1. Anberlin - “Impossible”
This song came on the radio when I was in the car with my wife recently and we kind of both went “who is this? it sounds kind of like Jimmy Eat World but it’s way catchier than their new song.” The girl in this video is mad hot, too. And I have to admit, part of the reason I put this at #1 is the perverse joy I take in how ridiculous and European boy band these guys look on the single cover image above.

2. Fabolous - “You Be Killin’ Em”
The streak of great Fab/Ryan Leslie collabs continues with this single off of Fab's weird EPification of his mixtape from earlier this year. This is actually kind of the perfect look for Fab right now, since even after he scored a straight up rap hit with "Breathe" he still seems unable to even try to make a single for one of his proper albums without an R&B hook singer, and really as this song proves he can do decent hooks himself and this is both kind of clubby and catchy but still very hip hop-sounding and breakbeat-driven.

3. Gucci Mane - “Making Love To The Money”
When this song appeared on a couple Gucci mixtapes earlier this year, I thought it was an instant standout, but other people didn't seem really into it or maybe thought it was too obvious or something. So I'm pretty happy now that it's starting to get a lot of radio play and might end up being the biggest hit from the infamously mismanaged The Appeal album -- at one point a mixtape track with Trey Songz was getting more spins than anything on the album. Now this goofy song with a reference to Ray J's sex tape in the chorus is a bigger hit than the song that's supposed to be the album's current single and actually features Ray J.

4. will.i.am & Nicki Minaj - “Check It Out”
This is kind of like the Lionel Richie sample on the Enrique Iglesias song in that my inner '80s baby is primarily responding to the Buggles sample in this song, but then the song itself ends up insidiously working its way into my good graces. Plus the "Think" break stuff at the end here is pretty fun, and I mean as tired as I get of people speculating in increasingly unlikely ways about when popular artists are supposedly ripping off Baltimore club music, this one is pretty blatant and undeniable.

5. Jamie Foxx f/ Rick Ross - “Living Better Now”
This song sounded really exciting when I heard it on the radio a few times recently, the beat sounds like a not unwelcome knockoff of "Beamer, Benz or Bentley" with a Biggie sample and a lot of other shit going on in it (although all this subliminal Ross = Biggie stuff has to stop, shit ain't right). Kind of reminds me of the amped up energy of the Jamie Foxx/Lil Wayne song I got really excited about 2 years ago before "Blame It" came and wiped it from everyone's memory, which might also happen to this since Foxx's other new single with Drake seems to be taking off more.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 01, 2010 at 11:30 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.