Tag: Wiz Khalifa

Saturday Flashback: Kelly Rowland feat. Wiz Khalifa – Gone

“Who needs the artistic bit?”

Tom: I reckon, Tim, that your thoughts on this will be very much coloured by whether you recognise the track it’s sampling.

Tim: Ooh, is it Basshunter’s Now You’re Gone?

Tim: Oh, it isn’t. But yes, yes I do.

Tom: Because I do. And it’s a folk music classic. Or a slightly more modern pop classic. Or… well, yes, Counting Crows covered it too.

Here’s my problem with this: it never resolves the chorus. Yes, fine, occasionally you’ve got the “got ’til it’s gone” line in there, but the actual resolution is the next line, “they paved paradise” and so on. That’s important. And it’s just not here.

Tim: That’s a very, very good point you’re making, but there’s the question you’re bypassing here which is: why include the sample?Just reusing it because they can? Because the lyrics fit? Or to give it a recognisable hook to hand an otherwise fairly dull track on? Because if it’s the latter: you’ve got the recognisable bit. Who needs the artistic bit?

Tom: Well, apparently no-one. And sure, you could say they’re doing something original and new. I don’t know, you could use a word like ‘recontextualising’ or something. Fine. Except Janet Jackson did the same thing twenty years ago, and that didn’t resolve either.

Tim: Bastards, all of them.

Tom: Harsh.

Tim: Fair.

Maroon 5 feat. Wiz Khalifa – Payphone

Adam Levine sounds increasingly like a parody of himself.

Tom: It’s time for a stupidly high-budget video disrupted by sound effects!

Tim: That is BRILLIANT.

Tom: In fact, it’s so distracting that I’m going to put an unofficial lyric video in here, and we can work from that instead.

Tim: Oh, fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uTF9Z6cjb4

Tom: Adam Levine sounds increasingly like a parody of himself; there’s a fine line between “recognisable voice” and “Kermit the Frog”. Still, he hasn’t crossed it yet, and when the chorus is this good I think we can forgive occasional bits of nasality. And the usual one or two swear words – just enough to create an “explicit” version to seem edgy, but not so much that they have to censor every other word.

Tim: Indeed – edgy is cool, whereas Kid Cudi just sounds like he’s got a particularly bad stutter.

Tom: Oh wait! It’s time for a rap bit that announces itself with a good bit of profanity.

Tim: Hooray!

Tom: It’s not as bad as it could be, though; Wiz Khalifa’s always had a more laid-back flow that fits into a pop record. Here’s my general rule for rap middle eights in 2012: “it could be worse; it could be Pitbull.”

Tim: That’s true. It also doesn’t last particularly long, which is nice. Actually, strike that—it does, but I was too engrossed in that first video to notice it. Oh well.

Tom: Good song though.

Tim: Indeed, and we must ensure that it gets top 10, so that Radio 1 are either broadcasting explosions over the airwaves or the official expletive-filled lyric video over the internet.