5ingles

FREE KITTEN
"Bananas"

The more I listen to Inherit, the less I'm in love with Free Kitten as a unit. Yet I wonder if it isn't high time for Julie Cafritz to start issuing feminist-polemic, poetry-slam CDs; she's got such a wonderfully vinegar-y presence, and it'd be worth so much more freed from the warthog snarl of this band.

LAMBORGHINI CRYSTAL
"Roach Motel"

I was so prepared to fervently heart this: the Skaters connection, the dead-battery tape-recorder production values, the drenched-in-prescription-cough-syrup ennui, the Beavis and Butt-head sample. But too often over the course of these 35 curdled minutes they blow their deal by channeling Ariel Pink.

RAEKWON DA CHEF feat. GHOSTFACE KILLAH
"Jihad"

Wu folks just fucking kickin' it unreal here, spray-painting explicit cartoons that probably never happened on your mind's eyelids. But at their worst—and this episode's far from their worst—Ghost and Raek are more than worth their weight in 24K gold ropes.

THE TING TINGS
"Shut Up and Let Me Go"

Pretty sure this is the 2008 equivalent of Elastica's 1995 hit "Connection": taut, tart, salty/sassy robo-pop from the U.K. that's apparently effortless. Disco not Wire, rejection not symbiosis, but the arch freshness is the same; let's hope Katie White and Jules De Martino won't vanish as quickly as Justine Frischmann, et al.

USHER feat. JAY-Z
"Best Thing"

Ush got hitched last summer, right? Putting aside the question of why any self-respecting lady would wanna marry this R&B phenom after he profited handsomely off of some very public infidelities, "Best Thing" implies that the orgy might not be over for him—or that he's just cool with catering to the ongoing reconciliatory needs of his audience.