1. Gucci Mane - “Lemonade”
I have to say, although I liked a lot of Gucci Mane songs before “Lemonade,” this might be the first one I’ve really totally loved. The depressing period in the past couple years of Bangladesh, once one of my favorite producers, blowing up off of the overrated “A Milli” beat and an army of even cheaper-sounding knockoffs seems to be finally coming to a close, with actual great beats of his like “Video Phone” and this song all over the radio. And even though “Lemonade” technically has “A Milli” drums, everything else about it is a totally different beast, with that jackhammer piano riff and absolutely amazing fluid, squirming bassline. And then there’s Gucci, running with whole car/clothing colors = food lyrical concept that rappers before him like Jadakiss and Young Dro raised to an artform and building a whole song around it in a way that should translate to ‘high concept deep cut’ but instead comes out as ‘hit single.’ Although Noz has talked about Gucci being huge in Washington (and it’s probably true to some extent – my sister-in-law teaches in Southeast D.C. and once reported “I’m A Dog” somewhat unsettlingly being the most popular song among her 5th graders), radio in this part of the country has been really slow to play much by Gucci, came kinda late to “Wasted,” etc. (I literally heard “Photoshoot” on a Baltimore station for the first time this week). So it’s kind of cool that radio here actually seems as excited about “Lemonade” as I am, even if they still really need to start playing it more than “O Let’s Do It.”

2. Sade - “Soldier Of Love”
I probably shouldn’t be surprised at how aggressive this is, since “No Ordinary Love” is pretty much a hard rock ballad (I was actually going to make a joke about how a band like the Deftones could cover it and then looked it up and realized they really have), but I was pretty taken aback by how much this bangs, and all the little snare and bass and synth stabs just jumble up into these beautifully gnarly polyrhythmic grooves. This isn’t really anything like “Pretty Wings” but I mentioned it in my Singles Jukebox blurb because it’s kind of thrilling that in this day and age someone so far removed from what contemporary R&B radio usually plays can still land a big hit there if they come back with a song this good.

3. Nick Jonas & The Administration - “Who I Am”
I was pretty much totally alone in liking this on the Singles Jukebox, but it’s really good, I think, although I think I was kinda predisposed to liking his solo stuff since Joe Jonas isn’t on it and Nick wrote some pretty great Demi Lovato songs. I kinda sorta wanna hear this album.

4. Ne-Yo – “Never Knew I Needed”
2009, the year after The Year of the Gentleman (the post-gentleman year?), was pretty uneventful for Ne-Yo, trickling out a 4th single from the album that sounded like a 4th single, while his biggest feature was a terrible Keri Hilson single and his biggest songwriting gig was a terrible Rihanna single. Toward the end of the year, he finally released a pretty good new solo single, but it was for the soundtrack of that Disney movie The Princess and the Frog and R&B radio wouldn’t touch it, nor would any other format. When I heard the movie got 2 Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song, I thought maybe he was getting some recognition for the song after all, but nope, turns out Randy Newman did music for the movie too, so he got to add to his pile of statuettes with his 18th and 19th Oscar noms to date.

5. Birdman f/ Drake and Lil Wayne – “Money To Blow”
As I’ve written before, Drumma Boy has the habit of making awesome beats and then letting terrible artists rap and sing inane bullshit over them, so that I end up enjoying the songs in spite of myself, which is frustrating but probably one of the highest complements you can pay a producer. After “Every Girl” and “Successful” I guess this brings the total of songs with Drake on them that I grudgingly enjoy to 3, and I’m kind of scared of that number continuing to rise as he continues his reign of undeserved ubiquity. He really needs to stop talking that “Houstatlantavegas” shit, though, like, bitch you’re from Canada! You should be saying something like “comin’ to you live from the city of Saskatorontreal.” My friend who’s obsess with Birdman remixed this song for his new blog, The Birdman Is Not Normal. He really is a far more intriguing and mysterious individual than Wayne if you think about it – they should’ve made that documentary about Birdman instead.

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