Jamie Foxx Feat Chris Brown
You Changed Me (RCA)
Actor-cum-musician Jamie Foxx and whirlwind of bad press Chris “Breezy” Brown do what only two attractive men with good voices can do: make a cooly enticing, rap-influenced banger. Foxx employs a suave flow in the pre-chorus, and the whole thing cherrypicks many of the best elements from rap and R&B, splicing them together for a highly competent love-making move. Not since Jeremih’s Birthday Sex have we been treated to such a potent aural aphrodisiac. Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?
Clean Bandit
Stronger (Atlantic)
Oh, Clean Bandit. What are we going to do with you, Clean Bandit? Stronger is Rather Be 2.0, all the pianos, violins, friendly, upbeat vocal line and playful nu-house winks you know and love, and the makings of another summer blockbuster. But by God, the videos. Can someone ping their management an email and tell them that it’s not cool to watch people play violin? And that dressing up in futuristic garb to try and sex it all up is plain weird? It feels like watching home-schooled kids do a recital after they’ve just discovered YouPorn.
LSDXOXO
Keisha (via Bandcamp)
Brooklyn producer LSDXOXO has a strong sense of the spooky about him. He released his new digital mixtape Sacanagem – that’s Portuguese for lewd – last week and it has a wonderfully eerie yet baile funk-influenced feel to it. Keisha, a moody rattler that samples the chorus of Rihanna’s Pour It Up and crazed, crying phone calls from spurned women, is exactly the kind of original, club-focused material that makes him so exciting. And the whole tape’s only $2 to buy on Bandcamp (or more, if you please). Don’t you love this terrifying future?
Olly Murs
Seasons (Epic/Syco)
I don’t really get the hatred of your boy Murs. He’s a kind of beige version of Robbie Williams, lacking his charm, and making up for it in inane toothy grins. He’s just a poor estate agent who has wandered on to a music video set and just stuck around. Seasons is your stock forgettable pop song that tries to earworm you with a “woo-hoo” whistle-while-you-work refrain, but damn, at least it isn’t Passenger, you know what I mean? He isn’t trying to trick you into an iTunes purchase with a kooky-yet-suicidally-irritating singing voice. Let the man live (in his champagne Jacuzzi powered by burning £50 notes).
LA Priest
Oino (Domino)
This track gives me flashbacks. Flashbacks to Yeasayer, to Empire Of The Sun, to Egyptian Hip Hop, and to Late Of The Pier, who LA Priest used to thrash around in circa 2008. It’s the same kind of quirky alt pop-rock that sounds like it was made using Stylophones from Urban Outfitters. Do we really need to return to this kind of quirk? No more, please!
