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

R.I.P., Jacka.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Beyoncé is great, "Drunk in Love" is cool and all, but Chris Brown's "New Flame" was the Best R&B Song of 2014, and no award show has the power to revise history or fact. So consider Beck's Grammy coup over Beyoncé a sort of karma, Beyhive. Live by committee, die by committee.

Major label awards spectacle aside, the biggest news in music today is that there's a CyHi the Prince song that I've replayed more than twice. My world is topsy-turvy, and the end is nigh.

The Jacka and Ampichino "Family First"

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Released: June 19, 2007

After his passing last week, David Drake memorialized Jacka's otherwise under-explored legacy with an obit, and Marty made a playlist. While I'm familiar with Tear Gas, What Happened to the World?, and stray Husalah cuts, I'd never done a Mob Figaz deep-dive, so Marty's playlist was invaluable. Much of what I love about Cormega or solo Styles—the righteousness, the ethical whiplash, the astute fatalism—Jacka issues in spades. "Family First" isn't the richest or most representative Jacka cut, but that sample flip had me gone for an hour or two. "I'm feeling sick as hell/I'm getting out my body."

Post Malone "That's It"

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Released: Jan. 16, 2015

Post Malone's "White Iverson" is apparently a song of the moment, never mind that it sounds quite like an upstart artist laying thirsty trapwork for a haymaker Drake remix. "That's It," which Malone dropped a few weeks earlier, is rather where it's at, with Malone illustrating the struggle rapper's lifestyle in simple, tick-tock narrative: "Enjoy a 40 every morning/Everclear and some recording."

Rihanna f/ Kanye West and Paul McCartney "FourFiveSeconds"

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Released: Jan. 21, 2015

Whoever advised Rihanna to channel Loretta Lynn for this one better lay fingerprints to that Grammy next year. Think of this as a Rihanna song featuring Kanye (rather than a Kanye song featuring Rihanna) so that you, too, can appreciate "FourFiveSeconds" as the folksy successor to "No Love Allowed," the best Rihanna song, no debates. "I say what's on my mind," RiRi sings, "I might do a little time," and I believe her.

Lil Durk f/ Chief Keef "Decline"

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Released: Feb. 2, 2015

Sounds more like a Keef track than a Durk song to me, but whatever. Last year Durk's Signed to the Streets 2 bored me to tears and an epic nap, and here he's finally snapped me out of it. Instead of that breathless rage rap cadence that he and others prefer as of late, here Durk is singing a la Future, and with similar prevailing concerns: "She calling me, block list/Thot bitch, opp shit/She can't come home no more." Chief Keef is, essentially, the godfather of 21st century blues.

CyHi the Prynce "Forever"

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Released: Feb. 6, 2015

CyHi suggests that he's Kanye's successor on this jawn, which, I mean: dot dot dot. While I'm hardly his biggest fan, "Forever" is somehow irresistible to me, especially the leather-weather-umbrella-propeller stretch. Also, the hook bit where he asks a hater how long he plans to hate on CyHi the Prince, and the hater tells him, "Forever." Am I such a hater? Complex commenters would tell you as much, that's for goddamn sure.

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