mixtape maestro (2.0)

Alt-country-tinged indie-pop singer-songwriter Lissie has received plenty of acclaim within the past year, winning over critics with last year’s Why You Runnin’ EP, then sending the blogosphere all gaga over her rustic renditions of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” and Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness”. That adoration should only continue as more ears become enamored over the Fleetwood Mac-evocation and heartland charm found within her newly dropped major label debut Catching A Tiger, a surefire bet for Best New Artist attention come next year’s Grammy’s.

On stand-out album track “Stranger”, Lissie nicely blends her classic C&W influences with the dense ’60′s girl group shimmer of Phil Spector “Wall of Sound” pop, but she manages to avoid the doe-eyed girlishness that typified most of those acts, her whiskey-soaked delivery presenting her as no dainty pushover as she dismisses the advances of a wannabe suitor.

Instantly turned off when she notices the ring on his finger (“I thought you said/ That you were single,” she dryly growls), Liss does her best to make him feel as silly and small as possible over the next three minutes, hitting him with a series of turn-downs that build from the simple and direct (“You’re not the kind of man that I wanna give my love”) to menacing threats (“This thing goes, you’ll just be rubble”) as he continually refuses to acknowledge her non-interest in him.

As salty as her lyrics get, though, the arrangement’s twinkling gallop and churn coasts along nicely, ending on an anthemic high of twangy bliss that only heightens the independent woman pride (“I’m not yours, I am mine”) she fades out with.

Lissie – Stranger

BONUS DL: Lissie “Bad Romance (Lady Gaga Cover)” (alt)

Here’s the video to current Catching A Tiger single, “When I’m Alone”:

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)

The last time 30 Seconds To Mars hit the BBC’s Live Lounge, we surprised even ourselves by having nothing but good things to say about their awesomely moody re-interpretation of Kanye West’s “Stronger”.

We can’t dole out the same high praise on their newest LL cover, a somewhat too-serious rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” that siphons out all of the original’s hooky Euro-pop kookiness for some glacial modern rock pacing. But we do dig Jared Leto’s disturbing yelped re-writes (“I want your love/ I want your disease/ I want you open-mouthed and on your knees”) and guitarist Tomo Milicevic’s mirroring of the “rah-rah ah-ah-ah” lines, so we’ll refrain from filing it in the “FAIL” column, and just give it an “errm…interesting” rating.

DL: “Bad Romance (Live Lounge Lady Gaga Cover)” (alt)

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.

BONUS DL: As An Aquarius (Myspace) featuring Bryan Zimmerman “Telephone (Lady Gaga/ Beyonce Cover)” (alt)

“Telephone”, the better of the two Lady Gaga/ Beyonce collaborations to premiere late last year (as well as the official second single pick from LG’s The Fame Monster set), is the latest track for acclaimed remixer Doctor Rosen Rosen to plant his surgical gloves on, and as with everything else the good Doc touches, it’s given a satisfying upgrade.

Under Rosen’s helm, the bright and shiny crackle and pop that made “Telephone”‘s original incarnation veer a little too Britney-esque and chaotic at times, is slightly downplayed for a darker electro-pop pulse, excitingly heightened by quirky, voice-affected breakdowns, fuzzed-out basslines, and a far-too-brief soul clap section around the three-minute mark (plus, it also doesn’t hurt that Beyonce’s portions are more successfully woven in here).

If only we had the power to sway label-heads (which, sigh, we don’t), we’d encourage them to use this version to accompany the forthcoming “Telephone” music video rather than the original.

Grab the MP3 below, followed by a bonus offering of Rosen Rosen’s deliciously moody remix to Weezer’s “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To”.

DL: “Telephone (Doctor Rosen Rosen Rx)” (alt)

Bonus DL: Weezer “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To (Doctor Rosen Rosen Rx)” (alt)

“It sounds like ABBA’s ‘Fernando’”.

“No, I hear Madonna’s ‘La Isla Bonita’”.

Ever since it’s premiere a couple months back, “Alejandro”, Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster-housed ode to letting go of old Latin lovers, has inspired plenty of giddy “This reminds me of…” chatter amongst her ever-growing fanbase, with many targeting those two aforementioned records.

But for anyone who kept their ears glued to Top 40 radio in the early ’90′s, “Alejandro” read the best as a tribute of sorts to ABBA via the slow, pseudo-reggae lope and weighty, Euro-dance-pop galumph relied on by that other mega-selling Swedish quartet Ace of Base, an idea succinctly proved through this inevitable mash-up of “Alejandro” and Ace of Base’s fifteen-year-old sound-alike “Don’t Turn Around” spliced together by award-winning Vegas DJ/ producer Morningstar.

Not only do both tracks own virtually the same backing track and melodic structure, allowing for near-seamless back-and-forth transitioning, but the concluding relationships depicted in both numbers nicely compliment eachother, the combined requests of “Don’t turn around/ Cause you’re gonna see my heart breaking” and “Don’t call my name/ Don’t call my name, Alejandro” helping add an entire new layer of brilliance to this appreciated novelty.

DL: “Alejandro/ Don’t Turn Around (Morningstar Mash-Up)” (alt)

There are times when Beyonce goes on one of her overly-flamboyant, “tomorrow’s R&B”-soundtracked tangents that modern pop/ R&B brilliance emerges. We’ve experienced that with “Upgrade U” and “Single Ladies”, two tracks that tested the limits of our comfort with sultry vocals being lain atop the most oddly-constructed, mechanized-hip hop-soul grooves, and ultimately won out by having sturdy enough hooks and themes at their core.

But for every one of those gems, there’s a handful of others within that same style that largely fail at justifying the point in her trying so hard to go against the grain. Latest I Am…Sasha Fierce single “Video Phone” falls in this camp.

Over co-producers Bangladesh and Sean Garrett’s weird, cacophonic hip hop-styled homage to Trent Reznor, Beyonce takes on a slinky, exaggerated Southern drawl to indulge in a little burlesque-y “I know you want me; I want you to” preening. “You sayin’ that you want me/ So press record/ I’ll let you film me,” she teases betwixt the track’s eerie recipe of pinball machine plinks, finger snaps and two-ton drums, sounding probably a little too delighted in being some random guy’s via-iPhone jack-off accompaniment.

Like “Diva”, Be’s catchphrase-riddled “A Milli” for the ladies, “Video Phone” would work best as a brief album interlude, since it’s only for about a minute and a half that it manages to be an intriguing curioso cut. After that, it starts to feel like a meandering mess, unable to latch onto a strong hook or cool musical-based deviation to make it’s multiple elements gel into an satisfying whole.

Throwing in Lady Gaga as a duet partner for the Deluxe Edition remix doesn’t really help matters either, as what should be this amazing event quickly grows sour, with Gaga sounding a bit lost trying to mimick the gully sass of Destiny’s Favorite Child and proving, as she did when playing hook girl to Wale, that she’s not as captivating when relegated to the side car role (The video, embedded below, is kinda hot though).

If there is one “Phone” one should attach themselves to, we say go for B & L’s other recently released collaboration, the far catchier “Telephone”, or the Pitbull-assisted remix of “Video Phone” featuring the “I’m The Shit” beat and the Cuban-American emcee giving a couple seconds long karaoke shout-out to the old DC nugget, “Survivor”.

DL: “Video Phone (Pitbull Remix)” (alt)

Ragga-froggy-voiced curioso Sean Kingston is back, and while his latest effort “Fire Burning” might not have the power to distance him from the novelty whispers that will probably always surround him, it’s conveniently armed with a dancefloor-ready charge that’ll surely earn him lots of spins alongside the Lady Gaga, Flo Rida and Black Eyed Peas tunes currently dominating Top 40 playlists.

In need of someone to blame for your inability to break from under “Fire Burning”‘s spell? Target producer RedOne, the man behind GaGa’s trio of Top Ten hits. He envelops Kingston’s disinctive growls about some dame’s mesmerizing “birthday cake” (read: ’09′s version of a badonkadonk) in a spirited assault of gleaming synth work and buzzing bass sounds that may come across a bit chintzy when heard while alone, but when heard blaring from the DJ’s speakers while stuck within a mass of drunk and sweaty party-goers, feels like the peaking moment of an excitement-filled Friday night out.

From the album Tomorrow, due August 25th.

True, after loving Wale‘s previous two mixtape triumphs, 2007′s 100 Miles & Running and the Seinfeld-themed, year-later follow-up The Mixtape About Nothing, the comparably bland lyrical input on his official major label debut, “Chillin” (not to mention the questionable choice of Lady GaGa as hook feature), kind-of deserved the underwhelmed reaction it initially received.

But after a few listens, and a coming-to-terms with the idea that this was meant to be rapper’s introduction to the less Web-affixed masses, “Chillin’” didn’t seem so bad; plus, it was hard to deny the song’s oddly tantalizing hip-pop mixture of Wale’s “Top Billin”‘ swag-jack, GaGa’s shameless M.I.A-biting and Cool & Dre’s lively production (winner of best use of a Steam sample in a year that’s saw the already overly-familiar “Na Na Na Na” tune become even more ubiquitious).

Previously MM-hyped DJ/ remixer/ producer Skratch Bastid helps elevates “Chillin’”‘s level of appeal much further with a mega-sized-feeling revamp that cleverly interweaves nods to Wale’s D.C. birthplace (via it’s licking of Trouble Funk’s go-go classic “Let’s Get Small”) amongst other blink-and-you-miss-them snippets, ranging from “I Put A Spell On You” to “Paper Planes” to “Arab Money”, all inspired by select lines.

Look for Bastid’s new 110% mix CD to drop real soon, and try to catch him on his tour throughout Canada sometime this summer (see dates here). As for Wale, his long-awaited AllIDo/ Interscope debut, Attention: Deficit, is due sometime later this year.

Wale f/ Lady Gaga – Chillin’ (SKRATCH BASTID REMIX) from Skratch Bastid on Vimeo.

DL: “Chillin’ (Skratch Bastid Remix)” (alt)

Here’s a couple random goodies that have pierced the Maestro’s eardrums in a good way recently:

First up, the great DJ Ted Smooth gives Lady GaGa’s breakout smash “Just Dance” a nice hip hop tone, throwing in those beloved skittering drum patterns from Jay Z’s “Jigga What, Jigga Who” and a Busta Rhymes verse (“I’m back on my bullshit so much/ My bowel movement’s fucked up”) as backup to GaGa’s drunken exclamations (still love the WTF randomness of that “Where are my keys?/ I lost my phone” line).

Our lone complaint? Not enough Buss.

DL: “Just Dance (Ted Smooth Remix)” (alt)

Next, from the fingertips of DJ Fabian, comes a summer-ready blend of Jamie Foxx’ deathless “Blame It” atop the always-BBQ-friendly grooves of Arrested Development’s “Everyday People”.

Thank you Fabian, for being all too aware that you can never go wrong with a lil’ 90′s throwback vibe.

DL: “Blame It On The People (Jamie Foxx Vs. Arrested Development)” (alt)