Soul, a couple rap songs, some metal, and an electronic artist cutting up Fugazi. What could be better?
The Olympians, "Pluto's Lament"
I don't think we've talked that much about Daptone Records around here. Daptone is a retro soul label out of Brooklyn, releasing records by Sharon Jones, The Budos Band, Charles Bradley, and many others. While most of the artists on the label are very retro in sound, it usually still sounds pretty fresh in no small part because a lot of these types of music kind of disappeared from the music scene for a while.
The Olympians are a pretty recent band from the label, with their self-titled debut record being the most recent LP from them. I like it, although I'm not entirely sure that I love it. It's very well executed, and enjoyable, but it has never put its hooks into me the way the best material on the label has.
Felt, "Rick James"
Felt is Atmosphere with the addition of Murs as a second MC. The first album (which this song comes from) feels a bit tossed off, but the second and third albums are much more considered and carefully made albums, and are quite enjoyable.
Mastodon, "Crusher Destroyer"
This song comes from Mastodon's debut album Remission, which set the template for their first several albums. From this very first album, they demonstrated technical prowess but also the ability to just write a catchy song, two abilities that would serve them well in creating some of the best metal albums of the past couple decades.
Jay-Z, "Never Change"
I was chatting with a friend and observed that I really like about every third Jay-Z album. Going to Allmusic and checking his discography, it's actually something more like one in four. He's been very prolific, bogus temporary retirement and all. Anyway, The Blueprint is one of the great ones.
(NB: the studio version is apparently being suppressed on YouTube, so I linked to a live version.)
Chris Lawhorn, "Nice New Outfit / Greed / Walken's Syndrome / Face Squared / No Surprise"
Chris Lawhorn's project Fugazi Edits was basically aimed squarely at me. He took all of Fugazi's catalog and cut and sampled it all up into new compositions. As I can't get enough Fugazi or sampling, this was basically just catnip to me. I like the album an awful lot, but I don't know how much other people will enjoy it if they're not as big into Fugazi as I am.