The trillest JFK impersonator around teams up with the hottest lips in indie for a smooth new track.
There is a sick twisted pleasure in watching the trainwreck that is Lana Del Rey. Should we even call her Lana? Or is it May Jailer? Or is it Lizzy Grant? As a career musician that has reinvented herself (and her lips) more times than Prince, she has been the subject of endless scrutiny amongst blogs, finding herself under the very unforgiving public microscope. Despite all the controversy, the girl’s vocal talents are undeniable and, on record, she sings in a smooth, sultry tone reminiscent of classic vocalists. Her live performances are where she seems to misstep. Her bafflingly disconnected Saturday Night Live performance left America scratching their heads, wondering what Lana had up her sleeve next.
A$AP Rocky, however, is quite the opposite. Fully embraced by the hip-hop community, his debut mixtape LiveLoveA$AP received universal acclaim and led to him signing a $3,000,000 record deal with Sony before it even dropped. A$AP teamed up with Del Rey for the track “My Bitch” (previously titled “Ridin’”), a Kickdrums produced jam originally scheduled to appear on the production duo’s mixtape Follow The Leaders. When an in-studio preview of the collaboration leaked online back in April, the eager response to the song caused Rocky to pull it from the mixtape and save it for his upcoming commercial debut LongLiveA$AP, due out September 11.
Yesterday, Del Rey’s video for her single “National Anthem“, featuring A$AP Rocky as former president JFK and the songstress as his muse Jackie O, went viral. Hours later, “My Bitch” was released to the blogosphere, sending the Lana/A$AP mania into full force. The smooth hip-hop production totes a flute not dissimilar to the pan flute featured on Rocky’s recent single “Goldie” and has Del Rey boasting on the hook.
“I wanna be the object of your affection,” she swoons, sounding surprisingly comfortable on the beat.
Hip-hop hook-duty may be the “gangster Nancy Sinatra’s” calling, as her poignant presence on the track suggests. Rocky soon comes through with his unmistakable flow that rides the track perfectly. “Lana, Lana, tell ‘em what it is. Tell ‘em that you do it, and you mean to do it big,” he encourages. As part of the demographic that has been perplexed by Del Rey’s direction in the past, I couldn’t agree more with Rocky’s suggestion.
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