So it’s spring time and apparently sex is in the airwaves. It started with Major Lazer’s "Hold the Line." Then Cham and Santigold did the booty call collabo "Call Mi." Then somebody messed up and passed the number to Demarco and Busy and the phone sex jams have um, multiplied forthwith.
Phone Sex Blend:
Cham f. Santigold, "Call Mi"
Major Lazer f. Santigold and Mr. Lexx, "Hold the Line" (Ghislain Poirier rmx)
Demarco, "She Can’t Wait"
Busy Signal, "Da Style Deh"
Busy Signal, "Nah Ansa"
Busy Signal, "The Ansa"
Download: Ghetto Palms Phone Sex Blend
The Cham joint is labeled a Madhouse release which means it’s a Dave Kelly production but with the crazy surf guitar hook and crunk half-tempo it sounds like he flipped the basic elements of the Major Lazer tune. Santi, as usual, is the best thing about any track she’s on, which is saying a mugfull because not many vocalists could put their bars after a soundclash-ready artist like Cham and come away with their kneecaps intact.
I won’t speak much on "Hold the Line" since it has already been parsed to def but it had to be represented and the Poirier remix, with its manic soca meets b-more wuk up made a nice segue into the Demarco tune. "She Can’t Wait" might be my favorite song of the week in a guilty pleasure kinda way. Active ingredients include: 1) a trance-soca meets ragtime vamp, 2) Demarco singing his heart out with real emotion about the hardships a woman must feel when the fuck a come down pon her and of course 3) a phone call intro from said woman which leaves no room for doubt about the seriousness of the situation. Also he says "bag of mouth" which is my favorite piece of patois.
For non-guilty pleasure check any Busy Signal 45 (or let’s be real, mp3) of the last few months. He must be testing Sizzla for the most prolific artist title, because less than a year after his LP he has accumulated enough sterling tunes for another album or two. The last few weeks alone have found him licking back Sly & Robbie’s "Murder She Wrote" riddim (? expect this to feature in Ghetto Palms in the near future), voicing Sergio Mendes’ carnival classic "Magalenha," whistling the hook from Suzanne Vega’s "Tom’s Diner," covering Phil Collin’s "One More Night," and whatever the dholak meets yodeling of "Da Style Deh" is. (In fact I was tempted to break the theme and blend it into some bollywood or middle eastern drumming and I spent half my recording time looking for Hossam Ramzy’s "Baladi Plus" before I remembered it was probably in the CD wallet that Rekha accidentally gave away to visiting UK DJ Adil Ray in the middle of a particularly drunken Basement Bhangra.)
Anyway, my point is, we should not surprised if Busy turns in not one but two phone sex jams and outdoes everybody else in terms of phone interludes, ringtones, vibration sounds and concepts (one tune is "The Ansa," the other “Nah Ansa.” Although I put them here in abridged form, these songs are all worth listening to in their entirety—so ask me nice and maybe I’ll make some of them freeloads.
