Harlem rapper/R&B singer Azealia Banks debut LP Broke With Expensive Taste has been in a perpetual state of delay, but that hasn't stop the firebrand from staving off audience hunger with new material. Banks is already teasing a new mixtape, titled Fantasea II: Second Wave tenatively scheduled for a July 11, 2014 release. While such a far-off date might seem farfetched, Banks has supplied "Count Contessa" for proof. The beat supplied by producer Lone squelches and squeaks like interstitial JRPG music, if it was soundtracking a nautical themed house party. "If you can't dance and if you can't sing", Banks intones several times over the wavy synths. If the release date has any grounding in reality, we'll have plenty of time to practice our moves.
Daft Punk time travel in new video
If Daft Punk's rosy love-letter to the 70s Random Access Memories failed to demonstrate robots are capable of experiencing nostalgia, the French duo's new video featuring Pharrell and Nile Rogers is the final proof. Nothing overly complicated about the set-up here, just the four collaborators in an angelic disco glow playing for a dance conscious crowd at Studio 54 circa 22nd century. The camera pans the entire crowd and we find there isn't a single soul not caught up in the groove. Daft Punk has supplied a video that lives up to the song's lofty commands.
How to Dress Well releases "Hangover Mix"
"Ok i woke up super hungover today and made this mix of songs," Tom Krell of How to Dress Well begins his most-recent Soundcloud posting. The near 45 minute mix weaves through intermittent clips of Krell recontextualizing current rap juggernauts in the way of "Hold On We're Going Home" and a Ryan Hemsworth remix of "Honest". Krell finds the time to stop over and laconically back up Kanye West on "Hold My Liquor" with his breathless falsetto. We also detour to incendiary bits of Kevin Gates, subdued acoustic strumming from the reviled GG Allin, and slow-burning pieces from Tink and Tracy Chapman. When considering the parenthetical title of "Hungover Mix", the genre-hopping starts to make sense. As Krell succinctly puts it in his post, "it's like a mix of songs that soothe and punish".
The moment Banks' trembling voice alights on the bed of minor piano chords and disembodied vocals found in "Waiting Game" her fall tour pairing with the Weeknd starts to make sense. Like Tesfaye's lothario alter-ego, she displays a shadowy seduction in a soft quiver, "and if I'm feeling evil we've got nothing to gain." A twitching electronic pulse (courtesy of Sohn) envelops the track while she wonders "what if the way we started made it cursed from the start?" As the pulse grows louder, Banks becomes more uncertain "scared of even thinking bout what we are." The libidinal "the way you make me feel sexy" comes with a caveat: "but it's causing me shame." Physical desires take a backseat to the simple joy of shoulder-leaning. The Weeknd gallivants around with no concern, Banks carefully considers every step. The song isn't the same.
According to Pitchfork, rapidly-rising Harlem rapper Azealia Banks is working with indie-firebrand M.I.A. Presumably the two are collaborating on tracks for Banks' forthcoming Broke With Expensive Tastes LP which is slated to drop in September. While you wait for the record to be released, enjoy this still great track from Banks that shows what Universal saw in her.
Earlier today, duo Broken Bells comprised of the Shins' James Mercer and Danger Mouse debuted a mysterious desert trekking video that ended with the above image. It's now been confirmed that the band will be following up their 2010 self-titled debut with an album titled After the Disco. The LP sports a tentative January 2014 release date and the band teased the announcement on Twitter, tweeting "there may be more than meets the eye".
Check out the minimalistic space fare below, complete with Mercer attempting his best falsetto over a wobbling synthesizer and steady drum beat.
RZA and Paul Banks making an album together
Yesterday's installment of "What's New(s)?" spotlighted the improbable partnership between sample fiend Girl Talk and former Rocafella member Freeway. Today comes an even more unlikely partnership, formed by the Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and Paul Banks of Interpol. In an interview for Rolling Stone, RZA took time out from plugging his latest projects to describe the effort which reportedly has been in the works for the past six months. Speaking to the motivation for recording with the Interpol frontman, RZA complimented "Paul just has an energy about him. I think if we put our sandwich together it will be great." Continuing, RZA said "we went to the studio and we started writing songs and they sound very,
very different than what I do, but very unique and very peculiar." Though RZA was quick to temper the praise, ensuring "it won't be able for awhile."
Banks previously issued his rap mixtape Everybody On My D*** Like The Supposed to Be, so this isn't an entirely improbable partnership, but it does raise more than a few eyebrows.
Channeling-her inner Aaliyah, Harlem-firebrand Azealia Banks has dropped the skittish "Needsumluv." Sporting a sample from Aaliyah's "One in a Million," and featuring production by machinedrum, Banks dials-down on the "X-rated," lyric of tracks like "212" unleashing a song of conflicted-love. "You don't really wanna leave her, but you're tired of her," she sings on the opening line. With infectious-brilliance like this, nobody should being tired of Banks any time soon.
"Are You
That Somebody?", Aaliyah's 1998 effort for the Dr. Doolittle
soundtrack remains the greatest R&B track to arise from that decade.
There's really no other way to parse it. Every element of a classic is in the
song. Timbaland's stuttering production which had yet to take on the full-icon
status it would later enjoy. Static Major's evasive, but crucially important
backing vocals that slip in and out with the beat. And then at the center of
the perfect storm is Aaliyah. While the song is rife with crisp drum strikes,
her voice never swells to that loud, knocking level. She's content to dwell in
the shadows and whisper her affection, rather than belt it from a rooftop. In
the past few years, her lesson of less is more has become the motto of an
entire crop of indie R&B singers.
One of those singers is the
American-born/British-raised BANKS. On last year's stellar "Waiting
Game" she carefully crooned "I'm thinking it over, the way you
make me feel sexy but it's causing me pain," entirely cognizant of the kind
of damage such an admission would deal. Such pained self-awareness is essential
for a track like "Are You That Somebody?” one major reason why the
artist's cover of the tune for BBC Radio 1 works so well. Ditching drum
machines for a hiccupping guitar, she embodies the role of the "goody
goody" who has a "naughty naughty" personae lurking underneath.
Like Aaliyah in the original she delivers the omission in a hushed whisper, not
wanting just anyone to know everything about her. "See I'm trusting you, with
my heart, my soul," she croons in a moment of great candor. When you're
risking so much, you can understand such carefulness.
“Where’s the promise from sea to shining sea,” Bruce Springsteen asks on the anthemic opener of his seventeenth release in a forty-year career. He bellows the question over and over again, trying to find the answer but to no avail. The “promised land,” Springsteen loved has been lost. It sits broken down on a back-road somewhere in the heartland, choking in the dust. On Wrecking Ball, Springsteen tries to find an answer to that all-important question anyway he can, tracking it down with dogged determination.
“We Take Care of Our Own,” serves as a masterful introduction to Bruce’s rediscovery of America and stands as one of his strongest openers in years. Musically it resembles a large chunk of Magic, a no frills rocker with a captivating chorus. Springsteen’s mantra of “we take care of our own,” is less a statement of the present, more a sobering look back at the past. The nation that welcomed everyone with open arms has long since vanished.
"We Take Care of Our Own
Given how fragile our country has grown since Bruce dropped Working on a Dream in 2009, it’s no surprise he talks at length about our current economic situation. Where Working on a Dream was starry-eyed mythologizing of the new era of politics, Wrecking Ball is a retreat to the work of Nebraska, small-town citizens clinging to their routines just to escape the strains of daily-life. On the feet-stomping, hand-clapping “Easy Money,” Springsteen imagines robbing all the “fat cats,” deeming it the perfect date. The jaunty “Shackled and Drawn,” name-checks “bankers’s hill,” as “The Boss” rises each day to put his nose to the grindstone.
This us against them fat-cat talk paints the record in a dark hue and in “Jack of All Trades,” Springsteen ups the ante, promising to “shoot the bastards on sight.” On this slow-burner, Springsteen becomes “the jack of all trades, master of none,” knowing that in this economic environment it’s the best shot he’s got at work. “We’ll be alright,” he sings over a delicate piano figure with weary-confidence. Elsewhere, Springsteen recalls The River, avowing that we “stood the drought, now we’ll stand the flood.” Where the river was dry, it’s now run over the banks, drowning many Americans. The searing solo from guitar-wizard Tom Morello seals the deal on the sobering song and is a high point of the album.
It’s worth mentioning that this record is one of Springsteen’s most successful marriages of music to message. “Death to My Hometown,” counts itself as one of several songs that comes through as an Irish sing-along. The raucous numbers are the embodiment of “misery loves company,” the depressed and defeated brought together by a few beers and a common enemy. However, a larger than life ghost haunts this album, by way of E-Street saxophonist Clarence Clemons. With the “Big Man’s” death in June of 2011, Springsteen lost his close-friend and foil. On previous downbeat tracks Clemons’ solos were cathartic, welcome releases from the shackles Springsteen’s songs put on us. On Wrecking Ball the darkness can become overwhelming at times, tracks like “This Depression” altogether blotting out Springsteen’s “sunny days.”
Nowhere is the balance of message and music better than the title-track, which I readily count as Springsteen’s greatest in a decade plus. Here Springsteen is stunningly defiant, begging all naysayers “take your best shot.” Even with a bloodied lip and bruised face, Springsteen staggers to his feet, resolving to never fall to fear. Max Weinberg’s in-the-pocket drumming astutely accents Springsteen’s pleas and Clemons’ understated sax blasts are a youthful liberation, transporting us back to a simpler-time.
"Wrecking Ball"
Much like the world we live in, not everything about this record is perfect and Springsteen can’t spin gold from everything he’s given here. “Rocky Ground,” though admirably ambitious with shimmering organ and soulful choruses, fires in too many directions and Bruce can’t seem to pull it together. “You’ve Got It,” similarly stalls, reading as a cast-off from 2002’s The Rising. Springsteen rescues the record on the penultimate track “Land of Hope and Dreams.” Out of all the tunes here, it has the strongest feeling of an actual E-Street song. The ghost of Clarence Clemons returns and he unleashes a solo halfway through that hearkens back to “Jungleland.” The epic swells as Springsteen’s train barrels down the tracks, welcoming “saint and sinner” alike on board. The subtle strumming of “We Are Alive,” is an updated take of “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” for a new generation of outcasts. With his final words Springsteen exhorts the starving souls of Americans to sleep easy, when they wake up the nightmare will be over.
“Hard times come and hard times go,” Bruce reminds us on the aforementioned title-track. We’ve seen this type of trouble before and we’ll see it again. What’s changed since Bruce last took on an America he couldn’t seem to understand is that we are no longer one nation. Between two wars, a recession, depression, and general uncertainty about the state of our union, we’ve fragmented into millions of pieces. On the bonus track “American Land,” we no longer welcome the people dying to get here with open arms. We’ve grown disillusioned, cold, and cynical. Springsteen’s latest release may not be perfect, no one would confuse it with Born to Run, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a re-affirming record in a time when the voice of reason is increasingly silent. On Wrecking Ball, his message is loud and clear and we need it now more than ever.
Bass-music producer Shlomo has a free-pass to work with any R&B singer he'd like. "Don't Say No", the centerpiece of his breakout 2013 EP Laid Out spotlighted How to Dress Well's perpetually aching vocals up against a skittering background. Banks' seductive croon became even more exotic after her pairing with Shlomo's "tropical boom" on last month's "Brain". For such decidedly non-human soundscapes, he's able to ring out absolute pathos from his collaborator. Effectually, he's indie-R&B's "Horse Whisperer".
And over the course of the last year, there's no one's ear he's had more than Chicago's Jeremih. Already in the midst of a career-transformation with 2012's sorely underappreciated Late Nights with Jeremih, he completed the metamorphosis with the quiet storm of last summer's "Bo Peep (Do You Right)". That piece of airy bleeps and slow gurgles already seems staid though as soon as you hit play on "No More". Leaping out of the gate with scraping electronic sounds, "No More" writhes with trap-rap ticks and palpitating bass drops. Jeremih is similarly jittery, repeatedly wailing in his falsetto "I don't want to wait." "All I want is you now and later" he confesses at another turn; concealing agitation. By the end he descends into ghostly Auto-tune and everything is obscured. Waiting games are only "fun" for so long.
"No More" is the first taste of a new, as-of-now-untitled EP Shlomo and Jeremih have partnered up for. You can download the track through NPR and look for the EP out through WEDIDIT/Def Jam.
Interpol has been making a bit of a comeback of late. The NYC three-piece announced a slew of tour dates on their website, including choice dates at the Governor's Ball Music Festival and All Tomorrow's Parties Iceland. Along with those festival dates, frontman (and occasional rapper) Paul Banks, guitarist Dan Kessler, and drummer Sam Fogarino will be top-billed on NME's Awards Tour which spans eight dates across the U.K. in March.
While the band tours the U.K., they'll be wrapping up their as-of-yet unnamed fifth LP. Recording for the follow-up to 2010's self-titled release concluded in December, so plans for a 2014 release seem incredibly high considering the flurry of tour activity. That said, there haven't been any tracklists shared so things are still incredibly tentative. While you wait for the effort to materialize, help yourself to "Barricade" from Interpol's self-titled album.
Tour Dates: 3/18 Glasgow, Scotland- Glasgow O2 Academy 3/19 Leeds, England- Leeds O2 Academy 3/20 Manchester, England- Manchester Academy 3/22 Liverpool, England- Liverpool O2 Academy 3/23 Nottingham, England- Nottingham Rock City 3/25 Birmingham, England- Birmingham O2 Academy 3/26 Bristol, England- Bristol O2 Academy 3/27 London, England- London O2 Academy Brixton 6/6 New York, NY- The Governors Ball Music Festival 6/20 Scheessel, German- Hurricane Festival 6/20 Neuhausen, Germany- Southside Festival 7/10 Lisbon, Portugal- Optimus Alive 7/12 KeflavÃk, Iceland- All Tomorrow's Parties Iceland
Big K.R.I.T. remixes Gary Clark Jr.
Considering Mississippi-native Big K.R.I.T.'s predilection for blending hip-hop, blues, soul, and it seems all-too-appropriate he'd be linking up with blues-revivalist Gary Clark Jr. The Texas bluesman is currently prepping a "remixtape" of his well-received 2012 debut LP Blak and Blu, and the K.R.I.T. remix of the title-track is our first sampling. K.R.I.T. leisurely travels down the motivational lane for the number. Krizzle offers up pearls of wisdom like "I know what you're going through, no need to be shy about it, ain't none of us brand new, don't let the world brand you," atop a steady knocking beat. Clark dials down on the traditional bluesy hollering for a soulful croon, giving the whole affair a weightless feeling.
No official date has been announced for Blak and the Blu: The Mixtape, but Spin is reporting Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, and Bilal will be guesting on the tape. You can hear the title-track here, and view a clip for the monstrous "Numb" below.
Check back in tomorrow for more of the newest in new(s) and follow @AllFreshSounds on Twitter for updates throughout the day.
Part 1 of the "Top 50 Songs of 2014" ranged from bubblegum boom-bap to landlocked surf-pop and this second act is no less unwieldy. But before we dive further into the best of what the year had to offer, let's look back at what we've seen so far.
50. "Picture Me Gone"- Ariel Pink (pom pom) 49. "Blank Space"- Taylor Swift (1989) 48. "I'm Coming Home"- Lil Boosie (Life After Deathrow) 47. "Say You Love Me"- Jessie Ware (Tough Love) 46. "Man of the Year"- ScHoolboy Q (Oxymoron) 45. "New York Kiss"- Spoon (They Want My Soul) 44. "I Love You All"- The Soronprfbs (Frank soundtrack) 43. "Interference Fits"- Perfect Pussy (Say Yes to Love) 42. "Webbie Flow (U Like)"- Isaiah Rashad (CilviaDemo) 41. "And I Am Nervous"- Shy Boys (Shy Boys) 40. "Never Catch Me" ft. Kendrick Lamar- Flying Lotus (You're Dead)
"To me death is not a fearful thing," Jim Jones once proclaimed. The end he brought for himself and 912 of his followers in Guyana showed the ugliest of that statement. On the brighter side of the coinSteven Ellison's fifth album as Flying Lotus, You're Dead!, shows us that we all pay death far too much respect. Instead of saying someone "died" we dance around the word like Michael Palin and John Cleese in the immortal Monty Python sketch. "I wanted it to be playful, because it's the one experience
we have in common. I wanted to make something that captures death from
different angles," Ellison declared in an interview.
Nothing on You're Dead! captures all 360 degrees of our ultimate end quite like propulsive jazz-rap cut "Never Catch Me." Boosted by a lightning bolt verse from "King" Kendrick Lamar, "Never Catch Me" captures "curiosity, animosity, high velocity" and is quite amazing in the way it does it. Hobbling synthesizers are lapped by amphetamine dosed drum machines. Basslines wildly flail like captured salmon on their last breaths. Piano hopscotches in and out of frame. The way it all coalesces is "wrong and right" as Lamar puts it. It's simultaneously messy and well-made. Like death, there are hundreds of words you can use to describe "Never Catch Me," but one will do... triumphant.
39. "Tearing Down Posters"- Jawbreaker Reunion (Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club)
If I handed out album of year awards based solely on the nebulous idea of "fun," the teasingly named Jawbreaker Reunion's first album of "slumber party punk" would win in a landslide. For example a. skip to "Tearing Down Posters," the third and best track from Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club(a title I never get tired of typing). Sure it starts with Lily Mastrodimos somberly admitting obsession: "my name never wants to leave your mouth, I think that it just doesn't want to come out," but it explodes into something far too catchy to realistically be called "emo." Andrea Maszak's drums bounce. Bella Mazzetti and Mastrodimos carve enough riffs off of the bone to feed 20 people. Thom Delaney plays his bass like he's trying out for the Beach Boys. It'll drive you "crazy," like Mastrodimos is as she struggles to win someone over. "I don't wanna sit around and mope," she projects. Mission accomplished.
38. "Try Me"- DeJ Loaf (single)
Rap thug types hear DeJ Loaf's breakout single "Try Me" and quietly sigh to themselves. Hip hop knuckleheads press play and raise the white flag before the last waves of crystalline synth fall off a cliff. They give up because they've spent years trading in stock threats and seen no dividends. Loaf? Well she raps "let a n**** try me, Imma get his whole mothaf***in' family," and becomes the biggest thing in Detroit rap.
It's all in the delivery. Loaf promising to "turn a b**** to some macaroni" with a Mac or 40 is funny enough, capable of eliciting brief smirk. Done in that chirrupy, Auto-tuned voice though it's a kneeslapper that knocks harder than DDS' bass. And when Loaf circles around to how this kind of mindless violence has claimed lives close to her, "I been out my mind since they killed my cousin," her voice doesn't change. She can't afford for it to. No matter how much it hurts, you don't change course when you're staking your reputation on something.
37. "Queen"- Perfume Genius (Too Bright)
Perfume Genius' Michael Hadreas is on the record as saying his breakthrough experimental pop track "Queen" is "inspired by gay panic" and once you know that it's hard to hear the song in any other way. "No family is safe when I sashay" he unreservedly declares in the chorus of echoing drums and rippling electric guitar, voice supported by gruff "ooohs" on either side. If he's going to be seen as some sort of "gay villain," then he's going to take it to the extreme. He's going to proclaim himself royalty.
Of course there's more to the story, every "villain" has a story to tell and Hadreas is no different. He may be defiantly sashaying, but he's doing it with skin "cracked, peeling, riddled with disease." In the 1980s the panic wasn't necessarily a concern that LGBTQ-individuals would convert unsuspecting straight Americans, but that they would pass on their Gay-related immune deficiency (GRID). With "Queen"'s jagged orchestral arrangement Hadreas taps into that all-important time for LGBTQ rights, when it wasn't just a struggle for equality it was a struggle to survive. Then as now, the majority had nothing to be afraid of. Those in the minority were the ones living in fear. Earlier in his life that may very well have been Hadreas, but it isn't any more. Now he's the one standing in the spotlight helping others step out of the darkness.
36. "No More"- Jeremih & Shlohmo (No More)
Seeing that Jeremih is still hanging around and making relevant music, I can't help but pull a Tom Haverford and ask myself: Jeremih? Jeremih? ...Jeremih? The dude that wanted to "riiiide out" on "Birthday Sex" six years ago? Yes, the very same. But where that Jeremih was making relatively tame loverman R&B, the Jeremih of 2014 is a much bigger risk-taker. "No More," with Shlohmo's punishing synthesizer swipes doesn't happen in the late-2000s. That was a time for schmaltzy pickups. Since the advent of the Weeknd in 2011, we're in the era of emotional detachment. Riding out's been replaced by "I won't let it out." "Feenin'" still exists though it's much more dire. Sweet melodies have turned sour; Auto-tuned voices sound writhe on the floor. There's urgency to everything. "I don't wanna wait," Jeremih repeatedly cries. Don't be astounded if he's back on the Billboard charts in 2015. He refuses to settle and that's his biggest asset.
35. "Jackson"- Cymbals Eat Guitars (LOSE)
Only now do all past comparisons of Cymbals Eat Guitars to Built to Spill or Modest Mouse seem so silly. With "Jackson," the lead track to junior release LOSE, they cross over the New York state-line into Jersey, home state of emo heroes the Wrens. "Jackson" is a tad showier than anything the Meadowlands band would produce, blazing solos and punishing drums, but it has the same soaring quality that made a track like "Happy" so compelling.
Initial bits of keyboard ebb into a wall of guitar noise that recedes and lets singer Joseph D'Agostino come up for air. "We're riding, through Jackson pines, towards Six Flags to wait in lines, and have our spines shook," D'Agostino half growls/half stutters. That line in particular is far more literal than anything BTS or Modest Mouse would attempt, intended to pay tributeto former collaborator Ben High who died in 2011. Instead of giving some cryptic eulogy, D'Agostino dials into the "mundane," because that's where some of our greatest memories lie. You pay tribute to someone by recalling them at their most human. And rocking out in every way imaginable.
34. "Fancy" ft. Charli XCX- Iggy Azalea (The New Classic)
All of this comes up with Iggy Azalea's DJ Mustard jacking "Fancy" because cultural appropriation is always going to be an issue when white people perform hip hop. It was when the Beastie Boys started. Slim Shady was Elvis in the worst way possible when he kicked in doors with "My Name Is." Macklemore has to field similar questions. Tip was right when he intimated that hip hop, particularly the conscious kind, is a means to fight back against the oppressive majority. Which is why it's problematic when Slim or Macklemore or Iggy raps, they'll never be a part of the oppressed.
One failing though of Tip's Twitter diatribe, besides the aforementioned hypocrisy, is that he doesn't mention that the track that broke hip hop, "Rapper's Delight," was a party song. When he wasn't watching Knick games on a color TV, Big Bank Hank was driving slow in a sunroof Cadillac. He and the rest of the Sugarhill Gang was F-L-Y and so it is with Iggy Azalea's "Fancy." She's going to rock high heels and guzzle cups of "Grey Goose" while the bass snaps like a rubber band. She and Charli XCX, who crafts one of the year's most indestructible pop hooks, are going to trash hotels and they'll look good doing it. Iggy was asking people to "drop it" from verse one, so leave all your baggage at the door. It'll still be there when the song ends.
33. "Holding on for Life"- Broken Bells (After the Disco)
As Broken Bells the Shins' James Mercer and Danger Mouse fail disco. Disco's supposed to be about an emotional release, not conveying the kind of existential dread that "Holding on for Life" is comprised of. The extraterrestrial Theremin creeping into the song is one kind of eerie, hearing Mercer struggle to understand what's going on around him is quite another. His confusion is only amplified when an acoustic guitar shuffles as he burns cigarettes in the bone-numbing cold. Nothing in "Holding on for Life" makes sense. Neither the Beegees voice Mercer adapts in the chorus, nor the keys that float in midair and heighten the suspense. The hairs on the back of your neck will stand up when you hearing them and your feet will stop tapping. When Broken Bells fail disco they do it in the best way possible.
32. "Who Do You Love?" ft. Drake- YG (My Krazy Life)
When's the last time we got full-blown a-hole Drake? The Drake that's hanging out with strippers, making people kiss his pinky ring and reminding everyone that'll listen how he's running the game. That's the one that's the most fascinating of all of Drizzy's personalities, if only because the manufactured toxicity is such a far cry from reality.
We get his unadulterated a-holishness with YG collabo "Who Do You Love?" and we're better for it. YG and DJ Mustard tag-team the lead for the My Krazy Life track, YG icily warning folks to "sprint like athletes" when he pulls out his fat heat and Mustard supplying one of his springiest, most burbling tracks. The way YG's grizzled raps blend with Mustard's mint condition keys is a thing of beauty. As incredible as their alchemy is it's a well-placed single compared to the home-run Drake hits. It's not enough to say he's enjoying some fine-dining; Drake's going to tell you he's "eating crab out in Malibu at Nobu." He's flying across the country to film music videos. When he needs to pay someone off, he'll do it. Drake was overly indulgent in 2014 and "Who Do Love?" was the start of the spending spree.
Enjoy the bop while you can. The Chicago-born scene that borrows from drill, juke, footwork and 808s and Heartbreak rap is unsustainable. The drum machines clap way too fast. Keyboards and synthesizers are sweet enough to cause audible diabetes. Auto-tune is slathered on so thick that performers sound like they're suffocating. Bop is meant for the here and now.
Bop is crafted to soundtrack the kind of party MBE have and then bail when cleanup time comes. Zoning off of molly dosed drum programming; the Southsiders throw money up and stomp around the dancefloor. The keyboard is clearly drunk and so are they as their Auto-tuned crooning stumbles all over the beat. A great party is one that can't be duplicated. So it is with MBE's introductory track.
(Look
for Part 3 to pop up right above this one. And if you love the songs
included, say so in the comments. If you hate them and have nothing but
righteous indignation for the countdown, express that to.)
