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Lil B: "No Black Person Is Ugly&quo...

Every few years, Lil B taps into a pure, unfiltered sunbeam that channels his essence. “No Black Person Is Ugly” is one such moment—an empathic sentiment delivered loosely, a mood big and vague enough to live in. He opens with in a tightly packed flow that tricks you into expecting a linear, coherent performance. But you soon realize it’s Lil B straight through, a string of small, disconnected sentences tracing the contours of some big, connected thoughts. “I see it every day—they got shows like ‘Jailbreak’ but won’t help you get straight,” he mumbles. The...
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FKA twigs: "Pendulum"

FKA Twigs is an empress of subtlety, a connoisseur of the barely tangible moments between pop music’s satiating exhalations. The big reveals in her songs tend to hit with half the force of usual radio fare, yet they leave impressions that only grow more pronounced with time. Not since last year’s bewitching “Water Me“, though, has the London singer released a single as dedicated to nuance and will-o’-the-wisp sublimity as her latest, “Pendulum”. With a rickety click-clack and some pin-prick textures, several layers of FKA...
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Cymbals Eat Guitars: "Warning"

If you’ve never seen Cymbals Eat Guitars play Lenses Alien live, you might be shit out of luck. The Staten Island band performed not a single song from their excellent 2011 LP while debuting new material on the road this past fall. “It was work playing material from Lenses Alien live,” frontman Joseph D’Agostino explained. “If you had even a couple drinks before the show, there was no way you were gonna nail everything.” But judging from the singles Shaolin’s finest have let go from their upcoming third record LOSE, their only...
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Tobias Jesso Jr.: "True Love"

Aw, listen to this guy, coming on soft and real and clear-eyed like he was your oldest sweatshirt saved from the bottom of a dresser drawer in the house where you were born. So who is he? In an interview from last March, former Girls producer and bassist Chet White talked about getting a demo from a Canadian singer-songwriter just two days after the band had broken up—Jesso. White liked it instantly, and invited him to come stay on the couch and make a record. Visa problems held him up in Vancouver, but Jesso has shared a couple of demos via YouTube. Here we have...
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Rustie: "Attak" [ft. Danny Bro...

It’s kind of surprising that the inevitable took this long: Rustie has released his first collaborative single with a high-caliber rap artist. Admittedly, the Glaswegian beatmaker is no stranger to working with vocals—2011′s excellent Glass Swords featured singer/producer Nightwave woven through its hyperactive synths and clicking beats, and it was followed by an alternate version of “After Light”, which boasted the featherlight harmonies of AlunaGeorge. But for anyone who thought 2013′s hard-knocking “Slasherr” wouldn’t...