Speaking of unexpected collaborations… With the release of the video of La Roux’ hit single, In For The Kill, last week, there was talk about how Kanye actually helped her on the remix of the song which made me wondered if it was on the production side, or if he had actually dropped a verse, well seems like he did a little of both and a new version of the video that was released last week will even be released in the upcoming days.

updated with dirty version of the song.

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download : La Roux – In For The Kill ft. Kanye West (Dirty Remix)

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download : La Roux – In For The Kill ft. Kanye West (Remix)

While Quicksand was her debut single, In For The Kill, was La Roux’ first major breakthrough and success. She released a video for the song back then featuring a car looking alot like the Delorean in Back To The Future and the whole 80 vibe matching it.

According to her Wikipedia page, In for the Kill sales 600% after being played on this season of HBO Entourage. Well seems like the immense success and new found [again] popularity that she gained following this feature gave her a good enough reason to reissue a video with a bigger budget and trading the whole Back To The Future vibe to something that looks more like the boardgame Clue, but in live action in a the historic Hotel Chealsea in NYC.

update: Re-reading the email I’ve received promoting the video, they’re saying that this is actually the second single of La Roux? They probably mean second single on North American soil, because this is not her second single overall. But it would definitely explain the release of a new version of the video as I thought it was quite an odd marketing move to re-release a video for the song for no particular reason apart having being a hit on Entourage.

Oh and La Roux is also gearing up for her North American tour starting next month where she will be visiting a handful of cities supported by Francis and the Lights aswell as Far East Movement.

Don’t Miss Your Chance to Catch La Roux In Your Town!:
*These dates feature Francis and the Lights as support
** These dates feature both Francis and the Lights and Far East Movement

11/1 Ft. Lauderdale, FL – Culture Room*
11/2 Orlando, FL – Hard Rock*
11/4 Tampa, FL – Ritz*
11/5 Atlanta, GA – Tabernacle*
11/7 Baltimore, MD – Rams Head Live **
11/9 Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero **
11/10 Washington, DC 0 9:30 Club **
11/12 Providence, RI – Lupos*
11/13 Hartford, Conn – Webster Hall*
11/15 Boston, MA – House Of Blues **
11/17 New York, NY – Terminal 5 **

download : La Roux – In For The Kill

Fresh from his upcoming project, The Revox Suite, the Canadian artist give us a second sneak peek of what’s to come with the complete makeover and mash up of La Roux’s Bulletproof with Nicki Minaj’s verse that was featured on Monster.

“Bulletproof Monster”, the second installment in The Revox Suite , was a challenging experiment. The acapella of Nicki Minaj’s verse from “Monster” is in a vault somewhere so I was forced to use it with Kanye’s beat underneath, which made adding new vocals tricky. I also had to digitally alter La Roux’s “Bulletproof” melody to make it fit the “Monster” beat. Add my revox to that and it feels like I’ve created a musical Frankenstein. Fitting, I think. Enjoy this “Bulletproof Monster”.

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download : Colin Munroe – Bulletproof Monster

The eclectic duo of DJs/producer Thomas Wesley Pentz and Dave Taylor, alias Diplo and Switch, are back once again with a brand new project under the Major Lazer persona. It’s been a year now that they’ve ignited every dance floors with their first release, Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do, and I guess they were not satisfied as they are setting everything back on fire with the release of Lazerproof. Major Lazer hooks up with British pop artist La Roux (if the name wasn’t a enough to tell) and much like M.I.A. and Santogold, the partnership is nothing else than perfect as the 14 tracks mixtape will demonstrate… everything seems to fall into places without too much effort.

Everything was apparently put together during a little visit to Jamaica and features a handful of features like Gucci Mane, Drake, Gyptian, Rusko and Amanda Blank.

1. Bulletproof (Nacey Remix) [ft. Matt Hemerlein]
2. Colourless Artibella
3. I’m Not Your Lemonade + Heroes ‘N’ Villains Remix [ft. Gucci Mane]
4. Independent Kill [ft. Candi Redd?]
5. Keep It Fascinating
6. Magic (Falling Soldiers Dub)
7. In 4 the Kill Pon De Skream [ft. Drake?]
8. Houstatlantavegas Pains?
9. Tigerlily (DYWHAP Blend) [ft. Rusko]
10. Can’t Stop Now (Armor Love Remix)
11. Quicksand (Mad Decent 2010 Rerub) [ft. Amanda Blank]
12. Cover My Eyes (Costra Nostra Edit)
13. I Said It (Major Lazer Dubplate) [ft. Opal?]
14. Hold Yuh (Double Dubplate) [ft. Gyptian]

download : Major Lazer and La Roux Presents : LazerProof

Remember when I posted that Slim Tongue Sugar’s track In For The Kill which was using a sample of British artist La Roux? Well someone named K-Word of the hip-hop group True 2 Life Music decided to send me a track that was also sampling In For The Kill of La Roux, but putting a darker twist to the mix… To be honest, I get so many emails in my inbox, that I don’t get the time to read them all, so I actually get picky to the one I read and let me tell you that having anything La Roux related with the email is always a good way to get me to open the email in the first place.

It was the first time I heard of True 2 Life Music, but I can see that they’ve been getting some exposure as of late, opening for Wale & Wiz Khalifa and collaborating with the such of DJ Booth and for a good reason, I mean this track definitely sounds good so it’s no wonder that they’re starting to make a name for themselves. Expect to see their name popping off here and there in the upcoming months and what not because like I said, they seems to be on the up and up lately.

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download : True 2 Life Music – For The Kill

STS aka Sugar Tongue Slim is an emcee born out of Atlanta, but hailing from the city where it’s always sunny (Philadelphia). I’ve been following him for awhile now… ever since he dropped his debut mixtape, Demand More, back in 2008. Part of the new school of hip-hop, he’s been on the up and up ever since collaborating with established names like DJ Jazzy Jeff, Beanie Seagal, Nas and many more. He’s about to drop a new mixtape entitled Demand More 2 and this is the first leak out of it sampling In For The Kill of British artist La Roux, another out of the box artist to sample, adding her to the list next to Coheed and Cambria that he sampled on his first mixtape.

Be sure to be on the look out for STS as his dynamic and versatile style definitely adds to his already established mass appeal making it impossible for him to not explode on the scene.

“No breaks in my immediate, the future ain’t that far away / I put so much in my rhymes that I might write a bar a day”

BY THE WAY, this is the right way to sample a song, you should take notes Jason Derulo, because that Whatcha Say is a blatant copy/paste, we don’t need another Timbo on our hands…

download : STS – In For The Kill ft. La Roux

download : Phoenix – 1901
download : Phoenix – Lisztomania

download : Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move

download : The Lonely Island – I’m On A Boat ft. T-Pain

download : Animal Collective – My Girls

download : Simian Mobile Disco – Audacity of Huge ft. Chris Keating

download : Grizzly Bear – While We Wait For The Others

download : Jay-Z – Empire State of Mind ft. Alicia Keys

download : Clipse – Kinda Like A Big Deal ft. Kanye West

download : Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll

worth mentionning : The xx – Islands, Metric – Help I’m Alive, Empire of the Sun – Standing On The Shore, Japandroids – Young Hearts Spark Fire, Camera Obscura – French Navy, La Roux – Bulletproof, Florence + The Machine – You’ve Got The Love

If last year retrospective was called ‘Laisse Moi Tranquille 2008‘ since it was quite fitting considering the fact that I wanted nothing else from it, 2009 on the other hand was quite different, like I said in my previous post, it shared it’s own of ups and downs but the pace was more stable than 2008… leaving me time to breathe, which was a very good thing.

Anyway, I’ve always found that making lists was a bit egotastic as everyone has different tastes and rarely you will find an universal list for anything, at least a list that is ranked. Which is why, my lists are not actually ranked as I also find it very hard to put music in order, especially when so many good albums came out in 2009.

I highly suggest to check out the albums that I listed down below if you never did or heard of them before. They’re also accompagnied by reviews, a thing that I never (or rarely) did before, something I’ll probably look up to in twenty ten.

download : Phoenix – 1901

download : Florence + The Machine – You’ve Got The Love

download : KiD CuDi – Heart Of A Lion

download : Mr. Hudson – Time

download : Grizzly Bear – Ready, Able

download : Animal Collective – My Girls

download : Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move

download : Passion Pit – Little Secrets

download : Miike Snow – Silvia

worth mentioning: Jay-Z – Blueprint 3, Handsome Furs – Face Control, Metric – Fantasies, Japandroids – Post-Nothing, Patrick Watson – Wooden Arms, Fever Ray – Fever Ray, Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz, La Roux – La Roux, Bat For Lashes – Daniel, The xx – xx

ps. I had to make them as images, because I couldn’t format my post in ‘advanced html’ with the use of <div> nor <table> … somehow Tumblr does not allow that.

I’m just going to put it out there, but am I the only one to find Elly Jackson somewhat pretty? I don’t know, just had to say it I guess. Anyway, here’s the video for her fourth single off her debut self-titled album.

download : La Roux – I’m Not Your Toy

So we’re already six months in 2009 and well into the seventh … here’s a little shortlist of what I thought best of what was released so far (in no particular order). I know Top 30 might seems like an odd number, but I just wrote down songs off the top of my head and it ended up around 28, so i added 2 more to reach 30. You might also notice that I play around with the release dates of the songs, some of them leaked in 2008 and are still on the list, because they were officially released in 2009 and so on … anyway, here it is in no particular order.

download : Mr. Hudson – Supernova ft. Kanye West
download : Dan Black – Symphonies
download : Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move
download : Phoenix – Liztomania
download : Lupe Fiasco – Shining Down ft. Matthew Santos
download : Camera Obscura – French Navy
download : Clipse – Kinda Like A Big Deal ft. Kanye West
download : Little Boots – New In Town
download : Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll
download : Phoenix – 1901
download : The Lonely Island – I’m On A Boat ft. T-Pain
download : N.A.S.A – Gifted ft. Kanye West, Lykke Li & Santigold / Aoki Remix
download : Animal Collective – My Girls
download : Metric – Help I’m Alive / Acoustic
download : Kid CuDi – Make Her Say ft. Kanye West, Common & A-Trak
download : Frankmusik – Better Off As Two
download : Coeur de Pirate – Umbrella (Rihanna Cover)
download : Timid Tigers – Are You Gonna Go My Way ft Lenny Kravitz, Ludacris & Notorious B.I.G.
download : Manchester Orchestra – I’ve Got Friends
download : Kanye West – Paranoid ft. Mr. Hudson / Big Sean Remix
download : Grizzly Bear – Two Weeks
download : Keri Hilson – Turnin’ Me On ft. T-Pain & Lil Wayne (Remix)
download : Passion Pit – Moth’s Wings
download : Drake – Best I’ve Ever Had
download : Simian Mobile Disco – Audacity of Huge ft. Chris Keating
download : Bat For Lashes – Daniel
download : Asher Roth – I Love College / Chamillionaire Remix
download : Chester French – She Loves Everybody / Shawn Chrystopher Remix
download : Daniel Merriweather – Change ft. Wale
download : La Roux – Quicksand
download : Handsome Furs – I’m Confused

Oh and Charles Hamilton getting punched in the face by his on/off girlfriend, that shit was priceless …

ps. I wanted to squeeze in I’m Not Alone of Calvin Harris, but couldn’t find the mp3 on any of my computers and neither on the web.

And that will be all folks.