This is another track from Drake’s new album Thank Me Later. This is one of the most anticipated tracks on the album and its called Light Up featureing Jay-Z. Enjoy! Afraid we cant make this available for free download, but im sure you still enjoy streaming. Plus make sure you check out iTunes very soon for the new album.
For a chap whose music is reknowned for being stripped down, basic, bluesy rock (you know, apart from the orchestral stuff and the bits with marimba in), Jack White is remarkably versatile, or at least, always prepared to try new things. After soft-pedalling the White Stripes, he’s been in two bands that have had massive chart and live success, worked with stars of Country [Loretta Lynn], Folk [Bob Dylan], Pop [Alicia Keys], and Rock [The Rolling Stones], and now he’s teamed up with multi million selling rapper Jay-Z to release a track. He revealed the collab in an interview with GQ:
“I just did a record with Jay-Z,” said White. “We did a song together a few weeks ago. It was incredible. I played him something that I’ve been kicking around for a while and he immediately came out with words for it. It’s unbelievable-sounding.”
It has been reported that British pop duo, The Ting Tings have signed with Jay-Z and his record label Roc Nation.
What’s funny is that they report this as the duo’s big chance to make it big in America by saying things such as “Jay can make them one of the biggest British bands in America.” The next Coldplay? No, thanks.
Im very interested to hear a Roc Nation influences album, will that mean I will be hearing a lot more hard baselines in their songs.
Apart from The Ting Tings Jay-Z also signed another British pop group, the Sugababes. No Jay, why the hell did you sign a band in complete decline even in their native country?
Cool, old school soul
Old school revival. Recorded on old analogue equipment in a Brooklyn bedroom by a group of young soul musicians, this album has a sound straight out of the early 70′s. The music sounds like it’s been lifted from a classic film soundtrack: if Marvin Gaye had written the score to a Bond movie it might sound something like this. There are no samples, no casio-tone saxophone parts, no vocoders, just live instruments arranged well, played well and recorded well, like music used to be when people cared about what they were producing, instead of jumping about like strippers in front of a listless, pallid audience of 17 year old girls. Even on the digital version this sounds like classic soul that’s been maturing in someone’s vinyl collection for the last three decades. Like a vintage wine, take it down from the rack, gently wipe away the imagined dust, stroke the album cover in anticipation of the sensual delights you’re about to enjoy, and lift the stylus gently into position. Immediately you’ll hear a snappy, shuffling complex beat, maybe backed with a bit of piano, then a guitar drops into the groove, picked out with a long, reverb soaked xylophone, and then you notice that your head has been bobbing like Stevie Wonder for the last 30 seconds and whoops, here comes the horn section and there’s funk all up in your ears.
I admit it, I’m biased. I love that old funk and soul (although it’s by no means the guiltiest of my pleasures) – there’s so much feeling in it, especially compared to all the angry rap and vacuous pop rock that make up ‘pop’ at the moment. Having said that, Jay-Z was awarded Rolling Stone’s best single of 2007 for his track ‘Roc Boys’, which is basically just a sample of the really cool beat and horn section hook from title track ‘Make the Road by Walking’, with him rapping about how brilliant he is all over it. What makes me sad is that Jay-Z probably made millions from the single, and the album’s producer/creator Thomas Brenneck will have got nothing like as much for actually writing the song. Still, chin up.
If you’re into Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Marvin Gaye or Amy Winebox, or the idea of a bluesy, funky, soulful instrumental album appeals to you, then buy this and you’ll love it. I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be hearing it in movies, adverts and sampled in other more ‘pop’ artists songs as soon as the music supervisors of the world feel it’s safe enough, so you might as well get a copy and annoy your friends by telling them who that track on the advert is by, and how they should really go and check out the Daptone records site, because there’re really a load of great music up there, funk and soul as it should be, or at the very least check out The Menahan Street Band or Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (the musicians’ other band) on YouTube or iTunes.
