ABN - Still Throwed

From what might be the year's best rap album. Many effective pairings here: electric guitar crunch across glimmering synth, tuneful drawl across rapid-fire flows, elegiac Still masking hostile Geto Boy 'Still' (...waters run deep), Z-ro and Trae - two really rich weathered voices, experience-stained w/ all the varnish peeled off.

Ashanti ft. Robin Thicke - Things You Make Me Do

For anybody who didn't find themselves inexplicably skipping through The Declaration: a modest bit of cooing from the Venusian space-pod subgenre of R&B. Certainly slight (having flashbacks to old Christina Milian ballads here) but I have a hard time resisting. Never mind, ignore this.

Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)

Seemed to go nowhere on first listen, but 'going' ends up hardly the point. Relentless snake-charmer video is helpful because impossible to unsee - Beyonce The Iron Woman plus careening, teetering backing of synth whiplash & engine-that-could up in your face.

Big Boi ft. Andre 3000 & Raekwon - Royal Flush

Heard this on the radio a couple times which was weird. It feels tossed off but in the best way - Akai improvising & casual dart tossing - as if taken off some random mixtape. Andre's verse is also afforded twice the airtime (& memorable lines) to help reassure people like my old roommate who never recovered from The Love Below (*solemn blank stare*).

Bun B ft. Rick Ross, David Banner, 8Ball & MJG - You're Everything

Show of unity - stunning, hair-raising - could've come off as defensive but instead it's about devotion, the pathos behind what it means to belong. "We all different but we all rep the same thang." Production is baroque & lugubrious: choirs, doom bass, spidery keys (not too proud to say I was reminded of this). That Jodeci hook (an unusually intact sample) materializes like some phantom EVP recording - latent lovesickness, make the song cry.

Busta Rhymes - Don't Touch Me

Stodgy fall between stools notwithstanding, Busta's still really adept at stretching his flow through the gears of a beat. Syllables scuttling through every crevice, "Be water, my friend", adaptable motion is his forte. Vast improvement here on "Touch It"'s stiff slash/bust scheme, more organic, slow burning and nimble w/ tension built around the simple removal/return of the snare. Not bad. Gets some A+ verses out of the remix lineup too (Kane, Nas, Game, Wayne, etc.).

Ciara ft. Ludacris - High Price

"Oh" by way of "You Don't Want Drama" or Oh-M-G or Quetzalcoatl-riding banshee bloodbath if that's your thing. Really befuddling, the chorus a mere breathing space between those garish stentorian shrieks (e.g. 'YOU KNOW ME!'). Ludacris's verse splat in the middle is also oddly long (and pretty good) but imbalance seems to be the order of the day.

Keyshia Cole - Heaven Sent

Very pretty and measured ballad. Something about the way that ethereal "sent from heaven" finishes her more sober lines & later just softly persists under a third climactic register (string-section crescendo & all that). Video blatantly highlights stuffy MJB lineage but a little indeterminacy is detectable & it seems to suit her better (is that A Different Me?).

Cheri Dennis - Pretend

Lovely - Cheri patient, optimistic but then caveating in nervous double-time, finally allowing herself to openly pine for her guy. Floodgates over ripplets of descending toms - nice underpinning along w/ that unusually low-key bridge as if she's in contemplation or just out of speech.

Stacey Epps - Floatin'

All glimmering milky-ways & divine reverie - exceptionally unearthly for neo soul type stuff. More permeation of downtempo - see also Solange looking to Zero 7/BOC, Sa-ra, beatsmith names like Ras G & the Afrikan Space Program, etc. Sort of washes over you which is typical but agreeably lush & effortless feeling.

John Legend ft. Andre 3000 - Green Light

Is this the first Outkast-related thing that might actually pass as an honorary drum & bass track (this one somewhere between liquid-funk & boutique labels like Subtle or Covert Operations)? And what kind of criteria is that? Well... the kind that gets me writing blurbs about John Legend songs apparently.

Lil Wayne - A Milli

Undercooked passed off as raw - a Weezy specialty - and nowhere more at home than over this Bangladesh scribble. Forerunning germ - a kooky bit of Kelis filler - left on loop, now breeding and growing smarter each day (vocabulary of four words if we count "Diva"). Boring, as in into the skulls of your children.

Lloyd ft. Lil Wayne - Girls Around the World

Lloyd, new romantic elven androgyne, on a relaxed 90's style groove. Takes its time but not its space - sauntering "thin" break is a welcome relief & the detailing is all twinkly vibraphone and billowing strings. Also Lloyd, heartthrob falsetto on the verge of evaporation, sounds pretty good here. Light flatters light.

Ne-Yo - Closer

"I know her face, I just don't know who you are." Works on two levels, in the club catching a glimpse of some missing encounter, or anywhere at all at the precipice of a desired relationship (4x4 perhaps internal as heartbeat). References to becoming owned & captive but there's a sense that it's an unwitting seduction, that is to say, formulated by him alone. "The more I get, the more I want." He is the one, but in this case so is she.

Scarface - High Powered / Emeritus

Bookends of what may be the last Scarface album. "High Powered" - something like the grandeur of Game's "One Blood" but senior, unconcerned w/ proving itself, distant from the rowdiness of youth but still within earshot. "Emeritus" - the formidable ending note too boss for a chorus - "to the critics analyzing my shit, thinking so-and-so is better, you can suck my dick" plus the final lines are killer but I won't spoil it here.

Termanology ft. Bun B - How We Rock

Termanology's sort of gawky & unconvincing like he's geeking out in real-time over his own multisyllabic rhyme schemes. You, sympathetic listener, are invited to commingle into the geekiness. I have to admit, he is pretty scrappy. Basement Primo beat & a solid cast-against-type Bun B certainly help.

T.I. ft. Kanye West, Jay-Z & Lil Wayne - Swagga Like Us

Hard to ignore the fact that only T.I. sounds up to the task but kind of thrilling anyway. Starts by swooping in and detonating into war-drums - already the sound of an expensive trainwreck - the entire thing swollen, oversized, & half-choking on its own autotune. M.I.A., of all people, floats around as larger-than-larger-than-life rallying cry. "Pay no attention to those men behind the curtain..."

Trina ft. Killer Mike - Look Back At Me

Like the sun, like a flower. Not-so-intimate club (and whip and chain and cattle prod) music. The baddest: Trina's maniacal laughter, the pong-paddle ratatat, those outrageous, uh, screwing fx. Seriously nasty.

V.I.C. - Wobble

Prefer this to "Get Silly" actually - less catch-line but the 'wobble' rhythm is fairly outlandish (i.e. a ringtone of it had me at bar two). Style cues from Idlewild but the whole thing was probably both too specific and dispersed to have really caught on like its crank donk brethren.

Young Jeezy ft. Kanye West - Put On


Rapper once accused of coasting off adlibs now accused of exploiting political/economic climate for self-promotion. The shift is to Jeezy's credit & he does have a knack for blowing things up in scale if not w/ matching resolution. Every puffed up 'AYYY' needs its matching minor-chord IMAX stage ("Soul Survivor", then "Go Getta") so why not a move towards public address? As for Kanye Digital, his new vocaloid thing works well as a timbre - viridian cityscapes & glass - but I still have no idea what he's 'putting on' other than a long face.