Despite not being an homage to everyone’s favourite Ted Danson-starring eighties sitcom, Rihanna’s latest still has plenty of spirit (sorry). It’s a laid back ode to the simple pleasures of kicking it with some good friends and a refreshing beverage, making it the perfect antidote to the abortive summer many have just lived through.
To be fair, Rihanna could use a little downtime. She’s recently spent months on the road all over the world promoting her mega-selling album ‘Loud’. She’s also been testing her acting chops in the forthcoming movie ‘Battleship’, mystifyingly based on the popular board game of the same name. Not to mention recording and releasing her new album ‘Talk That Talk’.
Speaking to Kanye West in Interview magazine, Rihanna outlined the approach she took for ‘Loud’. “I wanted every song to have its own subject, its own story, its own look, its own sound-and I feel like we did a great job of accomplishing that,” she said. “I just wanted to create something that was timeless, that wasn’t locked into the moment when it was made. And I wanted it to feel really good. I just wanted to make 11 great individual songs that all made sense together.”
It’s been a busy 2011 for Rihanna. Fresh off a globe-spanning tour in support of bajillion-selling album ‘Loud’, she was back in the studio working on a new record. She even found time to act in the forthcoming I-can’t-believe-it’s-a-real-movie Battleship and pick up Esquire’s Sexiest Woman Alive award. Her latest album ‘Talk That Talk’ appeared just last month, with early indications suggesting that next year is going to be just as busy as the last for the ‘Umbrella’-wielding Bahamian.
Despite still barely being into his twenties, you can’t fault Tyga (an acronym of Thank You God Always, fact fans) for his confidence. ‘Rack City’, the latest release from his forthcoming album ‘Careless World: The Rise Of The Last King’ sees him tossing up boasts and dollars in equal measure.
Over a minimalist beat that recalls ‘Rhythm and Gangster’-era Snoop Dogg, Tyga does an excellent job of talking himself up, drawing particular attention to his success with the ladies and the strength of his finances. The Snoop comparisons don’t stop there though. Like the Doggfather himself, Tyga is West Coast through and through. While the famous East/West rivalries of the 1990s have largely died down, Tyga is a firm believer that his side of the country is ready for a hip-hop revival.
“I think on the West Coast we always had different and unique styles,” he told Dubcnn. “We haven’t been getting a lot of recognition the last five years because everybody thinks everybody has to be like Snoop, Dre, and Ice Cube because we had a run and we changed hip-hop and we changed music. So now people are looking for that new change now, but we got a lot of good West Coast artists out right now.”
The new album, his first on Young Money, is looking to put the West Coast back on the map. Featuring collaborations with, you’ve guessed it, Snoop, The Game, Pharrell and Drake, it certainly isn’t lacking star power. We’ll be able to see if the young upstart can keep pace with his guests when the record drops in December.
Let’s be honest, this song is going to be a hit. It wouldn’t matter if the remainder of this piece consisted of nothing more than a haphazard mishmash of vowels and consonants, chances are the large proportion of readers will already have made up their minds to track down ‘Our Day Will Come’ regardless.
Even before her untimely – but hardly unexpected – demise, Amy Winehouse was a titanic cultural force. Now she’s joined Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison at The Great After Party in the Sky, we can only expect her legend to increase. In these circumstances, it’s all too easy for the image of the tragic rock star to eclipse the actual music that made them famous. Thankfully, this first posthumous Winehouse release provides a welcome reminder of precisely why everyone fell in love with her before her tabloid image took centre stage.
Put simply, the girl could sing. There is undeniable soul in her every syllable, something that the wave of retro-copyists who sprung up in her wake have always struggled to emulate. ‘Our Day Will Come’ is a reggae-inflected take on the 1960’s doo-wop tune, originally recorded with producer Salaam Remi when Winehouse was just 18 years old.
The track is our first glimpse of ‘Lioness: Hidden Treasures’, an album that gathers a range of previously unheard songs which span Winehouse’s all too short career. Released in December, the record also features versions of ‘The Girl From Ipanema’, ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and ‘Body and Soul’, the duet with Tony Bennett that was Winehouse’s last studio recording.
When The Black Keys emerged in 2000, few would have predicted that the blues-fuelled guitar and drums duo from Akron, Ohio would go on to be one of America’s biggest bands. Two million record sales later, it looks as though Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have had the last laugh.
Along the way, they’ve morphed from a brutally stripped-down act that recorded on battered 8-tracks in disused factories to one that works with super-producers like Danger Mouse and once put together a side project featuring Mos Def, Ludacris and the RZA.
Their last record ‘Brothers’ was their biggest yet, netting them three Grammy awards including one for Best Alternative Music Album. They are now on the verge of releasing the follow up ‘El Camino’, which drops on 6 December. Seeing as their previous offering saw the band add a new gloss to their traditionally minimalist sound, you might think that the follow up would be more of the same. Not so.
“It’s the fastest we’ve ever played,” Auerbach told Spin. “The new album doesn’t sound like ‘Brothers’. It doesn’t have that open soul feel to it. It’s way more driving and the tempos are really fast.”
‘Lonely Boy’ certainly backs up this statement. It’s a rollicking, stomping beast of a song, blending an eardrum puncturing guitar riff with Auerbach’s 10-packs-of-cigarettes-a-day howl. This is probably due to the fact that the track is ripped from the Black Keys archive, being one of the first songs the band ever wrote. Whatever its genesis, ‘Lonely Boy’ is a welcome addition to the band’s increasingly massive body of work.
Switching gears from the minimal dubstep for which he is best known, ‘A Case Of You’ sees the Mercury Prize-nominated James Blake stripping things back to just voice and piano. While it might seem like a major departure for an artist so closely associated with urban music, this cover of the 1971 Joni Mitchell song actually makes perfect sense.
Long before he began dabbling in electronics, Blake started playing piano at the age of six, eventually going on to study Popular Music at Goldsmith’s college. While his early shows were mostly just him and a laptop, it’s clear that Blake’s love of live performance never went away. Following the release of his self-titled debut album Blake put together a full live band, allowing him to bring fresh life to his studio creations on stage.
“I’m a keyboard player, and just being able to play live in front of people and exercise that love of doing it in a way that I’ve never been able to do is great,” he told Pitchfork. “Before, there was frustration in being behind a computer and playing all this stuff – it was almost like being the pianist for a silent film. It’s not like you want the recognition, you just want to do it live and show yourself you can do it. There’s actually nothing better for me than to sing and play the piano in front of people.”
The haunting ‘A Case of You’ is an undeniably good fit for Blake. Joni Mitchell’s style is not an easy one to emulate, but he does a tremendous job of navigating the song’s vocal peaks and troughs. Despite its contrast to much of his musical output, Blake’s take on ‘A Case of You’ is a welcome addition to his repertoire.
If you thought it would be impossible to build an almost four-minute song around the many wonderful features of a disposable drinking receptacle, Toby Keith has some news for you. As its title suggests, ‘Red Solo Cup’ is about the inexpensive drinking vessel most commonly found filled with beer at barbecues and other festive gatherings. Over a cheery banjo-fuelled stomp, a comically slurring Keith extols said cup’s limitless virtues, in particular its myriad uses in a party environment. It’s not all laughs though. The song manages to squeeze in some political commentary on America’s current financial woes in the shape of a line about home foreclosures.
But ‘Red Solo Cup’ is really about the good times. It’s a chunk of dumb fun that also happens to be catchier than a six-armed baseball player. Seriously, one listen to this track and it burrows so far into your cerebral cortex that you’ll likely till be humming it in 2024.
“It is so stupid that it’s good,” Keith told The Boot. “We could play it in here, then play five other songs, give it an hour, walk out and you’d hear the receptionist going (singing), “Red solo cup!” It’s like a nursery rhyme. When I went to record this time, I didn’t have a bus song like ‘Weed With Willie’ or ‘Get Out of Your Clothes or Get Out of My Car.’ So I cut it, and it’s getting so much attention.”
Hopefully, Keith’s love of single-use utensils is explored further on his latest album ‘Clancy’s Tavern’. We can all agree that sporks are long overdue for some serious musical recognition.
Following the stratospheric success of debut album ‘Lungs’ the pressure was always going to be on for Florence Welch’s follow up. Judging by ‘Shake It Out’, she’s decided the best response to big expectations is very big songs. Never a particularly understated act, this taster of the new album ‘Ceremonials’ sees Florence + The Machine turn everything up to 11.
Building from a comparatively subdued opening, ‘Shake It Out’ gradually gathers momentum until it reaches a level best described as ‘Kate Bush on steroids’. It is unashamedly expansive and melodramatic, perfectly designed to promote mass singalongs at the massive shows Florence will undoubtedly be playing in the near future.
According to Ms. Welch herself, one of the key ingredients in avoiding difficult second album syndrome comes down to who you end up collaborating with. For ‘Ceremonials’ she once again teamed up with super producer Paul Epworth, the knob-twiddler behind records from people like Adele, Cee Lo Green and Bloc Party.
“I was really lucky to be able to work with amazing people like Paul – he was so inspiring,” she told Digital Spy. “I’d come back from my tour and he’d have an amazing drum pattern or chords ready for me. When someone is constantly feeding you with inspiration, it makes the whole process quite easy because you start to see images and can form lyrics quite quickly. I also read, walked a lot and went to galleries as much as possible for inspiration. It’s important to keep yourself in touch with the world.”
Considering their Nashville background and the fact that the guitarist’s father is legendary singer/songwriter Paul Overstreet, you’d be forgiven for expecting Hot Chelle Rae to be to be some kind of stomping, slide-guitar slinging country act. Boy would you be wrong.
Peddling a dangerously infectious brand of sugar-coated party pop, it is hard to imagine a band who sound less like they come from Nashville. ‘I Like It Like That’ continues the formula laid out on debut album ‘Lovesick Electric’ of big choruses, impossibly shiny production and more hooks than a fisherman’s tackle bag. Continuing a trend that previously saw them support Lil’ Jon, the band have invited hip-hop duo New Boyz on board to spit some caffeinated raps over the track.
Following previous single ‘Tonight, Tonight’, ‘I Like it Like That’ is the latest glimpse of Hot Chelle Rae’s forthcoming album ‘Whatever’ which will be released at the end of the month. One thing’s for sure there is plenty of Hot Chelle Rae to go around. Preparation for the new record has seen them pen more tunes that would seem humanly possible. At least they’ll never be stuck for b-sides.
“We’ve written 15,000, 15,020 songs – something like that,” guitarist Nash Overstreet told USA Today. “I think it’s going to make people move, roll their windows down, have a theme song, a song to cry to when they’re breaking up. We’re going to give them a lot of pieces to have as a life soundtrack on this record.”
After sending the Twitter-verse into a storm last year over their supposed ‘marriage’ Drake and Nicki Minaj team up for something that is undoubtedly real. A certifiable club banger, ‘Make Me Proud’ motors along with a propulsive bass shudder precision-tooled to get booties shaking across the land. Things really kick off when Nicki Minaj drops in for a typically awesome verse that demonstrates why she’s just about the hottest thing in hip-hop right now.
‘Make Me Proud’ is taken from Drake’s forthcoming album ‘Take Care’, which will be released 15 November. It’s going to have some pretty big shoes to fill if it’s going to top his previous record, the platinum-selling, Billboard-topping ‘Thank Me Later’, but it looks as though he may be on the right track. While he’s dialling back on the collaborations that defined his last LP, Drake has managed to bring in none other than Stevie Wonder to give a major boost to his R&B credentials
“With Stevie it’s hard for me to explain. It’s an incredible thing I witnessed that night,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “He heard a song that he saw some potential in and he added some key pieces that made it come to life. I’ve never played a song for people and they’ve cried and gone into their own private zone in their mind where they’re really thinking about some situations that hit home. And this song has done that for me.”
With just a few weeks to go until ‘Take Care’ hits, Drake seems quietly confident that he’s got another smash on his hands. If the record can maintain the levels on show in ‘Make Me Proud’, there’s every chance he’s right.
