London rapper/ producer Wiley, aka the “Godfather of Grime”, rescues one of the greatest “one-hit wonder” gems of the 1990’s from the spiderweb-draped corners of our memory on his excellent new single “Never Be Your Woman”, a hook-recycling of White Town’s memorable 1997 DIY-pop smash “Your Woman” that finds him unapologetically shrugging-off the idea of monogamy to a sinister tropical-house soundtrack and the somber chorus moans of up-and-coming UK songstress Emeli Sande.
His feverish flow acting like skipped stones across the minimalist beat’s addicting combination of brief synth flashes and a cavernous, carnival-esque rumble, Wiley giddily boasts of his cheating ways, the promise of meeting fresh fish (and the chance to be the blinged-out center of attention) sounding like a far more attractive excursion to him for the night than spending a quiet, romantic evening at home with his main boo. And if it just so happens he gets caught, he could truly care less how his lady reacts, matter-of-factly punctuating his last verse with the oh-so-cruelly-”whatever” line: “My house/ I pay the mortgage”.
You ain’t right, Mr. Wiley (though moreso for not holding this undeniable low-key banger back for a far more fitting summertime release).
Peep the original (and our personal favorite) version below, followed by the official “Never Be Your Woman” video (presented in Shy FX Remix form).
Single (featuring remixes from Herve, Solo, Agent X and N-Type) drops February 21st.
Now, compared to the Beast’s re-interpretation and Example’s previous “re-fixes” of pop tart smashes (his must-have 2006 mixtape, We Didn’t Invent The Remix, featured memorable swipes at Lily Allen’s “Smile” and Britney Spears “Toxic”), the rapper’s “Tik Tok” falls a bit short on the yuk-yuks, but his version is still miles more entertaining than the Ke$ha original, if only because it doesn’t leave you feeling dirty for liking it when it’s over.
Kicking off with a teasing instrumental lick of Cameo’s “Word Up”, Ex spends the rest of the performance narrating his own day o’ debauchery, waking up in the A.M. feeling like “Queen Lizzie” and trading in Kee$h’s beloved Jack Daniels toothpaste for the dental hygiene aid of rum (especially love the Max Martin-ized pop-”rock” crunch brought forth on the chorus).
Catch the gig below, followed by a quietly compelling live go at single “Won’t Go Quietly”:
While we would have been perfectly fine with Eve re-entering the game with something on par with her brilliant 2007 single “Tambourine” (from that never-released Here I Am project), the once-self-proclaimed “pitbull in the skirt” has curiously opted on bringing her lengthy hiatus to a close instead with “Me N My”, a dubstep (!!!) record jointly helmed by Salaam Remi and genre beat-crafter Benga (it swipes the backing track from the latter’s Diary of An Afro Warrior album cut “E Trips”) that never quite gels into the left-field mind-blower it seems to think it is.
To be fair, “Me N My”’s faults don’t necessarily fall on it’s fierce beat (a juttering riddim that grabs hold of a creepy, “creatures stalking you in a dark alley-way” type of menacing club vibe), but Eve’s inability to bring much to it. Soullessly rapped musings about how her and her bitches get down at the hot nightspot might work for a hook, but when stretched over two verses and choruses that numbingly meld into one long lyric, her contribution completely bores, making us long for a cameo from Missy Elliott, MIA or Santigold to help color the production with their own respective weirdo-chant pizazz.
We’re all for American rappers trying to experiment with different styles (especially long-missed female ones), but when it sounds like your heart’s not really all that into it (both the track and re-entering the game), we say step aside and let an actually hungry emcee have the honors.
“Live Your Life”’s lyrical encouragement to not let all the negativity cramp your style was nice and all, but let’s not be foolish. The main source of this record’s appeal had little to do with T.I.’s positive spewings and all to do with Rihanna’s ice queen warbles, the larger-than-life pop production and that damn “Dragostea din tei” sample.
So with that being said, it’s not all that surprising that with a lacking of all those aforementioned elements, garage-pop-ster Just Jack’s recent Live Lounge acoustic cover of the tune falls a bit flat (or maybe it’s simply because his consonant-omitting accent just feels totally awkward in place of T.I.’s fluid flow).
An award-winning, yet modest R&B/ Pop success in his native Australia before achieving major UK fame last year thanks to guest vocalist duties on Wiley’s “Cash In My Pocket” and Mark Ronson’s universally-lauded remake of The Smiths’ “Stop Me”, blue-eyed soul-ster Daniel Merriweather is now ready to make a return trip to his original headlining role, his long-predicted superstar-to-be future teetering on the edge of fruition.
Perhaps aware that high pop chart placement and heavy radio saturation is likely a given no matter what he drops (especially with Mark on board), Merriweather has chosen to avoid the “easy hit” love ditty for his certain first solo smash, alternately deciding that he’d rather make his listeners think than swoon with social commentary-infused single “Change”.
But for all it’s message-carrying ambition, “Change”’s lyrics barely register with importance here, too overshadowed by the sublime magical recipe that is Daniel’s faultless soul tenor against Ronson’s horn-y Motown bounce-meets-Rawkus Records’ boom-bap score (with featured rapper Wale as the bonus dessert) to ever matter.
These two could theme a song around the horrors of head lice and it would still probably emerge a retro-glazed, soul-pop must-have.
Nearly bursting out of it’s seams with a kitchen-sink-like musical make-up that dabbles in DIY electro-pop, Streets-y UK rap and bits of 2-Tone, “Single Dad” from London trio Man Like Me, almost feels too rambunctious for it’s own good, but in the end it emerges a keeper, it’s ever-morphing bag o’ sonic tricks held together under an amusing lyric about one of the most frightening things that could ever happen to a responsibility-phobic young man.
“Shock! Horror!” cries singer/ rapper Johnny at the news that he’s about to become a dad, “How can you be a father?/ Yourself you can’t look after/ Let alone another”. If this was Maury Povich, he would be the one frantically racing to that damn back hallway, Povich hot at his heels, not to console him, but rather to cruelly continue informing Johnny that he’s “99.9% sure” he’s the pop.
As the track’s lively main boogie of bobbing basslines and blaring horn fare illustrate the pressure-cooked chaos his life now falls under, Johnny dizzily speeds his way through all kinds of panicky emotions, at one point selfishly wondering aloud how this sudden revelation will disturb his music career aspirations. Alas, he eventually cools down and comes around to accepting the new “tag” thrust upon him, resulting in “Single Dad”’s greatest moment: a charmingly melodic detour that finds him re-assuring himself that “It’s gonna work out in the end sometime/ I’ve got to…believe it”.
A contagious serving of real-life humor delivered under an equally wacky musical pedigree (we’re especially fond of the out-of-nowhere steel drum celebration that arises towards the song’s end), “Single Dad” has enough entertaining ideas bubbling within it’s four minute frame to generate some curiosity in what other intriguing hilarities their Spring-set debut will have to offer. In the meantime, hit up their MySpace to peep more LOL-worthy video clips and download (for FREE) their B-Sides & Rarities mixtape.
The single will be digitally available February 9th.
Remember Lady Sovereign? The Polly Pocket-sized London grime rapper with the side ponytail, energetic persona and random (in a good way) rhyming style who arrived with much fanfare a while back (garnering props from State-side vets Jay-Z and Missy Elliott along the way)? Well, just when she was about to fall off the edge of memory, the gal returns (and sans ponytail!!!) with this first taste of her upcoming Spring 2009 album, Jigsaw.
Destined to support many a choreographed dance crew, “I Got You Dancing” percolates with a busy serving of electro-quirk bubblings, her delivery retaining that manic spunk that made her so well-liked (or well-hated, depending on your tolerance levels) before. Yeah, it lacks some of the self-deprecating wit that earned her the requisite “Fem-inem” tag (no bagging on her hairy armpits or molehill boobs here) and it still takes a couple listenings to fully understand what she’s spitting, but “Dancing”’s exhilarating beat swirl and bits of hooky, Auto-Tuned pop polish supply enough of the goods to trigger anticipation for what else Jigsaw has awaiting for us in the new year.
Since emerging in the summer of 2003, it was almost instantaneous that East Londoner Dizzee Rascal nabbed the title of the UK’s best hip hop export. His versatile beat choices, thick accent and nasal delivery might not have given him much potential as an American crossover success, but his sharp storytelling skills, grim soliloquies and unique take on standard gangsta talk nevertheless made for an impressive rap personality from beyond the States’ borders.
Highly anticipated track “Wanna Be” from his third album, Math and English, finds Dizzee joining Lily Allen in her rainbow-colored universe in this witty attack on wankstas. Since we’ve grown accustomed to hearing Dizzee spit over a wide array of different genres and styles, his hyperactive flow over another lighthearted musical sample (“So You Wanna Be A Boxer” from 1976’s “Bugsy Malone”) is fitting and he and Allen make for a surprisingly, complimenting duo. As he takes on his typical defensive stance (“Ain’t nobody telling me I got no grime”), Allen is as cute as ever on the playful hook in which she dismisses phony gangsta rappers in lovable twee fashion (“Your pockets getting fatter/ But you couldn’t pull the trigger if you need to/ Cause you haven’t got it/ So you might as well quit”). It’s a nice tweak on the Ja Rule/ Ashanti formula (the hard core thug and the sweet sounding chanteuse) that might not stand out as the best from either artist, but a charming sidenote collaboration between new friends.
Those more in tune with his less chart-aiming side would appreciate the bluntly titled “Pussyole”, an early leaked album cut that took the breezy hook of Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two” and bedazzled it’s classic break with venomous keyboards and spitfire verses condemning an untrustworthy associate. In what’s probably his strongest straight-up hip hop offering to date, Rascal’s breakdown of what he expects from his friends is the kind of humorously raw diatribe he excels at. “Why you running with that pussyole!?!/ Leaving with that pussyole!?!”, he infectiously chants, in one of the hookiest unvarnished lines since Apache was looking for his own “Gangsta Bitch”, and Akinyele had groupies begging to “Put It In My Mouth”.
It seems every few months, the UK breeds more and more tough-talking intellectual pop acts doling out observational ramblings of the youth culture over schizoid beat fusions. Two that the UK press constantly bust nuts for, The Streets/ Arctic Monkeys-love child Jamie T and ultra-perky pop tart Lily Allen, join forces on “Rawhide”, the B-side to the re-release of last year’s tragic “Shelia”.
As usual for Jamie and others of his ilk, “Rawhide” is another scatterbrained collection of well-pitched short stories amid random quotables, heavily accented outbursts and kitchen sink production. There’s so much going on and the track flies by extremely quickly, but bits of it will indefinitely stick in your brain and make it a favorite even if you don’t really know why.
Un-trained ears will come away from most of Jamie’s music as they do after watching a David Lynch film, confused and frustrated but begging for more in hopes that you’ll come across what you missed before to make sense of it all. “Rawhide” ranks as one of his weirdest; the only thing that’s really apparent is that there is a post office robbery and some action happening on the “motorway”, the rest is so drowned in consonant-omitting cockney slang it’s hard to follow along. Lily Allen’s appearance is even stranger. She comes out of nowhere, sounding like some ethereal spirit with nothing to do with what’s going on around her. Yet the melodicism that comes with her helps ground “Rawhide” some, blunting the track’s relentlessly wacky indie-garage spirit, and forming a memorable chant out of the title that ends up the song’s main selling point.
A puzzling patchwork of whatever Jamie sees fit, “Rawhide” can best be summed up as being “British”. We’ve heard better from both but there’s a little throwaway magic here that keeps it from being as trashy as it initially appears.
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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London rapper/ producer Wiley, aka the “Godfather of Grime”, rescues one of the greatest “one-hit wonder” gems of the 1990’s from the spiderweb-draped corners of our memory on his excellent new single “Never Be Your Woman”, a hook-recycling of White Town’s memorable 1997 DIY-pop smash “Your Woman” that finds him unapologetically shrugging-off the idea of monogamy to a sinister tropical-house soundtrack and the somber chorus moans of up-and-coming UK songstress Emeli Sande.
While we would have been perfectly fine with Eve re-entering the game with something on par with her brilliant 2007 single 
An award-winning, yet modest R&B/ Pop success in his native Australia before achieving major UK fame last year thanks to guest vocalist duties on Wiley’s 
Nearly bursting out of it’s seams with a kitchen-sink-like musical make-up that dabbles in DIY electro-pop, Streets-y UK rap and bits of 2-Tone, “Single Dad” from London trio 
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