I showed you the line but you crossed it
2023 Mix 11: Anti-deadbeat-dad-pop, throwbacks tasteful and otherwise, the returns of V V, ABRA & BYOP, Pipokinha goes pretty, 70s Indonesian pop, and the rap class of 2016-17 ekes out a couple [7]'s
Each week I skim through about 2,000 songs mostly from Spotify's company-curated New Music Friday playlists. Whenever I find 80 minutes worth of music I like, I make a CD-length mix and write a newsletter about it.
The late aughts are back! This week you’ll hear from Miranda! (remember “Don”?), VV Brown (remember “Shark in the Water”?) and Be Your Own Pet (remember every music blogger’s mixtape c. 2006-2009?), possibly for the first time in many years.
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10
1. Big Freedia: Central City Freestyle
Billed as a one-take freestyle over a simple bounce beat. But Big Freedia’s allure hasn’t faded: a bread-and-butter track like this is refreshing after her countless cameo appearances over the years. Video’s charming, looks like it was filmed on about twenty different cameras.
Each week I find more than the requisite 20-25 songs I can fit in the runtime of each mix. Usually the ones that don’t make it go on a purgatory playlist for a future week, though often their charm wears off and I delete them altogether.
I’d been holding back Coi Leray’s “Players,” a fun backyard barbecue party anthem that sampled “The Message,” because I’d just featured Leray on a remix. But Holly Boson’s discussion of it on the latest episode of her podcast with James Murphy (no, the other one) turned me around on it. I didn’t realize it’s a not-so-coded diss track directed squarely at her deadbeat dad, Benzino. Any chance to clown on that guy should be taken without reservation.
3. FLO f. Missy Elliott: Fly Girl
Of the many attempts to mine Missy Elliott nostalgia, including a good one on the new Skrillex album, this one might have the most fidelity to the era. FLO sound like they’re fundraising to open a millennial R&B museum, and although this isn’t their strongest bid for a big foundation grant (that’d be “Cardboard Box”), I’m sure a high-rolling donor will bite.
French-Israeli singer imports a millennial-style guitar figure on her own pastiche. Keeps things interesting on the edges, especially with a Middle Eastern middle 8.
5. Kah-Lo f. SixSaidIt: Little Bit Remix
A track from 2021 that is identical, down to the exact runtime, but technically has a new verse by Kah-Lo stuck on toward the end. Together, Kah-Lo and Riton engineered some of the best house-music-for-headphones streamcore at the end of the ‘10s. Solo, they’ve each lacked that mercenary hitmaker spark—that era of algorithm pop seems beyond dead at this point (not that it was ever “alive” per se), but Spotify will keep suggesting its zombie progeny to me and I will occasionally fall for it.
Ghanaian artist appears to mix a dash of amapiano into his Afrobeats, specifically those jutting bass synths, which I think I’m hearing more frequently in Nigerian pop recently — though I can’t really tell if it’s a trend or if it’s always been there and I’m just noticing it now.
V V Brown is back, news that will likely cheer me and at least one other reader of this fledgling newsletter. Hope there’s a comeback album to follow; go listen to Travelling Like the Light again if you haven’t. A critic you may know called it the tenth best album of 2009! (He was wrong, it’s probably the seventh best.)
8. Klara & Jag: BAS, RÖK & DÅRAR
Swedish dream-pop — Åly & ÄJ?
Also dreamy, and I was primed to enjoy it after getting through a particularly tough slog in the People’s Pop polls listening to the sledgehammer sounds of 1985. Good use of a mid-80s sledgehammer here, though, flirts with freestyle without quite making it there. Wish it would develop more over its indulgent six minutes. The abrupt cutoff at the end suggests this is an album track; ABRA made my top 20 in 2016 so I’m curious to hear if the whole thing sounds like this.
10. Be Your Own Pet: Hand Grenade
Fire up the Blogspot! Be Your Own Pet is back with a corker. Sounds like the contradictory bitter and bright-eyed protagonist of songs like “Becky” is now bitter and less bright-eyed on the other side of the Trump era. Rocks.
11. Bebe Rexha: Heart Wants What It Wants
Congratulations to Bebe Rexha, who I can imagine as Indiana Jones dodging booby traps and outrunning rolling boulders to steal a precious artifact from Miley Cyrus’s recording studio. Bebe Rexha has been making music for a decade now and this is her second good song. I’d say you have to respect the hustle, but…do you?
12. Smeez x D3an f. Major League Djz, DJ Tunez, & Sikiboi: Too Fine
As usual I’ve provided a grab-bag of amapiano known and unknown this week. Here’s the unknown one, plain as amapiano goes, but with a bright swing in the rhythm. People like vanilla!
Brian Wilson pastiche from a Chilean singer-songwriter, who is allegedly pursuing an upcoming album of “space boleros.” Neither part of that phrase can be heard here.
14. Miranda! & Cristian Castro: Prisionero
Miranda! has been releasing a few collaborations with other Argentine pop artists this year. This one’s got 90s star Cristian Castro, who mostly blends in.
15. MC Pipokinha, Mc Delux, & DJ ABDO: Realiza Meu Sonho
Some things I can listen to for a long time while remaining more or less oblivious to their context. The little I know of MC Pipokinha is that she’s controversial—there was general uproar about young kids at her extremely raunchy live shows, for instance (though I’m reminded of Gillette lip-syncing the unedited version of “Short Dick Man” at a Xuxa show). Google a little further and she’s insulting teachers and allegedly doing weird stuff with cats on her OnlyFans (this is where I bail). But hey, here’s an MC Pipokinha song that Google translates to “Fulfill My Dream” and it has a pretty snyth line. I’m choosing to leave that as the full extent of what I understand about it.
17-year-old rapper from Dominican Republic, deft and playful, another good Dominican rap find after Angel Dior.
A would-be Eurovision contender who won the Ukrainian competition in 2022 but withdrew after evidence surfaced of her falsifying documents about a trip to Crimea. I’m glad Kalush Orchestra competed in 2022, but this song would have been a good one for 2023.
18. A Boogie Wit da Hoodie f. Mariah the Scientist: Secrets
A Boogie Wit da Hoodie now seems cursed with his dubious gift of modal rap-singing, which has precipitously declined in hipness. But this one almost manages the same trick “Look Back At It” pulled off, surrounding his narrow range with a chord progression that creates the illusion that he can sing. Last time he had the “I Will Survive” circle-of-fifths to buoy him so he’s not hitting the same heights, but there’s an interesting haggard quality to his vocals, and on the remix Mariah the Scientist provides an answer verse, chastising him and seducing him at the same time. Has the effect of a long-running affair that’s long since lost its passion: taboo by rote.
19. Lil Uzi Vert, sped up nightcore, & ARIZONATEARS: Watch This (Pluggnb Remix) (2022)
The artist credits here might as well have been in Esperanto. Best as I can figure: this song was originally recorded in 2019 over a beat by producer Forza, whom Lil Uzi Vert later accused of trying to sell unreleased material. So “Watch This” went into the vault for a while, and then the whole thing turned into TikTok shit, with a producer (ARIZONATEARS) releasing this remixed version online last August. That version went viral on TikTok, and the song—remix only—was finally cleared for streaming in February with the addition of an “artist” named “sped up nightcore,” which is the name Atlantic Records uses to distribute viral TikTok content to streaming services. Anyway, this annoying reminder of many things on the internet I do not fully understand — and hate, to the extent I do understand them — also happens to be the best thing I’ve heard by Lil Uzi Vert since “XO Tour Llif3,” which should mostly tell you I don’t really like Lil Uzi Vert. (Though I did make an unholy mash-up of “Money Longer” and “Viva La Vida” once. It worked, but it has sadly been lost to the mists of time.)
20. Rully Djohan: Bubuj Bulan [c. 1971]
Nice find from Soundway Records, who recently put out two 70s Indonesian instrumental tracks as a post-script to their compilation of Indonesian pop from 1955-1969, Padang Moonrise. More information on this particular recording on Bandcamp.
21. Shelly Fairchild & Shamir: Fist City
I was not aware there was now a Kill Rock Stars Nashville, but this is exactly what you would expect from that, a faithful cover of Loretta Lynn’s “Fist City” with the canny inclusion of Shamir, whom I now desperately want to make a country album.
22. Mellow & Sleazy & TumeloZa f. LeeMcKrazy, TyroneDee, & TitoM: Thesha
I’ve come around to Mellow & Sleazy being the best amapiano artist out there right now—they bring a texture and fullness to their productions, often arranged with an almost orchestral sumptuousness, that seems unique. And they also push things to strange places: at about the three-minute mark on this song the bass is so hot it blows out completely (at least on my speakers), which reminds me of their arresting use of silence on “Amasango” from 2022, where the beat suddenly drops out at one point and leaves you hanging for 30 seconds while someone doodles some jazz keyboard. Mellow & Sleazy, I am available to do this!
Ending things on a droney note, a short loop from electronic artist McDowall, Scottish former post-punker from the band Coil.
And before I hit a droney note myself, I will end it here. Until next time, try to be your own pet, unless you have a mouse problem, in which case you should consider getting a cat instead.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Be Your Own Pet’s “Hand Grenade.”