Best Tracks of the Week: Meek Mill, Earl Sweatshirt & More
If the tryptophan from all that turkey has got you feeling sluggish, never fear, Highsnobiety Music has got your weekly dose of the week's best new songs to get your juices flowing again.
Earl Sweatshirt has unveiled another track from his forthcoming Some Rap Songs that, realistically, is among the best things he's ever made. And if that weren't enough on its own, we have a slowthai/Mura Masa collaboration that sounds even better than it does on paper, a surprise return single from Kelly Rowland and a long-gestating B-side from A$AP Rocky built around a Tame Impala track. It's as lit as an oven in here.
All those and more make this (slightly abridged) edition of Best Tracks of the Week:
A$AP Rocky – “Sundress”
I’m strongly convinced that Tame Impala is the glue that is holding the current state of hip-hop and R&B together, because anytime that an artist samples or covers them, their music becomes instantly better. (Side note: Shoutouts to Rihanna for leading the way as per usual.) Rocky is on a hot streak in the wake of his new album TESTING, it's the gift that keeps on giving. - S
Earl Sweatshirt – “The Mint” ft. Navy Blue
Enigma has been a staple of Earl Sweatshirt's mythos since the beginning, but previous descriptors utterly fail to describe the next level shit Earl is on right now. The second taste of his upcoming record Some Rap Songs has more going on in the first 20 seconds than most of the year's rap albums put together; a bricolage of sound that congeals into a track that borrows equally from J Dilla as it does Gil-Scott Heron. Point being? Earl Sweatshirt is making the most important music of his career, you had best tune in. - J
Kelly Rowland – "Kelly"
Kelly Rowland reinventing herself as a radio-ready trap star with a self-titled ode to sexuality? Yeah, you can say that we're here for this. - J
Malibu Ken – "Acid King"
Aesop Rock and mysterious producer TOBACCO uniting as the duo Malibu Ken? We'll take it, yet another of 2018's boundless musical surprises. Their debut single as a unit is a nasty bit of business, with Rock's bars flowing ceaselessly over a beat that recalls the jarring, angular synths of the soundtrack to Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Their impending album promises to be gripping, if nothing else. - J
Meek Mill – "Oodles O'Noodles Babies"
The name of Meek Mill's upcoming album is Championships, a word that is give its true sonic equivalent in "Ooodles O'Noodles Babies," one of two tracks dropped from the project. Over a blazingly triumphant soul sample (with some Stevie Wonder synths thrown in for good measure), Meek boldly delivers a set of piercing heavy yet empowered verses. - J
slowthai – "Doorman"
Over a giddily delirious beat courtesy of Mura Masa, slowthai proffers another of his effective eviscerations of society's ills. On the chopping block this go round is high society and all the dehumanization that comes with it. "I pour my heart out and she laps up my blood" he bemoans over frenetic percussion; a better descriptor of the vampiric 1% there is not. - J
Sneaks – “Money Don’t Grow on Trees”
There has been too much toxic energy engulfing the music world lately, so when this spiritual song made its way into my inbox I felt like my faith had been temporarily restored. Snapping to the melodic beat while Sneaks repeats the line “money don’t grow on trees” is almost like a form of meditation. A friend recently put me on to the DC native a few weeks ago and my obsession continues to build with each drop. We need more queer black feminist rappers to thrive in this industry, they’re honestly our only hope. - S
Tommy Cash – "X-Ray"
Tommy Cash's link-up with the incomparable PC Music cannot be better personified than his bonkers new single "X-Ray." Upon first listen, the helium-infused beat could be mistaken for the sort of head-thrashing dance-pop someone like Cascada was making a decade ago. But that's all part of the Tommy Cash experience, something not quite rap, not quite dance, but fully primed to make your synapses explode. - J
Be sure to check out last week's edition of our best new tracks right here.