HIP-HOP
Ill Mind of Hopsin 5
Hopsin, digital release; streaming here.
"You been brainwashed by a fake life," the L.A. rapper with the freaky white eyes rants about the misspent youth of kids who take the rap lifestyle way too seriously. Yet they lap it up: This amusing diatribe had more than one-million views in its first day online.
POP/ROCK
Let's Fall in Love
Mother Mother, from the forthcoming The Sticks (Last Gang Records); streaming here.
Let's do it – let's write a song that shadows the lyrics of a Cole Porter classic, but that sounds totally different. Grainy big guitars pound out the valentine chorus of this infectious single, which shows the Vancouver quintet inching towards a heavier sound.
ROCK
Headache
Metz, from the forthcoming Metz (SubPop); streaming here.
The hardest thing is to make the simplest thing sound new. Toronto rockers Metz get down to basics and then some, in a textured abrasive head-banger that pounds a few fresh dents in the battered old chassis of punk.
INDIE SOUL
Hector (Hoxton Hall Session)
Cold Specks, from I Predict a Graceful Expulsion (Arts & Crafts); streaming here.
The gospel-channelling singer from Etobicoke, who last week made the short list for the Polaris Prize, gives a strong, live-off-the-floor performance backed by a couple of big horns and a rhythm section. No pitch-correction shenanigans here, just a truth-telling song in the raw.
VIDEO
New Lands
Justice, from Audio, Video, Disco (Ed Banger Records); streaming here.
It took a French electronic music duo and a Catalan video producer (the confusingly named Canada) to re-envision America's national game as a bloody amalgam of football, baseball, lacrosse, roller derby and motocross. Like the music, the video is really about the present reanimating the past's view of the future.