Each week, we listen to a lot of music, in a variety of settings, often when we're drunk, high, or otherwise distracted. It's tough keeping track of everything we hear. Weekends, then, are an opportunity to really sit with new music and let that shit ride. By Sunday night, I'm down to one or two songs that I keep on loop heading into Monday, until the next batch of albums and mixtapes drops, and the cycle resumes anew.
Keeping that cycle in mind, we're gonna try something new here. Every Monday, we'll run a summary of our favorite tracks from the past weekend, ideally tracks that have dropped in the past week or two, or at least within the past month. Since we can't review every full project under the sun, this at least keeps you up to speed on the new, dopest shit in our personal best-of lists. Taylor Swift might creep up in this list one of these days. You never know. (My weekends are weird.)
This week, however, brace yourself for trap and bass, courtesy of Big K.R.I.T., Pusha T, Rick Ross, Mystikal, and the now standard-sized Boosie. Play these tracks for your friends and family at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
1. Big K.R.I.T. "My Sub Pt. 3 (Big Bang)"
Release Date: Nov. 10, 2014
Big K.R.I.T.'s alternative creation myth: "This is how it all started way back/First the booming voice, then the bass crack (eight-oh-eight!)/And that's when we first started fire/Cuz the speakers wasn't grounded, and he fried all the wires." I reviewed K.R.I.T.'s album earlier this month, and it took me a 30 minutes, at least, to move on from "My Sub Pt. 3" to track four. While drafting, I chatted briefly with a Deeply Southern friend of mine who double-confirmed that this shit knocks indeed. The third and best installment of K.R.I.T.'s "My Sub" series so far, "Big Bang" features pristine bass (duh), howling electric guitar, and backwoods crickets on the beat, sounding as true to Mississippi as humanly possible.
2. Boosie f/ Webbie "On That Level"
Release Date: Nov. 12, 2014
Boosie just dropped Life After Deathrow, an impressive mixtape with the emotional range and populist songwriting perspective that have minted Boosie as a rap legend. "On That Level" is a club record, however; and I first heard it while smoking shisha in Queens, solo, because wasn't nobody tryna turn up/out with me Saturday night, so I smoke alone. Next club or Brooklyn house party I attend better drop this record with the quickness, all praises due: "Just came home; please drive me crazy."
3. Rick Ross f/ Yo Gotti "Trap Luv"
Release Date: Nov. 13, 2014
Gotti warns, "Fuck that iPhone 6; they be tracking niggas." Ross shouts out W.E.B. DuBois: "Souls of black folk: to hustle wasn't a choice." The beat, produced by Deonte "MoneyBag$" Hayes, features a Donny Hathaway interpolation that's loosely patterned after the Baptist choral hum from B.I.G.'s "Who Shot Ya?" There's just so much going on here, bolstered by so many quotables. "Still losing weight with the South on my back!" I biked from Spanish Harlem to Astoria and back on Sunday, on the strength of just that one bar. #RossFit
4. Pusha T "Lunch Money"
Release date: Nov. 18, 2014
"Grew up on Nintendo, playing Contra," Pusha raps over a chaos Kanye West beat that sounds like Yeezus getting banished by Superman to a 64-bit universe of nightmares. This shit is invincible. I have no idea what the ideal environment would be for playing this record, however. A bank heist? An extra-dimensional space laser shootout? I ride the 6 train to/from Harlem, a commute improved 300 hunna percent by the pinwheel psychosis induced by this beat, which thankfully drowns out all the slapboxing and toddler whines. I hope Pusha's whole next album sounds like this. "What I'm cooking in the kitchen, niggas? Bobby Brown, New Edition, niggas!"
5. Mark Ronson f/ Mystikal "Feel Right"
Release Date: Nov. 23, 2014
Mystikal went on Saturday Night Live this past weekend and transformed into James Brown. "It's exercise with thighs and hip muscles/Next exercise, you gon burn some lip muscles." Why we only hear this maniac backed by a jam band once per decade, I have no idea, prison stints aside. On "Feel Right," Mystikal shouts "yabba-dabba-do!" and brags about clocking studio time with Bruno Mars. I love the former moment and am feeling preemptively weary in re the latter. I've rocked with dude heavy since Ghetto Fabulous and The Wood soundtrack, so seeing him tap dancing on SNL alongside Bruno Mars in matching double-breasted jackets is a zany career high that I hope he sustains. For now, we've got this solid bandstand jig to tide us.
