Star Tracks compiles the most interesting new music from a broad range of established and emerging artists.
This week’s playlist features new music from Future, Justin Bieber with Don Toliver, Joe Rainey, Lolo Zouaï, ODESZA, Internet Money featuring Yeat, and Wilco.
Click here to listen along to the Spotify playlistwhich includes additional tracks we loved this week.
Future: PUFFIN ON ZOOTIEZ
Future is gliding through his halcyon era. Recently declared the “Best Rapper AliveIn a glossy GQ profile, the 38-year-old from Atlanta is set to spend the summer headlining some of the biggest festivals in the world, including the first ever Rolling Loud in Toronto. On the cover of his new album “I NEVER LIKED YOU” — a hilariously toxic and on-brand title — Future is pictured relaxing in the back of a luxury vehicle, immaculately dressed in royal purple, dozing peacefully in a sleep mask, unbothered. With 16 mixtapes, nine studio albums and countless collaborations under his belt, the godfather of mumblecore reached the pinnacle of hip hop long ago. Now he’s just cruising.
Future doesn’t change the formula up too much on “I NEVER LIKED YOU.” The album is jam-packed with bass-heavy trap beats and plenty of features from hip-hop A-listers and acolytes — Drake, Kanye, Young Thug, Gunna, Kodak Black are all here. There’s also a welcome appearance from burgeoning Nigerian singer Temswhose brilliant hook overpowers a dull verse from Drake.
But Future is at his best when he’s working alone, like the album highlight “PUFFIN ON ZOOTIEZ.” “I’m way outta here, I’m too far in the sky / Hermès ashtray to dump my ashes,” he raps, locked in over a moody, downtempo beat, woozily listing the various illicit substances that keep him afloat. An efficient and technically impressive track: Future’s flows sound pristine, even untouchable. But beneath the swagger there’s a heavy sense of sadness, a malignancy hiding beneath the surface. That’s the Future paradox that keeps us coming back for more. — Richie Assaly
Justin Bieber (feat. Don Toliver): Honest
Skating on the line between hip hop and R&B, Justin Bieber’s latest single, “Honest,” with Don Toliver is one of the most natural collaborations in recent memory. Adopting Toliver’s spaced-out sound that marries wandering and building synths to skittering high hats, Bieber walks into the American singer’s world — a world where it’s nearly impossible to tell where hip hop ends and R&B begins. Like Toliver, Bieber has existed in both before, but this space feels like home as his clipped vocals swim through the production instead of wrapping around DJ Khalid’s sunny pop rap tracks. His lines from him border bars when he sings “Honest (Honest) / You’re modest, I like it (I like it) / You stay down and you the baddest (Baddest),” but it fits like a long-lost piece of a puzzle.
In Toliver’s case, this track isn’t in his wheelhouse, it’s simply his house. His vocal control and ability to jump between singing and rapping are effortless. And featuring on a song that sounds more like his from him than the primary artist’s repertoire just goes to show how distinguished he is from the rest of the field. — Demar Grant
Joe Rainey: bezhigo
Each time I listen to “bezhigo,” I feel something different: melancholy, hope, wonder.
The track is one of two fascinating new singles released by Joe Rainey, an Ojibwe pow wow singer who recently signed with 37d03d, a label and music collective founded by Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Aaron and Bryce Dessner (The National).
On “bezhigo,” Rainey fuses traditional Pow Wow singing patterns with experimental vocal flows, conveying a distinct emotion with each rise, fall and inflection. Produced by Minneapolis musician Andrew Broder, the song is fleshed out with stirring live strings and a subtle throbbing of bass that sounds like distant thunder. Finally, the track includes samples from pow wow MC Jerry Dearly Sr. and the late Kenny Merrick Jr.. — a nod to the rich history that informs Rainey’s experimental music. The result is transfixing.
Rainey’s debut album, “Niineta,” drops on May 20. — AR
Lolo Zouaï: Give Me a Kiss
Lolo Zouaï’s music has always dipped its toes in the sultry, but “Give Me a Kiss” has plunged so far in it’s almost hypnotic. Slowing its bpm to a crawl with drowsy synths and heavy 808’s, Zouaï pulls you into a house neighboring The Weeknd’s “House of Balloons.” But instead of locking the bathroom for lines, Zouaï’s steamy vocals invite you to “Lock up the bedroom, yeah / Gonna be here ’til Sunday / Blurring our vision.” She also offers her sensual lyrics with distorted effects and, combined with the distorted drums, it’s a clear movement away from her smooth R&B debut album “High Highs to Low Lows.” Zouaï has gotten racier with her lyrics from her since then and more experimental with her sound from her, but the evolution is more than welcome. — DG
ODESZA: Behind the Sun
Please forgive me in advance for including a big and brash EDM song on this otherwise tasteful playlist. But there’s something unashamedly fun about the latest track from ODESZA, the American electronic duo and summer festival favourites.
Built around an immediately gripping vocal sample from Iranian singer Simin Ghanem, “Behind the Sun” drops into a pummeling drum line, which the duo says was created by recording snares”through metallic resonators” (I don’t know what this means, but it sounds accurate). Like its accompanying video, the song is extravagant, cinematic and borderline ridiculous — one can imagine it being used to soundtrack the final credits for a Marvel film or something. But that’s OK! Grab some glowsticks, hydrate and enjoy. — AR
Internet Money (feat. Yeat): No Handoutz
Yeat’s sound is really starting to round out. All the bars now rhyme, the flows fit within their confines and that bell… that bell! In a pool of Playboi Carti and Young Thug clones, Yeat has found a way to stick out with what is now his trademark bell and his unique vocals. Internet Money’s cybernetic production with distorted 808’s is a digital playground and it’s a pleasure to hear Yeat romp in it. There are very few artists on the planet whose lyrics are near-unintelligible and yet you’re begging for more of them, but Yeat has officially found himself among them at age 22. — DG
Wilco: Falling Apart (Right Now)
Gather ’round, dads, there’s a new Wilco track!
Earlier this week, the Chicago rock group released “Falling Apart (Right Now),” a brisk and breezy track from their forthcoming album“Cruel Country.” “Now don’t you lose your mind / While I’m looking for mine,” Jeff Tweedy sings over a swirl of twangy and country-inflected guitars.
“There have been elements of country music in everything we’ve ever done,” Tweedy said in a statement. “We’ve never been particularly comfortable with accepting that definition, the idea that I was making country music. But now, having been around the block a few times, we’re finding it exhilarating to free ourselves within the form, and embrace the simple limitation of calling the music we’re making country.”
It’s certainly a change — and sounds nothing like the band’s iconic “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” an album the band has been performing this year to mark its 20th anniversary — but eh, works for me. — AR
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