Hot New Joint Roundup: Boy/Friend, Perfume Genius, and ILLClinton

"I Do That" by Boy/Friend featuring The New Deal

Admittedly, I was slightly late to the party on the R&B singer Boy/Friend. Thanks to the Internet, I was aware of his breathtakingly smart self-released effort last year, Leather Weather. But because I don’t wear any leather, I was foolish in not fully embracing this EP for what it was—smoove R&B, run through heavy, dreamy synths, and got hung up on my morals when it’s just a song about leather jackets and shorties.

Following up Leather Weather and a series of self-released songs via his Soundcloud page, Boy/Friend has returned with the promise of the Low Key EP, and recently released the effort’s first single, “I Do That,” featuring a guest spot from Jason Scott of The New Deal. Again, boasting production from his go-to collaborator MNTN, “I Do That” is both incredibly sincere in its sentiment, but also hilariously contemporary with references to Netflix, Instagram, “Girls,” and using an app to order dinner, amongst other things. Whether it was intentional or not, it’s a peak at what young, modern love looks like in a major metropolitan area. Certainly when Seamless goes under, and the expression “#nofilter” is erased from some future society’s lexicon, “I Do That” will not have aged incredibly well, but that’s obviously not the point. It’s a slice of right now, and that makes it an incredibly urgent song.

Dropping in after the song’s second verse, Scott arrives and delivers his rhymes at a breakneck pace, barely stopping to take a breath. Sure, it’s a little raunchier than the rest of the song (“I’ll eat you out in public”) but nevertheless; it injects a surprisingly fun burst of energy into the track.

Download "I Do That" above via the Souncloud link.

"Queen" by Perfume Genius 

2+ years in today’s music marketplace can feel like an eternity. That’s how long Mike Hedreas’ project Perfume Genius has been away, since he dropped his moody, dark sophomore album Put Your Back N 2 It in February of 2012. In that time, the once fragile songwriting structure has grown by leaps and bounds—imagine the glimmer of bombast on his single, “Hood,” but then multiplied by like a thousand and filtered through a bunch of scuzzy sounding effects.

That’s what you get on the return of Perfume Genius—“Queen,” the first single from the new joint dropping in September, Too Bright.

In their non-review write up of “Queen,” Pitchfork’sresident savant Ian Cohen opens his piece with “Perfume Genius a very aggressive singer-songwriter project.” You have to wondering if Ian Cohen has ever actually listened to the first two Perfume Genius albums before—which were anything but aggressive. But the anger on “Queen” lives up to that descriptor now. Written in response to the “gay panic” that Hadreas sees around him, he confidently sings “No family is safe when I sashay,” as an array of keyboards and sound effects explode behind him.

If “Queen” is to serve as some kind of thesis statement, and a middle finger to a homophobic society, Too Bright should be the sound of Hedreas growing into himself as a songwriter and performer with something to say.

Too Bright arrives on September 22nd via Matador. "Queen" is available now to cop digitally via the iTunes Marketplace. 

"TrILLfluential" by ILLClinton

So the song is called “Trillfluential,” and based on what you know about me, and how trill I try to keeps it, there’s practically no way I could not like it.

Arriving mere months after their most excellent Illanta II, the Atlanta duo of Brennan and Blake Belair—AKA ILLClinton, have returned with a new single, taken from a forthcoming (as yet unnamed) EP.

On “Trillfluential,” Belair takes pitch shifted and reversed vocal samples, packing them tightly into big, spacey synths, backing the whole thing up with trappy beats—in a sense, expanding on many of the production tricks and techniques he explored on Illanta II.

Lyrically, it’s fascinating to see how far MC Brennan has grown—released only a little over a year ago, the duo’s first Illanta effort contains a lot of lyrics about smoking blunts. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But in a short time, Brennan has developed into a rapper with a clearer message. On “Trillfluential,” his flow is incredibly precise—dipping into a little post-Drake style with rapping and then singing on the refrain before the downshifted hook continues—“Always keep it trill until the day a ni**a die,” which, to be #hunnest, is what I would love to see on my headstone.

Based on how enjoyable Illanta II was, and the very promising signs on this single, ILLClinton is an act that is not to be slept on.

"TrILLfluential" is available now in the iTunes Marketplace.