Out of My Head: Five Songs I Listened to This Weekend

In which the messiah is black.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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A perk of being a rap fan in winter is that you can block out all of Whoville's insipid Christmas chants with the full trap force of your headphones' bass. If it ain't Whitney, Mariah, or Idina, Santa can miss me with all the jingles and ho-ho-hos.

This weekend I drank my way across Brooklyn, tweeted about D'Angelo, and blasted HS87 as I rode up and down the RFK. A thousand new songs hit SoundCloud by Sunday morning, and I damn well listened to them all.

1. Montana of 300 "Ice Cream Truck"

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Released: Nov. 20, 2014

I was in Bushwick sitting on a barstool when the homie David Drake forced my own headphones upon me just to hear this song and watch its horrorcore video treatment. "Ice Cream Truck," the slow-rolling style of drive-by that Montana and his Chiraq goons prefer. "I just bought a 'K, nigga, I just bought a pump/And they right here in this van; we ain't gotta pop the trunk." A shamelessly derivative trap beat, an entirely played trap concept, but hooks make the world go 'round, don't they? Also: excellent use of "fugazi" in the final stretch, word to McConaughey.

2. Chief Keef "Polly Pockets"

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Released: Dec. 13, 2014

Let's ignore the steaming winter garbage that is the very latest release from Chief Keef, "Nobody," which dropped today and head-faked 100 rap writers with the hint of a Kanye feature. If you're indeed a fan of Karaoke Kanye, revisit "Hold On" at your leisure. As for Keef, he's better than "Nobody." In fact just a couple days ago he dropped a superior, self-produced cut, "Polly Pockets," a lament about how all the sultry women in Keef's life are chasing him for the same reason: "Look at how she money-dancing/Look at how this money dancing/Niggas acting funny, damn it/Bitches acting like they want me."

3. Waka Flocka "3:30"

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Released: Dec. 13, 2014

Not to be confused with Stalley's slapper of the same name. No, today's "3:30" features Waka Flocka jacking the "Fire Squad" beat from J. Cole's 2014 Forest Hills Drive and rappity-raps his ass off a la Ludacris in his prime, a la T-Pain a month ago. Surprise, motherfuckers! Waka Flocka Flame can outrap Logic. (Please forward all traditionalist rap nerd complaints to your local Department of Waste.)

4. Lupe Fiasco "Madonna (and Other Mothers in the Hood)" f/ Nikki Jean

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Released: Dec. 14, 2014

From now on, just assume that whatever random SoundCloud loosies that Lupe lets fly will make their way into my weekend playlists and subsequently into this column. "If Madonna," "Deliver," and "Next to It" are proper indications, I'm more excited for Tetsuo & Youth than I ever was for Lasers, even though Atlantic Records has, for nearly a decade now, figured Lupe Fiasco's fanbase for suckers. My head is bowed, praying for the album we need right now. 

5. D'Angelo & The Vanguard "Another Life"

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Released: Dec. 14, 2014

Black Messiah leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, D'Angelo's 2014 Prince album is somehow more compelling than Prince's 2014 Prince album; compare D'Angelo's "Charade" to Prince's "BREAKDOWN" for a snippet sense of what I mean. That said, Black Messiah's jam-band production is a tad overstated and too energetic, sounding less like a tender D'Angelo album and more like Erykah Badu, whose voice can cut through anything. "Another Life" is one of the album's more effectively robust cuts, however, and proof that D'Angelo tended to his preternaturally fragile voice throughout the years, even as his life and body declined. I last listened to this "Another Life" at 7:30 a.m. on a three-mile walk from East Harlem down the Upper East Side, kicking a trail of rocks and frost; that's how you listen to D'Angelo. 

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