With all the versions of this Rick Ross ode to gangster bosses, and bombastic egoism, the most refreshing take on the beat was House of Ladoshas campy ballroom edit. "I think I´m Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, /.../.. sprinkle green in the blunt, call it Listerine". Gangsta rap and gay culture is like the best of both worlds. With new artists like Le1f, Mykki Blanco, etc, the rapgame can only rise higher. Lex Luger was everywhere as a producer in 2011, and since its up for grabs everyone can get the signature sound.
Berlin based Canadian crooner put out his album "Nudity & Atrocity" earlier this autumn on Mangrove Records. I sense vocal family-relations to both Arthur Russell & John Maus. If Bodan is the underground king of global indie softness, we hope his forced exile in New York will end in 2012 when authorities get their eyes on his song-crafting skills and let him pass jail.
8. Hindabuilding – HYDROBOYZ
When MocroManiac, Hydroboy, and RQS, from Bijlmer, Amsterdam, released their mixtape "Hindabuilding", it was one of the freshest, most phuturistic, European hyper rap form heard in a long time. They proved that the Netherlands has more UV-laser swag than Lil Wayne & Tiësto together. The flow, the music, is slightly offbeat at all times like a stolen purple vespa on a brick street in sunshine.
7. Bubbelgum (Carli's 100mph Mix) – Marcus Price & Carli
Carli´s madness version of a Swedish anthem is exactly as liberating and fast as opening an anynomous door and finding out that behind it you just stepped into a sweaty secret party where all your friends are and it has an open bar and an unlimited smoke machine liquid stash and you´re making out with someone who looks like a woman but you´re not 100% sure.
6. We Found Love – Rihanna
It seems like everytime you enter a gym, this song is playing on the radio soundsystem. Its such a great example of how mega dance vibes sneaked into RnB and turned people like David Guetta into one the biggest hiphop producers these days. But when we end up at some lame rock concert in Berlin with jamming musicians who apparently was "really avant-garde" 20 years ago, we deeply pray to hear just any random Rihanna hit to clean our ears out and feel more in tune with time. The track is made by Calvin Harris, and the video succeded in its alt-artistic, color corrected love chaos, to bring some regular life into hitlist material. Btw, the Norwegian producer duo Stargate from Norway is putting the Scandinavian country on the map (they did Ne-Yo´s "Miss Independent" a few years ago), and were also responsible for the previous Rihanna singles "Please Don't Stop the Music," & "Rude Boy."
5. Did It On´Em – Nicki Minaj
First time I heard this was in a cheap fried chicken-joint in New York, and I was immediately hypnotized like a rat under the influence of Rattenfänger von Hameln, and spent hours googling any word I could remember from it, to find out the name. The trancey production from Bangladesh ("A Milli", Gucci Mane´s "Lemonade") is so hard-hitting and unconventional. The only thing is that I don´t understand why you have to diss regular people so much in the lyrics, I know you live in star-land and need 20 red doves plus a rainbow coloured fringe just to get out of bed, but anyway, let´s make the music speak for itself and "put your number two´s in the air". One of Nicki´s best track choices ever.
4. I See U – Lunice
Montreal producer Lunice took over the baton where Girl Unit & Night Slugs lost their stamina in the race, and crafts excellent dark dance tracks with as much influence from slow sci-fi sounding hiphop, as any next level shit. If the world was to end tomorrow, and, in the film about it, a mystic tribe with black fishnet vests and nuked New Era-caps lived in a forest, with only one CD player with the collected back catalogue of the whole UK Garage genre and all of Justin Timberlakes records, this is how it would sound like when they prayed to their god in the shape of a huge instrumental rap-group.
3. Feelin´ So Hood – Araab Muzik
2. Look At Me Now, instrumental
Yes. I can´t even start to explain how this basically stalked me for such a long time, pumping from every passing car, in stores, on internet, as remixes, in the middle of the night from a faraway galaxy. New York, Amsterdam, Göteborg, whereever, whatever – the Look At Me Now beat won me over with love at first sight. It seemed way too "crazy" to be coming from any of the regular stable of producers tho. And: after some research it turned out to be a collaboration between looney Dutch house producer Afrojack & Diplo. I don´t even wanna think of how quickly this one might have come out of the studio (15 min?) – but its mastered in a way that when you hear it, your inner baby screams in joy of salvation. Chris Brown, Busta Rhymes, & Lil Wayne did their best to dignify it on the radio version – but since Chris Brown is not and has never been a "bro", especially not since the accused abuse of Rihanna, I choose to crown the instrumental version with a silver kippa.
1. I´m On One – Dj Khaled, Drake, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne
(Prod by T-Minus, Kromatik and Noah "40" Shebib)
The slight reverb in the end of each sentence, the melody line with the occasional mute of treble frequencies, the slow bpm, the obesity of Rick Ross and its relation to his voice, Drake´s growing stardom, Lil Wayne´s lines "I walk around the club, fuck everybody", Dj Khaled´s growing insanity with crystal clear superlatives developing his "We The Best"-concept, thoughts of epic lifestyles that takes you to places in both the outer and the inner world. Either you´re on one, or not, you´re floating, fading, high on something, could be incense, glory, what you have in that cup while you´re sliding down on the floor with a smile on your face and you feel everything you wished for is happening and all is complete like you want and you can´t wait for what comes next. Mazel Tov!
