mixtape maestro (2.0)

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

“Teqkilla” is one of those M.I.A. tracks that leave you feeling like you need to be under the influence of something to truly “get”. Yeah, that can describe most of Maya’s output, but usually we can find some element in her kooky, international music-informed art-pop patchworks to lovingly grasp onto while sober. In it’s twisted cacophony of synth blurts and bleets, dubstep-y tribal thump and chanted shout-outs to various alcoholic beverages, “Teqkilla”, /\/\ /\ Y /\‘s latest single, lacks that one magic ingredient to pull it all together and help transcend it from mad scientist studio experiment to off-kilter pop genius.

That is until this remix arrived, boasting a guest appearance from the one and only Nicki Minaj, one artist we’d strangely never thought of ever pairing M.I.A. with despite their similarities in mic…ahem, “animated-ness”. “It’s going d-d-d-d-d-down/ Everything slo-mo in the background”, launches Nicki at the beginning of a deliciously wacky verse inflected with that strange English-Jamaican accent she enjoys so much, instantly triggering wishes that she and Maya will hook up for an entire collaborative mixtape and vibe off each other’s respective eccentricity.

Hell, maybe with an added M.I.A. sixteen, “Massive Attack” would make some sort of sense.

/\/\ /\ Y /\ drops July 13th.

DL: “Teqkilla (Remix)” (alt)

Seeing as though Nicki Minaj is not only behind some of the most memorable cameo raps of the past twelve months, but is pretty much the only female rapper anyone talks about these days, it’s unfortunate that her official solo career hasn’t gotten off to such a great start.

First we had “Massive Attack”, a tuneless earache of a record that greatly deserved it’s blink-and-you-missed-it chart tenure; but to quickly follow up that flop with the not-much-better “Your Love”, a limp R&B ballad slightly re-polished from it’s original mixtape-based incarnation? What’s really going on behind the scenes?

“Your Love” is definitely a stronger bid for crossover play thanks to its smooth sampling of Annie Lennox’ 1995 Grammy-winner “No More I Love You’s” (itself, a cover of a modest mid-’80′s UK hit by English new wave duo The Lover Speaks), but the decades-old nostalgia factor can’t really rescue what’s essentially a boring number, as Nicki is heard drifting through two drab verses that express her attraction to some thug hunk she just knows she shared the greatest love of all with in previous lives (“I think I met him in the sky/ When I was a geisha he was a samurai”. Yeah, okay).

Throw in a major lack of the crazy vocal inflections and goofy one-liners we’ve come to expect from Nicki, and an ill-advised, self-squeaked hook that grows more and more grating with each repeating, and we’re left scratching our heads wondering what the hell to make of it all. Does Nicki really think that releasing what sounds to be some old Blaque outtake from the late-’90′s is really what the people are demanding of her?

Single officially drops June 1st, but in the meanwhile check out a remix of the track featuring (of all people) Flo Rida, as well as the new video for the Wayne/ Minaj Rebirth collabo “Knockout”.

DL: “Your Love (Flo Rida Remix)” (alt)

What do you get when you cross a New York Times article painting a somewhat uncomplimentary of a blog-pop superstar, truffle french fry-related jokes and Tweet clowns from said superstar accompanied by cries of being mis-quoted? NEW NON-/\/\ /\ Y /\-AFFILIATED M.I.A. MUSIC!!!

Posted on M.I.A’s blog earlier today under the title “War Crimes and French Fries”, alongside images of NYT news clipping and audio snippets of the Lynn Hirschberg-led interview, “I’m A Singer (Haters)” finds the singer/ rapper (/chanter?) bringing the beef to the aural realm, employing the electro-riddims of Various Productions’ 2005 single “Hater” to help support her takedown of Lynn (“Why the hell would journalists be thick as shit?/ Cause lies equals power equals politics”).

How sad is our lives that we are now yearning to hear a wax response (whether rapped, sung, talk-chanted, or Auto-Tuned) from Hirschberg to really make this rivalry interesting…?

/\/\ /\ Y /\ drops July 13th.

DL: “I’m A Singer (Haters)” (alt)

M.I.A. has never not had “something to say”, but who could’ve expected her next message to come packaged like this?

Unsurprisingly worlds away from the mainstream ground achieved on “Paper Planes”, Maya’s latest, “Born Free”, sees her celebrating her inner-rebel (“I don’t wanna live for tomorrow/ I push my life today”)
atop an unforgiving, and highly exhilarating, drum and bass assault seemingly built on the stuff of your worst nightmares (in actuality it’s sinister punk chug is based off a sample of synth-pop pioneers Suicide’s 1977 classic “Ghost Rider”).

While it’ll definitely take a good listen or two for it’s riotous thrashing about to soak in, the song eventually lands as another brilliant M.I.A. anthem, with the singer-rapper’s distinctive poetics (“I don’t wanna talk about money, ’cause I got it/ And I don’t wanna talk about hoochies, ’cause I been it” stands as a highlight for us) emerging from the apocalyptic murk as some of 2010′s greatest hook-chant work so far.

Look for M.I.A.’s still-untitled third set sometime in June, then proceed to have your…well, mind blown by the thought-provoking, but soooooo NSFW video/ short film for “Born Free” (Warning: features graphic sex, nudity and some extreme displays of violence) below.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Back in 2008, 16-year-old Aussie Gabriella Cilmi emerged with one of the better Winehouse-wannabe tracks with debut single “Sweet About Me”, a seducing slow-burner that found her naughtily winking to boys that she wasn’t one of those goody-goody girl-next-doors.

Fast-forward a couple of years and Cilmi has conveniently done away with the retro-soul trickery for sophomore album Ten, trading in one overdone pop trend for another in a somewhat jarring makeover that sees her targeting the futuro-dance diva niche.

On first listen, Ten lead-off “On A Mission” registers overwhelming in it’s intent to throw everything (Hi-NRG electro pulses!!! ’80′s aerobics-pop synths!! Disco guitar flickers!! “I am woman/ Hear me roar” chutzpah done with a loud Anastacia growl!!! Cheerleader B-girl-isms!!) at the listener at once at rapid speed. But once you’ve grown accustomed to all it’s overdramatic, heavy metal-meets-Studio 54 goofery, the song enters the realm of being an irresistible slab of awesomely bad guilty pleasure Velveeta, the laughably determined combination of faster-than-fast tempo and hefty vocal firepower making like the aural equivalent to a loudmouth physical trainer trying to get you in tip-top beachwear shape for the summertime.

Loses points for Cilmi not being able to deliver lyrics that paint her more inside the joke though (cause the corny, self-serious “super-heroine theme song” songwriting fails miserably).

Catch the video below, then peep the Eve-featured remix (which should evoke a giggle or two out of it bringing to imagination Ruff Ryder’s First Lady being trapped in some weird, arcade game 8-bit hell).

DL: “On A Mission (Remix featuring Eve)” (alt)

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.

It always feels like an amazing thing when Lady Gaga does a guest spot on somebody else’s song. For someone so calculated in her every career move and paparazzi pose, it just seems like she wouldn’t waste her time playing “hook girl”/ featured act on a track unless said song was on an extremely epic tip, a level that “Let Them Hoes Fight”, her new collaboration with “Baddest Bitch” Trina, comes nowhere close to reaching.

Produced by Jim Jonsin (who also helmed Trina’s biggest hit to date, the 2005 Kelly Rowland duet “Here We Go”), “Hoes” is Trina’s wholly unnecessary three-and-a-half-minute-long attempt at invading the electro-dance-rap scene, featuring her tossing her weave and slinging out un-funny disses (“He keep sending me these drinks/ Cause you lookin’ like his grandma”) at jealous females in the club giving her the stink-eye while 8-bit blips and bleeps and faux-eerie organ synths twinkle all around her.

Meanwhile Lady Gaga’s main contribution rests on a forgettable chorus that paints her as (gasp!!) a third-rate Ke$ha, which is a sad reality, especially considering this would’ve probably been a far more interesting ditty had the “Tik Tok” singer (with someone like Kid Sister replacing Trina) been involved instead.

Trina’s fifth album, Amazin’, drops in May.

DL: “Let Them Hoes Fight” (alt)

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”.

DL: “Fire” (alt)

Bonus DL: Eve featuring Missy Elliott, Fabolous & Swizz Beatz “Tambourine (Remix)” (alt)

Unfortunately for Young Money soldier/ New Orleans rapper Gudda Gudda, his hood-reppin’ Guddaville cut “Always Love You” won’t win the blue ribbon prize for Best Mixtape Use of a Chopped-Up Sample of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” in 2009 (that honor remains with Theophilus London’s still-impressive track of the same name from a couple seasons back), but that doesn’t mean it’s not noteworthy.

Coolly weaving Houston’s over-long belt into a chill, Southern rap groove (with a brief shout out to the Dolly Parton original nicely tossed in in the opening seconds), Gudda’s “ALY” succeeds as a fine laidback jam that’s just begging for a summer season to attach itself to.

Plus, it gives us another reason to excitedly anticipate the forthcoming solo debut from Nicki Minaj, his increasingly likable rappress labelmate who steals the show here with a trip through memory lane, where she recalls her days as a young “Harajuku Barbie” sipping Italian Icees while running amuck through the concrete jungle of the “Capital Apple”.

Snatch up the cut below, as well as another Nicki-blessed treat: a No Ceilings-birthed remix to Beyonce’s “Sweet Dreams” (also featuring a somewhat needless Lil’ Wayne) in which she rocks the mic right with rewind-worthy references to Balloon Boy, Plaxico Burress and Slick Rick (and his eye-patch) all tucked into a single killer verse.

DL: “Always Love You” (alt)

DL: “Sweet Dreams (Remix)” (alt)