mixtape maestro (2.0)

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)

Uncategorized doctor rosen rosen, electro-R&B, remix, soulja boy, teen rap, vistoso bosses

Damn the Hot 100, you know you’ve got a bonafide pop hit when there’s a slew of teenagers and twenty-somethings posting bedroom-set, acoustic cover versions of your song all over YouTube.

These guitar-clutching hopefuls’ latest obsession: Drake’s inescapable “Best I Ever Had” of course, and while most do a good job recreating Drizzy’s smash into a strum-a-long puppy love lullabye, our top favorite would have to be the version delivered by the young trio of Donna, Anna & Ruby. Part Beach Boys surf ballad, part late ’90’s teen pop confection (anybody else get a lil’ LFO “Summer Girls” vibe from the rap verses?), we could see this precocious cover become a hit on it’s own easily.

To quote their best (added) line: They had us “like The Roots and Erykah Ba-du” from the first guitar pluck.

DL: “Best I Ever Had (Drake Cover)” (alt)

As an added treat, check out this nicely keyboard-bedazzled remix of the original “Best I Ever Had” by French producers The Twins:

DL: “Best I Ever Had (The Twins Remix)” (alt)

Uncategorized acoustic, cover song, donna anna & ruby, drake, france, remix, teen rap, the twins, youtube

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)

Uncategorized Atlanta, bubblegum, remix, soulja boy, teen rap, vistoso bosses

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)

Uncategorized '09 grammy's, bubblegum, duet, karina pasian, remix, soulja boy, teen rap

Remember back in the day when hip hop dances used to be easy to master? When you can pull out a decent Wop, Cabbage Patch or Running Man and earn an onslaught of cheers from your peers? Nowadays, you can get tired just watching the way kids pull off over-complicated steps and contort their bodies in odd, almost in-human like fashions. Not to mention the fact that it seems like every other hour, a new dance craze is being birthed from some different corner of the nation.

Out of Cali arises the jerkin’ movement, an urban youth sub-culture that seemingly (if understood by the many You Tube posts revolving around it) consists of hyphy-esque beats, skinny jeans, knee bends, backwards Running Man moves and having a “geeked up” swagger.

Helping give it a push into the mainstream’s light is “You’re A Jerk”, a corny, though slightly catchy, cut by L.A. teen-rap duo/ future one-hit-wonders New Boyz (a sort of Cool Kids for the “Rugrats” set). Unsurprisingly, the track doesn’t carry much depth, but if you desire trunk-rattling sparse minimalism, goofy horny boy braggadocio (“Got your girl on my swag/ She lovin’ them jerkin’ songs/ Like the new iPod, just touch it and turn her on”) and a silly titular hook that will surely be echoing throughout your brain for hours after the track ends (whether you want it to or not), think of it as an early Christmas present (that you’ll likely forget all about come December).

“You’re A Jerk”: pure for-the-moment hotness, or the latest sign that hip hop is on the verge of dying…again? Discuss amongst yourself.

DL: “You’re A Jerk” (alt)

Uncategorized california, dance craze, hyphy, jerkin, new boyz, teen rap

With Lil’ Mama spending less of her days rocking the mic than she is judging dance crews and inexplicably remodeling herself as more of a generic teen-pop princess, what’s a listener craving a new-generation Roxanne Shante-meets-Missy Elliott rappress to do? How about turn their attention to Rye Rye, an 18-year-old Baltimore native with a wicked flow and a promising position as the first act signed to M.I.A’s N.E.E.T. label.

For the past two years, Rye has slowly been generating buzz thanks to collaborations with blogger-approved DJ’s Diplo, Blaqstarr and The Count & Sinden, and even spent some time touring alongside her “Paper Planes”-singing CEO.

On her latest offering “Bang”, she jumps atop a previously released Blaqstarr/ MIA mixtape cut and lets loose a fiery blast of manic rhyme furor that’s in perfect compliment to the track’s tribal-like, drum-and-chant delirium. Denouncing all the lames that can’t hang with her rapid-fire rhythm and offering a stern warning to nasty little boys with their minds in the gutter (“What?/ Don’t think so slick/ If you thinkin’ opposite/ I’m-a bang your lips”) without breaking a sweat, Rye Rye delivers a self-assured performance so full of heat, it should make a lot of these other rappers (both new to the scene and firmly established) re-think whether they even want to be involved in the rap game anymore.

Let’s just hope she won’t have to face any distracting reality show gigs or have any urges to be a Britney/ Rihanna-wannabe anytime in the near-future…

DL: “Bang” (alt)

Uncategorized baltimore, blaqstarr, female rap, freestyle, lil' mama, m.i.a., mixtape, rye rye, teen rap

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.

Uncategorized jim jonsin, ringtone rap, sammie, soulja boy, southern rap, teen rap

No matter how old a listener might be, or what hipster-approved sub-genre mash is currently dominating the world wide web, bubblegummy confections about puppy love will never fall out of style, especially if said song is performed by actual teenagers. With that being said, our fingers are crossed that “Delirious”, the debut single from ATL girl duo Vistoso Bosses (17-year-old Taylor Parker and 16-year-old Kelci Ferguson) becomes the inescapable hit of the Spring.

Reminiscent of the INOJ, KP & Envyi and Lumidee singular entries that came before (which were mostly satisfying because you never felt a need to ever cop any one of their respective albums), “Delirious” marries a delightful hop-scotch-soundtracking mix of Legend of Zelda flutes and lightly skittering drum pitter-patter behind the familiar narrative of dodging a secret crushes’ glances so that one doesn’t melt into a pile of giddy mush.

Pure infectiousness.

Uncategorized Atlanta, girl group, teen rap, vistoso bosses

If Lil’ Mama hadn’t blessed us with such great scene-stealing collabs with Avril and Rihanna, we could’ve cared less what the young rhyme slinger did after the gumball silliness of “Lip Gloss”. But with an already considerable pre-album track record, we’re all giddy with excitement as to what she’s bringing us next. Now the pressure’s on to keep the momemtum up with follow-up solo single “On Fire”.

Without the Clipse-hungry minimalist boom-bap and million-plus hooks of “Gloss”, “On Fire” feels a little basic in comparison, but hey, if Mama came out with another song about how fierce her cosmetics were, we would of all rolled our eyes collectively. She stays within her age range here, referencing “Mortal Kombat”’s Sonya Blade and adopting those “stop, drop and roll” directions from elementary school fire drills for a decent, yet not all that original, stab at a chorus. In the end, this really isn’t all that memorable, but it’s her effortless flow and brief forays into solid singing (hopefully a straight R&B song is amongst her album tracklist) that saves the day.

Download: “On Fire”

Uncategorized female rap, lil' mama, teen rap

All it took was one simple song about how “poppin’” her lip gloss was and seventeen year old female rhyme slinger Lil’ Mama was on the tip of every’s tongue. Though it’s not clear if she writes or not (a thought that we sadly can’t help but consider), Lil’ Mama rocks an addictive flow (listen to the way certain words literally roll out of her mouth) and a charismatic, self-assured persona that already makes her better than a considerable amount of fem-cees currently on the scene. Setting up quite a buzz before her debut album drops, Mama is intent on showing there’s more to her than bubblegam raps about her makeup with a slew of bootleg remixes and new tracks circulating the Web.

First up there’s “No Music”, what seems to be a brief album interlude, that can be found during a mid-break in the “Lip Gloss” video. The minute long cut lives up to it’s title since it’s beat relies on nothing but handclaps (apparently an homage to some Harlem street corner game) as Mama launches a brazen freestyle dripping with G-rated braggadoccio (save for one ‘N-word’ use). Remember when you had to give a twelve-year old Bow Wow credit for handling the mic so well? It’s the same feeling you get from Lil’ Mama. She could teach a lot of grown-ups about breath control, the way words flip so easily from her throat.

On “Umbrella”, Lil’ Mama thankfully takes the place of Jay Z, who garnered many complaints for ruining what’s an otherwise great pop song by believing he could get away with just being a big name and doing no work. Her verses actually pay attention to the track’s premise, adding in her own relationship stories and then ending it off with a killer adoption of Rihanna’s “ella ella ay ay” chant in the form of her name. If all the tyke gave was her breathy “this is the remix” intro, she would’ve trumped Hova, but it’s nice to see her put an effort into her contribution and actually elevate it’s awesomeness.

Lil’ Mama’s strangest work yet falls in a bootlegging of Avril Lavigne’s infectious #1 “Girlfriend”. She once again lucks out with making something that could be oft-putting and silly actually pop. Putting in overtime with a speedy rap to stay in junction with the track’s happy-go-lucky “Mickey” stomp, Mama ends up miraculously sounding like she was meant to be side-by-side with Avril in the first place. Few other rappers would touch this cut with a ten-foot pole, much less be able to not outshine Lavigne or avoid goofiness in the process. Like a pro, Mama meets the challenge head-on and ends up acing another one. With her relentless, Lil’ Wayne-like work ethic and ability to make anything she touches sparkle like gold, the industry could be looking at their next savior with this underage superstar-in-the-making.

Download: Lil’ Mama “No Music” (Rapidshare)
Download: Rihanna/ Lil’ Mama “Umbrella (Remix)” (Rapidshare)
Download: Avril Lavigne/ Lil’ Mama “Girlfriend (Remix)” (Rapidshare)

Uncategorized avril lavigne, bubblegum, duet, female rap, girlfriend, lil' mama, remix, teen rap, umbrella