1. K. Michelle - "V.S.O.P."
I really dig her whole album but obviously this song is a standout that has just gotten stronger as it keeps climbing up the radio charts. She basically stole that Chi-Lites sample from Jay, too, I associate with this song more than "December 4th" already. It actually reminds me a little of Meek Mill's "Dreams & Nightmares" in that it feels really loud and intense just off the blaring vocals before the snares finally, briefly come in briefly for a few bars at a time halfway into the song. By the time she's got Henny chilling on ice I feel like the walls are shaking, the song just goes hard as shit. Pop & Oak have produced some of my favorite R&B songs of the last couple years, including Elle Varner's "Refill" and Miguel's "Use Me," so I'm just adding this to the list. These songs are all in my favorite 2013 singles Spotify playlist, by the way.

2. Sage The Gemini - "Red Nose"
Although the immediate result of Billboard counting YouTube views toward chart positions was the whole regrettable "Harlem Shake" thing, there's been an unexpected effect in the last few months of random regional rap songs charting off of Vine memes and dance videos. There was the J. Wop song in that Miley twerk video, Tha Finatticz, a YG song that lots of people, many of them white, love make Vines of saying the N-word to, and a couple of songs by Sage The Gemini, who I'd never heard of before all this. "Red Nose" is my favorite of his two big Vine hits, and is also the only one of all these songs that I've actually started to hear on the radio pretty steadily, and it's really grown on me, just has a nice weird awkward groove while still being incredibly danceable and catchy.

3. Future - "Honest"
This song is comparable to "Feds Watching" by 2 Chainz in that you could tell on one listen that it wasn't going to be as big a hit as all the singles off their first album, but it ends up growing on everybody and being kind of a sleeper hit (while still not the huge lead single they need). They even peaked at the exact same spot, #10, on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. And even though it felt immediately transparent that the verses follow the same formula as the "UOENO" hook, he at least takes it in a different direction, and the chorus is just kind of amazing with Future busting out the cracked falsetto from the "Body Party" background vocals in all its glory. Plus the beat just feels like a departure from everything Future's done before, the piano is kind of amazing. And with Future getting kicked off the Drake tour (and maybe is back on now?) for speaking a little too freely with the media, it kinda feels like this song is starting to really help define and expand his public persona.

4. Blake Shelton - "Mine Would Be You"
I always relish whenever I hear a non-standard time signature in a hit song, and it's especially rare in a country song, much less a country ballad. So the verses being in 7/8 are what mainly caught my ear about this song at first, but it's pretty damn good in general, and I've always struggled to find a Shelton song as likeable as Shelton himself. Last country song I heard in 7/8 was LeAnn Womack's theme song for "The Berenstain Bears," no lie.

5. Capital Cities - "Kangaroo Court"
I've been hating "Safe And Sound," every single damn thing about it, but I have to say the doomed follow-up single is growing on me. The guy's voice still isn't shit, but this one has a nice bounce to it. And the label spent all that "Safe And Sound" money on a pretty cool-looking video for a song that is gonna go absolutely nowhere.

6. Wale f/ Nicki Minaj and Juicy J - "Clappers"
Even though The Gifted was easily the weakest of the summer's big event rap albums, but credit where it's due, he's 3 for 3 with good singles. "Pretty Girls" may always be the best Wale song as far as I'm concerned, just a fantastic bit of pop polish on a Go-Go sample so that it made sense with someone like Gucci Mane on it, and this song attempts a similar trick, a little less successfully while still managing to be pretty fun. It's particularly Go-Go-ish in that it's this kind of aimless, flabby track that runs well over 5 minutes, with all these different voices going in and out, but Nicki Minaj darts in and out with an incredibly short verse than runs 21 seconds (about half as long as Juicy J's appearance), totally stealing the show in even less time than she usually does.

7. Scotty Rebel f/ French Montana - "Bang"
This song hasn't made much noise but I think it's pretty killer, even with a French verse. Rico Love is such an underrated hitmaker.

8. One Direction - "Best Song Ever"
"What Makes You Beautiful" is heads and shoulders above anything else these guys have done and rightfully their biggest U.S. hit, but looking at this really drives home that it's kind of their only hit here, once you set aside all of their fanbase's iTunes downloads. And this one is pretty much their least successful single yet, which is ironic given the title. It's fun and spirited and stupid, though, and I like the little Who homage that resulted in such an amusing One Direction fan twitter war.

9. The Naked And Famous - "Hearts Like Ours"
I revealed my silly misunderstanding a while back about confusing this band, who have a female singer, with Passion Pit, who have a male singer, and unfairly hating Passion Pit because of songs that were actually by The Naked And Famous. But now I like songs by both these bands. I don't know what that means. Maybe just that I'm not so stubborn after all, I hope.

10. Kings of Leon - "Supersoaker"
These guys are a truly embarrassing band on every level, but the further they fall from their commercial peak, the easier it is to admit when they make kind of a jam. I liked "Radioactive" a little, and I like this even more, nice little guitar licks, big stupid chorus, title almost as cringe-inducing as "Sex On Fire."

Worst Single Of The Month: Hustle Gang f/ T.I., B.o.B, Kendrick Lamar, and Kris Stephens - "Memories Back Then"
Last year, in the run-up to Trouble Man, there was a lot of talk of the album having a song that featured Kendrick Lamar, B.o.B and a sample of Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know," which just sounded like a terrible idea to begin with, as much as I like the original. Apparently Gotye realized that, too, and didn't clear the sample, so the album dropped without that song (although you can hear a leaked snippet here). And pretty quickly soon after the album, T.I. started releasing a ton of songs under the 'Hustle Gang' banner, trying to get the Grand Hustle label/brand back in business, and a lot of those tracks have been really dope. But the biggest of those hits, sadly, is a rebooted version of that song, with the Gotye sample replaced with a new beat and a new hook. "Memories Back Then" reminds me a lot of the 'song memories' SNL sketches, where a group of guys sing a heartwarming song together and take turns swapping dark, disturbing stories. In this version, T.I. reminisces over an old school chum ("she let me fingerfuck her on the school bus"), B.o.B recalls losing the love of his life because another girl he was with got pregnant ("on top of all that, it wasn't even mine -- damn!"), and Kendrick thinks back to a materialistic girl he pursued before he made it big ("tried to make you mine, ho! tried to make some time, ho!"). If Gotye was still singing "now you're just somebody that I used to know" on the hook, it'd at least be thematically appropriate, but instead we now have Kris Stephens blankly singing "I think of all the memories I've had, all of the things I did back then," like she's all wistful about T.I. fingerfucking her on the school bus. Oh, and Kendrick says "Mick Romney." MICK. ROMNEY. Incredibly awful song.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 18, 2013 at 12:32 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.