August Alsina Feat Nicki Minaj
No Love (Def Jam)
As far as I can tell from my cave of hardened tissues and half-full bottles of Coke, August Alsina hasn’t really taken off in the UK. But, although there are a wealth of R&B guys with sunglasses about, he’s worth more than a cursory look. Here, after a recent health scare, Alsina has decided to settle down with Minaj, writing an ode to monogamy and the beauty of joint Ikea trips. Only joking. It’s about take-it-or-leave-it infidelity. No Love makes me think of a edgier Usher tune. Minaj flits expertly between singing and rapping, and is impressive at both in a way you’d expect from her.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
Nickelback
What Are You Waiting For (Island)
It’s not often that a Nickelback song can conjure up a theatre’s worth of imagery, but What Are You Waiting For paints a vivid picture of an American teenager, one entirely unfascinated by music, or anything remotely arty. They have a busted old iPod’s worth of Counting Crows, movie soundtracks and the like. Their clothes allow them to fade into the background. They just want to listen to their quasi-uplifting, carbon-copy Nickelback songs in peace. Welcome to the grey world of the tasteless millennial.
Passenger
27 (Black Crow)
Liking Passenger is akin to liking having lit cigarettes stubbed out on your extremities: a furiously unpleasant experience that you just can’t stop subjecting yourself to. 27 is a post-Mumfords hoedown that juggles a mind-blowingly irritating vocal with the most basic ‘feelgood ukulele tripe’ backing track. I would rather have tinnitus than have to listen to this guy’s wispy, bizarrely enunciated music again.
Knife Party
Begin Again (Earstorm)
Man, I was almost not mad at this Knife Party track. It’s got a kind of cool Sonic The Hedgehog thing going on with a bit of epic French electro whisked in, but then Rob “Pendulum” Swire turns up like a house-party guest with dog shit all over his shoes. His voice sounds strained like someone’s giving him a permanent bear hug, and it adds absolutely nothing to the song. It’s as if he’s walked in on the other one making a banger and gone, “yes! I’ll start writing the top line now”, while the other one presses his forefinger and thumb into his eyelids and squeezes them shut.
Billon Feat Maxine Ashley
Special (Virgin EMI)
This is like someone’s made a terrible, oozing Frankenstein’s monster out of Disclosure, Kiesza and Duke Dumont. The plan was to make an ultra-banger containing all three of these artists’ best bits and create a phenom greater than the sum of its parts. What they’ve ended up with is a song so bland that I’m unsure it even exists. I feel like I’ve just sat here and made it up in my head. The sort of tuneless whistle you might hear a confused, middle-aged man do while performing a menial task.
