Drake - Dreams Money Can Buy

Okay, theres alot to be said about Drake. He can be a little bitch, he can be whiney and petulant. He's a rapper, like Kanye's a rapper. Not technically amazing, but comes up with the lines that get stuck in your head, because they've overextended trying to stuff a little bit too much into a somewhat clever punchline and the awkward delivery stays with you. That being said, he has good songs, and at the end of the day, I'm not mad.

Where he does shine in hip hop however is his ability to carve out his own sound with his solo releases. For a guy who's only put out one commercial release to be able to push a sound of his own, its kinda remarkable (hows that go-go music going Wale?). And its a pretty decent sound. Kind of melancholy sounding, dreamy thing with big drums. Couple this with future collaborations with Jamie XX and The Weeknd, this is a cohesive vision for how he wants to sound. Anyways this leak is a continuation of that and I like it. Interested to see where the rest of it goes. Watch the internet get up in arms about that 'remaining 5' line too haha.

Drake - Dreams Money Can Buy

Best.Of.2010 Honorable Mention - Lazerproof

I find La Roux to be really boring. True story. All their electro-pop ditties sound exactly the same to me. However like another big name indie group (The Gossip), they coast by because they have a female lead singer with an amazing set of pipes on her and as a result can sing the house down.

Enter the Major Lazer boys, Switch and Diplo. Hated on (mostly Diplo here, Switch seems to not to have received the same treatment) for cultural appropriation, apparent douchebaggery and seemingly just having too much fun, they defied the haters and created one of the most strikingly different and charismatic dance music albums of 2009, Guns Don’t Kill People, Lazers Do. The debate on Diplo and the rest of his Mad Decent crew can wait for another time, but lets cut to the chase and say in my eyes they keep club music fresh and fun by promoting and using elements of dance music from around the world and in this case the focus was on dancehall and reggae.

Love or hate it, their diverse production and selections for the remix tape Lazerproof, they show just how striking a singer Elly Jackson really is. With a constantly shifting sonic background that ranges from reggae to dancehall, dubstep, top 40 rap and beyond, the songs come into their own, no two sounding quite alike, yet all intrinsically linked. Switch and Diplo’s pop experience also play a roll, with catchy samples that will get stuck in your head for days. (Seriously, there was a two-week period where I couldn’t get their dubplated “Mad Decent big up all di fallen soldiers” hook out of my head.)

The end product is a fun, catchy, not super serious mixtape that’s displays the full talents of both Major Lazer and La Roux. It’s not a slap dash cash grab, but rather something that defies the expectations of the listener for how good said collaboration would be on paper. And I’m willing to bet like other Diplo tapes Piracy Funds Terrorism and Top Ranking, it will still be getting many spins long after the blog hype is gone.

Major Lazer & La Roux - Lazerproof
BONUS
Major Lazer - Cash Flow (Classixx Glass Bottom Dub Mix)

Drake - Fireworks (Deadboy's Slo-Mo House Edit)

Cudos to The Fader for rubbing it in how much I missed out on when I was too sick to make it out to Deadboy the other week. By all accounts I missed an amazing show. But I’m not too worried, there are plenty more events from Don’t Sleep coming in the future.

I could write something about how the bassey house and ghostly R&B are so hot right now and this is the cutting edge blah, blah, blah, wank. This is one of those tracks that goes beyond genre exercises and hangups. The simple truth is that what Deadboy has done with this edit is cut away all the excess from the Drake original to get to the heart of what he was trying to express. Problem with a lot of Drake songs isn’t necessarily the emotion he’s trying to convey, it’s that he fumbles around with how to present it and so the sentiment is lost. Couple that with his annoying rhyme pattern and a weird sense of stature and entitlement and what should be resonant winds up being grating (cheese).

This edit just works for me really. Combines my appetite for forward thinking dance music with the fact that right now I just feel like music that isn’t the usual pump up and get ravey stuff. Sometimes people like dance music but don’t feel happy. And what better artist to express inexplicable and unreasonable melancholy with than Drake? Part of me would love to drop this in the middle of a huge set at a club, just to see what happens…

This is coming out sometime soon on a limited edition vinyl pressing called Cash Antics Vol 2. You better believe I’ll be buying it.

BONUS - Deadboy - Long Way 2 Go