SONG FOR THE MOMENT: KATIE-ƎCHO

4/5

Echo Chamber. 

Zoning like 4 o'clock in the morning. 'Thinkin' 'Bout You' (yeah you). Middle of the night, further East in Japan, trying to write a love song in the same anxious, yearning beauty of vulnerability vein as Maggie Rogers' 'Say It', 'Tahlia' by King Princess, or Haim's 'Night So Long' and the perfect, signature hit from Katie comes on. "Yeah, I don't know why you're messing around with all them other girls/Acting like you've got all of the time left in the world/I promise that if you were mine I'd never let it go to waste, hm/I can tell that you've been hurt before I know because so was I/I know you feel the energy when you look in my eyes/Can you tell the way I feel? I'm obviously yours to take/Because it's 4 o'clock in the morning/And that's about the time I start zoning/Thinkin bout all the ways that I want it/And it's time that you know, you know, you know." If only it was that simple, hey? Singing on the top of a car like Aaliyah...one in a million. But now the South Korean singing sensation Kaite Kim, who shows us that the soul of Seoul music is more than the K-Pop juggernaut BTS or the haze of Heize is back after the 'No Instructions', 'Future Love' and 'Love Kills' songstress that you'd be 'Better Off' listening too, made a killing-let alone a living-on all killer, no filler covers of today's biggest hits to round out her last album (Cambila Cabello's 'Senorita', 'Old Town Road' by Lil Nas X and Khalid's 'Talk'). And the 'Remember' singer who busked one of her biggest hits underground in New York's Subway, before getting hot rapper Ty Dolla $ign to fly over for the music video-let alone jumping on the remix-for the infectious song with the dolphin sound, returns with 'Echo'. Yeah you heard right, 'Ǝcho' is echoing.

LOG this one in your quarantine playlists right now, because we need music at this time more than most. It's like you could taste it. "What have you done, to me/When I hear your voice, it drives me crazy/Ooh, crazy/Thinking about you, lately/Boy, you've been on replay in my mind/And I don’t mind", she sings on the velvet first verse like the rising, right now star she shines as like. Talking about butterflies like Mariah Carey hitting everytime like she does...Katie, not just Mariah. As Kim Bridges the gap with a pre-chorus that will have you singing along, "And I hope you can catch me if I'm falling/'Coz I'm full speed ahead and I just can't slow it down/And I want you to say, so I can just say it out loud/Right now, right now" hooked. Just like the turquoise doorway, 80's futurist trend of this artist artwork lead you straight through toward her latest stunning single and it's neo K-Pop, new age R&B classic chorus line of, "Coz every little thing, all the little things you do/Noticed I'm different when I met you/Something 'bout you, you/Makes me want you, you/Could’ve shut it off, show you out if I wanted to/Bouncing off the walls like I need you/Something 'bout you you, you you/So tell me if you're falling/Like I'm falling, for you/'Coz I'm saying if you do, saying if you do/Echo, Echoing/So tell me if you're falling/Like I'm falling, for you/'Coz I'm saying if you do, saying if you/Echo, Echoing." The Axis of world music is about to change again with this one. Hitting straight out the 'Echo' park, all the way to the home of the Academy award for Best Picture, 'Parasite' Oscar.

Movie like trailers have been teasing this music video drop all week like the album that will surely follow like the amount of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram users about to Spotify suit. As cinematic as they come. Pink roses surround Katie sitting between American muscle, for a black convertible, hearse like in a Batman mirroring modern cave lair whose white lights turn into a blood red room as her heart bleeds for her male lead, suited and Brylcreem booted like the dark knight. And in this chess not checkers, artistic hallmark video to go with the best of her rest, six shooting like the smoke from a revolver. Just wait until she opens the boot like they closed her rose filled coffin on the dead of night 'Thinkin' 'Bout You' movie. Calling home on a payphone in the remote Route 66 like highway middle of somewhere in the tumbleweeds of California, with poolside fashion, this is someone who puts as much in her visual design as she does her music. Let alone style and swagger like RM and those Bangtan boys. This whole clique clip is squad goals. Even if you ride solo like your best friend is the only one you can trust in the end...the echo of yourself. Part 'Thelma and Lousie', other part American Gothic by nightfall. Bathing in a bathtub of bullets for this 'Bonnie and Clyde', Katie explores more edits in the desert, camera work, traditional textures and typography all whilst being surrounded with a classic choreography of dancers who in this locked down age should be at least six feet apart, but remind us during this social distancing how good it used to be and how much we can't wait for it to always be again. As we dance to this song that will echo in the roaring twenties of what this year was supposed to all be about...together. And in this stars trek as spaceships straight out of the EVE online game that all us geeked out nerds will be playing right now in software social quarantine introduce this visual in hyperspace, the star wars between American and Korean pop music has begun with friendly fire. This video may be Hollywood, but the landscape of music mainstream has long belonged in a southern state of Seoul. Now how's that for a future love worth thinking about? TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

SONG FOR THE MOMENT: LEON BRIDGES-INSIDE FRIEND (Featuring JOHN MAYER)

4/5

Inside Singing Voice. 

Quarantine music has never sounded so good for your social isolation playlist, playing from the middle of the day to late at night on repeat as you can't even tell the distancing on this songs vibe check length. Take me to the 'River' legend Leon Bridges truly coming home is know to cut a rug. Whether it's on the maroon smooth music videos for the 'Good Time' funky soul singer like 'Bad Bad News', or being coaxed by a date in El Paso to go 'Beyond' after dinner for the southern singer. Even in collaboration like 'Texas Sun' with Khruangbin, or 'July' and its awesome artwork with Noah Cyrus, on the outstanding Odseza track and good time, cookout, family get together over crates of vinyl and beer and piano playing chereography, 'Across The Room'. 'It Feels Good', right? When this man moves...he Moves! But now he's doing it in his living room. Sliding across the wooden floors from the hallway to the kitchen like the 'Risky Business' of Tom Cruise, white collar, black shades, sans pants. Candlestick holder as microphone in hand. "Slide through when you want/You know I want to put you on/It's evil out there/Let's keep it at home/So come on/I wanna see you slide across the kitchen floor/can't give you more", Leon laments in lyrics for what in this one world, 'Together At Home' is one Zoom meeting music video collaboration away from being the quarantine anthem we all crave. Unlike the ill advised, but well intentioned collaboration with 'Wonder Woman' Gal Gadot. Which didn't need to be taken down in more ways than one. Imagine.

Motown mapping through the keyhole in baby blue some awesome artwork like a Lionel Richie single back in the day, 'All Night Long' like a classic Commodore, this record calls on a collaboration with rock guitar hero John Mayer like Skype or Kanye. But bittersweet this song for the record was actually cut last year during a session. Yet picked up off the cutting room floor what better time to put it out there than right about now? Some of "it's evil out there/let's keep it at home" wise words seem knowingly ahead of their time and forewarning...even last year. As this one off track for a man who has classically covered Ginuwine's 'Pony' (not literally mind) and made movie records for everything from Will Smith's NFL critical (and with good, we need to do something about this now, this movie came out four year ago reason) 'Concussion' to Ryan Gosling's reunion with 'La La Land's' Damien Chazelle on their 'First Man' small steps on Neil Armstrong's giant leap (playing late, great American poet Gil Scott-Heron in the movie and covering his 'Whitey On The Moon' (what's crazy is last night me and my parents were emailing Bridges song videos from back home in the UK to here in Japan-live and 'Tiny Desk' NPR etc (now that's how you do quarantine)-and after sending some Leon, Dad replied back with Heron's 'Whitey On The Moon' unbeknownst to him of the link. Isn't that something?)) is the only thing you need right now as you keep it four walls and bolted. As Mayer's trademark, take you there guitar riffs soothe you in stunning soloist sound as they sing, "you can be my inside friend". Leon Bridges and John Mayer in your living room. If that doesn't keep you at home. Nothing will.

How can this not be our and your 'Song For The Moment' at this time of corona? "Won't You be my inside friend?" As someone seeing themselves right out the door, doesn't call this perfect pair anymore like Alica Keys asking "How Come" like Prince (Rest Peacefully. Four years gone. 4ever reign). "Come through with your hair still wet/Yoga pants, sweatshirt on the bed/Heart heavy and your week been crazy/We can be lazy baby embrace me", couch potatoed and bed bound with some Netflix and chill they paint the perfect picture in motion with their music. With the wax lazy boy lyrical poetry of, "we can be lazy baby embrace me", Bridges and Mayer take what most think is a prison at home (ELLEN!!) and talk about it being the finer things in life like when "hair still wet, yoga pants, sweatshirt" like no make-up is truly when the one you love is at their most beautiful like R.E.M. or your wildest dream. And if your week (if you've even been counting the days) has been crazy then this one's for you in sofa solidarity. The original concept came from Leon and John joking about how this would make the perfect date for an introvert like Bridges. And now all these months later it's the perfect track for our times. With all the proceeds from this single going to MusiCares, COVID-19 relief fund, like the G.O.A.T. M.J. giving the proceeds of his Netflix, corona brought forward Chicago Bulls, ESPN 'The Last Dance' documentary (2 episodes in, already at $4 Mill) to charity. What more could you want like Gaga, Elton, John Legend and The Rolling Stones performing in home-to-home, Mi Casa concert together? "I hope people find it soothing and uplifting while we hole up indoors and get through this", Leon Bridges told music magazine Rolling Stone. And half an hour later on repeat halfway through the day I think it's safe to say I have a new inside friend for this lonely company all the way, thousands of miles from home in the Far East, lost in translation. Comfort over crowds, this laidback soul jam session makes for the perfect date night even if you're stuck inside again with nothing on as we stream. As they say, "that's what inside friends are for". TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

REVIEW: BRIAN FALLON-LOCAL HONEY

4/5

By Gaslight. 

'Together Through Life' like the black and white iconic imagery of a modern era Dylan classic record Bob. With a enamoured couple entwined between strewn clothes and rugs for picnics in the back of a station wagon on the open road. The front cover of the Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon's new album evokes the same feeling in moving monochrome. With a black beanie, Jersey boy, local Bruce Springsteen working class hero in a cigarette, rolled up short sleeve white-tee sat uptop the roof of some classic American muscle with his strong arm wrapped around the front of his 'Local Honey' protectively. All as that gold typography marks the perfect picture photograph of this albums artwork and the same couple of the mesmerizing music video of one of Brian's beautiful ballads, the 8-track 'Honey' closer, 'You Have Stole My Heart'. That without the need of colour looks into the beautiful but bare like skin trees of a changing and symbolic season. As our together through this life, compelling couple, evoke and endear that born to run love that feels like it will never run out of road or gas. As they playfully dance, joke that they won't, smile that a thousand words of devotion smile and smoke cigarettes that look like the winters fog of their breath above them as they look to the skies, when they're not buried in the parachutes of each others arms, face to heart. As Fallon yearns, "I don't know if you know/But I feel you in me/Inside of my years/Inside of my bones" for a love that leaves us thinking, "I could have swore I knew you before" for a girl who looks like the Record Store Day Springsteen 'American Beauty' that sat on the hood of his ride in denim and dreams.

Honey, as a matter of fact every black and white video or visual for this albums artwork truly is a piece of such. From the 'When You're Ready' start and the different families that take the stool of this profoundly personal music video and ode to our own. What seemingly starts this 'Local' album as a love song really is one, but a much deeper to a man's true love of his life, his children. His son. His daughter. I mean 'You Have Stolen My Heart' may even really be about this. As 'When You're Ready' by Grace from his gift from God, Fallon devotes and emotes this legacy lament with, "I can't tell you who to love/I don't know who that might be/I hope they cheer you up like crazy/Sweep you right up off your feet/Though I don't want you to grow up/'Cause I don't want you to leave/When you're ready to choose someone/Make sure they love you/Make sure they love you half as much as me", beautifully. All whilst offering the wisest words of fatherly advice, "In this life there will be trouble/But you shall overcome/They'll hurt you in your heartstrings/They'll leave you in the dust/But you do just like I told you/Stand strong and hold your own/A soft answer, quiet's wrath/A gentle whisper breaks a bone". Fatherhood may be a reason Brian wanted to kick the habit on the other single and the deepest cut of his monochrome movie like music videos, as he talks about taking '21 Days' to get over the lovers hold of nicotine. Stubbing it all out with the sobering support of circular chair cathartis for the amazing actress in this vivid video as Fallon hits the road, rolls down his window and throws away his last Lucky Strike. "I miss you most in the morning/we used to talk over coffee," he says romanticisng this drugs itch like an old friend or lover he's probably not going to see again, no matter how many times he picks up the phone. Even if this addictive, intimate album leaves you craving for more.

Have mercy. "Come pick me up from the night/From the hands of the dark/From the things I didn't know/That would simply break your heart". As evocative as those opening lines to the bonus track of The Gaslight Anthem's last album, 'Get Hurt', this one is really something. Wonder all you want because this eight set is the perfect infinite number like Kobe, forever 24. For Fallon's third album in four years after Gaslight, we can't even anthemic keep up with. Following his debut hit 'Painkillers' and the 'Etta James' soulful beauty of 'Sleepwalkers' two years back. 'Have Mercy' like our ballad anthem favourite bit of Gaslighting on the all pretty 'Horses' that runs wild and free like Cormac Mccarthy, or "go on find another love better than me". Galloping in feather touched drums and symbolic symbols as "angels speak your name into existence", finding "love in our forgiveness". Wild Rolling Stones couldn't drag you a way from this hooks pull once it gets in. The pebble beach pictueresque shores of 'I Don't Mind (If I'm With You') banjos make up for the "winds getting colder and the night getting cruel". As it's clear this mans 'Lonely For You Only' on his most honest and heartfelt yet as he invites to admit, "Well, don't lie to me, don't lie to yourself/We were much too sentimental, baby, to make it in the modern world/And I spent my nights alone, and I rode the wheels off/I simply ain't the first thief, honey, holed up on a cross". There's no 'Hard Feelings' for us when it comes to this all too short, but utterly sweet album with substance, minus the saccharine like, "a slow song playing from a baby blue Mercedes" from this young boss. But it's on 'Vincent' when Brian gets his most firsthand, first-person personal on this slow but sincere LP for the record. All about someone from South Texas who says "my name is Jolene, but I hate that song/I was baptized in a river when I was young". Anthems don't have to rock the city stadiums, sometimes they just have to soothe the local bars as smooth as Jack Daniels with Tennessee honey. How sweet it is to love like this. TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

Playlist Picks: 'When You're Ready', '21 Days', 'You Have Stole My Heart'. 

REVIEW: THE STROKES-THE NEW ABNORMAL

4/5

Back To Abnormal.

Nothing is normal right now. You only have to look through the window of your four wall sanctuary you feel imprisoned in at this time to tell. But stay safe as houses at what you call home. Soon you won't feel so alone. But let's zone out in this quarantine with our headphones right now and forget about the loneliness to all this social distancing, as we maintain six feet laying down with some mood music for this self isolation in the middle of the night. Things are so strange right now even the New York band on everyone's t-shirt in the new millennium, The Strokes have a new album out...The Strokes baby! 'The New Abnornal' is their first album in seven years. And perhaps their best since their sophomore set 'Room On Fire' (2003). With all due respect to the 'First Impressions Of Earth', 'Angels' and 'Comedown Machine' big-three. This is just how abnormally good the new one is right now. In a sign of the stranger things time were we need it now more than ever. 'Is This It'?! Sometime or 'Someday' like 'Last Night' we wish it was the simpler, college days of 2001, when The Strokes released their iconic, classic debut in July like 'New York City Cops' just mere months before a truly terrible tragedy took the city and changed the world forever. Just as this band, Arcade Fire, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The White Stripes were changing the sound and style of rock in this modern age for every band you see and hear now from the Kings Of Leon and Artic Monkeys to MGMT. And like a rolling stone with scruffier Beatles hair and a pride of place that could be set straight back in the same 60's, they sounded smoother than leather on bare cheeks. "It would be cool of 20 years from now," they said starting out in 2001,"people would still be talking about what good music we made." Imagine that.

Now almost two decades later and with the world in its worst state since the day the towers fell and put us all at war with an inner anxiety and an outward, side-eyed weary distrust for each other, The Strokes give us their sixth album after seven years. All for some music in times of corona that for at the very least gives us some distance and breathing room from all we inhale and can't take from the news on a daily basis before we choke up like we're all afraid to clear our throats in public for those same looks of distrust and disdain. But lets leave all that for the subways and sidewalks as we stay in our apartments and remind ourselves why The Strokes-who are keeping our enthusiasm-kept the magic of the worlds most famous town New York City alive. Just like when The Boss, Springsteen finally came back for 'The Rising' after 9/11 for an album of solidarity songs after a fan passed him walking the street and rolled down his car window and shouted, "WE NEED YOU!" We need music like this right now for some of the solace it can provide in these troubled times. And as The Strokes 'Abnormal' return with some Guggenheim album artwork by NYC's legendary Jean-Michel Basquiat (the beautiful 'Bird On Money') that Andy Warhol or Keith Haring would be jealous of, pop rock has never sounded so fresh and fortunate in our living room stereo galleries. Things are 'Not The Same Anymore' like that standout track were front man Julian Casablancas sings, "You’re not the same anymore/Don’t wanna play that game anymore/You’d make a better window than a door/Oh, the strangers, they implore/It gets so easy to ignore/Just like the girl next door," on a song that may as well be the, "And now the door slams shut/A child prisoner grows up" unfortunate, tragic anthem of our times. Just like the 'I Don't Like Monday's' like best 'Why Are Sunday's So Depressing' take which was clearly recorded months before COVID-19 turned every day in 2020 to the last one of the week.

Rick Rubin hallmark helmed like a Beastie Boy or Chilli Pepper in the Shangri-la studio in Malibi, California. So you know like Jay-Z's '99 Problems' a classic album ain't one. And this for the record might be full of some of the best Strokes tracks of one of the most influential bands of all time. Cross the bridge to Manhattan on this project and you can see this indie post punk and garage rock outfit in leather and skinny denim in the new wave electric of 'Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus', not only a Stroke of genius, but a master mainstream classic, record of the calendar. It's the kind of song even The 1975 couldn't come up with in all their years as Casablancas sings across the chorus, "I want new friends, but they don't want me/They're making plans while I watch TV/Thought it was them, but maybe it's me/I want new friends, but they don't want me", for some lyrics that right now can't help us feel triggered. Whereas on the 'Eternal Summer' we're all hoping for once this eternal rest is over (past Easter Trump!). With lyrics we only hope aren't all the way true like, "They got the remedy/But they won't let it happen/Yeah, they got the remedy/But they won't let it happen", for the Summer that won't go away like the one thing that won't right now and we only wish will when it gets too hot outside for people who can't understand what's happening or what they're doing to stay inside like they should. But for all the fickle fate aptly named tracks and singles like 'Bad Decisions' (like a lot of people are making right now whilst all the keyworkers and real heroes who wear scrubs are saving the world as we knew it) featuring the one and only Billy Idol (see he gets it) and the stellar standout on our front porch, 'At Your Door' were we should all be staying out right now, giving it up for those real heroes behind the masks that we clap...and hopefully in turn vote for. It's the closing 'Ode To The Mets' and its last minute in reprise that is so good it could take the "other" baseball team in this Yankee town all the way to the World Series...and it doesn't need any pinstripes to distract you to do so. And between the orange and blue like a Knickerbocker this is the most 'Selfless' album from these New York dolls yet. The same time we have the revival of a new Kooks album too from Blighty's Brighton beach. Right from the outstanding 'The Adults Are Talking' outset you know the maturity is set like in your ways past 40. Quiet...this might be The Strokes loudest record yet, albeit in a very different dynamic and way. And aptly again with the first words, "Say it after me/Say it after me/They will blame us, crucify and shame us/We can't help it if we are a problem/We are tryin' hard to get your attention/I'm climbin' up your wall/Climbin' up your wall", in closing how fitting? Say it after me. Sometimes abnormal is better than the new normal now. Now as we all need to take pause during this panicked planets pandemic, we can at least press play on this master stroke. TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

Playlist Picks: 'Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus', 'Eternal Summer', 'Ode To The Mets'. 

SONG FOR THE MOMENT: PHOEBE BRIDGERS-KYOTO

4/5

Alone In Kyoto. 

Lost in a Japanese translation like Air's atmospheric soundtrack, 'Alone In Kyoto' or Scarlett Johansson Shinkansen taking a solo bullet there in the aforementioned Sofia Coppola movie alongside the one and only Bill Murray, Phoebe Bridgers is back. And there's no better place for her to be right now than in the land of the rising sun...well apart from quarantined at home like the rest of us that is. Following her classic comeback single, 'Garden Song' in bloom, the Los Angeles, California indie darling is here in 'Kyoto'. The most traditional of towns for this instant vintage singer, retro like stores you won't find on Rodeo. The perfect song for us Far East during our Tokyo drift like Sung Kang's Han, via a Yokohama home. But over 200 miles away (or four days like the amazing cyclist this writer met in a hot spring in Hakone), or a couple of hours if you shoot a bullet from the bright lights and big city and Shibuya Scramble crossing (now with no need for traffic lights now everyone is staying home and staying safe as houses), under the Starbucks you'd now be lucky enough to get a seat looking over in (but make that coffee at home and self isolate. It's cheaper and better for your health), Kyoto is a picturesque far cry from the neon dream of the capital exclamation in electric. Beyond beautiful, surrounded by traditional temples and wood and bamboo, there is nowhere as compellingly classic and weary traveller reawakening and wonderful as this puncuation place for your gap year itinerary. It's the picture perfect postcard and soundtrack setting for this single, just a few train stops away from Osaka or the port and beef town that gave the late, great Kobe his name.

Sounding distinctly and traditionally in inspired instrumental like the country of this tracks origin, or a Japanese House or Breakfast, this terrific track would have found itself in translation to that Park Hyatt Hotel movies soundtrack back in the day. Just like BTS frontman R.M's 'Seoul' like '.mono' ode to the same 'Tokyo' British best Lianne La Havas bittersweetly found herself alone in. And like that karaoke parlour video amongst the taxis and temples, or 'The Jezabels' subway to Shibuya 'My Love Is My Disease' stalk, Bridgers bridges the gap with a mesmerizing music video that looks like an old school, 80's Japanese one you'd find on the television sets squirrled away in thrift shops. Taking you via Godzilla rays and cherry blossom skies on a neon time lapse shimmering tour like a ray of Madonna light. Bringing her new single to Jimmy Kimmel, 'Live From The Lavatory' via her bathroom under the creative influence of isolation (got to love those bathtub acoustics). Harmonising into a pink toy microphone like these were the school instruments of Jimmy Fallon and The Roots, she sings, "born under Scorpio skies/I wanted to see the world through your eyes/until It happened and I changed my mind." As "dreaming of Tokyo skies" the 'Georgia', 'Chelsea' and 'Smoke Signals' singer who has recorded for everyone from the 1975 ('Jesus Christ 2005, God Bless America') to the Zach Galifianakis 'Between Two Ferns' movie and has even named a record after Demi Moore like Angus and Julia Stone did Sylvester Stallone tells us, "Day off in Kyoto/Got bored at the temple/Looked around at the 7-Eleven/The band took the speed train". Should have gone to Lawson.

Convenience store browsing or not this is one of Phoebe's most personal and prolific best yet and she's been doing that constantly with the 'Garden Song' this Spring. The boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center with Conor Oberst supergroup singer is now one of the most independent, wisest artists in this young mainstream age of cherry picking Spotify stream trends. She's full albums on repeat to everyone else's skipped stones. Her rainbow record dog days debut, 'Stranger In The Alps' and its 'A Ghost Story' like sketched artwork puts a sheet over the competition and is a haunting, stone cold classic. Still to this timeless day. It's crazy to think its been three years since its release. But now the 'Smoke Signals' atmospherically direct us to a new release when we really need it now with albums from legends like star (re)born Lady Gaga ('Chromatica') and the California Summer girls of Haim ('Women In Music Pt. III' and what quite possibly, five tracks in may be the album of the year) quarantined pushed back a year after Maggie Rogers (giving us the album of the year in January with 'Heard It In A Past Life'), 'Cheap Queen' King Princess and of course Lana Del Rey ('Norman F###### Rockwell') showed it really was a calendar like it is a time for women in music right now like it's always been and always should be. Now look to Phoebe F###### Bridgers dot com to lead the mother lovin' way with her new album 'Punisher' due June. As the 'Killer' EP artist in the Jack Skeleton jumpsuit looks to kill the competition again like Frank Castle to the skull with the bones of her bold and beautiful songwriting and flesh and blood storytelling. We're a long way away from finding a vaccine for this COVID-19, but in a home life starved for entertainment with sports postponed and cinemas cancelled like most actors, with music being somewhat healing, this 'Kyoto' song is the beginning of your stay at home, middle of the night boredom cure. TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

SONG(S) FOR THE MOMENT: USHER-DON'T WASTE MY TIME (Feat. Ella Mai)/SEXBEAT (Feat. Ludacris & Lil'Jon)

4/5

Lovers and Old Friends. 

Please tell your lovers and friends that Usher, Jon and Luda had to do it again. Usher has two of the biggest new tracks out in R&B right now. What is it 2004 again like your college days or Summer Walker coming 'thru' with the guest feature and 'You Make Me Wanna' sample doing it Raymond's way? Yeah! It may as well be as we don't even know what day it is as we can't even leave the house right now. So hold on when it comes to making 'Love In This Club' for a man who even has a track called 'Stay At Home' with Future (on the 'A' of his classic Jay Electronica and Jay-Z like partnership album with Zaytoven)...but for all sorts of different reasons. Like R&B King Tanks tweets 'While You Wait', "Usher is about to put R&B back in the clubs". But still stay in your place and stay safe during this quarantine in this time of corona. Yet I have a confession to make like Part II. There's nothing like nostalgia. And this new Usher is showing me like a cinema seat to one at home for a Spotify 'Best Of' playlist like the date was '8701' (yes I got it bad. No need to remind me. You don't know? Just pop ya collar. You'll t'work it out. This man has more hits than John Wick. Just listen to the first five of that album. No one's done that since outside the 'Hot Fuss' of the Las Vegas high rolling The Killers), or a 'Raymond V Raymond' face off like all the D.J.'s are doing right now, live streaming from home for the fans. Just like his fellow ATLien prolific producer, our man Jermaine Dupri. OMG like will.I.am. The 'Instructions' on hallmark hand for the first 'Don't Waste My Time' track featuring Ella Mai...which won't do. Even if you end up dancing to it all night like club 112, 'Dance With Me'. 

But "if you're sexy and you know it clap your hands". Because this really is like these college dropout days like Kanye in 2004. WAKE UP MR. WEST! Jesus walks, is king and the crown of R&B takes his throne again like slow jams or 04's 'Truth Tour'. It was these turntables versus battles that's started this whole thing off when Lil Jon and T-Pain took each other on for our quarantined entertainment...WHAT?! I said it was these turntables versus battles that started this whole thing off when Lil Jon and T-Pain took each other on for our quarantined entertainment...OKAY?! And peace up, A town, just when it looked like an all love, mutual friend tie, Jon dropped a new record with Ush-er and Luda like WHAT?! Take that and rewind it back. LET'S GO! As these three king's of the ATL reunited and got back together like Jagged Edge, teaming up like the Hawks or Falcons to really fly. Third times the big charm from this big three that never really left the club like Jon's signature sonic sound and shouts that clapped like Ludacris famous outro after one of his trademark highlighting  raps (remember when you'd be scratching over the entirety of the record in anticipation for one of Luda's legendary 16's? What rapper makes you do that now?) to the neon strobed video with all of the lights. But come on, tell me you don't think of Kevin James dancing with Will Smith in 'Hitch' when you hear 'Yeah'! The Q-Tip... the Q-Tip. No need to make pizza...they've got food there. And we all know the beautiful ballad of a synthed sequel that slowed it down for all your 'Lovers and Friends' with Ush's velvet, best yet verse that is swagger singing personified in the zone (peep the behind the studio scenes of Usher feeling and writing this track late at night, "oh I'm on first? Let me at 'em") from Usher's 'Confessions', one week, a million and change, diamond seller to Lil Jon's platinum 'Crunk Juice' pimp cup of grill bling. So to be fair this should be on the punchline legend Luda's next project, as the 'Fast and Furious' star pedal to the metal raps, "SexBeat turn it up loud till I blow my speakers/Get lower than my subwoofers or high as my tweeters/My diva eat you up like you my gourmet chocolate Godiver". Showing no signs of stopping like their 'Red Light' and crazy kinetic 'Dat Girl' B-side and cutting room floor jam (how was that not a number one single like 'Good Kisser' was left off an actual album?) other collabos like 'She Don't Know'. VROOM!

808 kick drum check. But if you want to be welcomed back to Atlanta, then it's all about Ludacris and Jermaine Dupri. Or should we say Usher and Mr. J.D.? It's not just about the holy trinity of the Raymond all the girls love, Chris 'Tej' Bridges and the ultimate hype man Dave Chappelle's show immortalised. YEAAAH! On the ones and twos for the music Hollywood video who's who, spot the celebrity, epic house party with comedian Jamie Kennedy playing Fonzworth Bentley like 'I Need A Girl' Part 1 or Diddy's Hilton's which feels like somewhere in Brazil or Italy-even if it is Cali (Chef Snoop preparing the food with Salt Bae finishing touches)-which we all wish even more that we could have right now. But this summer hot single this spring set for the season, featuring 'Trip' singer Ella Mai (referencing the Jon and Luda aforementioned 'Lovers and Friends') was already scorching hot before the 'SexBeat' bomb was dropped. And as Usher baby sings, "I'm glad you made (You made)/Intoxicate/Your vibe's amazing/Feel the love in the air, baby, you know (You know, you know)/In a rush, we be letting the time go/You're gonna have to show me now" to begin this song inspired by Hi-Five's 90's baby hit 'I Like The Way (The Kissing Game)' y'all know what it is like So, So Def. As Jermaine and his Jackson 5 legendary like production partnership on a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis scale tip, Bryan-Michael Cox bring that smooth sound to add depth of soul to the mainstream and chart topping and toe tapping hits. It's that 'Emancipation' form that brought the Mimi out of Mariah Carey until she mined a diamond and wanted nothing more for Christmas and even made Usher admit some hard truths. And after some decent albums over the last couple ('Looking 4 Myself'/'Hard II Love'), Mr. Raymond has more to confess too. As the sequel to his and Durpi's magnum opus of break-up ballads, 'Confessions 2' is set to come in the 2020 that could still be the new roaring twenties once we rage against COVID-19 together. Reuniting like we all hope to this calendar this is one sophomore set that won't slump. How about a part IV? Because what's entering the confessions booth without the counsel of Lil Jon and the two men who welcomed you too Atlanta 2 with Diddy and Snoop? The A is about to be a capital again. And Usher is going to show us the way. Especially in a time were everyone from his boo Alicia Keys, to Lady Gaga and Haim have pushed back and put their highly anticipated albums of the year on indefinite hold. You wait all decade for a hot new Usher record and two come along at once like the bus. Pushing it to the limit, giving more. Smoke that victory party cigar King. Once this quarantine is over he's going to have everyone running to the clubs screaming like Jennifer Lopez's 'Hustlers' round the block after his cameo on the double. Yeah man. TIM DAVID HARVEY.