chorus’ semi-somber resignation of “Turn off the bedroom lights/ I guess I’ll be alone tonight” nodding towards an “it’s probably all for the better” resolution while simultaneously indicating that some “solo” fun will have to be had as a substitute.
When Sade‘s sixth studio album Soldier of Love finally makes it way to release in the early weeks of next year, it’s arrival will mark ten looooong years since the release of the band’s last studio effort.
Now, we’ve come to expect long hiatuses between projects when it comes to this crew (if you recall eight years flew by before they followed up the “No Ordinary Love”-housed Love Deluxe with 2000′s Lovers Rock), but AN ENTIRE DECADE!?!…that just ain’t right.
Thankfully, Sade have opted on teasing their new release a couple of months early with today’s premiere of it’s first single/ title track, a slow-burning concoction about getting through heartbreak (“I’ve lost the use of my heart/ But I’m still alive”, Sade Adu opens, her dead-eyed tone still as piercingly chilled as we last remembered) that’s sparked by militaristic drum rolls, jagged electric guitar stabs, rousing background vox support and a “wild wild West” line that’ll surely draw smirks from those who perceive it as a shout-out to Kool Moe Dee.
Though it features a couple modern-ish production elements, longtime fans needn’t worry: “Soldier of Love” doesn’t try to re-write the cool Sade sound too dramatically, managing to perfectly fit side-by-side with the rest of the band’s much-adored nocturnal-soul catalogue.
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!)
Being that jazzy R&B newcomer Avriel Epps is also credited as a model and actress, it makes some sort of sense that when hit with a vicious attack of the nerves while courting a smooth-talker who makes her feel like “the center of his attention whether we’re in his room or up on the moon”, the only way she can calm herself down is by imagining that they’re actors playing roles on a soundstage. Then again, she might also want to spend a few sessions on a shrink’s couch to deal with these internal issues if she plans on giving this seemingly promising relationship some real length.
A year after topping the Pop and R&B single charts with 
Radiating a neon glow even before one’s pupils is set on it’s vibrantly-colored video clip, 
When 
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