Metal Lungies

Monica is back and she brought out the R&B thug in Jeezy and Yo Gotti. Peep the shitty photoshop, this one is official.

I’ve been fiending for this edit ever since Mr. Mitch played in his Valentine’s Day mix for Dazed. Attaching instrumental grime to TeeFLii works so well perhaps because the sparseness isn’t such a far cry from the DJ Mustard beats that animate ratchet & blues. Here’s hoping this turns into a real, weird collaboration a la Shlohmo and Jeremih.

Mustard-lite minimal club bangers still have life in them.

TeeFLii proved he’s capable of more than ratchet bangers with his debut album Starr. But he’s still adept at making ratchet bangers of various textures as evidenced by a recent cut from LA rapper SBA1’s mixtape and a Valentines day EP. Get both below.

For his next trick, P.U.D.G.E. mashes together Horace Brown’s “One For The Money” and Frank Zappa. Last time it was a YouTube meme.

Knxwledge’s torrential output of beats on Bandcamp can make him inaccessible to even the most obsessive online music hoarders (hand raised), but he seems to have found a dream collaborator and guiding force in singer/musician Anderson.Paak. Together they are NxWorries and their first single “Suede” is divinely pimpish though Paak distances himself from the label. We previously took note of Knxwledge’s soulful predilections on Hexual Sealings in 2011. We are glad it wasn’t a whim.

Putting The Weeknd on the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack sounds like somebody’s C+ Twitter joke, but here we are. What’s crazy is that it’s one of the rare Weeknd singles that’s actually pretty great, following “Often” and “Kiss Land”. Crazier still: barring any subliminal messages, it’s squeaky clean. Like Michael Bublé clean. Go ahead and throw it on your ‘when mom is in the car’ playlist.

The follow up to Coultrain’s kaleidoscopic soul opera from last year is an EP that continues the story. He opts for (relatively) more grounded production this time, but that just makes it easier to get lost in the dense lyrics and dreamy vocals.

SoundCloud gives us a glowing new jack swing-y flip of Bobby Brown’s “Roni”.

Jamie Foxx’s grown and sexy response to the prevailing ideology of ratchet & b is worthy in the age of The Weeknd and Ty Dolla Sign.