(t5!) My Year In Lists 2006: Singles! 10 to 6
Even with hip-hop’s dominance in airplay and sales nowadays, the topics it covers hasn’t been broad lately. So when this 25-year-old Muslim from Chicago released a skateboarding-themed single, it was refreshing and he gained an instant cult following from hip-hop fans longing to be refreshed. However, “Kick, Push” never rides one-dimensionally. Yes, it’s about skateboarding, but it also involves all the appeal connected to it—dedication, liberation, rebellion, teen romanticism, individualism. It’s a testament to Lupe’s comprehensive storytelling, the ability to encompass, in just a little over four minutes, an immense thematic ground that a whole genre disregards.
As formidably experimental as Return To Cookie Mountain, the best track off it is its most straightforward and, also, it’s most strong-willed. It starts off with ferocious clanging and locomotive drums, gathering up momentum for the enormous stampede ahead. Once it’s joined by Tunde Adebimpe resolute staccato verses about a werewolf on a hunt, it becomes too powerful to stop. While you listen to the maelstrom, you can’t help but feel as omnipotent as the track and as ravenous as its subject. Like what Adebimpe says in the chorus, “My hearts aflame/my body's strained/but, God, I like it," even when there’s a hint of suppression, you ultimately give in to your animal instincts.
Each time I listen to this, there’s something I find very likeable: the frolicking disco bassline; the strutting guitar lead; the ghostly synth accent; the schizophrenic blips; the playful, not-so-English enticements of Brazilian lead vixen, Lovefoxxx; the fact that their lead singer’s name is Lovefoxxx; the quotable lines she’s groaning, such as “wine, then bed, then more, then again!”; the guitar breakdown reminiscent of Soft Cell covering “Spirit in the Sky”; its palpable inspirations, like Talking Heads, Blondie, Peaches, Le Tigre and, of course, DFA; and the fact that the danceability factor could withstand numerous repeated listens. It’s sexy, it’s innocent, it’s mischievous, it’s the aural equivalent of the best sugar rush you’ve ever had.
Like every song off Citrus, the shoegaze-labelled echo-laden guitars are emblazoned in epidemic proportions in “Thursday”. But to admire this song just for the instrumentation stops short of its excellence: Japanese vocalist Yuki Chikudate is this song’s allure, unveiling her greatest impersonation of a plaything caught in the wind. With her celestial high-pitched vocals, Yuki is reaching her arms out for someone when she’s not entirely sure if someone is actually there. She vigorously searches for him amidst the cloud of noise, and she’s wayward, vulnerable, and somewhat defeated yet she remains hopeful. Then her and the melody gently exits, the percussions find the cymbal crash a bit more to lead the track into a saccharine climax.
Others attempt to interpret what 21st century pop sounds like, Timbaland and Timberlake got it right off the bat with “Cry Me A River” and continue to get it with this single. And that’s because “conventional” doesn’t exist in their vocabulary, especially in Timbaland’s. He effectively clouded the lines that separated pop, R&B, and electronic music into a trademark sonic character. The synths? You can actually feel it percolating. The beat? It’s just a standard kick-kick-snare, but it’s enhanced by ascending hollow clicks, JT’s Doug E. Fresh beatbox, and maniacal cartoon laughter. Timberlake’s falsetto is prime as always, it’s a proposal that is impossible to reject. And, really, how could you reject the newly-crowned King of Pop?
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