A heartfelt tribute to old-schooler Jimmy Spicer's "The Bubble Bunch" and the totally, um, understandable male obsession with a certain exceptional body type. It's essentially "Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers" over electro cursor-squiggles, b-b-b-b-but that's all it needs to be.
Atlanta rapper Young Scooter's rather unique style is to declaim phrases about whatever comes to mind — cocaine/money — with little regard for beat or timing or linearity. On "Colombia," he plays a determined, delusional outsider who erratically yet deliberately expounds on how he's gonna go DIY and take shit over, with a voluptuous Cuban model by his side. The ominously tolling production, from Future's Free Bandz production orbit, thuds with a martial stride as Scooter drones on with a strangely compelling, monotonic charisma. Of course, we could say that the song comes off as if he'd written a sonnet to his muse (cocaine/money), impulsively ripped it up, and then rapped fragments of stanzas as he picked them up — to brutally decentering effect. Or we could just note that Scooter relentlessly spews information — lots of characters (Hector, Isabella, Black Migos), amounts (metric tons, 60 pistols, million-dollar runs, eight minutes to produce a brick), and lots more details to show that he, more or less, knows how to run his own operation and make private planes full of cocaine/money. But what's most memorable is how these vocal salvos sound both world-weary and amped to bend the world to his will. Ultimately, that's what he's selling.
Violins cry, horns sigh, an oboe kibitzes, fingers snap, and an androgynous voice flutters its falsetto in the most luxuriously, exquisitely delicate plea for us to "stay." But who is this wispy creature cooing, "I'm a fool for that shake in your thighs" like he/she's got all the time in the world to explore this subject further. How did we get here, and is this creepy or rapturous? Oh, come on, who are we kidding? That "hmmm" on the chorus just sealed our fate.
Death-metal, rendered in a furious spray of pastels.
From the Velvet Underground to the Modern Lovers to Richard Hell to Jim Carroll to R.E.M. to the Dream Syndicate to Galaxie 500 to Pavement to the Strokes to countless others, there have always been heady rock bands trying to lock down an agitated, trance-like guitar-bass-drums groove over which some poetically inclined young man or other can intone cryptic lyrics with a flat affect and vaguely nihilistic/existential swagger. In 21st-century New York City, Parquet Courts are keeping the faith, shuffling nervously through Ridgewood, Queens, flipping through magazines, perusing junk food, playing scratch-offs, and savoring the feedback loveliness of the extended outro.
There's a certain indie song (usually keyboard-driven) every year that sounds like nature and the elements and how they strike fear and wonder into the heart of a fragile and flummoxed young white man who used to scream in a punk band but now drinks too much and scares his girlfriend by listening to obscure suicide folk and viscerally defiant hip-hop. He wants to find something that feels, um, heartbreaking yet communal, ya know? Youth Lagoon's Trevor Powers may have written that song, with the marginally reassuring refrain, "You'll never die." Thanks for trying, Trev.
The Don Vito and Michael Corleone of Chicago footwork leave you speechless, breathless, and restless — anybody who's not bobbing their head or tapping their feet has clearly given up on life. A five-minute cavalcade of drums rolls and squeaky synths, it's like having your heart rhythmically defibrillated. Or as this YouTube Greil Marcus (a.k.a., "radicalbeatz") puts it: "lots of momentum on this track! like a train. but this track is off the track. this train is not bound to a track. this is the future of trains. this is the future of tracks. this is the future of music."
A heavily dosed, post-seductive, shoegazing R&B variation on a horror-filled theme. And as far as horror-filled scenes go, this song's narrative rates: Bro wakes up on a beach in Fort Lauderdale with a molly hangover and some random skank's tongue in his mouth, guzzling a White Russian in a vain attempt to ease the self-loathing. As Weeknd frontskank Abel Tesfaye self-dramatizes: "This ain't nothin' to relate to."
Whoever says pop music isn't improving all the time is just whistling through their PoliGrip, because these three fresh-faced L.A. sisters (who are, of course, seasoned industry pros) have reclaimed this '80s pop classic , excised the trashy nepotism and corny mom-jeans empowerment, and rewritten it with a lushly contemporary, gauzily mysterious, Etsy-boho Instagrammar that results in a far funkier white-nymphs-in-the-canyon fairy tale.
Two City kids push back gently against the gentrification that has transformed their respective neighborhoods (and boroughs), evoking a similar mix of pride and panache. In the video for "Harlem Roses," Cha$e delivers a WTF spoken-word intro about two million-dollar penthouses going up down the block, local landmark Lenox Lounge is poignantly chronicled, but mostly, Cha$e and partner Kid Art proceed to swag the fuck out, updating Camp Lo's "Coolie High" soliloquy and sounding like you hoped A$AP Mob would before you heard them. On "New Brooklyn," Dyme-A-Duzin flows slyly over the jovial sample of Cymande's "The Message" that laid the foundation for the 1990 Brooklyn classic "Me & the Biz" by Masta Ace, as well as a bit of Golden Age BK elder Daddy-O from Stetsasonic, declaring "Brooklyn, New York, is our hometown," in his gravelly bark. Rockin' a bow tie and suspenders, strolling sans his Phony Ppl crew, Dyme's a "product of Jay, Biggie, and Kane," shouting out neighborhoods and quarter waters and making a weed joke at the expense of Williamsburg hipsters. Exploiting and paying homage to their respective local iconography, both Cha$e and Dyme-A-Duzin keep the makin'-it-takin'-it hustle alive.[videoembed size="full_width" alignment="center"][/videoembed]
If you're not in desperate need of a serious motivational ritual to get through your morning coffee, let alone the rest of the grindstone day, then I'm not talking to your obviously-in-denial ass. This is for everybody who wakes up, rolls over, looks at the clock, and growls, "Fuuuuck me." DJ Schwarz feels your torment, and he's here to help with the most transcendentally exultant EDM anthem of the post-Skrillex era. Over a smack-the-sky, Electric Daisy Age synth-hymn and ceaseless breakdowns, Schwarz warbles and chants his way into your battered heart. The money shot: "Once you realize how fucking beautiful you are, other people will start to fucking realize how fucking beautiful you are. That's a beautiful motherfucking thing." Indeed it is, bromanoff!
The Most Down for Whatever Rapper Alive flaunts a mesmerizing, trance-like This Heat sample (via Harry Fraud) and a nasty GG Allin punch line to shit on MTV or anybody else within earshot. The man sounds rabid.
I only know the Spanish island of Lanzarote as a cultural tourist — it's where the epically crap movie Krull and the epically misty Stone Roses' "I Wanna Be Adored" video were both shot — which also means it comes steeped in eerily exotic adventure and escape. And this track by Norwegian space-disco honchos Lindstrøm and Terje only ups the ante with pure boingy-bass, Moroder-soundscape propulsion drenched in sheets of synth arpeggios, keyboard-pumping melodrama, and a kooky, conga-tweaked outro where other destinations are purred in your ear ("Honolulu," "Santiago," "Tenerife," "Acapulco," and "Mississippi," wait a minute!). I'm currently listening to this in the rain while picking up dog poop, but damn if I don't feel like a thatched-roof beach-cabana jet-setter.
In the former, Rick Ross rapped about date-raping a girl on molly; In the latter, Lil Wayne "beat that pussy up like Emmett Till." Luckily both those bozo verses were ditched via remix, since the productions, both by Atlanta residents, are coincidentally two of the year's most unforgettably quixotic. On "U.O.E.N.O.," Childish Major's beat woozily shields its eyes from the sun, again and again; but with "Karate Chop," Metro Boomin creates a hulking Godzilla lurch, decorates it with decadent tinkles and laser sirens, and methodically lays waste. Next, hire a copy editor, yo! There are plenty of them unemployed, just check your local media listing.[videoembed size="full_width" alignment="center"][/videoembed]
To a jaunty, naïve melody that's got an unnerving undercurrent of "Afternoon Delight" as written by Joni Mitchell circa Blue, the U.K. folkie sings with startling gravity about the trials of a fragile girl on the road attempting to live like an unbreakable woman. The hard-earned lessons get more and more forceful as she strums an acoustic guitar like it cheated on her in another hotel room just down the hall.
The Los Angeles production duo Classixx juices up a Gap Band funk strut and gives it a glistening club-pop crescendo and breakdown, while perpetually love-vexed ex-LCD Soundsystem keyboardist/vocalist Nancy Whang breezily moans like she's actually relieved to miss getting on board yet another flight with a sultry stranger. After all, it's almost summer, when sultry strangers are a dime a dozen.
With Lil Wayne now on an understandably devilish crusade to foul every punch bowl he can reach with his still-rich-as-fuck, post-incarceration pimp stick, it's left to this Atlanta MC eccentric to push the boundaries of what's rapping and what's hysterically spontaneous jibber-jabber. And he's up to the task on this hysterically spontaneous track, as he jibber-jabbers hypnotically, with a constantly fluctuating tone and accent, sounding like he's always clearing his throat, through a cubistic cascade of synths (from producer Jay Neutron), bragging that his diamonds will wink at you and his watch is Italian and he wears slippers and yacht shoes and he'll hoot and screech "Picacho" (pronounced like the Pokemon character or "peek at you") at anybody in the club. It's no "Ha," but it's a different time.
Both of these ladies are about exploding soul and funk and pop with technical virtuosity, conceptual dazzle, and general sophisticated freakiness. So, yeah, this song sounds like Prince. But if you can't feel Monáe's badassery when she spits, "Let them / Eat cake / But we eat wings / And thrown dem bones on the ground," then maybe the problem's not hers but yours. To wit, "the booty don't lie."
Sierra Leone-born teen vocal scamp Aminata Kabba (a.k.a., A*M*E*), Nigerian-descended teen production whiz Uzoechi Emenike (a.k.a. MNEK), and Switch protégé Duke Dumont team up for a finger-wagging, crossover-house throwdown that stalks you with an utterly contemporary strut, but that you could easily imagine Strictly Rhythm's B-Crew (Barbara Tucker, Dajae, Ultra Nate, Mone) turning into an Olympic-level diva par-tay.
You know Scarlett O'Connor (subtle!), that country-gal ingénue played by Clare Bowen on the TV series Nashville who's really Australian but loitered around the Bluebird Café and learned to sing like Lee Ann Womack with a pacifier in her gob? No? Well, anyway, Caitlin Rose is the so-much-better-than-you-could-imagine real-life version, and this song has a put-that-record-on chorus you'll be humming long after Scarlett/Clare has returned to the confines of musical theater in Sydney. In the video, she croons while smoking, cuffed, in the back of a cop car. Now there's some network Nashvegas mythos!
This prodigiously talented, "brain-broken, Frank Ocean-listenin', stain-hittin', satin wood grain-grippin'" Chicago rap nerd writes songs with such a boldly multifaceted tumble of implied emotions and points of view that for any slumming outsider to try and elevate it above the genre and call it, say, refreshing, should be grounds for beef.
From New Jersey's reliably buoyant house label French Express, it's the most sublimely soothing dance track of the past year. With the muted pulse of a keyboard line and the echo of a guitar lick that builds into a crest of elation that surges and quickly recedes, "So Good to Me" practically emanates a summery coastal glow that immediately melts your reserve. There's a droning coo (Soul II Soul's Caron Wheeler?) that tingles your heart rate, and then it hits you, almost unfairly, as Malinchak masterfully fades in and fully integrates the tragic swoon of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's deathless "If This World Were Mine." When Marvin croons, "Aww, baby, you're my consolation" — which actually sounds more like "cancellation," love being the obliteration of the individual self and shit — it's over. This one's gonna soundtrack a montage of hugs like the final scene of Cinema Paradiso that goes on and on until the snow falls.
The San Francisco singer-guitarist's sparkly, deceptively pedestrian, y'allternative stroll busts into a gloriously horny, teen-spiritual chorus that leaps out of the speakers and suddenly makes you feel like that autistic high-school basketball kid who drains three-pointers! Of course, before that same chorus is over you're already facing facts and lamenting that "shit goes on and on and on." Such is life, for kids of all ages.
Perhaps compelled to speak up for everyone who was impatient with the lavishly insouciant (and unavoidable) original, Kieran Hebden whipped out his microhouse scalpel and got to work. Revving up the BPMs so the track flipped from pleasantly unhurried to a serotonin gallop, he trimmed and pinched and twisted fillips of JT's and Jay-Z's voices into a mad, intoxicating chatter, answering them with an itchy typewriter counterpoint, a woodblock-knocking beat augmented by a shaker for a good measure, and before you knew it, the voices dropped out and you didn't even miss 'em.
When these swingin' pop scientists went back to the lab and ran some song ideas through their spectral deconvolution software, they emerged with an unlikely result — a sumptuous recasting of "Turning Japanese," in which frontman Thomas Mars throws himself at our feet and cries: "I'd rather be alone." The algorithm-based chords don't lie.
The height of pop eleganza, with the U.K.'s post-dubstep goddess circling around Julio Bashmore's sensually shifty and surging house tableau. The way the radiantly insistent, richly appointed bass weaves in between you and your dance partner is a marvel of production etiquette. There hasn't been a dance-floor come-hither this classy since Lisa Stansfield aye-aye-ayed into our lives with her been-around-the-world purr.
The only song on the more somberly introspective Mosquito that's got the post-punk-electro sashay of 2009's It's Blitz, "Sacrilege" is the Yeahs' grandest, edgiest, most straightforward anthem yet. Wailing about an angelic-seeming yet forbidden love, Karen O's voice has a tenderly corrosive quality that's talkin' square-biz to ya, baby, and Nick Zinner's guitar stomps and pirhouettes and fandances around her with prickly precision. Then a 24-member "Like a Prayer" gospel choir appears to consecrate Karen's supposed transgression. Praise, Yeezus!
The Pistol Annie gives her sassy shtick a rest and hushes the honky tonk with a slug-in-the-gut, steel-guitar weeper about what a young girl can give away forever to a dude with nothing to lose but a bar tab. Interesting sidenote: "The Morning After" is co-written by Caitlin Rose's mother, Liz.
A shaggy-dog exploration of a riff that could've howled or seared or gotten increasingly heavier as Vile declares, "I think I'm ready to claim what's mine." But instead, it wanders around and around lost in a mood until he starts a verse with "crestfallennnnnnnn," like he might fall asleep before the end of the song, and you realize this whole claiming-what's-mine business is, well, not exactly what it's all cracked up to be.
The speedy, Get Happy-esque Stax groove gives a dizzy energy to what is actually Vampy Dubz' most open-heartedly romantic, vulnerably yearning song, with Ezra Koenig experiencing a crisis of non-faith as fellow reluctant congregant Rostam Batmanglij harmonizes supportively. But some rhetorical questions — "Want a little grace / But who's gonna say a little grace for me?" — are best left unsaid. Unless, of course, you've got a melody this godforsakenly lovely to soothe your savage, secular-intellectual breast.
The music registers as a stark, monochromatic post-punk roar, but it's honed to a blur that blindsides you, and the message of vocalist Jehnny Beth is a 2013 punk cris de coeur fired right in your face: Shut your fucking mouth! Don't make yourself available to the social-media cacophony, don't contribute to the distraction, and maybe you'll be able to hear your life taking shape. And maybe you'll be able to find your own voice. And maybe you'll be able to break away from everyone who's always told you to shut up. So yeah, it's an "angry tune."
At nine minutes and 17 seconds, it's an extremely powerful and pretentious agitprop art exhibit set to a rutting and squawking techno soundtrack on a runaway bullet train into the personal-political maw of cocks and vaginas and domestication and power roles and the object (and subject) of desire, etc. For the last 13 seconds, Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson, her voice increasingly distorted, chants, "Let's talk about gender, baby." Meanwhile, this song argues that the only rational thing to do is scream.
The black-metal "Freebird" or "November Rain" or whatever power ballad evokes rampaging escape from a wintry Norwegian snow-prison. In league with Converge (whose Kurt Ballou has recorded their first two albums) and Baroness (whose John Baizley did the cover art for the second), these guys are modern-day rock's burning core, fusing various metals, punk, and thrash with a screamingly melodic flourish. Dig when the outlandish, top-hat-and-speedball guitar solo appears like an apparition at 2:45; you may start to tear up a bit. Fuck Varg and Burzum and all that evil church-burning nonsense — Norway's been through enough. Time to straight-up rawk.
Sampling soul-jazz flautist Hubert Laws on the intro brings to mind an old TV cop show or '70s movie that's always flickering in the back of your mind, reminding you of adolescent days alone on the living-room floor as the sun starts to fade and you can't stop obsessing on Angela's tops and sweaters that are always held together with a safety pin because her growing maturity keeps popping off the button in the exact same place. Then Cole and Miguel start in on love songs and crushes and kicking game and bullshit jealousy and drinking and money; as the beat reverberates with a rough synth thud, you realize that absolutely nothing has changed and Angela's safety pin was about as secure as life would ever get. Cue the sirens.
After a decade-plus of strumming, often solemnly, around the pop margins with their emo-folk tribe trailing devotedly, the Quin twins crash the synth-pop main room with an unmistakable, irresistible come-on — rushing, touching, dreaming, breathing, heating up, sparking in the dark, making things physical, both literally and with the twinkling, whooshing, bass-hurtling EDM beat, and simmering whoo-ooh-ooh breakdown that has you panting for the chorus to finish the job. It's as if their world just got a whole lot brighter.
Such a meticulous masterpiece of garage-soul dynamics and delirium that the only logical thing to do is stop writing. AND. TWERK. RIGHT. NOW.
It is literally impossible to imagine a scenario that would not be improved a zillion percent by bumpin' this frisky frolic of bodacious bass, bippity-bop cowbell, and boudoir bushwa by the grown-ass man of blue-eyed R&B raconteurs (sorry, JT). Inexplicably, it's produced by this fucking guy. Thicke to us: "You the hottest bitch in this place!" Us to Thicke: Why, thanks, you suit-and-no-tie Mr. Stubble. T.I.'s having more fun than at anytime since ATF rolled up on him at Walgreen's. There's lots of talk about not trying to "domesticate" your lover. And at one point, there's a naked model holding a pig — let your metaphor game play amongst yourselves.
Hard-hustlin' South Florida Lotto winner hides in the trunk of reigning club-rap production auteur (Mike Will Made It) and unassailable hook-captain (Future). The beat creeps and races and shivers like an anxiety disorder orchestrated for lazer synths, while the Auto-Tune sing-song and agitated verses lure you into a Grand Theft Auto hellscape of Haitian gangsters, omni-racial orgies, stacks stained with blood, discussion of Ace Hood's mortgage ($4,200!), and Officer Jelly Belly braggin' about his "D-League" hitmen (what, dudes who shoot like Travis Leslie?). But that's all noise: Bottom line, the chorus will make any dancefloor go kablooey on impact, like a dubstep drop without cartoon quotes around it.
With a death-grip on the mic amid an industrial-punk cataclysm, Our Lord and Savior Yeezus Christ sermonizes about mass incarceration and never-not-mutating racism atop a vaporous mountain of Louis Vuitton pipedreams, then instructs his minions to burn their gold, grind it to powder, scatter it on a glass of water, and swallow the bitter result. Wait, that was Black Moses, right?! Regardless, here is Yehovah's current communique for Americans who find him (and other prominent African-American agitators) a nuisance or hypocritical or worse: Slavery and its ongoing damage aren't your fault, huh? That's not the fucking issue, cowboy.
The retro-future clufu is over (i.e., it's our permanent present) and the French woebots are dancing blithely with this fucking guy, which proves end times are indeed nearing. "What keeps the planet spinning?" From the evidence presented here, apparently it's Nile Rodgers' guitar.