Remember that time we forced Idris Elba to listen to Skepta and he did his best Skepta impression over the phone and then, shortly after, released his own remix of "Shutdown"? Or that time we picked the brains of Cradle of Filth frontman Dani Filth to find out what The Sound of Summer 2015 would be and he predicted "Ibiza" by The Prodigy ft. Sleaford Mods (can't win them all, I guess)? Well now that Summer 2015 is - just like jokes about #piggate - over, we thought we'd better get in touch with someone else to cast a critical eye over some of the singles that have emerged in the last couple of months. Who better for the job than Will Young?
In 2015 alone, Will Young has described David Cameron as a "really cross maths teacher", the 2015 election as "a wet fart", Simon Cowell as "obnoxious" and, when asked about Kanye West, replied "Who is this man?" Plus, he's been in the industry for fifteen years and happens to know his shit (apparently he completed the writing for his most recent album, 85% Proof, in just 10 days). So, we sent Will Young six of our favourite songs at the moment, and he reviewed them all, down the blower, from the comfort of a Tesco car park.
SLIM JESUS - "DRILL TIME"
Noisey: Hey Will! So, what do you think of Slim Jesus, "Drill Time"?
Will Young: I can’t get over this man, or boy….
I think he’s 15 years old in that video.
I must profess, I didn’t get to see all of it. My connection dropped because I was in a Tesco car park. I read some interesting things on it - some people saying, “oh, he’s got more attention because he’s white," and then Eminem obviously comes into the mix, and then someone else was saying, "well it’s actually a perfect parody because they’re holding up guns, but they’re toy guns though they look like real guns." I didn’t get to see the whole thing so I couldn’t listen to the full lyrical content, so I can come back to you on that one in terms of what the story’s saying, but what is his story?
Well, I think he’s just like a kid who, like you know, like a lot of these people, they just uploaded videos not expecting much and he’s had lots of co-signs from various different people in US hip-hop. I don’t think people know loads about him apart from the fact that that video has become quite controversial just because they’re so young and toting guns and drugs and the rest of it, and also because he’s quite good.
My favourite bit actually, when I was interested, is one of the dudes holding out a wad of cash and he holds the cash to his ear as if it’s a mobile phone, and I was like, “Okay that’s quite cool actually!” I’m taking it more as a video, which I shouldn’t do, but I thought that was kind of genius. I’m not a massive fan of all the gun things and I can’t imagine anyone who is, so I don’t really know about shock-value or what.
ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER - "I BITE THROUGH IT"
This is probably the weirdest one we'll play you today: Oneohtrix Point Never.
It's my favourite one. It’s amazing, it’s amazing! It starts off and then suddenly, unashamedly, it just goes quiet. It’s a beautiful serene moment for like five seconds and then it comes back in again. That kind of music can be really shit but what I love about it is they do it in 4/3, which I think is always interesting. I don’t know anything about them, I don’t know what their roots are, but it’s got a little bit of a sense of improvised jazz in there and I think that’s probably because of the beat. If they’ve stuck to a 4/3 beat you know that they’re really thinking about it, because you’ve got to make a choice to make that sort of time signature. You don’t just do it randomly. It takes you on a kind of – much overused word – but it takes you on a journey, and I think it’s really beautiful, actually. Really, really beautiful and I’d buy it. I’d absolutely buy it!
This could be our winner today!
It’s a complete winner for me and it could have been a disaster. There’s real thought behind it, and it’s a bit like when you go and see contemporary dancers dance and it can either be just the worst thing you’ve ever seen in your life and you think, “I want to kill these people”, you know, or they just get it right. The difference between getting it right and getting it wrong is the intention and the exploration behind it and I get a sense that they haven’t just thrown this together and I’m really interested in them.
JAMMER - "ROYAL RUMBLE" (FT. EVERYONE)
Noisey: Here's Jammer, featuring 20 other guys. Are you feeling this?
Will: So, I’m a big fan of rap and hip-hop. I mean, I’m a big fan of the hip-hop stars from the 90s. I thought it was a really interesting time then - I'm just giving you some context here. What I loved about people like the Wu-Tang and one of my favourite rappers, Method Man - or even now, more modern rappers like Mos Def - is that the music is fantastic. However, I don’t think that the production is brilliant on this track.
It’s quite Windows 95-y, a lot of the grime production.
Grime’s amazing because it’s so stereo, in your face, and fresh - it’s got that street feel. If you get it right, it’s super exciting. If I think of people that have got it right over the years, one of them’s completely eluding my mind now, but you know, even people like Tinie Tempah at the beginning. Who’s the other one that I’m completely forgetting? Oh god…
Dizzee, Wiley?
Dizzee, of course! I don’t think the quality of the production’s that great and also I can’t hear what they’re saying!
It’s hard to make out the lyrics?
Well, I can’t make out the lyrics and the whole thing about rap is that you want to hear what they’re saying. So, to be honest, it’s very hard to form an opinion on it because I can’t tell what they’re saying, so I sort of draw a little bit of a blank with that.
Have you ever been on sites like Rap Genius and stuff where people are arguing over what different lines mean, and all that kind of thing?
No, but it sounds amazing because I think it sounds like a sort of musical modern way of looking at lyrical content. You know, I mean it’s no different to sitting in a class and studying plays and literature, so you know, I think it’s brilliant to be able to digest what someone’s saying. It doesn’t really matter.
I just typed in ‘Will Young’ into Genius. Quite a lot of tracks on here, you can see what people think they’re about.
I never look at anything to do with me, I just plough on. Plough on regardless!
CARLY RAE JEPSEN - "RUN AWAY WITH ME"
Shall we do the next one, Carly Rae Jepsen?
Now this is interesting, because I met her on Alan Carr recently.
How was that?
It was a coincidence. I hadn’t heard of her but apparently she’d had this massive hit, but then, you know, I don’t know anything. She’s really cool. There was something about her, because I was expecting a kind of like irritating, LA vacuous American that kind of says "hi" but is really looking over your head, you know, but she was quite the opposite. I liked the fact that she wears sort of slightly mis-matching clothes. Her haircut looks like she’s basically sort of rolled out of bed after drinking a few pints. She was saying that she didn’t really like LA that much and I liked her even more for that. Also, any kind of new pop song that has a saxophone in it is basically a hands-down winner for me.
Right, that’ll push it over the edge?
Yeah. There’s so many crap songs that just start and you just think, “Oh screw this, you know, you’re pulling me in because you think we’ll just shove a dance beat in it and it’ll be great”, so they’re like mediocre songs but you’ll sing along to it in the car, whereas I think she, or whoever writes them, has done something a little bit stylish. She’s got credibility.
I think that’s even one of the more poppy tunes on her new record, which is quite weird and electronic in places.
This is going to sound really weird, well I feel weird saying it, but there’s something a bit Chrissy Hynde about her, maybe it’s just the haircut. I get the sense she doesn’t do processed pop from the conversations that we had. However, the video’s not great, but you can tell they’ve shot that because she’s on the road and they don’t have time.
YOUNG THUG - "BEST FRIEND"
What about the other big hip-hop track which is "Best Friend" by Young Thug.
Love him, love him, love him.
Yeah?
Brilliant! Awesome. He’s got intelligence, real style, and he’s saying something that’s really fresh. Even just the way he looks is brilliant, he’s kind of just this really scrawny dude and I’m excited about that. What’s his story?
Well, he’s a pretty big rapper from Atlanta. On the one hand he’s got ongoing legal battles, including charges that he tried to assassinate Lil Wayne, but then on the other hand he wears tutus on the cover of Dazed and Confused. So, he's a wildcard.
I love him even more now! He sounds like a man that’s really testing what it is to be masculine. That’s right up my street. Anyone who does that - back from Bowie to Grace Jones, Annie Lennox – testing gender, you know, is brilliant.
In the hip-hop community that kind of thing is still quite out there and people ask him if he’s gay or straight or what, and he’s got nothing to do with it. One day he'll day be toting a gun, next he'll be in his leather skirt.
You know who it reminds me of? You know who I wonder if he’s taken influence from? He’s like a mixture of Mos Def and that guy that came out who is gay, the rapper who had that brilliant video set in the school… it features a girl that looks a little bit like a sort of dirtier Mutya from the Sugarbabes and he’s in like a school girl’s outfit and it starts with him in a lecture hall… Zebra Katz!
WILL YOUNG - "JOY"
We’ve now come to this track "Joy" by Will Young...
Can we do this more often, because I’m really enjoying this?
Yeah, we can do it all the time. We can send you our monthly playlist, if you like.
Oh my god, I love it. Please do! And please come to a gig.
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