Hi and hello, everyone. Slamthony Jamtano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. Weekly Track Roundup time, bringing all the tracks together that have dropped over the past week or so that I thought were worth talking about, addressing, whether I loved them or hated them or felt somewhere in between.

And let's get into the worst tracks of the week.

We have just a handful of those.

Starting with this remix of "whoa" that features Juice WRLD from XXXTENTACION. Do we need to keep dragging this out? Can we just let them rest? I don't see what this remix brings, especially since so many of the lines sound just hyper-punched in, more punched in than Juice WRLD usually sounds. Again, I don't see the drive and appeal here of just continuing to juice, no pun intended, the memories of these guys It's just getting more and more unflattering as we continue on.

We also have this new track over here, LUCKI, "Diamond Stitching". LUCKI once again sounds asleep at the wheel. Totally lifeless, no direction, no voice, no personality, very little in terms of flow, whack beat choice as well. I just don't really get the appeal. I continue to not get the appeal.

And also this new KSI track, "Catch Me If You Can". I feel like this song would sound better and be hotter if this were like 2019, 2018. I feel like KSI came into the industry, was sort of transitioning out – not transitioning out of just making content and streaming and YouTube stuff and so on and so forth. But his transition into music, I feel like he got into doing music and creatively, outside of some tracks here and there where maybe he's gone in more of a pop direction when it's come to tracks that have more of a pure rap style and sound from him. I feel like he's just stagnated. I feel like this is a song he could have come out with four years ago, and I would have been like, Yeah, that's decent for a guy who you don't usually see rapping, for a guy who is in the content space. And there's a lot of, Lord knows, there were a lot of content creators in the late 2010s and mid-2010s who were like, I just want to I'm going to be a rapper now. I'm going to be a rapper. And they made some trash ass rap music. KSI was actually pretty listenable. It was okay. Wasn't as bad as a RiceGum or something like that. Sounded fine for the most part. But I feel like he's just like spinning his wheels in the mud. This just feels like something he could have come out with a long time ago. I'm just not hearing the progress, the change, the anything. It's just whatever.

All right. Moving on from there.

Meh, the songs that I was on the fence with.

You might like them more than me. Starting with a new one from Lil Tecca over here. "OWA OWA" is the title the track, and it's titled after the main sample of the song. That would be the OWA vocals from "Video Killed the Radio Star". So it's a chill, summery, autotune-heavy trap track with some quirky samples that are cool. It's a vibe. It's not mind-blowing, but it's entertaining while it's on. An interesting sample choice for sure, no doubt.

Moving on from there, we have this new one from MAVI over here featuring Earl Sweatshirt. "Landgrab" is the name of the track. Absolutely killer vocal performance and bars from MAVI, honestly. I don't think I've heard the guy sound this alive on a track. Really cool soul chops on the instrumental as well. I'm just not into how short it is. And Earl sounds like he's rapping over an entirely different beat. His flow doesn't even sync up that well with what's going on. He sounds just very out of it while MAVI sounds locked in, and it's just difficult to reconcile that. So, a lot to like. A lot I'm just on the fence with this track. Hopefully, there's more material coming soon that's better.

Moving on from there.

Lorde, "Man of the Year". New track and single that I am on the fence with in a lot of ways. I think it's got some experimental bits that are quite interesting. I think melodically, it's more gripping than her last single for sure. But then toward the end, the song just goes into this very cliché bombastic, over-the-top, millennial pop, almost like a distorted, aggro ballad thing that we've heard done time and time and time again. I don't really think she puts an interesting spin on it. And when the song ends, it just feels like it fizzles out. It just reaches a very chaotic and somewhat noisy peak. And then for the most part, it's done. It's a big buildup for very little payoff. But I will say, the opening verse, the first leg, very strong, very subtle, but pulls you in, loving those bass chords as well, which I thought were a really nice touch. Just the ending just seemed very abrupt and not that great of a payoff, considering how much it was built up to.

We have a new one over here from Bobby Logic, "Bad Motherfucker" is the name of the track. It's not that naughty of a song, though. It just feels like he's going back into acoustic pop rock mode a little bit. It's a tad bit Sublime. It's got some fun bars and parts. I feel like it could have been better if he really leaned into getting real hokey with it, given just how unlikely for a rapper these points of reference are in terms of the instrumental, and just the way the song sounds. Certainly, it's not the worst thing he's done in this style, but it could be better for sure. Doing tracks like this, guitar/bass tracks, so on and so forth, it's not Bobby's strong point yet. We could say yet. We'll say yet.

Moving on from there.

bbno$, hitting us with a new track, "Mary Poppins". I don't know about this hook, man, but the beat and flows are there for the most part, even though at this point, I feel like it just sounds like a very... that standard dancey, somewhat tongue-in-cheek pop rap formula that he's really got nailed down. I mean, he's an entertaining guy. You can't deny that. But it does feel I feel like he's hit a formula at this point, and the song just continues on with that formula. And it's okay, and it's fine.

All right, we have a new one over here from Addison Rae. "Fame is a Gun" is the name of the track. And like usual with a lot of Addison's singles, it just sounds like a lesser version of something I've already heard. I feel like her singles continually prove that she definitely has some cool taste and definitely some interesting reference points here and there, but they always sound behind the curve. None of them sound like they're onto anything entirely new or exciting or putting an interesting spin on any of the stuff that they're borrowing so heavily from. And on top of that, I feel like what really makes this track fall short is just how, I'll say, uninteresting the writing is. I mean, meditating on fame, it's a thing that a lot of artists do these days. It's a narrative we've heard over and over and over and over and over again, whether it be Taylor Swift or Tyler, the Creator or The Weeknd, so on and so forth. There's a lot of artists out here just dropping musical diatribes on their fame, which is fine. But with so much saturation on this topic out there, you've really got to think about ways in which you as an artist are going to bring some interesting or specific spin to this topic that other artists aren't. And I just think Addison falls flat when it comes to that completely with this new track.

All right.

Best tracks of the week.

These are the ones that really stood out to me that I enjoyed. They are as follows.

This new one over here from The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die. "Beware the Centrist" is the name of the track, and it's an absolutely killer one. It's interesting to hear the band not only speak to some really intense and urgent social issues in their music in a very overt way, but also going a very punky and aggressive, post-hardcore direction with the guitars and the vocals as well. Great performance, solid production. Really interesting that they've flipped their sound around quite a bit on this one from some of the sparkly like emo-influenced epics that they used to record back in the day to something just very gruff and, I'll say, material like this. It's pretty sick. It's pretty badass.

All right, moving on from there.

Weyes Blood with Drug Dealer, "Real Thing". That's the name of the new track, new collab from them. And it's got this beautiful, heavily-arranged mid-70s vocal pop songwriter vibe to it. It's totally gorgeous. It's very... it's a wonderful listen. Highly, highly, highly recommend this track for sure. Very excited to, hopefully, hear some more Weyes Blood very soon.

We also have this new one over here that's from Wet Leg, "CPR", opening track to the band's forthcoming album. And it's groovy, low down, almost Viagra Boys-ish, post-punky, garage-rocky vibe to it. Some talk-sung vocals as well. It's fun. It's cool. It's very in vogue. Lots of underground bands doing this thing. Wet Leg themselves have certainly proven to be one of the more interesting artists doing this exact thing in this exact lane. I mean, certainly helpful when it comes to popularizing this groovy post-punky talk sung stuff. So it makes sense that they would continue smashing it when doing so. So yeah, just Wet Leg doing Wet Leg, with maybe some nastier guitars. I'll say that. All right.

We have Tropical F*ck Storm over here coming through with another single from their forthcoming album, "Dunning Kruger's Loser Cruiser". This sounds like Dirty Projectors on bath salts. These guys continue to just specialize in this very art, noise, punk rock, controlled chaos sound that is very difficult to put into words. But I will say, consistently, their music sounds exactly like their album covers.

All right, moving on from there.

HAIM comes through with this single, "Take Me Back", from this forthcoming album – and they've dropped a few – [and this is the first one] that I was actually legitimately impressed with, not only because I thought it was a very good entertaining song, but it felt very, I guess, out of the ordinary for them. It was super lofi, rough, around the edges. It felt like they were doing a bit of an edgy punky underground thing with this track that was just not that slick pop rock sound that they're typically known for, that they typically do very well, but I think hasn't really been hitting on this new album cycle. As far as the singles go, at least for me, I feel like they've written much better songs in the past. But "Take Me Back", I feel like, is a step in the right direction. But with it being the only single that sounds like this, I guess if you enjoy it, I am of the presumption that this might end up being the only song on the album that sounds anything like this. I guess we'll find out, though. But there you go. "Take Me Back", a bit of a rough around the edges banger from HAIM. A very entertaining one.

We have a new one from Ghais Guevara, who's come back with a new single, "Nina Narcissist", is the name of this track. The guy has been building up a lot of momentum as of late, getting some interesting bits of exposure and placements that I feel like a lot of people wouldn't necessarily expect, given just how underground he is. But no, he's making some waves. And it's not hard to see why when you listen to a track like this, that sounds like a song from a parallel the universe where, I don't know, Travis Scott stayed creative and just didn't continue repeating himself over and over and over – not to say he didn't take some risks on his latest album, Utopia, but how goddamn long did it take for him to actually switch things up and try something different? But no, I mean, this does sound like I'm listening to some very nasty, distorted SoundCloud rap, some psychedelic trap, but it's a little more experimental and distorted and lofi and left field and weird. And the autotune sounds all freaking funky. Ghais Guevara is definitely doing something pretty out there with this track, and I respect it while still having some allusions to some mainstream stuff. It's that nice balance between a very odd but also accessible, too.

All right, we also have Clipse. Clipse is back. Pusha T, No Malice, Pharrell production. I'm going to be honest: it sounds like something from Pusha T's last album, which also featured a lot of Pharrell production. But you know what? That's not entirely a bad thing. It sounds like a solid song off of the last Pusha T with a No Malice feature. And also, to be honest, twice, I think No Malice outraps Pusha T on the track. He's got a lot of banger bars and bits of wordplay on there. The Mahatma line, the selling Lady Gaga line. And there was another one as well. There's another line on there that really struck me that always eludes me. I have to come back to it, but still, I very much recommend this track. It's a bop and a half. And if the single, if the first track off this record is sounding this good, I'm pretty excited to hear the rest of Let God Sort Him Out, the forthcoming Clipse album.

We have a track over here that slipped by me. There was a lot of other stuff I was paying attention to, but I have to circle back on this track with Playboi Cardi and NBA YoungBoy. This collab, this crossover that they did that's over this wild, out there, insane, like lofi, 808 heavy, minimal beat. "Alive" is the name of the track. And this song was born out of a weird beef that I'm sure a lot of you guys may have been following between Kanye and Playboi Cardi, when Kanye was deep in the throes of his most recent racist, weird social media bigoted homophobic freakouts on social media. A lot of that vitriol was aimed at Playboi Cardi for reasons that I'm bored with going over and don't want to get into. But in the midst of all this, Kanye releases this track with NBA YoungBoy, and apparently, there's a backstory to this track. It's not just simply a Kanye / NBA YoungBoy song. It is, in fact, a track that Cardi also had some inclusion in. And then Cardi released his own version of the song. That is this version that I'm talking about down below. It is called The Live. And it's actually a really thrilling and exciting track. Like NBA, lyrically and vocally, is in rare form on the track, sounding very coherent and very lucid in his focus, in his performance. He sounds absolutely hungry on this track. And then Cardi himself also the same. He's like, rapping on the song and sounds absolutely sick doing it, even with that weird deep vocal pitch on his voice. And I love the instrumental as well. It's got a very nasty industrial hip hop vibe to it that reminds me of early 2010s Kanye, even little Death Grips to an extent as well. I don't anticipate either these guys are going to drop another track like this anytime soon. So this may just be like a unique one-off standout moment. But I'm digging this track quite a bit. It's a pretty sick one, I'll say that. All right.

Alice Longyu Gao, one of the most interesting figures in underground pop today, continuing to be interesting with this Turn Up Music Volume One single that has been released attached to the track "Let the Music Talk", which is this hilarious meta-commentary on music that features a lot of talking, and there's a lot of music with a lot of people yapping on it these days. And it seems like Alice is just trying to get in on the fun a little bit with a talk song track as well, but doing it in such a way to where it's ironic and tongue-in-cheek and very aggressive and over-the-top. But yeah, very entertaining track. Loving this one. Will be turning up to this music for sure.

And then we have this new one from Alex G, "Afterlife" is the name of the cut. Alex G, once again, giving us a bit of a rock ballad that sounds vaguely late '80s, early '90s. It's interesting. The last lead single to his previous album had almost, again, a '90s rock ballad, Soul Asylum flair to it is what I want to say. And it feels like he's operating in a similar air on this one, maybe a bit more jangle pop. Sounds fantastic, frankly. But yeah, loving this track quite a bit. I think it's one of his better songs, frankly. He's just really got his finger on an interesting rock pulse that not a lot of artists have their finger on, honestly. And I guess to a degree, that's always been the case. But I feel like he's doing a better job lately of just writing more focused songs around those sounds. And "Afterlife", I feel like, is just another piece of proof of that progression. But yeah, loving this track. Again, loving how jangly it is. Feels a little REM, too. Feels REM, just like very early '90s college rock. If you're into those early '90s college rock vibes, give this track a listen.

All right, that is going to be the Weekly Track Roundup. You guys are the best.

Anthony Fantano, Weekly Tracks, Forever.