Clams Casino - Cold War (Janelle Monae Refit)

I've already explained how much I love Janelle Monae, and most specifically her song Cold War. Clams Casino, who has his fingers on the buttons for Lil B and Soulja Boy, amongst others, has also seen the light, and has done something beautiful with it.

Clams makes beats for rappers, so he's taken off the frenetic drum-n-bass beat, and got something quieter and slower ticking along in the background, with a once-a-bar boom to give us some landmarks. There's a great interview with him about it here.

This is stripped-down production at its best: an instrumental so good that it doesn't even need a vocal. Lil B put something on it. He's got some good lines ("growing up we were dying to live, now we're living to die") but overall he's just, erm, not that great? I love his voice: the sound quality on the vocal's a bit rubbish but you can still hear how good his voice sounds, a bass gutteral growl. But he just has nothing to say - he must say "Lil B" eight times in this. Ah well, enjoy the instrumental!

You can download Clams Casino's whole mixtape of instrumentals via Potholes in My Blog

Clams Casino - Cold War by mantequilla

Big Boi ft Janelle Monae - Be Still

Here's some controversy to spice up Monday morning: rap interludes might not be that bad after all. I have been staunchly opposed to them. And in the interests of preserving what little integrity I have left, I would argue that this is about 30% soul, 20% Motown swing and 50% hip-hop.

So it's a fair mix, rather than just an embarrassing cameo by some rapper who should know better. Also, it's got Janelle Monae on the intro, and her voice melts my little hard heart, so by the time Big Boi starts trying to rhyme "orange" with, um, "urr-ange", I'm already in a little ecstasy of aural bliss.

Janelle Monae - Sir Greendown

This, to me, sounds like a cross between Moon River and Doe, A Deer. Not in a bad way at all.

Janelle Monae - Cold War

Mix relentless DnB with intensely emotional RnB, and you get something that you could call DnRnB.

Or just call it Cold War by Janelle Monae, since there's never been anything like this before, and I doubt it will ever be equalled.