I don’t have a cute little theme for this week’s blend other than this: #ghetto palms. I guess technically I could have fit four XXXXs into refixxxx but that’s got to stop somewhere (I don’t even know what you’d have to do in this chat-roulette era to justify a pentuple X-rating but I am sure it would be icky). If there is a river that runs through this palmcast, though, that river is named Lil Wayne. This week Wayne turned up next to Jovi Rockwell on a Flo Rida track, got remixed by some cumbianuts and was even paid tribute by post-coupe auteurs Zaza Twins when they chopped up a hyperventilating female speak & spell repeating their name into Millie-like retardation. All that and somehow was still back in his cell for lights out. I think it just goes to show that Wayne is approaching the saturation point where—like Shabba, Jay-Z and a handful of others—he is just a constant reference point for every sub-culture from Egypt to UK to Buenos Aires. I guess you could call this the “Drop the World” blend.
GP102 Drop the World Blend
Flo Rida f. Jovi Rockwell and Lil Wayne, “Fresh I Stay pt. 2”
Lil Wayne, “Drop the World” (Sonora refix)
Os Havaianos, “Um Pente e Um Pente” (Samba Funk Vol. 1)
Zaza Twins, “A Millie Version”
Zaza Twins, “Coupe Decale instrumental Avril 2009”
Matt Shadetek, “iHop” (Flowers EP)
Download: GP102 Drop the World Blend
Right after Wayne comes some baile funk dudes called Os Havaianos. I’ve been trying to trick someone to do a guest palmcast covering recent developments in funk for like a year plus and everyone who knows about that stuff swears that the whole genre has fallen offa shape and is not worth touching on. But somebody should have told me about these kids because it turns out that when you put legitimate samba drum-choirs into the SP-1200 favela blender instead of sappy freestyle or battery brain, it gets good again.
Then come the Zaza Twins. Boima put me up on them back when but I was recently reminded how crazy their stuff is by my fellow palmista Sarah Bentley (she wrote the Esau Mwamwaya cover story for the Africa issue and her recent interview with the inventor of the Dutty Wine is one of my favorite pieces of online journalism). Lastly there’s a track from Matt Shadetek’s forthcoming Flowers project which drops June 8th—excellent throughout but not particularly tropical except for the helium-voiced synths of “iHop” which I’m pretty sure were inspired by shangaan electro. Onna other hand It’s always possible that he just went so deep into Detroit that he arrived in Africa by mistake.
