The Way You Keep It Hot

Dijon “Another Baby!”

“Another Baby” is clearly referencing some mid-to-late 80s pop in its structure and production touches – I’m mainly picking up Prince, Jam & Lewis, and Scritti Politti – but the actual sound of the track is a bit warped and inside-out, making it feel more like it’s a dispatch from the future than a retro pastiche. Dijon’s lyrical subject essentially paraphrases the words of one of his obvious touchstones – “if love is good let’s get 2 rammin’” – but with an emphasis on procreation. This only becomes apparent as the song moves along, and the focus shifts from “come on, let’s have sex” to him hard-selling the notion of expanding the family. Maybe I’ve just been listening to the wrong things my whole life but the lyrical conceit here strikes me as somewhat novel, and the execution is just the right balance of sexy and funny. (About 70/30, let’s say.)

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Kaytranada featuring TLC “Do It! (Again!)”

It probably isn’t hard to flip a sample from anything on TLC’s Crazysexcool and end up with a cool song – the source material is top shelf, and just hearing a little snippet of T-Boz’s distinctively smoky voice can carry the vibe of a whole song. But Kaytranada goes far beyond that, reworking some elements from the bridge of “Let’s Do It Again” into an entirely different musical phrase. It makes me very curious what the starting point for chopping this up was. Has he heard this specific potential in the song for 31 years? Was this how he heard it in a dream or something? Was he just screwing around and landed on something sublime? If you know, don’t tell me. It’s more fun for these things to be a little mysterious.

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