mixtape maestro (2.0)

Mike Posner may possess one of the most hardest-to-easily-love voices in modern day pop (his slightly Timberlake-ish, raspy and paper-thin croon ranking up high with Ke$ha’s Auto-Tuned yodel-squeaks in the lane of “Is this person serious singing like that?” initial reactions), but that hasn’t stopped the singer-songwriter-producer from being added to plenty of recent One To Watch music blog lists, mostly due to the heavy buzz generated from last year’s two mixtape releases, A Matter of Time and One Foot Out The Door.

This year marks Posner’s transition into the big leagues (he signed to J Records last July), and he’s smartly decided to launch this “official” era by releasing mixtape highlight “Cooler Than Me” as his first single.

Upgraded from it’s acoustic beginnings with a trendy dance-pop thump, “Cooler” exudes the sound of a “future smash hit”, the combination of its newfound club polish and Posner’s catchy calling-out of some chick’s uppity ways (“You got designer shades just to hide your face/ And you wear ‘em around like you’re cooler than me”) solidly establishing the record as the summer-pop earworm to beat.

Are we fully convinced we can handle an entire album of Posner, especially if it doesn’t bear the appealing sample and cover-heavy twists of his mixtapes? Nooooot entirely, but we’re definitely sold on dude when it comes to this one jam.

Check out the video for the “Cooler Than Me (Single Mix)” below, then afterwards, cop the Big Sean-blessed rough draft version as well as Posner’s take on Soulja Boy’s “Kiss Me Thru The Phone”.

DL: “Cooler Than Me (Mixtape Version)” (alt)

DL: “Kiss Me Thru The Phone (Soulja Boy Cover)” (alt)

On paper, having one of our top guilty pleasure jams of 2009, the Vistoso Bosses‘ unfortunate non-hit “Delirious”, be completely sapped it of it’s appealingly Crayola-hued, “Legend of Zelda”-meets-four-square wispiness for darker electro textures doesn’t seem like it would fly.

Yet, consistently impressive remixer/ producer Doctor Rosen Rosen ultimately makes this revision work, his heavy slabs of spooky synth gloom and typewriter drum machine ticks bringing a sinister heft to lines like “When you look in my eyes/ You make me delirious”, instantly transforming what was once this cutesy (and fairly harmless), teenybop crush ode into the beginnings of an exciting “Fatal Attraction”-for-the-high-school-set big screen thriller.

DL: “Delirious (Doctor Rosen Rosen Remix)” (alt)

Given props waaaayy back at the beginning of the year as a guilty pleasure crush we just knew was going to dominate the Spring, “Delirious”, by Atlanta teen duo Vistoso Bosses, unfortunately never really managed to catch fire beyond a few blog-world hypes. So we subsequently forgot about it…that is until they decided to bless the people with a recently unearthed new vid for the Soulja Boy-featured remix.

And while we wish they could have linked up with someone like Drake (imagine the tender melodies he could’ve lain here) rather than Mr. “Turn My Swag On”, who has the nerve here to claim to be like “Hov back in ’96″ (he wishes), we can’t help but A: admit how much this perfectly compliments Soulja Boy’s equally charming bubblegum-rap tune “Kiss Me Thru The Phone” and B: just be so highly stoked that “Delirious” actually has a second shot at smash hit-dom now, even if it is only because of the groan-worthy teen-rapper’s presence.

DL: “Delirious (Remix)” (alt)

DJ/ producer Sammy Bananas and singer Maggie Horn make up Telephoned, a duo out of New York whose sole gig apparently is to flip inescapable rap hits of recent memory into wicked, almost-unrecognizable clubby confections. But don’t dare label their efforts as “covers” or “remixes”, because, as their MySpace states, what the dual force are truly accomplishing is “(fashioning) a postmodern take on both”.

In their hands, Soulja Boy’s goofy anthem “Turn My Swag On” is transformed into a genre-blurring blob of cutesy pop, Southern rap spoofery and dubstep grime, with Horn committing the most precocious “Hopped up out of beeeeed…” wail we’ll probably ever hear and featured emcee, Ninjasonik’s Telli Federline, dishing out battle raps in support of “the average Joe who gotta work a job”.

Meanwhile, their excellent riff off of T-Pain’s ’08 slow jam “Can’t Believe It” simply consists of key elements of the original (that twinkly-eyed melody, that elongated “yeeee-ahh” hook/ ad-lib) sparsely sprinkled over one of those endlessly revolving 90′s-era party grooves.

Stay tuned to their MySpace, cause they plan to drop even more of these fantastic “non-cover” re-works in the future.

DL: “Turn My Swag On” (alt)

DL: “Can’t Believe It” (alt)

Raising “Kiss Me Thru The Phone”‘s bubblegum level of a couple more notches, this uni-sex remix sees seventeen-year-old R&B singer Karina Pasian (fresh from last year’s surprising Best Contemporary R&B Album Grammy nomination) more than eager to send smooches back to Soulja Boy through her cell phone screen.

“It’s crazy how I cannot be without your loving/ And when we’re far apart the distance’s got me buggin’”, she replies (probably) Tweets back, her silky, young woman pipes a perfect fit with the track’s nursery rhyme bounce. Aww, puppy love. Back then, being separated from a boy- or girlfriend really did seem like the end of the world, didn’t it?

Is it bad, though, that we wish this could have been her own solo song from the get-go, so that we wouldn’t have to admit to admiring another Soulja Boy record?

DL: “Kiss Me Thru The Phone (Remix)” (alt)

A sprinkling of Chic-y glitter all over the then-Santogold’s ridiculously lovable dub daydream “Shove It” would seem to be needless (God knows we’ve heard this non-single favorite made over enough different ways), but Canadian DJ/ producer Grandtheft‘s disco treatment ultimately pushes this version near the top of the “Shove It” remix heap, it’s festive swirl providing a surprisingly effective companion to Santi and Spank’s vocal contributions and making the record an even bigger club anthem.

DL: “Shove It (Grandtheft’s Disco Remix)” (alt)

Continuing the Ms. White love, check out this mash-up of Major Lazer’s “Hold The Line” over Soulja Boy’s still-fire “Turn My Swag On” beat (courtesy of Philly’s Emynd) below:

DL: “Hold The Line Vs. Turn My Swag On (Emynd Remix)” (alt)

Damn you Soulja Boy!

Damn you for that dumb ‘Tell’ Em’ part of your moniker! Damn you for making Mixtape Maestro spend far too long trying to figure out all the moves to “Crank That” (only to have the song be long past ‘played out’ when the routine was finally mastered)! Damn you for not just disappearing off the face of the planet like all the other brief ringtone rap successes! But most of all, damn you for coming up with something as likable as “Kiss Me Thru The Phone”.

Unfortunately it seems the term “one hit wonder” may not long apply to the 18-year-old, given that “Phone” has already cracked the Hot 100 Top Ten and has the potential to rank even higher. Why? It’s a pretty sturdy piece of teen-rap fluff that succeeds off the same infectious bubblegum bounce that fueled prior Jim Jonsin productions’ (“Lollipop”, “Whatever You Like”) rises into airplay ubiquity while allowing Soulja to inject another gibberish hook (in this case: “Da da dadadada da da dadadada da da..”) into our brains for future echoings at the random-est of moments.

SB may still be one of the most annoying entities in rap music today, but the overall playful charm of “Kiss Me Thru The Phone” (with major kudos falling on Sammie’s infectiously circuitous chorus) does a fine job at dulling the ire a tad.