Cardi B Does a Quirky Freaky Collab With El Alfa, Carly Rae Parties Solo, and Is That D'Angelo?
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Si, si, si, si, I’m dyingggg!: El Alfa feat. Cardi B, “Mi Mami” – Acolytes of Dominican dembow, the best music in the entire world (Cardi agrees), are well familiar with El Alfa El Jefe, one of the genre’s most charismatic figures who has for years lent his baby-voiced dirty missives to a string of relatively massive hits. Cardi, who’s exceedingly smart about choosing the best collaborators and uses her industry clout to bring forth some of the best in Latinx pop music, is a no-brainer on this. “Mi Mami” feels to me like dembow under bisexual lighting, not as hard or aggressive as a lot of the genre, but still as nasty and brashly sexual as it often requires, even with a sheen of romance. El Alfa, of course, comes with his quirky freaky shit: “Cuando tú me da’ ese pan, le pongo el salami,” and “Cuando estamos en la cama, me come como Kentucky.” I am never going to stop playing this incredible song! Give us a whole collabo album! —Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
D’Angelo, “Unshaken” – D’Angelo climbed out of his quiet, soulful tortoise shell to record a song for the soundtrack of Red Dead Redemption 2, which is a video game about ??? redemption??? Here his vocals flow from a cool and steady falsetto to the baritone of a hardened storyteller, with a crackly Western melody that conjures images of a dusty duel. Leave it to D’Angelo to premiere his first new song since 2014 on a record-breaking video game I’d never heard of until now (don’t @ me). —Clover Hope
D’Angelo, “Unshaken” – D’Angelo climbed out of his quiet, soulful tortoise shell to record a song for the soundtrack of Red Dead Redemption 2, which is a video game about ??? redemption??? Here his vocals flow from a cool and steady falsetto to the baritone of a hardened storyteller, with a crackly Western melody that conjures images of a dusty duel. Leave it to D’Angelo to premiere his first new song since 2014 on a record-breaking video game I’d never heard of until now (don’t @ me). —Clover Hope