It may only be June, but damn if it hasn’t felt like Christmas recently what with the benefit of getting not one, but TWO brand new Andre 3000-featured cuts in the past week.
The Outkast-reuniting “Lookin’ For Ya” is an especially bittersweet one, seeing as though the suits at Jive are being punks by not letting Three Stacks be officially attached to Stankonia partner Big Boi’s Sir Luscious Left Foot solo set; thank God having the two emcees compare randy escapades (involving Ikea furniture and vice grip-esque vaginas, no less) atop the track’s wondrous galactic-funk (with the always in-the-key-smoove Sleepy Brown riding shotgun) is thrilling enough to briefly subside our boiling anger at the record label execs’ foolish practices.
Having Andre be a part of a shimmery pop-glossed makeover of Ciara’s newest sex jam “Ride”, however, just leaves us scratching our heads in confusion.
We can’t blame 3000 for slobbering all over Ciara’s “beat”-riding skills (have you seen the original “Ride”‘s video?), but really, out of all the songs released in the past year truly begging his presence (Janelle Monae’s “Tightrope” being on the top of that list), this is the one that inspires him to take a trip outside of whatever (likely awesomer-than-awesome) hideout he’s been cruelly sheltering himself in the most?
Somebody, please help us understand…in the meanwhile, grab both tracks below.
Contrary to what the Billboard charts print every week, Robin Thicke isn’t the only white boy these days who can convincingly pull off silky slow jams; as proof, just check “She Needs Me”, a woozy, bedroom funk concoction from music crit-beloved English soul man (and Beck BFF) Jamie Lidell‘s latest album, Compass.
Bringing to mind the rich and sultry R&B blueprints of Prince and Mint Condition at their most romantic mood-setting, “She Needs Me” is the kind of tune a guy pulls out when he wants to let his main lady know that it’s about to really go down this evening, it’s densely-layered and steadily-paced groove basically demanding the accompaniment of a candle-lit chamber decorated with rose petals and glass bowls of chocolate-dipped strawberries as Lidell’s nether-region-charging pipes fill the room, giving spectacular multi-tracked voice to his inner-most thoughts (“I wanted this so much from the moment I met you/…You’re the sweetest thing I’ve ever known”).
In an effort to prove that we’re not completely out of the loop when it comes to what’s been making waves within the music blog scene in recent weeks, enjoy this quick run-through of some of the more high profile new videos/ releases we’ve missed out on commenting on due to…uh, we’ll just say “real life” (and a few WordPress issues) getting in the way:
Sleigh Bells “Tell Em”
Anything you’ll ever read about this Brooklyn boy/girl noise-pop duo (vocalist Alexis Krauss and songwriter/ guitarist/ producer Derek E. Miller) is bound to note the band’s love for insane volume levels just as much as it’ll hype how crazily infectious the tunes hidden beneath all the ear-punishing distortion are.
Believe these words on both accounts.
“Tell Em”, the first single from the Sleigh Bells’ debut album Treats (due May 11th on Mom + Pop/ N.E.E.T.), may lead to one having early deafness, but bet you won’t be able to resist repeat doses of it’s rat-a-tat drum, turned-up-to-eleven guitar riffage and laser sound effects assault, nor Krauss’ pureform coos sweetly encouraging today’s young’uns “you can do your best today” betwixt it all.
Last summer’s chillwave/ glo-fi movement taught us the glories of music that was meek-sounding, of shitty quality and awesome; expect the upcoming warm weather season to be all about start-up bands/ acts co-signing the equally awesome louder-than-loud and shitty quality formula of the Bells.
We’ll politely decline from adding to the increasingly tiring “Is she copying Gaga?” rattle concerning Aguilera‘s new (meh) one, and just say this: when it comes to desperate slutty Christina, we’d rather give “Dirrty” a re-spin.
Is it bad that we wish we could just fast-forward to the next Aguilera album era already?
Christina’s Bionic drops June 8th.
Ciara featuring Ludacris “Ride”
Looking to get her career back on track after the commercial fumble that was her last album (2009′s Fantasy Ride), Ciara smartly hearkens back to a previous career highlight on new single “Ride”, re-heating the winning, “seductive ‘crunk & b’ crawl + Ludacris cameo” formula of “Oh” with an extra slathering of naughty sex kitten on top of it.
“I can do it up and down/ I can do circles/ To him I’m a gymnast/ This one is my circus,” she sings, nicely illustrating such bedroom talents with a slew of eye-popping body gyrations (amongst other “I’m not a little girl anymore” visuals) in the accompanying video.
Yeah, the hook claims it’s the “beat” that she’s riding “like a mother-[bleeping] freak”, but a ten-year-old could figure out what she’s really talking about.
Eminem “Not Afraid”
Capping months of track-owning guest appearances on joints alongside Drake & Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne and B.o.B (not to mention the killer freestyle track “Despicable”), Em‘s “Not Afraid”, the first taste off his next full length Recovery, lands as another lyrical stunner, with him surprisingly coming across as equally compelling when preaching positive about living a “clean” lifestyle as he does when he’s flexing his more loony and murderous-minded material.
Only problem is, while we’re excited to hear he’s become aware of how awful the various “accents” and pop star/ tabloid staple-spoofing had become, “Not Afraid” feels less and less interesting with each successive listen (maybe it’s that ’80′s arena rock-styled hook), and we’re not necessarily sure we’re ready for an entire album of Eminem getting all uplifting on us.
Surely Kim has done something scandalous in recent years to inspire at least one Recovery song that throws back to his bat-shit crazy rhymes.
Josh Ritter “Another New World”
From the critically-acclaimed folk singer-songwriter‘s newly released sixth set So Runs The World Away (currently streaming in full over at NPR.org), a seven-minute-long story song set atop beautifully sedative acoustic guitar pluckings and dreamily sirenic muted horns about an Arctic explorer and his crew and the tragic horrors that befall them in the midst of a voyage in search of the “new world”.
Doesn’t sound like your cup of tea? Take a chance and hit ‘Play’ and you’ll be surprised how misty-eyed you get once it gets to the part where the protagonist is forced to set fire to his beloved ship in order to stay alive.
Most attention concerning this final single from the nearly two-year-old I Am…Sasha Fierce will more than certainly fall on it’s strange, but definitely sexy, retro-themed video (with Bey once-again rocking the Bettie Page ’50′s pin-up look) rather than the song itself; but the cut (co-penned by sister Solange) manages to be somewhat fascinating in it’s own right with the steely-voiced diva turning herself inside-out trying to figure out why a man would choose to willfully bypass such a catch (especially one with “beauty”, “class”, “style” and, most importantly”, “ass”) to a tightly-wound ’60′s soul strut.
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”.
Despite Janet Jackson’s Discipline single (and pseudo-MJ shoutout) “Rock With U” never quite becoming the ubiquitous dance jam it deserved to be, we still couldn’t imagine ever liking the under-appreciated tune with a voice attached that wasn’t JJ’s eternally-sexy sing-whispers.
So color us surprised that after coming across co-writer Ne-Yo’s leaked demo recording, we were left wishing that he could’ve somehow stripped it onto his last LP and dropped it as a single himself.
In hearing his shimmery tenor calling out the eroticism of strobe lights over the track’s pulsing Euro-R&B throb, it’s like finally having the sibling record to “Closer” we were never officially gifted with.
Remember Collie Buddz? The white Bermudian had trunks rattling all across the globe waaaay back in 2007 with the release of his breakout single “Come Around”, a tokers’ anthem steeped in an old-fashioned reggae slow churn, but seemed to drop off the face of the Earth after his self-titled debut was met with less fanfare.
Well, after a few years toiling away in the more obscure corners of the mixtape scene, the singjay seems prepped for a minor comeback of sorts in 2010 with the recent unleashing of new single “Phonecall”, a Beatnick & K. Salaam-produced late-night booty call ode draped in the sensual allure of ’90′s-era slow jam R&B/ reggae.
And just as with “Come Around”, it’s “Phonecall”‘s throwback-ish touch that lands as it’s greatest asset: it’s busy, albeit smoove, backing groove pleasingly triggering memories of the genre’s “Flex”/ “Mr. Lover Man” heyday as Collie croons through every steamy detail of the late-night sex session (“Said she wanna start with massage…”, “She wanna ride from side-to-side and on top…”).
Whether you smoke or not, promises you’ll be craving the comfort of a cigarette once this seductive jam has left your speakers.
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.
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.
With the return of Maxwell in 2009 giving male falsetto-led slow jam R&B it’s rightful throne-holder back, it almost feels unnecessary for Alan Thicke’s son to even be around anymore offering his comparably inferior take on the form.
Still, we’ll give Robin this: his fourth album lead single/ title track “Sex Therapy” slithers and seduces in all the right places, blending yet another retread of the steady-pulsing late-night R&B groove behind Ciara’s “Promise” (producer Polow Da Don helmed both), a brief lyrical nod to Twilight, and a hook inspired by Lesley Gore’s 1963 No. 1 “It’s My Party” (“It’s your body/ We’ll go hard if you want to/ As hard as you want to…”) with far more successful (and less hilarious) results than a merging of the three might seem on paper.
For the inevitable guest rap-laden remix, Thicke even has the smarts to employ Ludacris, who, even as he edges long-in-the-tooth rapper status, still manages to come out with goofy XXX winners like “Got the banana/ Now let me split you” that the tween-aged schoolyard set can no doubt appreciate.
Over-the-top randiness has dominated the R&B game so much over the past couple years (thanks to so many artists doing their best to try to out-top the king of WTF sex jams R. Kelly), that it’s a bit sad that nary an eyebrow is really raised with the lyrics presented on this all-star remix of Trey Songz’ current Top 5 R&B hit “Invented Sex” featuring Usher and Keri Hilson.
Still, for the simple sake of having something new to add to your “Bump N’ Grind” playlist, this 2.0 take serves as a fine enough addition, with Ursh ordering his gal to “meet me upstairs/ So I can beat it upstairs” before quoting old Trey Songz singles (“I can’t help but wait”) and Keri dismissing missionary as “no good” while claiming that she can “have you so woozy/ You’ll think I invented X”.
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!)
It may only be June, but damn if it hasn’t felt like Christmas recently what with the benefit of getting not one, but TWO brand new Andre 3000-featured cuts in the past week.
Seeing as though Mario’s 
A year after topping the Pop and R&B single charts with 
With the return of Maxwell in 2009 giving male falsetto-led slow jam R&B it’s rightful throne-holder back, it almost feels unnecessary for Alan Thicke’s son to even be around anymore offering his comparably inferior take on the form. 
Over-the-top randiness has dominated the R&B game so much over the past couple years (thanks to so many artists doing their best to try to out-top the king of WTF sex jams R. Kelly), that it’s a bit sad that nary an eyebrow is really raised with the lyrics presented on this all-star remix of Trey Songz’ current Top 5 R&B hit 
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