November 29, 2012 – On May 3, a company called Tuf America sued the Beastie Boys for alleged copyright infringement involving decades-old music. On May 4, Adam "MCA" Yauch died after a long struggle with cancer.Now, the Beastie Boys have asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which shouldn't come as a surprise. What's shocking to a non-lawyer is the seeming obviousness of their argument.First, the Beasties say that if the alleged samples from go-go band Trouble Funk on 1986's Licensed to Ill and 1989's Paul's Boutique really couldn't be heard except "after conducting a careful audio analysis," then "there can be no substantial similarity" between the Beasties' tracks and their alleged unauthorized sources.

November 28, 2012 – Charli XCX's fascination with mixtapes, that hip-hop staple, steers her toward actual rapping on her messy but intriguing Super Ultra mixtape. The rapping is the worst part of new Super Ultra video subject "Cloud Aura," in the form of Internet via Los Angeles scenester Brooke Candy's bratty, nakedly trolling verse. Overall, though, Charli's swirling electro-pop is alluringly off-kilter here, with a lovelorn hook that lodges itself in the brain cells you just wasted hearing Candy spit, "You were my Chris Brown / I was your only girl." Which reminds us once again that "Nobody's Business" is, infuriatingly, one of the best songs on Unapologetic.The just-posted "Cloud Aura" video (via PopJustice) is a similarly postmodern affair, a pastiche of borrowed tears that will test your pop-cultural IQ and, at times, your patience.

November 28, 2012 – Future's SPIN Essential debut album, Pluto, received a deluxe-edition reissue yesterday as Pluto 3D, and the Atlanta rapper-singer is offering plenty of reasons to celebrate the occasion. He stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night for a wonderfully boisterous performance of sci-fi-synth fantasy love song "Turn on the Lights" and, with a grinning Kelly Rowland, the similarly spacy actual love song "Neva End (Remix)." (The two also recently released a well-executed video that lays bare their characters' struggles with cheating — it's below, too).With one R&B singer hopping on his song, Future returned the favor and jumped on Ciara's "Sorry (Remix Part 2)," a silky grind recalling her magnificent 2006 pinnacle "Promise"; Future adds some throaty absurdity that sadly has nothing to do with T.I.

November 28, 2012 – London-based singer-guitarist Roxanne Clifford and drummer Patrick Doyle's first and apparently last single with their unfortunately named, now-defunct band Sexy Kids, "Sisters Are Forever," used its surface-level sweetness to mask a decidedly creepy undercurrent. Joined by bassist Marion Herbain and guitarist James Hoare as Veronica Falls, they made that mix of harmony-packed catchiness and macabre discomfort a mission statement on last year's excellent self-titled debut album. The winsome, lightly fuzzy dream-pop of "Teenage," the first advance track from the quartet's upcoming sophomore album, Waiting for Something to Happen, sheds the band's self-applied "horror rock" description entirely.

November 28, 2012 – Low have worked with a murderer's row of producers. Along with indie-rock heavyweights like Steve Albini and Dave Fridmann, the Duluth, Minnesota, trio has recorded with Matt Beckley (Britney Spears, Ke$ha), Tchad Blake (Suzanne Vega, Sheryl Crow), and Tom Herbers (all things Twin Cities, including solo work by former Replacements and Hüsker Dü members). With 10th album The Invisible Way, due out on March 13 via Sub Pop, Low will add Jeff Tweedy to that list.The Wilco frontman is no stranger to Low, having toured both with the band proper and its offshoot Retribution Gospel Choir. Only recently, however, did Low head into Wilco's Chicago studio, the Loft, during a tour stop in the city. "What really converted us was hearing the new Mavis Staples tracks they were working on — big, simple, raw and intimate," singer-guitarist Alan Sparhawk said in a statement.

November 28, 2012 – Adele's 21 keeps racking up milestones. The British retro-soul belter's mammoth sophomore album has now sold more than 10 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Fittingly, that makes 21 the 21st album to achieve "Diamond" status in the SoundScan era.Linkin Park's 2000 Hybrid Theory and Usher's 2004 Confessions also crossed the 10 million plateau earlier this year, but Adele's accomplishment is all the more remarkable for taking less than two years to achieve. In fact, no album has sold 10 million copies more quickly since the boy-band era, when *NSYNC's 2000 album No Strings Attached did so in just 43 weeks.

November 28, 2012 – Odds are you won't hear Trent Reznor's latest video selection in an Apple commercial. Still, "Ice Age," from Reznor's How to Destroy Angels project with wife Mariqueen Maandig (plus his film score collaborator Atticus Ross and longtime Nine Inch Nails graphic designer Rob Sheridan), suggests a dark-side version of a plucky Feist indie-folk ditty. As Reznor put in his recent Reddit AMA, "We were experimenting around with the juxtaposition of something familiar and almost folky sounding sitting in a very cold and sterile environment." Mushaboom.The video for the seven-minute cut from HTDA's new An Omen EP, directed by The Road filmmaker John Hillcoat, carries over that combination of rustic and frigid.

November 27, 2012 – When a new André 3000 verse hits the Internet right after a new Big Boi track, wistful talk of an OutKast reunion flows naturally. On T.I.'s new chin-stroking blogger brush-off "Sorry," Three Stacks stokes such speculation all the more with an apparent apology to his fellow former OutKast half. "This the type of shit that'll make you call your rap partner/ And say I'm sorry I'm awkward, my fault for fuckin' up the tours," André sings in between some quickly rapped lines about how he "don't even like rapping fast."From fellow ATLien T.I.'s December 18 Trouble Man: Heavy Is the Head, the song is another idiosyncratic triumph in 3K's uncanny streak of guest appearances, and Tip is back on point here, too, nimbly refusing to apologize over twinkling keyboards and trappy snares.

November 27, 2012 – Before Dave Grohl's upcoming documentary film on a legendary Los Angeles recording studio hits theaters or DVD, it's coming to radio. The Foo Fighters frontman, former Nirvana drummer, and sometime Queens of the Stone Age ringer will host a limited-run show on SiriusXM, the satellite radio provider has announced.Dave Grohl Presents Sound City premieres on Thursday, November 29, at 4 p.m. EST on SiriusXM's Classic Vinyl channel. The show will air on a weekly basis and center around Grohl's stories about the music recorded at Sound City Studios in L.A. The shows will also include songs from the albums recorded there, such as Neil Young's After the Gold Rush, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Metallica's Death Magnetic, and a little record called Nevermind.Grohl announced in May he's directing and producing a documentary about Sound City.

November 27, 2012 – It's no great leap from rap's NBA obsession to rap's sex obsession, though the latter, of course, is even more universally shared. In a coincidence, SPIN has looked recently at not only which NBA team's roster has the most shout-outs in rap songs, but also 40 NBA players and their pop-music alter egos. Our Dwayne Wade himself, Jay-Z, recorded a guest verse for Philadelphia-based Maybach Music Group affiliate Meek Mill's new album Dreams and Nightmares, but Meek has said Jay rejected his own work as "wack." Now the track, a remix of guitar-smoldering sex jam (swish!) "Lay Up," has surfaced, via Dajaz1.Meek isn't here, but Rick Ross and Trey Songz return from the album version, Rozay with some new flourishes on his love of money and women. Jay stands in for the album's Wale, and whether he's at his best or not, his imperious example puts the song in a different league.