mixtape maestro (2.0)

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.

Seeing as though Mario’s “Break Up” spent much of the late-Summer-through-early-Winter kicking ass on urban music airwaves (coinciding with the entire length of time it took for us to finally accept it’s oddly-mashed elements as a “bonafide jam”), it’s not all that surprising that 3/4 of the single’s components (rapper Gucci Mane, singer-songwriter Sean Garrett, producer Bangladesh) would aim to recreate that chart-busting magic with the hopes of becoming hip hop/ R&B’s newest Midas Touch team.

If they continue pumping out infectious bangers like “Up In Your Heart”, a new track bearing the collaborative artistic print of the trio (from Garrett’s forthcoming second attempt at breaking out as a solo artist), such aspirations might soon become a reality.

With Bangladesh constructing another initially disorienting but ultimately addicting backing track bubbling with percussion-heavy delirium, Garrett slides through with a catchy chant of a hook: “Girl I won’t play with your head/ I wanna get up in your heart”. Which sounds sweet enough until we soon learn through his rap-sung first verse that by getting in your heart, Sean means getting so far up in you, he damn near reaches your heart: “You wonderin’ just why I like to wear a wife-beater/ Why I wear a wife beater?/ Well, uh, I like to beat her…”.

Meanwhile, Gucci coasts through a charismatic verse and a half, his flow playing hopscotch atop Bangladesh’s various drum taps as he flings out goofball one-liners at nearly every turn (“I let her shop until she drop/ And when she drop I get on top”).

A super-group in the making? It’s still too early to tell, but these three cats should keep the club floor crowded for at least another season with this one.

DL: “Up In Your Heart” (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)