More Cool Songs and Albums

Santogold
Santogold’s a lot like M.I.A: she does weird things with her voice, she effortlessly mixes genres of music, she’s got a pretty wicked pop/fashion sense and I friggin' LOVE her. Her new self-titled album is a twelve track study in eclecticism that is easily this year's most impressive debut. It’s like New Wave fuzz meets Punk Rock ethos meets blip hop beats and any other gimmicky sounding genre I can't think of right now cause I'm so blown away by the album. Yea, just get it already.



The Roots - Rising Down
Black Thought, ?uestlove and those other guys are back and I'm not sure what happened but dudes are pissed and frustrated. That being said, Rising Down might be the best Roots album I've listened to in a while. Dudes simply do not compromise. The music sounds so raw and the crew throws down so hard on every cut that you can’t help but think they will be the last band standing when this music industry thing crumbles. Rising Down is out now.



T.I. - No Matter What
I’d like to think T.I. spends most of his time under house arrest walking around his mansion in his Hugh Hefner-esque pajamas and swimming in a sea of moneys like Scrooge McDuck. And if dude wants to put up the occasional YouTube video blog to update his fans on what he’s been up to then that’s cool too. But somewhere I forgot that T.I. is still the King of the South so he went and slapped me over the head with a pretty great new cut No Matter What. Dude cannot be broken, peep the realness: “I lost my partner and my daughter in the same year somehow I rise above my problems and remain here.” Then you bring in the church organ beat and then it’s official: sorry Kanye, No Matter What just replaced Can’t Tell Me Nothing as the underdog-f-the-haters anthem. Point blank, period.