February 1, 2013 – Though known to be in the business of living fast and dying young, even the baddest of girls no doubt on occasion feels the need to slow things down just a bit. But where, pray tell, might they look for some much needed respite? Just ask M.I.A. "I spy with my little eye / Something that can get you high," the Tamil tigress rhymes in the opening seconds of her previously unreleased "Bad Girls"-era track, "Doobie." Timbaland protégé Danja (Britney Spears, Björk) produced both songs and shared the new one yesterday as part of his "Throwback Thursday" leak series.

February 1, 2013 – He's already booked to return to the Grammys stage as a performer after a four-year hiatus on February 10, but that same night, Justin Timberlake will extend his 20/20 Experience comeback for a live concert at the Hollywood Palladium. Newlywed Timberlake announced the show on Twitter Friday (February 1). Tickets go on sale Saturday, February 2 at noon PST, and don't run cheap at $118.50 a pop (fees included). And it doesn't look like us music journalists are going to catch a break, either: In a subsequent tweet Timberlake stipulated that the show is "Fans only!"And guess who else is best suited to help usher in JT's return?

February 1, 2013 – UPDATE: The original video has been removed, but a YouTube user has separated and shared the individual audio tracks, which are streaming below.The last time we heard nine minutes of ambient techno pulse accompanying the carefully casual steps of male models on the catwalk, Jamie xx was the man behind the boards, and Kenzo was the designer. A mere two weeks later, and a new entry has arrived: Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich (Atoms for Peace bandmate, Radiohead producer) have whipped up their own mellow mix for Rag & Bone's Fall 2013 menswear show, via Fader. The relatively frills-free audio seems tailor-made to accompany the muted vibes of the clothing. You can witness that less than thrilling interplay in the clip above, though brace yourself for the final two minutes, in which all of that cool ruminative electronica gives way unexpectedly to Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up." 

February 1, 2013 – Well, she does very much resemble a Bond villain, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that court documents have come to light revealing that Lady Gaga considers herself to be the queen of the universe. (Sadly, Gaga, the Internet would disagree.) The woman who also calls herself Mother Monster (could it be more obvious?) is currently being sued for unpaid overtime by her former assistant Jennifer O’Neill, who alleges that she's owed $393,000, plus damages, for 7,168 hours.Gaga's retort? As reported by the Post, Stefani Germanotta has adopted the "hood rat" defense, whose precedent can be found in every daytime TV court show ever. "[O'Neill is as] fucking hood rat who is suing me for money that she didn't earn ...

January 30, 2013 – First! Really, that exclamation point is only there for our own benefit — a futile attempt at pumping us up to run down one of the bleakest weeks in recent Billboard 200 chart history. No. 1 goes to Gary Allan, a slightly left of mainstream country sadman whose ninth album, Set You Free, moved 106,000 units (via Nielsen SoundScan). Interestingly, 63 percent of those sales were physical while last week's chart-topper, A$AP Rocky's LONG.LIVE.A$AP, owed less than a third of its considerable haul to CDs. Also, as we more or less predicted back then, the Harlem rapper's LP debut took a deep dive in its second week, losing 73 percent of its sales and landing at No.

January 25, 2013 – "Kingpinning" is a positively ferocious track from New York's Mykki Blanco, a "fast-rapping MC who reaches the wigged-out heights of Lil Wayne at his mid-2000s creative peak" while actually wearing a wig, as Brandon Soderberg wrote in our Breaking Out profile on the rising artist. Blanco's most recent mixtape Cosmic Angel: The Illuminati Prince/ss has been steadily transforming the way fans look at hip-hop music, and has placed him in a larger pool with so-called "queer-rap" icons in the making like Zebra Katz and fellow SPIN feature star Le1f.

January 25, 2013 – Southern California's Burger Records is a beloved bastion of DIY known to carry a torch for the salad days of punk in Los Angeles and Orange County. Though they released only one album, 1982's brooding masterpiece Homeland, the Middle Class were a highly influential group within that scene — legend has it our pal Keith Morris started Black Flag after seeing them play. But guitarist Mike Atta, who now owns the Burger-adjacent Out of Vogue vintage shop in Fullerton, has been diagnosed with cancer and his neighbors are helping him out.Below you'll find the unreleased Homeland-era gem, "Body and Soul," a gnarled slab of righteous post-punk that's part of a benefit tape Burger will put on sale tomorrow.

January 25, 2013 – The Coachella 2013 lineup was released last night to a resounding cacophony of mixed reactions. Since we know a thing or two about Southern California's preeminent music festival, SPIN has decided to sift through the poster and make sense of the fine print.10 PLEASANT SURPRISES1. The Postal Service: Ten years on from Give Up, the time is right for this reunion, which casts Ben Gibbard as a totes adorbs romantic in a sun-kissed flower field of DNTEL beats.2. Violent Femmes: Gordon Gano declared his quintessential folk-punk freaks "Gone Daddy Gone" in '09, but the "Blister" boys are back to take score ("Add it Up," if you will) rippingly. 3. 2 Chainz: It's hard to imagine a radio-rap riser better for the fest; dude's a proven performer and a gracious host, not to mention the track-amper everyone wants on their song.4.

January 25, 2013 – San Francisco-to-Los Angeles MC Alexander Spit has been steadily greasing the wheels for the arrival of his candy-dipped purple Cadillac of a January 29 Decon Records debut, A Breathtaking Trip to That Other Side. In December, we watched as he found fear and loathing on a desert adventure with a nude Lana Del Rey style-alike. And at the start of the new year we dove into the grimy and chilling "That's Spit" video, which found Alexander breaking down his M.O. thusly: "I spit, I spit, I innovate, and that's it."As it turns out, the guy can also wrangle a solid feature as well, since everyone's favorite foodie from Queens pitches in on the latest leak, "Artesia." Over a tense and menacing track, Action Bronson brags about eating sturgeon with a Greek surgeon, selling cocaine in Boise, Idaho, and listening to Joe in the midst of a tryst.

January 25, 2013 – In the remarkable video for Samantha Crain's "Never Going Back," the Oklahoma-born Americana artist comes to life in a most unusual way. Directors LAMAR+NIK began by shooting a normal video against a plain white backdrop, with Crain and her hirsute fiddle player doing what they do best: charming the camera with raw ability and gorgeous melody. But then the guys in charge of the shoot did a very strange thing: they printed out all 3,800-plus frames of the video they'd made, painstakingly hand-cut each one, then laid them all out in a row — a track, essentially, that the camera would follow for one long take so that the final product would be something like a flip book made for film.