What starts out as typically snotty swiping really ignites by the 4:20 mark (how perfect) when Bay Area rappers Plane Jane and Iamsu! speed up the pace in their lyrical battle of the sexes and instead of verses, start trading bars rapidly back-and-forth. "Like Me" hearkens back to female-male duets like Yo-Yo and Ice Cube's "The Bonnie and Clyde Theme" and MC Lyte and Positive K's "I'm Not Havin' It" (and Positive K's "I Got a Man," in which he rapped with his pitched-up female alter ego). Why don't people do this anymore? At a time when the amount of musical collaborations is at an all-time high, on-record interaction is a rarity. It's strange to hear a woman and man who sound actually engaged with each other rapping together.

A highlight of the upcoming DJ-Kicks mix (out Nov. 13) by New York dance-music revivalists Hercules and Love Affair, "Release Me," finds Hercules mastermind Andy Butler binging on a variety of retro sources in an otherwise '90s-house focused context. Says Butler of his new track and its vougishly dispassionate singer:

This song is so poignant it doesn't even need to try to be poignant. I prefer this beefed-up club version to the one on Womack & Womack's 1988 album, Conscience. The xx covered this a few years ago, but like most xx remakes and basically any cover that serves to de-R&B R&B, their version is, as the British say, pants. Womack & Womack's original remains largely forgotten, which is pantser.

Jeremy Rose was once the production partner of the Weeknd and, to hear him tell it, was unceremoniously dumped from that gig. That sucks because people actually care about the Weeknd, but per his new release under the Zodiac moniker, he's better off without Abel Tesfaye's warbling. I'd rather listen to this collaboration with the Brooklyn-based Jesse Boykins III than put up with the Weeknd's whining. I feel like it's all going to work out for Rose.

Based on numbers alone, you could look at Solange Knowles as this era's answer to La Toya Jackson (although even La Toya went Top 40 on the U.S. R&B singles chart a few times). She is the decidedly less successful sibling of a musical icon (Beyoncé, duh), although the desperation that tainted her earlier work (even her relatively respected sophomore album Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams) has by now evaporated.

Today's bit of Internet musical theater came courtesy of Sacramento's Death Grips, the electrocore/hip-hop hybridists who weirdly signed to Epic based on their caustic-as-fuck, not-at-all-commercial 2011 mixtape Exmilitary. It seemed a bizarre match at the time and, surprise, surprise, it turned into turmoil today when the group leaked its new album NO LOVE DEEP WEB not only without its label's permission, but before its label had even heard it.

On "L.A. Again," San Fran MC K. Flay and New York/Miami producer Michna team for a sunny electronic hip-hop track that reminds me of '90s near-novelty, very focused tracks like Skee-Lo's "I Wish." There is also a really big Luscious Jackson tribute happening here, even if it's not intended.

This new Crystal Castles song, off their forthcoming III album, is equally gorgeous (those gauzy synths!) and ridiculous (those shrieking vocals), a combination in camp heaven. I'm detecting a sense of humor here, but maybe that's wishful thinking?

For the past 24 hours, there has been an influx of new pop singles and almost all of them are subdued to the point of underwhelming. Here, I'll rank them in order of my faintly praised favorites.

This is so perfectly tortured, it sounds like it's from a lost John Hughes movie. Brooklyn duo Tanlines have a knack for making music that feels like dust fluttering in 3 pm sunshine beaming through giant library windows. As much as this is Gotye's song, Tanlines' takeover of it sounds like a sequel to the excellent closer of their debut album Mixed Emotions, "Nonesuch."

I feel like I have a new favorite house song of the year every week, but this really could be it. Hot Chip's Joe Goddard transforms his band's flimsy original into something that rocks so fucking hard, while staying nice and uplifting. Virtually every sound in this thing is pleasing.

"Starlight," the debut single from Brooklyn disco revivalists Escort is now 6 years old, but no less relevant than it was upon release. Part of it is its nailing of disco chic (and post-disco synth squiggles), part of it is that after releasing a string of singles, the act finally released its debut last year, thereby reintroducing the song. And the newest part of it is that it's been remixed for the band's upcoming Escort Remixed, out Oct. 16. The compilation collects some already released mixes as well as some new ones, like the RAC remix of "Starlight," which we're premiering today. This beefs up the track with a more Italo-indebted bass line, while retaining the sharp strings and Adeline Michele's lush vocals. It breathes new life into a track that has shown no signs of dying.

A three-disc box set celebrating the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson's first post-Thriller album, Bad, arrived in stores this week. I feel like I've been inundated with Bad25 propaganda via the Internet. There was also a two-hour special on BET last night featuring all nine of the Bad videos and people like Ashanti babbling about how galvanizing "Man in the Mirror" was and how it inspired her to be a better person. She was 7 when it was released.

To piggyback on my earlier praise of contemporary U.K. R&B, here's the new single from the U.S. native responsible for my favorite R&B album of year, Perfectly Imperfect (no really, it's much better than its title). Elle Varner's so far best known for her previous single, "Refill," a bonkers marriage of fiddles and 808s that sounds nice but, depending on how you want to read it, is extremely nasty (I haven't heard semen suggestion — "Can I get a refill?" — come off more innocently since Mariah Carey's "Honey"). "I Don't Care" probably has less classic potential, but it's a lovely, starry eyed ballad propelled by a giant, textured break beat and Talking Book-style keyboard flourishes.

Everything about the most recent single from British R&B duo AlunaGeorge is just slightly tweaked for weirdness and the effect is a surreal, woozy euphoria. Everything, that is, except for singer Aluna Francis's voice — every word of hers naturally sounds like the final one before the helium wears off. This is simultaneously stunning and slapstick, serious and novelty, soul and pop.

"You Make Me Feel" is not just a highlight of English producer Terror Danjah's second album, Dark Crawler (out Sept. 25 on Hyperdub), it's one of the most thrilling R&B songs I've heard all year. The rare all-sung track on an album full of instrumentals and rough grime tracks, "You Make Me Feel" exists in a state of flux: aggressive with its beats and ambient elsewhere, peppy in its bridge and laconic in its chorus and contemporary but strongly indebted to the '90s (multiple phases of that decade are referenced: new jill swing, 2-step, Timbaland-style wackiness). It's an appropriately satisfying series of payoffs.

As more proof that Neneh Cherry & the Thing's wild jazz album from earlier this year, The Cherry Thing, is the gift that keeps on giving, here's a remix of the only Cherry-penned track on the album of mostly covers. Norwegian producers Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas take just a few elements from the original (some horns, a vocal sample), like Masters at Work used to back in the day, to create disco where it wasn't.

What we have here is a current Balearic remix of Aalyiah's already breezy 2001 hit "Rock the Boat," nothing more nothing less. It took me a second to hear past the slight cheese — this is actually quite lovely.

This year's I'll Be Your Mirror festival (via All Tomorrow's Parties) is being curated by the Afghan Whigs' Greg Dulli and will take place Sept. 21 to Sep. 23 in New York. We're premiering the festival's official mixtape here. Full track list is below. I'm predictably partial to the Blanck Mass track, but Tall Firs' "Crooked Smiles" is too fucking weird not to appreciate.

The early '90s are all over today's shallow-underground house music, but few get the decade as right as London's xxxy with his remix of British dance duo Chew Lips' "Hurricane." The original was a crunchy electro thing; this sounds like something Marc Kinchen would have squeezed in between remixing superstars in 1993 (the drum sounds are so perfectly plastic), and that is the point. This thing is teeming with hooks, my favorite being the one that opens the song/follows the proper chorus ("Don't you want a little something?...") — the jazzy phrasing mixed with the jacking house is very Herbert.