This feature highlights a hand-picked selection of some of the bigger tracks of the week. We have chosen a few of the tracks that landed within our top 10 most played, focusing on those that stood out, and left room for discussion.
Once again, this particular feature is cataloguing the most POPULAR songs on the site, for some of the more overlooked tracks, check out Underrated Audio.
This edition of Top Tracks features YG, 50 Cent, Chance The Rapper, and more. Take a look at the list in the gallery above, and feel free to let us know your own favorite tracks in the comments.
Future- Covered N Money
Future's Honest is taking a shape we never could've predicted. While all signs pointed to the album going further into the robotic crooning territory that we saw on some of Pluto's biggest singles, Fewtch's duet with Miley Cyrus, "Real & True" found the smoothing over the edges that defined his previous vocal work.
Weirdly, it flopped, and the song where he yelled "Sh!t" repeatedly took off. Now it looks like one of Fewtch's most abrasive cuts will define the sound of his sophomore record, as "Covered N Money" occupies similar territory.
While not as minimally agressive as "Sh!t", the track is built of of a blurted rather than sung hook, yet it still retains some tone (partially due to a generous helping of auto-tune). It finds Future reuniting with Sonny Digital, who gave the rapper his first rap radio hit ("Racks"), as well as one of his biggest street anthems ("Same Damn Time"). "Covered" is somewhere between the two, and it'll take multiple listens to tell if it'll have the same lasting impression, but chances are, it just might.
50 Cent- Hold On
50 Cent's new material isn't all that decipherable from what his mid-career hits. "Hold On", along with the rest of his recent singles could sit comfortably on Curtis or Before I Self Destruct. It'll be interesting to see if it'll catch on with a crowd that doesn't have a nostalgic connection to Get Rich Or Die Tryin' or whether it'll pass by undetected.
It's good to see that 50 still knows his way around a hook, and still knows his strengths, but perhaps stepping onto some new ground might give his new material a necessary jolt of excitement.
DJ Mustard - Vatos Feat. YG, Jeezy & Que
DJ Mustard has expressed a desire to be the new Lil Jon or Fatman Scoop, a visible DJ who has his won deal, and crafts his own songs. Sort of like if DJ Khaled actually did some production work.
What works about Mustard's music is that it doesn't go for thrills and names like your typical crew track, instead settling for good old fashioned songcraft, with the DJ recruiting collaborators that make sense, both with the production style and with one another.
Skrillex - Coast Is Clear Feat. Chance The Rapper
The funniest thing about this song is that its essentially just an Acid Rap track with a chunky-ass bassline. Skrillex has the ability to embrace his Brostep tag with open arms, or completely transcend it. Here he mainly takes the latter route, supplying a juke-esque backdrop for Chance, approaching similar territory to that of the intro and outro of his latest project.
When he strips things down to just bas and drums however, it's clear that he's still going for that low-end thrill that he made his name off of, just in a more tasteful way.
Chance starts things off with some frantically delivered raps, before sitting on one Biggie-interpolating refrain for the majority of the track, and it never gets old.
YG - Really Be Feat. Kendrick Lamar (Smokin N Drinkin)
YG's technical ability is a far cry from Kendrick's, but story-telling is sometimes best in its most stripped down and simplistic. Kendrick's rhymes almost sound like prose, which give him a sort of narrator perspective, commentating the scene from the sidelines, while YG definitely feels like a protagonist, relying more on emotion than $10 words or flows.
The two play off each other well, but it's clear here that this is YG's story, and everyone around him are simply supporting characters in his Krazy Life.