It's a beat that deserved a second life, strong enough not just to hit the same city twice but to propel a favorite son forward. The watery Rhodes piano lick that accompanies the chorus acts as a sublime counterpoint to the snub-nosed bass bursts.
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The general mood is "I have friends in lots of these places!", and when Kobang expanded the track upon signing a label deal, the line he spun into a quasi-chorus was, "I love my city/ Ask about me and I bet they know me."Īs baldly personable as Kobang comes off, the star of the track is Lee's beat, a minimal funk oddity that bears the same relationship to, say, the Neptunes' productions as the Ramones do to the Supremes: a stilted, charming facsimile. Originally a short freestyle, the lyrics are dotted heavily with neighborhoods and street names, but Kobang abstains from boasts and shit-talking. If Tate Kobang's feathery "Bank Rolls (Remix)" feels a little extra so, it's because Baltimore's been inhabiting this beat for more than a decade now: it was sourced from an old Tim Trees track produced by Rod Lee, an artist who knows something about being a local hero. Regional rap hits often feel casual and lived-in. Natalie Prass: "My Baby Don't Understand Me" Like so many classic soul songs, it starts plaintively then picks itself up, and in the spirit of Gladys Knight, it ends redemptively with that most bittersweet symbol of farewells and fresh starts: a train. She’s got a small, pleasant voice, the kind that doesn’t so much sing over other instruments as draw them in, and on "My Baby Don’t Understand Me", a magnificent congregation of strings, horns, and woodwinds shows up to console her, to offer hope when she needs it most. What do you do when you realize you have nothing in common with the person you love, when it suddenly hits you that your entire relationship has been a slow process of growing apart? Is there any going back after a realization like that? Natalie Prass isn’t singing in hypotheticals on the lavishly orchestrated opener to her debut album-she really needs to know, and she’s posing the questions to you directly: "Where do you go when the only home you know is with a stranger?".įor all the Dusty in Memphis comparisons her album invited, Prass isn’t a belter like Springfield.
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Ty Dolla $ign has made a career out of writing about his needs and how they mingle with disposability-toot it and boot it, how many girls can fit in his cabana, these hoes ain’t loyal-and here he sleepily lands on the most raucous song of his career while sounding like a somnambulant party machine, the guy still going well past 2 a.m. There’s a slightly menacing tinge in everyone’s voice that makes it seem like this good time might be the last time: "I ain’t scared to die, on my dead homies", Ty sings, straining to hit his upper register. The hook is all about twisting typical hip-hop boasts into "who cares?" declarations-we’re in the club, we’re buying bottles, we’re driving Maseratis, blasé blasé blasé. The propulsive banger is something of an outlier in Ty’s long, varied discography-he’s never aimed for a radio hit without leaning on West Coast slap, and "Blasé" is pure blurry, Atlanta-inspired low end.
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The many moving parts hit some kind of crescendo with "Blasé", featuring Future and Rae Sremmurd, which loses all context on the radio and in DJ setlists, but even then is perceivable as part of a larger core.
#Rae sremmurd this could be us genius free#
Despite taking place in Los Angeles, Ty Dolla $ign’s opus Free TC most resembles a Broadway play, complete with a wide-eyed, scene-establishing opener, a Babyface-assisted aria, and a closing song literally titled "Finale".