Major Lazer: BBQ not included, but completely necessary
This pretty well sounds completely badass. Major Lazer is a collaboration between Diplo and Switch, the pair that brought you M.I.A.'s Paper Planes last year, a song that is perfect in itself and for which I have since discovered it is impossible to do a bad remix (even Wreckx-N-Effect Rump Shaker seems to work pretty well--yeah I don't understand why either).
As you can see, Major Lazer is a cartoon character, a la Gorillaz, something about a Jamaican commando to whom something bad happened in the 80's and...actually, I don't really care, because don't watch cartoons while I listen to music.
I tend to like the hipster version of any kind of local ethnic music better ("this music speaks to me!") and Major Lazer's version of Jamaican dancehall is no exception. It's easy quick access to the soundz, and they have most of the biggest vocalists and collaborators from the scene anyway. Plus, it lets you go all meta on a "When I fuck her all night"-type song, as in "What U Like".
And I think I really like Annie Mac Mini Mix, which is included in full on their Myspace page at the moment. 80's mainstream pop tune? Check. Autotune? Check. You might think you know where this is going after that. But you probably don't. Because it is mostly random. Great use of a Nirvana sample too.
Great pitchfork review, rightly recommending this be used as a soundtrack to this summer
-Kern
