If you’re reading this right now, it means you’ve survived and escaped the snowpocalypse that took over every place except California. Shout out to Stanford and our fantastic location.
It’s an eclectic one this week, folks — stream is here and check out the tracks below..
CHROMEO ft. TORO Y MOI — Come Alive — as described by anjana bala
It’s no surprise that the electrofunk duo combined their musical stylings with the absolute smoothest Chaz Bundick. Chromeo and Toro y Moi dropped this new track a week ago, and the funk is ALIVE. The feel falls neatly into Chromeo’s previous landscape of work, but with an incredible punctuation. Bundick’s high-pitched vocals are seamlessly integrated into some seriously catchy disco beats that’ll getchur feet moving fast. Be on the lookout for Chromeo’s new LP, White Women, that drops later this year.
CASHMERE CAT — Mirror Maru — as described by connor kelley
Magnus August Høiberg, aka Cashmere Cat, is an awesome name. It makes sense that he makes awesome music, at least in my brain. I first started listening to Cashmere Cat during spring quarter last year, when I snagged his “Diplo and Friends Mix,” the opening song of which is “Mirror Maru.” As the title track on the Mirror Maru EP, this song creates a little something special in the world of alternative bass music. Unlike its trap/future bass/downtempo/whatever-the-hell-genres-DJs-are-naming-their-songs-these-days cousins, “Mirror Maru” actually feels like a song that grows and goes places. It doesn’t follow an equation. It’s the chillest of chill, the dankest of dank, and I think you’ll like it.
NONAME GYPSY – Paradise – as described by linnea rivano barros
I first heard Noname Gypsy on “Lost” with Chance the Rapper and, well, I got lost, as was suggested, in the duet’s wonderfully somber exploration of drug-induced love. Noname’s contribution is snappy and clever but annoyingly short. “Paradise,” on the other hand, allows the rapper’s strange and spooky nasally voice and bittersweet lyrics to take center stage. Nostalgia drips from her words and also her sound somehow. She’s young and bubbly but has a hard edge to her that sticks ya in just the right way as you listen. That and her sharp rhymes will really do you in. You not hearing this? You not dilated peoples and a hand-etched to god like a lyricist? Probably should be. (I have to be honest — I have no idea what the hell Noname is talking about with that line but you’ll probably get it). So enjoy! Try not to get too sad and stuff.
SILVER JEWS — Random Rules — as described by cecily foote
When I find myself returning to songs I used to really love, I’m often bored by the upbeat ones that used to make me want to jump around and dance. But songs that I can really sink into, that let me stew with everything about the world that is terrible but wonderful to think about, that make me feel sentimental and so real, those are the songs that I will be loving until I am deaf or I am gone.
This is the Silver Jews. Stephen Malkmus, the genius from Pavement, is a member, but David Berman, the singer and lyricist, should receive just as much praise because his lyrics are some of the most brilliant I’ve ever heard. Real talk. Fun fact: their final show together was in a cave. This song was no. 11. (Check out the setlist here.)
EVIL NEEDLE — One for Kennedy — as described by max wolff
I loved this beat before it even looped. Before funky bass-line comes out of its shell, before the smooth, jazzy drop, before the intro-riff was even over. This is the beat playing in the background when I sleep in late but don’t feel shitty. When I walk to class slowly because it’s sunny and beautiful and who cares when I get there. For when I know things are gonna go my way and, even if they don’t, I’m gonna give zero fucks. Evil Needle makes a lot of these kinds of beats. His stuff ranges from chill-soul-hip-hop to slower electronic beats but it’s all worth checking out.
SAGE THE GEMINI — Gas Pedal (Caked Up Remix) — as described by sarika reddy
What’s so fascinating to me about trap music is that it’s pretty much a blend of the most proletariat, hard drug-influenced genres in modern music. I’d say that it’s a relevant representation of hypermodern culture — mixed, fast-paced, and just straight up wild. This remix of the already ratchet and ephemerally popular “Gas Pedal” has become a recent staple, crucial for getting turnt when getting high off Math 51 psets on a typical Friday night. The gnarly bass changes, looming mysticism reminiscent of walking into a strip club filled with popping bands and the tears of lost dreams, and not-so-subliminal “twerk”s pulse through your body and to your booty, forcing you to “wiggle like you tryna make your ass fall off.”
BLINK 182 — Dammit —as described by tina vachovsky
Yesterday, my friend texted me “I just witnessed a room of adults cry to Blink 182 cover band playing Dammit.” I can’t exactly praise Blink 182 for innovative artistic intents (the song is about a cliche break-up), but if you were ever an awkward middle school kid - and, let’s be honest, we all were - trying to navigate zits and hair in weird places, it was a staple. It was for those days, the ones when the angst of ever-changing friend groups and dramatic three day relationships became too much and you just wanted to scream “Dammit!” Back then, we thought that was growing up. Now that we’re faced with the actual perils, like applying to internships without any job experience and washing sheets on a regular basis, I think it’s time to bring this one back and complain, “Well, I guess this is growing up.”
FACE JAM — Too Much Trouble — as described by chase porter
Because this is the Space Jam, Taylor Swift, Outkast, and DJ Unk mashup that you deserve, but not the one you need right now. Well, I mean, you do need it, but I just wanted to keep parallel structure. I never knew a song could so well compile preteen playlists and actually make me nostalgic about two steppin’ at middle school dances (read: I wasn’t as cool as I thought I was). And now that I’m two steppin’ in college (this is a subtle dig at this whole two-step authentication thing), I can do so with much more confidence and much less acne (read: I am still not as cool as I think I am). Also, I love Space Jam; instant classic.
IDINA MENZEL — Let It Go — as described by bojan srb
Few things feel better than getting back up on your feet after a cold. In Disney’s new Golden Globe-winning animated film, Frozen, Queen Elsa (Idina Menzel) finds a new acceptance of her magical gift -the control over ice. Much like Menzel’s previous role of Elphaba in Wicked, Elsa embraces her strangeness and, for once, begins to live in a way that satisfies her. Yes, few things are better than getting back up on your feet, and those things might just be getting back up on your feet to this song. It’s catchy, it’s motivational, it’s cute. Just what the doctor ordered.
BEYONCE — *** Flawless — as described by eugenia puglisi
I can’t lie: this song has been my jam since I stealthily used my dad’s iTunes account to buy the self-titled album Beyonce during winter break. With its bold, chanting “Bow down, bitches” and rattling beat, layered with a feminist monologue by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I wonder how Queen Bey manages so seamlessly to make female empowerment so sexy. I did not wake up looking like Beyonce, but as a wise friend once said, “fake it till you fucking make it.” There’s really never a bad time to listen to this: you wake up for your 9 AM physics class, ***Flawless. You work out at the overly crowded gym: ***Flawless. You get the gist of it. So take a listen— don’t we all need a little ego trip once in a while?
COCOROSIE — Turn Me On — as described by eric eich
A gloriously WTF, kind of funny, sort of ugly, but also beautiful rendition of Kevin Lyttle`s “Turn Me On,” one of those songs everybody knows the words to, whether they would like to or not. As one of the most blatantly macho and self-interested dance songs about da club (despite, in Wikipedia`s words, the fact that “in the music video, the girl is dancing with Kevin Lyttle as if she is also turned on”) it gains a feminist twist when the twisted sisters of CocoRosie belt it out. I don’t know — I just like hearing Bianca coo about her python begging for mercy. Shout out to the creepiest but catchiest cover I’ve heard this young year.
JANIS JOPLIN – Me & Bobby McGee — as described by max walker-silverman
I dunno if they breed ‘em like Janis any more. When this hippie from Texas stumbled into San Francisco with a bottle of Southern Comfort and a few unstable habits, the world of Rock and Roll changed. Her relationship with fellow musician Kris Kristofferson may not have borne much fruit romantically, but it allowed her to cover this tune of his only days before her appallingly inevitable induction into the “27 club” - courtesy of a heroic dose of heroin. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to loose…” Bottles up, hair down, gimme an honest tune soaked in just the right amount of whiskey.
FIRE INC — “Tonight Is What It Means to be Young” — as described by brittany newell
I don’t care that this song is cheesy and outdated and frankly kind of dumb. I first heard it in the documentary “Wigstock” in a scene where a bikini-clad drag queen does cartwheels through a ring of fire. Needless to say, the song made an impact. Listening to it makes me feel like I am a big-haired exotic dancer wandering the mean streets of NYC with nothing but a gram of coke in my pocket and a hope in my heart, circa 1989. Who doesn’t need to sometimes feel that way? Maybe it’s my homesickness (ah, the American Dream! To be young, tacky, and ON FIRE) manifesting itself in a weird Freudian fashion as I wander the cobblestones of dear un-young England. Whatever the case, I continually find myself gazing nobly out the window, whispering these lyrics. Tact be damned.
LAURA MVULA — Green Garden — as described by katharine schwab
If I’m honest, I had a hard time deciding which Laura Mvula song to share. Her entire album Sing to the Moon is incredibly soulful and catchy. Several sound like private confessions whispered in my ear; others compel with their passionate storytelling. But with “Green Garden” I’m tapping my foot right away. It’s been called gospeldelia… Okay, I can work with that. The British singer’s silky voice is a soulful hook, and the rhythmic beats and swelling orchestral sounds make a killer combination. Listen to this one, and then “She,” and then… just listen to the whole album.
VIC MENSA and CHANCE THE RAPPER — Tweakin’ — as described by lawrence neil
“Tweakin’ ”, the third track of Vic Mensa’s solo effort Innanetape, starts off like experimental Pharrell-produced glam rap, Southern screw and bursts of discordant brass until a down low synth pokes through in the bass line under the catchy hook – tweakin’. Vic satisfies his Eminem quota for the mixtape on this cut, multi-syllabic and internally rhyming his way through two verses, brash and nagging yell-rap on his refrain. Lyrical gems pepper throughout, highlighted by the tremendous:
‘I don’t want to fight / I just want a quiet life and a nice little suburban place to cry at night / And an eye dropper filled to the top with cyanide / So my psychiatrist dies soon as she tries the Sprite / PSYCH. I love everyone.’
Homicidal playfulness and bizarro murder weapons for authority figures? The Marshall Mathers similarity is undeniable.
Chance’s coda is a melodic hypothesis on the Illuminati and his own sanity, theorized while ‘smoking on the medical’. Don’t expect closure – he ends his verse before his thoughts are fully disclosed, abruptly halting some wisdom (A smart man look like a mad man to a dumb man, but one man –) with the excuse, ‘Wait, I’m tweakin’”.
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