Oh, it's the Wild West now?
Mix 45: Lots of recommendations from Jukeboxers, Peoples Poppers, music-critical fellow travelers old and new, and yes: everything eventually changes, even amapiano...
Welcome to the last (official) mix of the year! I may collect songs from year-end lists for the next month and put out a final catch-all mix, but those songs won’t come from Spotify’s lists (and will probably only happen once). I need a break!
I’ve also finally nuked my preamble at the top about going through 2,500 songs a week from those playlists. I still did that this week, but over half of these songs are from recommendations, from Singles Jukeboxers (Joshua Minsoo Kim, Kat Stevens, Alex O., Katherine St. Asaph), People’s Pop pals (Jel, Lokpo, and some folks who shared suggestions for 2023 songs for the upcoming People’s Pop poll), and Chuck Eddy, from his Pazz and Jop product reports. Two songs are from this week’s League of Extraordinary Tracks round.
The big news of the week is that The Singles Jukebox is back…Back…BACK!! for two weeks as we tackle the big songs we weren’t around to cover and then do the traditional amnesty week of writers’ selections put to the group.
I’ll be back next week with year-end playlists, links, and a bunch of other yearly wind-down stuff, but don’t expect a mix of new music through my patented dumpster diving methods until mid-January.
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17 // Mix 18 // Mix 19 // Mix 20 // Mix 21 // Mix 22 // Mix 23 // Mix 24 // Mix 25 // Mix 26 // Mix 27 // Mix 28 // Mix 29 // Mix 30 // Mix 31 // Mix 32 // Mix 33 // Mix 34 // Mix 35 // Mix 36 // Mix 37 // Mix 38 // Mix 39 // Mix 40 // Mix 41 // Mix 42 // Mix 43 // Mix 44
MIX 45: OH, IT’S THE WILD WEST NOW?
1. Tori Kelly: Cut
After I heard “Missin U” in Week 34 I proceeded to do zero follow up and was unaware that Tori Kelly got Timbaland involved in the best thing he’s been associated with in a long time, even if it’s just his vocal ad-libs (though he appears to have a writing credit). The production is by Darkchild. (Thanks to Alex O. for the tip.)
2. Lexie Liu: Delulu
Lexie Liu, a Chinese crossover pop star, was the last person to put out an album I was interested in in 2022—the moody, glitchy The Happy Star. Nice details: phone screens, nosebleeds. This came across my radar from new releases but Katherine St. Asaph sold it—read her new column on PinkPantheress in Stereogum if you haven’t, it’s incredible.
3. Yanin: สุขใจค่ะ
Thai pop whose upbeat jangle reminds me a little of bachelor pad music in the late 90s—glad to see drum n bass firmly ensconced in the pop charts, now let’s bring back shibuya kei and Arling and Cameron! But maybe not Moog Cookbook.
4. Cariño: Aún me acuerdo de todo
Spanish pop-rock snagged from Jel’s 2023 list.
5. Belgrado: Intra Apogeum
One from the People’s Pop 2023 suggestions box, Barcelona snyth-pop group that seems to take the same stance on period-appropriate keyboard and drum machine sounds that Jack White takes to analog recording equipment, which works for them.
6. 4am Kru: Bristol Girls
Always defer to Kat Stevens for British untz untz bangers!
7. Elizat: Oinama
Q-pop via Joshua Minsoo Kim, glad to be nudged toward this scene/area whenever possible. (For other Q-Pop convos see Mix 33.)
8. Vinida Weng: Waiya
Thus begins an “amapiano evolution” block, courtesy Lokpolokpo, who pointed me toward this interesting use of amapiano in Chinese pop sung in Fuzhounese. This song led to a long conversation about how South African house music has evolved recently and is continuing to evolve…
9. Thakzin: Possessed
…into a form currently called 3step, invented/named by producer Thakzin, whom you can see discuss the process here. In 3step, as best as I can tell, there is a lopsided emphasis on the second two beats out of four (often dropping the second beat entirely), to produce a rhythm that anticipates the one but doesn’t land on it as hard as other funk, house, and dance music tends to. This gives you lots of the mellowness and expansiveness of amapiano— where you keep your footing but sort of lose yourself in the thicket of the beat—but it also has more of a sense of assuredness and lockstep, feels less amorphous than amapiano can, which tends to bathe you in the beat and throw in tension quasi-randomly with specific elements, most recognizably the ratatat of the log drum sound.
The most simplified version of the 3step beat I’ve found, which gives a good sense of the mechanics but is not much of a song per se, is the song “Hey Sister” by DJ Bongz, Dlala Thukzin, and Funky Qla. Though so far 3step, to my ears, doesn’t have as predictable a template or set of ingredients as amapiano does. Lokpo has a long thread on Thakzin and 3-step here.
10. Dlala Thukzin f. Zaba & Sykes: iPlan
Dlala Thukzin had major commercial success in South Africa with the 3step sound with “iPlan.” 3step has been hiding in plain sight for the whole second half of this year on my playlists: a few 3step songs are in my “amapiano holdover” list of 100 amapiano songs I didn’t have time for on my mixes, and one of Dlala Thukzin’s other songs was on Mix 35, where I said of that song (“Imoto”): “I have a sense that the amapiano moment is slowly morphing into its next phase, but that’s all gut and no brain so far, so I don’t have much to say about it.” I wasn’t sure if “Imoto” was reaching into amapiano’s past or future, and the answer—as I would have seen if I paid attention to, say, the South African charts or podcasts or YouTube (sorry, I’ve tried doing all of that before, this blindfold plowing-through is the only method that reliably works for me, we all have to accept our limitations…)—was both!
11. Tia Maria Produções (DJ Bboy, DJ Danifo, DJ Lycox, Deejay Poco, & Puto Márcio): P2
Batida often has a similar loping quality to 3step, where you don’t land hard on the one even though everything is leading you there. But there’s a bit more wooziness to it, a sense that even though all the flight instruments tell you you’re flying steady, you nonetheless feel your stomach rising and falling. This is an odd track, slight at only two minutes, but featuring an impressive who’s who of batida producers working in a collective they’ve been releasing work as periodically for a few years.
12. DJ Arana f. Cacau Chuu & MC Nina: Chuva de Perereca
The final baile funk of the year is DJ Arana at his most colorfully kaleidoscopic, as opposed to the IMAX sweep of his best track of the year (“ABCDário Da Guerra” from Mix 22).
13. Sha EK: EBK
Bronx rapper blows out your speakers and pummels with the sort of frenetic club/drill beat I associate with the previous two years but enjoy hearing again. 2023 hip-hop seemed oddly mellow given how abrasive it had gotten.
14. Busta Rhymes f. Burna Boy: Roboshotta
A short blast of immaculate professionalism from Busta Rhymes weaving in and out of his dancehall affect like there’s no one else on the highway, while Burna Boy gives a respectable pace car performance.
15. V/Z: Habadash
This one probably got through three rounds of mix-making back in June before I gave up on it. The way it works is, when a song is hovering between a [6] and a [7] but still made it through my sieve that week, I’ll put it on a holdover playlist and mix it in with the next week’s crop of possibilities to see if it stands out in a new context. If it goes through two or three weeks like this, I delete it, deciding that even though I still can’t figure out if it’s a [6] or a [7], the universe will lead me to it again some day. Well, the universe did just that—V/Z was featured in this week’s League of Extraordinary Tracks, and it took me several listens to determine whether (and how) I’d already heard the song before. At which point, voila, it was a [7].
16. Free Love: All the Same to Me
Another one pulled from the People’s Pop 2023 nomination suggestions, Scottish indie dance.
17. Pabi Cooper x Jelly Babie x Thama Tee: Jukulyn
Ghanaian pop Afrohouse.
18. Lunatik f. Kid X & Focalistic: Mitsubishi
One from South African producer Lunatik featuring one of my favorite amapiano vocalists, Focalistic, but at a much slower shuffle that I don’t hear much of in the SA dance and house music I’ve been sampling.
19. Terror/Cactus & Pahua: Ferrocarril (Rainsoft remix)
A representative track off of one of Chuck Eddy’s highly rated albums of the year, Bie Records Meets Shika Shika, a peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate collaboration between Chinese and Latin American producers on two labels. More info on the Bandcamp.
20. By Storm: Double Trio
And last but not least, a haunting avant-rap epic and ode to their friend from the group that formed after the death of one of the members of Arizona rap group Injury Reserve in 2020. Rapping, singing, hints of a jazz odyssey, and a shissel of reverb get the mood across: sad, weird, but finding a way to move on. Bye, 2023!
***
Don’t really think of this as goodbye — I’ll be back next week, I think! But I’ll need to think about a way to make this project, which I’ve been proud of this year, sustainable. (Maybe this was sustainable? I can’t really tell yet. I’ll let you know!)
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from By Storm, “Double Trio”
Your 3step instructional is a public service. Thank you