Beyonce | “Ring the Alarm”
The Rapture | “Don Gon Do It”
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The Rapture’s forthcoming fourth release, Pieces of the People We Love (on Motown–no, really), is such a mess it’s unlikely to rescue what remains of their career, but “Don Gon Do It” is their best hope. Granted, the verses are lowest-common-denominator MySpace disco, and front man Luke Jenner sounds like Opera Duck UK, delivering lyrics so cheesy (“Pain of broken-hearted life / You are so fucked-up / I wish you’d die”) they make Pete Wentz look like Slavoj Zizek. But the soaring chorus has a pure-platinum sheen worthy of Kylie Minogue–it’ll make you forget the rest of the song even exists.
“Wolf Like Me,” the debut single from the forthcoming Return to Cookie Mountain (Interscope), is art-punk’s hottest zipless fuck since Sonic Youth’s “Shadow of a Doubt.” A sensual/sensitacho number, it backs Tunde Adebimpe’s crooning cool come-ons (“When the moon is round and full / Gonna teach you tricks that’ll blow your mongrel mind”) with drony fuzz blast over an insistent double-dutch bump, then flips into a dark, drifting, melancholy bridge. It’s like something from Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden kicked into sweaty, let’s-cut mode.
Rick Ross | “Hustlin’ (DJ Orgasmic Remix),” “Hustlin’ (Catch Mix),” and “Hustlin’ Hustler (Cadence Weapon Hi-speed Edit)”
From fertile Baltimore comes the dynamic duo of DJ Dave Nada and Ris Richards (aka Chris Richards of Q and Not U), doing business as Rubber Bullets. Their debut, Crowd Control, is a 26-track continuous party mix, heavy on the hip-hop but omnivorously pillaging all things regional–they cut a sampled Nation of Ulysses scream into the martial beats of B’more club and drop in D.C. go-go classics. The intro to “Slip It In. Jiggle It” is the most genius punx-‘n’-heads mash yet: Young Leek’s “Jiggle It” and Henry Rollins’s, er, penetrating injunction combine to become a singular instructional.
