The Songs We Can't Escape

courtesy of the artists

My Dear Disco

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More About

• Squidley Cole
• My Dear Disco
• Larry McDonald
• Missy Elliott
• Hip-Hop and Rap

DRUMMER
"Feel Good Together"

If you're gonna convene a supergroup of drummers, all I should hear on your debut single is drums. But this is a straitjacketed rock song—albeit one that feels pretty good—with synths and guitars and a bass. Fail!

MY DEAR DISCO
"For Your Love"

Imagine corny '80s pop and Mega Man theme music thrown into a blender with Prince B-sides, and you've got a decent sense of what's happening here. But would you actually wanna listen to that? For fun?

LARRY MCDONALD FEAT. STRANGER COLE AND SQUIDLEY COLE
"Crime or Music"

You can guess what "Crime or Music" is about pretty easily; a few million rap songs lay out this ride-or-record dichotomy. Drummer McDonald is some kind of reggae legend, and debut Drumquestra overflows with funky rhythms, marimba splashes, dub, and all sorts of other merrily melodic flourishes. But this is one of those times when I wish audiences and performers alike weren't so stuck on the idea of vocal-driven music being the only way to go, because if this album was stripped of conscious rappers and calypso toasters who mean well but really just get in the way, it would go down so much easier. Would it be too much to ask for an instrumental version?

MONICA FEAT. MISSY ELLIOTT
"Lemme Know"

Remember when Missy was the future of women in rap? She'd drop a video and it'd be an event, a reinvention of what we came to expect from a rap video, with all kinds of jump cuts and fierce dance-offs and insane costuming and stuff. Then the bottom fell out, album delays piled up, and Missy found herself doing things like playing second banana on Monica's Jay-Z jockin' comeback campaign. Unacceptable!

TALK NORMAL
"Lemonade"

Dunno that I'd wanna buy a Dixie cup of actual lemonade from these girls, even if summer temperatures were to climb dramatically past the current unseasonable lows; might be spiders, black dye, sharpened barrettes floating in there. As would-be no-wave revivalists, their "Lemonade" should be enough to bring the out-addicted boys to the yard, but, Talk Normal? You've gotta get meaner and flintier for that eventual full-length everybody's checking for. Grrrrrr!