Video and Audio: Let’s get Capri-corny

Stars past their prime could still blow up

Usher: “Kissing Strangers”

Usher’s most pop-facing moment since he was hanging out with will.i.am, and it didn’t even get a proper video. This was co-produced by the late Busbee, who passed in 2019, so maybe the issue was how long it’s been sitting around—it’d’ve been fitting as an interim number one to break up an Ed Sheeran reign. Ush describes going “from strangers kissing to kissing strangers” with the breezy heartbrokenness that maybe will cycle back into fashion in the 2030s.

David Murray Quartet: “Francesca”

I blurbed the album last week, but I’ll reiterate this title track is a classic, especially Murray’s final minute and a half: not just for its dexterity but for they way it flows out of the last chorus, with the descending lines building over each other just as the main tune did, and then the band returning for one last hit while Murray goes for one last impossible squeal, almost modestly.

Rapsody: “Stand Tall”

The majority of the video’s runtime is Rapsody using Sanaa Lathan as her de facto therapist. The song isn’t free of pop-psych either, but rhymes like “You only wonder if I eat coochie or like some dick in me/Y’all need to read Dick Gregory” make this an uncommon piece of music-as-healing that serves both artist and audience.

Team Decalé: “Ambience”

Another month of Côte d’Ivoire doing its own thing (biama, says Moore.) There are super fast triplets, synth stabs on the beat, electro hand drums off it, some highlife-ish guitar in the upper registers, and extremely enthusiastic vocalists who helpfully flash their names on the screen when it’s their verse (Le Grand Homme! Azazou Satellite!)

Ice Spice: “TTYL”

The last and least streamed song on the Ice Spice album (which I’ll get to eventually; I just have largely non-empirical suspicions about “Ice Spice albums” as a category.) This is basic me-against-the-world stuff, microwaving old rhymes for “haters” that let her charisma radiate from falling “paper”s and  “later”s. Who could be a hater of hers? (A gaggle of germaphobes raise gloved hands.)

David Goode & Chloë Abbott: John Pickard: Orion: III. Betelgeuse

Organ-and-trumpet astronomical program music! Composer Pickard thinks rapidly aging star Betelgeuse will up as a planetary nebula; I believe the consensus is a supernova ending in a neutron star is much more likely, though it’s worth noting that it’s one of the easiest stars to observe and we’re apparently not even sure if it’s actually two stars. In any case, Abbott’s trumpet doesn’t appear to be interested in how this is all going to turn out in a hundred thousand years and takes off to play the finale from offstage.

Madi Diaz: “Girlfriend”

The hook is “so sorry I’m your ex’s girlfriend”, and if you’re wondering why she’s the one who needs to apologize when the ex-girlfriend in question is still calling him, it’s because she’s imputing motives that there’s no evidence for (and probably scrolling said ex’s socials because everyone does that.) Diaz’s unaffected vocal helps to make the parasocial sound normal, which (looks around) it is.

LaRussell, P-Lo, Too $hort: “Give Me a Beat!”

Throwback Bay Area rap with LaRussell’s high-pitched delivery making him sound like an excitable Wikivoyage editor listing alternative airport options for getting into Oakland (it doesn’t take that much longer from SJC than from SFO, depending on time of day.) Too Short does what he’s been doing for longer than LaRussell’s been alive; no doubt he’ll still be on that “pimp ass shit” when he’s in a senior community in Walnut Creek.

Matt Wilson’s Good Trouble: “Be That as It May”

This excellent track from a mostly-good jazz album sees Dawn Clement sing a straightforwardly fetching vocal while supplying some understated complementary piano flourishes, while Jeff Lederer’s clarinet and Tia Fuller’s sax express yin-yang (or top-bottom if you must) and Ben Allison’s bass and Wilson’s drums convey acceptance of all being as it may, at least within the studio. Even the glockenspiel doesn’t tip this into the corny.

Victoria Monét & Usher: “SOS (Sex on Sight)”

As the biz continues to fight to get one or the other of the two best older school R&B singers into the profit column, it’s not really surprising the Zoomers who drive streaming hits haven’t responded to this. Kids, 30-to-40-something horniness is not a crime! Okay, some of the time it is, but not here!

Justhis, Mushvenom, Dynamicduo: “GOAT”

Korean rappers of varying generations and credibility make a track called “GOAT”, on which each of them makes goat noises. Complicated, I know, but when the remix with Billy Woods, Kid ’n Play, and K’naan-y comes out I’ll make you a diagram out of sticks.

Brother Ali & UnJust: “The Collapse”

Don’t think I’ve sought out new music from Brother Ali for twenty years, but indie rappers never die, they just move to Istanbul apparently. I don’t know the exact recording date of this collaboration with Jewish producer UnJust, but it’s hard not to cross-reference the song with current events: “They raided and invaded their spaces and their flesh/Called them terrorists when they resist/Their own violence they called defense.” You bet it rhymes when he says it.