the 411 ft ghostface - on my knees

i have decided the reason this year sucks is because there have barely been any good r'n'b songs. most rap songs need an r'n'b twin to make full "i'll never forget this beautiful time in my shitty life" impact, and vice versa. they don't even have to be musically similar (although "so gone" will always be twinned in my head with the snoop/nate/warren version), for instance last summer "never leave you" had young gunz "can't stop won't stop" as its foil - we played them back to back, we heard them on the same radio shows, they belonged together like t boz and that naughty by nature dude! "never leave you" was even sweeter by association when you heard the gunnaz' too real to eq the mics harshness which was even rawer by association etc. two summers ago "dy-na-mi-tee" suddenly made sense when i heard it played close to "guess who's back" by scarface.

maybe it's a spring/summer thing in fact, i mean i can listen to nothing but rappers all winter but when the sun comes out hip hop needs extra sweetness around to sustain it. yeah yeah i haven't forgotten endless guest appearances like ghostface on this 411 song but they never really compare to how two songs can compliment and send secret messages to each other via radio or a mixtape or your winamp playlist (not ever on an album because albums are boring). the 411, who are british and do their verses in awkward spoken word, don't really need ghostface. not that "on my knees" is so magnificent, or that i don't like ghostface (though thinking about it i don't much), just that i love r'n'b and i don't want it to always be rap as well when they can co-exist so nicely in a different way!

so ignoring ghost's verse, i think the beat is going for a brit-kanye vibe because there is a nice string loop and a pitched-up soul vocal snippet (in the video they all pretend they are singing this snippet which is cute), but it turns out that a brit-kanye vibe sounds more like some kind of portishead girl-group experiment instead of kanye himself. (maybe that was obvious all along.) this is surprisingly cool! it shines on the radio too, even without an immediate rap twin. it might be because i first heard it on the essential selection amid a bunch of house stuff but whatever - more than anything it makes me excited for what 'the' 411 will do next, it could be really bizarre!

omg that pic has been at the top for a week!

sorry! anyway, where are all the fun spring songs? let us know what they are because we only like the joe/g unit and g unit/joe songs at the moment.

also, congratulate lil missy on her writing for a certain teen magazine, go buy them all and figure out which one it is!