Hip-hop has a new voice: Hayley Williams, frontwoman for Tennessee pop-punk band Paramore!
The 21-year-old singer teamed with hot Atlanta rapper B.o.B. for a pair of new tracks on his April 27 release B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray: “Airplanes” and “Airplanes (Part II),” an album-closing reprise featuring cameos from both Williams and Eminem. While the Em track remains under wraps, B.o.B. posted “Airplanes” to his website Monday, giving the world a taste of Williams as hip-hop songstress. Listen below.
The track opens with a slow piano melody and electric guitar as Williams delivers a vocal hook: “Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars / I could really use a wish right now, a wish right now, a wish right now.”
Next, a marching-band beat drops and B.o.B. gets to work, spitting rhymes questioningy the high life. “I could use a dream or a Genie or a wish / To go back to a place much simpler than this / Cause after all the partyin’ and smashin’ and crashin’ / And all the glitz and glam and the fashion… There comes a time when you fade to the blackness.”
It’s a super catchy track with Williams like you’ve never heard her before. But don’t be surprised by the Paramore crooner’s venture into hip-hop.
“Whether our fans know or not, [Paramore bassist] Jeremy [Davis] and I have always been really into hip-hop,” she recently said. “I’m a big B.o.B fan. Got everything of his that I’ve been able to get my hands on… It means a lot that I got to collaborate with a hip-hop artist who is from Atlanta. We Southern gals love us some Southern gentlemen.”
Do you like “Airplanes”? Or… should Hayley stick to her pop-punk guns? Tell us in the comment section below.
