In The Mix: Solange Reinvents Talk Show Performances
This week was especially difficult to pick out choice songs and videos, but these were worthy of making the cut. Check out the latest and greatest below.
Single Of The Week
Audrey feat. Jack Harlow - Comic Sans: The New York-based rapper’s newest is an homage to everyone’s favorite font, comic sans. Audrey and Jack Harlow trade bars, primarily ambiguous verses about themselves or the life revolving around them. It serves to the name of the song, given comic sans infamous reputation as an equally ambiguous font entirely lacking in purpose or function. Unlike comic sans, however, Audrey’s wordplay is on point, with lines like “And I see in 5D like I’m ed, edd, and eddy” to emphasize her potential as a formidable rapper soon to blow up.
Videos Of The Week
Zack Fox - The Bean Kicked In: After the success of “Square Up” and “Jesus Is The One (I Got Depression)”, Zack Fox’s latest single is another display of his eccentric, hilarious wit that he incorporates into each song thus far. “The Bean Kicked In” finds Fox in the fields, sipping on Perrier, working from a completely busted desk, and whipping around in a Tesla while eating. The draw here has to be his bars; each line is more gut-busting than the last. He spits, “Ay, remember when Janet Jackson had her titty out?/Ay, remember when Rihanna had her titty out?/Free the nipple man, Jordan Peele, get it out”. Lines like these truly question what it means to be a rapper today in the best way possible.
Technically not a music video, Solange’s live set on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is more inventive and impressive than many videos released this year. She restructures some of the hits from When I Get Home, including “Binz”, “Almeda”, and “Down With The Clique”. Complete with two background vocalists, a drummer, trumpeter, trombonist, three different pianists, and six background dancers, Solange utilizes the small space of a talk show’s stage to enormous effect. Solange sounds incredible live as well, and her band is top notch. Credits to the stage designer, too; the staircase behind the band adds a layer of depth and entertainment usually absent in talk show performances. The hard work and additional effort achieved to create this moment is clearly present, and pays off tremendously.
Farruko - Sorpresa: Farruko’s newest finds him navigating the streets of New York City, both by car and foot. He eventually meets up with a significant other he’s been texting all day, spending a fun evening with her on a rooftop, sipping champagne, and dancing. It’s all typical music video fodder, provided with a beautiful backdrop and a surprisingly unique Latin trap song. The chorus features a high-pitched flute refrain usually only heard in American trap music, and it sounds even better over Latin vocals and production.
Mix Of The Week
Park Hye Jin at The Lot Radio: Earlier this week Park Hye Jin performed a set at The Lot Radio, a shipping container in Brooklyn that’s been converted into space for DJs to spin for an always-online radio station. Jin brought a groovy mix that included some of her own work as well.
She begins the mix with a long vocal track of simple narration. A man discusses the world and its presence before us, and how it changed once we began to inhabit the planet. It’s quite existential and Jin slowly introduces instruments over the voice, including some sparse percussion made up of bongos and maracas. Eventually, the voice is distorted until it’s unrecognizable, and bleeds into a simple clapping boom-bap rhythm.
Near the halfway point the mix has picked up considerably, and Jin is spinning upbeat house music. A short chant repeats over breakbeat percussion, and long synth notes overlay the main beat. The song breaks and birds can be heard chirping; the chant is muted but still present, and it seems as if the song may break down into something else. Instead, the chant begins to return, the hi-hat picks up and the beat returns stronger than before, accompanied by a short, repeating piano ditty and elevated bass notes.
Later on, the mix has transitioned into a nocturnal house; the track in question is both led and backed up by synths, while a voice repeats, “Miami...to Brooklyn.” The mix slows down a few minutes later into a soft rock/folk song, acting as a sort of intermission before the final stretch of the mix.
The set concludes with Jin playing her own tracks, including “ABC” and her Baltra collaboration “Ahead Of Time”. Both fall under a lighter genre of house, denoted by Jin’s almost spoken-word vocals and intentional delivery. The set abruptly cuts partway through a song, but it doesn’t sully the fact Jin put together a fantastic mix for The Lot.
