rob them co vindicated!

beyonce ft lloyd banks - steppin it hotter

like everyone else, i hate it when super-talented and successful women release amazingly cool r'n'b songs. i can only speculate that they are fembots incapable of human feeling who will eventually murder us all. with hot beats and coffee beans! run everyone! still, before beyonce reveals her gameplan she has recorded this new version of "baby boy", which loses the chorus completely to rip some ini kamoze instead. this is maybe my favourite kind of rmx, where artist dude gets to critique their own song: 'man, even ini kamoze is better than the "baby boy" chorus!' implies beyonce, and she's right - it was easily the shittest part of the original, but thinking about it, sean paul was kinda bad too. oh look, he's gone as well! 's paul's had the charts on lock all summer, how about someone who looks more like craig david?' step up, l-l-l-l-lloyd! dude looks more like c david than c david does! the production on the original was tight but kind of cold-steel. obviously the only choice was to lay down the stalag bassline (or whatever sister nancy is using on "bam bam"), the warmest and comfiest sound of all time! it's like beyonce used her fembot powers to read my mind!

missy elliott - pass that dutch

omg this is the worst song ever!

heatmakers ft juelz santana - where i'm from

you know when you're listening to the diplomats and you hear one of the heatmakers tracks and they've got some amazingly hot vocal sample and you're like "whoa... "i'm ready".... that's so true, i am ready". well here's the news: it wasn't a sample, it was one of these heatmakers dudes speeding their voice up like a fucking phoney. (check that recent de la song with yummy from tha rayne where jay so-called dilla makes her voice sound weird and too high! "sick of r'n'b bitches over bullshit raps [unless they are dehumanized with production tricks so jeru won't laugh at us]" de la are annoying!)

um, actually it probably was a sample, but "where i'm from" is heatmakers pulling a n*e*r*d move and striding to the front of the track, not to compete on rap terms, but to bring the rock. the "paranoid" riff rock! except really it's more like rock-soul, and they keep the usual clomp-clomp drums. (sometimes drum patterns are so perfunctory that it has to be some kind of statement!) i don't know how many heatmakers there are or who's singing but that's cool. it's a nice voice. and then there's juelz with dazzling duck and weave technical tour de france-type verse.

it's not that different from any dipset track really, heatmakers have always brought some rock love/hate, but right now there's so much fire that even this playful inversion of formula can sound awesome and special.

britney ft madonna - me against the music

all britney's best moments are evil. an evil chord change or enunciation or phrase (i ain't going through these moments like we didn't all hear them a million times but even "don't let me be the last to know" had evil drums), it's all about scrunch-faced creeping and haunted microhouse of horrors arrangements. after a relatively evil-free couple of years, "me against the music" is promising cuz i can list several more than one evil thing:

- the fake strings (proper max martin minor key evil!)

- the bassline (although it is more a wide-eyed original sin evil)

- the track-cutting in the second verse (straight mixing board switch flipping like old dub records cutting is evil and gangsta!)

- britney's entire vocal (ahhhh!)

this is all good stuff, which makes it even more of a shame that madonna's bit is like the stupidest thing ever, jesus christ! "come over here i've got something to show you" yeah dude, well let me show you the motherfucking door! it's only a few bars but her appearance brings bad vibes and extra-musical lameness that's tiring more than anything. stop this foolishness!

the party break update

motherfuckers are trying to gentrificate fatman scoop. just this morning we were watching mtv and "be faithful" came on. it was cool for like one second cuz i didn't know there was a video, but shit is problematic:

- there's no credit for the crooklyn clan or faith evans. i mean come on, i know scoop gives it his all with the party chants and shit, but dude should get a proper job before he gets sole credit on anything. i started shouting like that once at a club but instead of making me the toast of the pre-club barristas, they tossed my ass out and banned me for three months.

- the video is on that stupid skint/uk dance lam0r tip where a computerized scoop has a big head and goes around some toytown place which as far as i remember is what happened in the "sweet like chocolate" video too, like you can just apply that technique to any song ever. still, i'm sure mixmag are impressed. the only way this song should be heard if you aren't actually dancing to it is to watch julia stiles rip it up in save the last dance, a moment almost as amazing as when she danced on a table to "hypnotize" in ten things i hate about you. don't pretend it didn't change your life too.

- this means the final credit should run crooklyn clan featuring faith evans, julia stiles, e crunk, & fatman scoop.

- it's being rereleased because of some album called something like fatman scoop presents party breaks volume one, which will probably be hot but then what will be left for the dj's who want to drop an element of surprise in their hiphop set if everyone is listening to these tracks on their aiwas. people will have to come up with their own blends. honestly, it doesn't bear thinking about, so i won't.