essential albums and songs to listen to this fall
Albums
cruel summer by G.O.O.D MUSIC
The album trades sonic extravagance for a largely stripped-down palette of 808 bass and tinny melodies ("Mercy," "Cold"). Guests include a marvelously surly R. Kelly ("The whole world is a couch/ Bitch, I'm Rick James toniiiight!" he belts on "To the World"), Jay-Z (whose breezy self-regard overflows into Spanish on "Clique") and younger comers, like 2 Chainz and Big Sean, who keep the goofy punch lines flowing. But the star is West, who bum-rushes every song he's on like it's someone else's acceptance speech. His "Clique" verse is a classic head-spinner: One moment he's slyly referencing girlfriend Kim Kardashian's sex tape; the next he's musing on race and wealth via an (imagined?) exchange with Bush-era CIA boss George Tenet, then eyeing real estate next to Tom Cruise's place. There are no grand statements, but plenty of hot lines.
Halcyon by ellie goulding
Halcyon, her second LP, pumps up her sound as befitting a court musician. The single "Anything Could Happen" has the London Community Gospel Choir swooping around staccato piano and club beats; elsewhere she's multitracked into a one-woman choir. If the songwriting doesn't quite measure up to U.K. art-pop divas like Kate Bush, the hooks always go to town, and her voice – Dolly Parton-dazzling in the upper register – mates gorgeously with electronics, swirling around itself on the title track, morphing through synthscapes on "Don't Say a Word." "I Need Your Love," a bangin' collab with Scottish rave-op master Calvin Harris (Rihanna's "We Found Love"), gets slotted as a "bonus cut," maybe to avoid confusing the more genteel fans. But Goulding's magic is in her multitasking. And if she really gets busy with current paramour Skrillex, things could get even more interesting.
Food and liquor ii: the great american rap album by lupe fiasco
"Hope my stories . . . keep your sons out the slums and your daughters out of orgies," raps Lupe Fiasco on his fourth album. Like a lot of firebrands, Lupe's got a messianic streak. But it's hard to begrudge his swelled head: What other chart-topping star packs his songs full of radical politics, black-history lessons and sci-fi visions of environmental catastrophe? Food & Liquor II has the usual Lupe deficiencies: a hectoring tone ("Bitch Bad") and bombastic beats that pile-drive messages home. He's better when he relaxes a little: Songs like "Hood Now," a celebration of black cultural takeover, have a lighter touch, and hit twice as hard.
songs
skyfall by adele
Adele has been compared to everyone from Aretha Franklin to Etta James, but her real spiritual forbear may be Shirley Bassey, the brassy, leather-lunged, slightly schlocky Welsh songstress best known for belting out three James Bond theme songs, including the indelible "Goldfinger." So "Skyfall," the title song from the forthcoming 23rd Bond film, feels natural, inevitable: Adele is a born Bond Theme Girl, with the voice, and the flair for melodrama, that the job demands. Written by Adele and her "Rolling in the Deep" collaborator Paul Epworth, "Skyfall" sounds like the product of a computer algorithm, designed to produce the Platonically-ideal Bond theme. It has a slow-boiling tempo; a grandly arcing melody line; strings and brass that shiver, gust, and swoop; and a bombastic, romantic lyric ("Let the sky fall/When it crumbles/We will stand tall/Face it all together"). Adele sings magnificently, but the thing feels a bit too worshipful, not quite goofy enough. This is Bond – James Bond – we're talking about, the campiest screen hero in history. Adele and Epworth might have leavened their heart-on-sleeve with a bit more tongue-in-cheek.
new god flow by kanye west and pusha t
Kanye previewed his new G.O.O.D. Music single in a breathlessly barked quasi-freestyle a capella at the BET Awards. The song itself has the same vibe of frantic triumphalism: a gospel sample, a bumrush beat and Kanye comparing himself to everyone from Lebron to Biggie to MLK to Rodney King and – in an even more audacious, "is nothing sacred"?! flourish – bragging that his new sneaker line is better than the Air Jordan. He’s more than a New God. He’s a Human Hashtag.
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