Tracks of the week reviewed: Rosalía ft Travis Scott, Diplo, Rak-Su

This week we’ve got a reggaeton rage-out, a Capital FM banger, and some very low-budget Afrobeat

Rosalía ft Travis Scott
TKN

Rosalía’s here to rescue summer with two minutes and nine seconds of furious reggaeton. TKN reunites her with Travis Scott six months after his Highest in the Room remix, and the song’s social distancing message is clear: no new friends and trust nobody. “We don’t fuck with people we don’t know,” warns Rosalía (in Spanish). A rule for life – or at least a pandemic.

Diplo ft Thomas Rhett & Young Thug
Dance With Me

Bad news: Diplo’s “gone country” because (checks notes) he wore a cowboy hat once and quite liked it? Dance With Me is an unwelcome country/tropical house combination, like that weird streaming playlist fodder that sounds like everything and nothing at the same time, elevated only by Young Thug turning up to sing eight nonsensical lines about choppers, texting and equations.

Rak-Su
Palm Tree

It’s easy to forget Rak-Su are still A Thing – they won The X Factor in 2017, just before everyone including Simon Cowell lost interest in it – and have been quietly releasing forgettable singles ever since. The Afrobeats-inspired Palm Trees is suitably low budget – explaining “I don’t have the funds for a flight right now,” but there’s a possibility that “one day” they’ll see a palm tree. Get yourself down the garden centre, lads, there’s loads.

Jason Mraz ft Tiffany Haddish
You Do You

In a combination seemingly pulled out of a dream diary after a night on the brie, Jason Mraz’s new single is a reggae track featuring Girls Trip actor and Beyoncé-bite whistleblower Tiffany Haddish, with a video where he … rides a giant cat. You Do You is all very #positivevibes, with lyrics such as “I know that any goal I wanna reach starts in my mind / I’m kinda dope ’cause I’m one of a kind” – and therefore is also totally unlistenable.

Orville Peck

No Glory in the West

Orville Peck is back and he’s ditched his mournful cowboy vibes, put a donk on it and gone D&B. Not really! He’s still doing heartbreakingly beautiful country music, and while this is ostensibly not a sad song – all our masked hero really wants to do is “hit the road with a dollar or two” – it’s still a deliciously melancholic misery-banger.

Contributor

Issy Sampson

The GuardianTramp

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