Neneh Cherry broke through with the rapping/singing hybrid "Buffalo Stance," a dance song without much low end that turned interjections into hooks ("Gigolo, sucka!") and included an amazingly melodramatic spoken-word breakdown ("The wind in my face, the sound in my ears / Water from my eyes, and you on my mind..."). That song is positively straightforward next to this, a sideways take on Madvillain's "Accordion." Cherry's sung/spoken/rapped/screeched vocals make MF Doom sound quaint in comparison, as they dip in and between the constraints of bars and loop back to zero in (seemingly randomly) on a few of Doom's lines to invent a refrain. The mounting jazz cacophony behind only adds to the chaos. This may not be one that yields repeat listens (who knows how it'll come off when Neneh Cherry & the Thing's collaborative full-length, The Cherry Thing arrives next month), but it's something to experience at least once, this avant answer to the renewed pop cultural interest of women in hip-hop. Neneh Cherry hasn't released an album in 16 years, and she couldn't have chosen a better time to come back.

Chief Keef, the 16-year-old unsigned rapper from Chicago, is still on house arrest at his Grandma's, but now he has a Kanye West remix to his name, because technology has had something of an effect on musical collaborations. Instead of recording in the studio together, Kanye sent some producers from his new label, G.O.O.D. music, to Keef's home in Chicago, where they set up a laptop and a microphone. Keef typed out a verse onto his iPhone on the spot, then yelled into a microphone for a few minutes, and this banger of a street remix was born.

Today, the Philadelphia-bred Santigold released her excellent sophomore album, Master of My Make-Believe. The collection of low-key anthems genre-hops like Madonna at her most informed and tasteful. You hear bits of punk, rave, dubstep, as well as some Knife-derived spookiness, some rapping that sounds inspired by Peaches and some drum programming that rips off/pays homage to Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill." The whole thing is sprinkled with a dubbish, reggae sensibility. Master goes to so many different places in such a brief period of time (11 tracks in less than 40 minutes) while remaining so user-friendly that it feels like it's holding up Gwen Stefani's 2004 album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. as an ideal. That release was a major player in converting the event pop album into a style-juggling, wide-cast sonic net — an ingenious strategy to cater to the then-burgeoning iTunes market. Why make a coherent statement when you can be all things to all people?

The theme of this video (which premiered today) just happens to be the theme of its singer's career: Rihanna is pretty. That is it. You need know nothing else to get Rihanna. Her beauty is as responsible for her success as any of her other natural gifts and those bestowed upon her by her producers, writers and managers. (Credit where it's due: despite terrible career/life decisions, her I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude is refreshing, if not fueled by the self-assurance that can result from massive fame.) "Where Have You Been" is a shoutier, uglier version of "We Found Love" from her underwhelming Talk That Talk album. Not like that'll stop it from being utterly massive! Your summer may sound something like this, like it or not.

"I'm a real nigga
I don't give a fuck
Put a towel down
It'll sop it up
It's just a little blood
It won't hurt
So what if it gets on my T-shirt?"

For another Record Store Day release, British singer-songwriter Victoria Christina Hesketh (Little Boots) teamed up with historic Chicago house label Trax to release the 12" for "Every Night I Say a Prayer." She wrote this one with Hercules & Love Affair's Andy Butler and it's better than anything on his group's sophomore dud Blue Songs. (It's also better than pretty much everything on Little Boots' own spotty debut, 2009's Hands.) The housey original version of "Every Night" incorporates a sort of cleaned-up old-school Chicago aesthetic (dig the claps), but Tensnake's posh freestyle rerub is the vinyl's real winner. You can never go wrong with clinking 808s and pretty female vocals. Fact.

There's nothing like a good answer song, and Wales' Marina and the Diamonds crafted a great one by opening up Justin Bieber's "Boyfriend" and rearranging its insides. If you were waiting for the female perspective on eating fondue, you'll be disappointed, but this does a really job of making the original's melody even ear-wormier while trimming the fat (i.e. the rapping). With a new Saint Etienne song called "Answer Song" having just been released yesterday, it's a good time for the medium. Check this space for my response to "Beez in the Trap," "Aunts on My Log."

The Flaming Lips' Record Store Day full-length, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, is a subversive take on the nature of musical collaborations in 2012. Instead of exploiting famous friends like Ke$ha, Bon Iver and Coldplay's Chris Martin for the sake of chart-friendliness (as is standard practice in the industry), the Lips push their poppy friends into noisy, borderline inaccessible territory (and collaborators like Lightning Bolt, Neon Indian, Yoko Ono and Nick Cave are pushed into even more experimental territory than usual). It's a stunning album that's not lacking in tunes, but that doesn't want to make them easy for listeners, either.

Today would have been the 61st birthday of one of the finest voices that ever blessed the Earth. Luther Vandross died almost seven years ago, and he is still sorely missed, especially when you consider the sad state of the commercial R&B male crooner (R. Kelly and Usher are about the only ones who can really sing and sell). Let's remember him by listening to his defiant disco (released a full two years after the Disco Demolition Rally supposedly destroyed the genre) and by staring at a bunch of New Yorkers' crotches. Miss ya, big guy.

In what seems like a bid to pander to the taste of fans of so-called PBR&B (a relatively recent strain of R&B that for whatever reason resonates with an indie audience that doesn't normally listen to the genre), the grunge-inventing, Shins-delivering, Postal Service-spawning indie label Sub Pop has released a bona fide R&B album. The craziest thing about it is that it doesn't sound like it's pandering at all. THEESatisfaction's Awe Naturale floats in a cloud that suggests Erykah Badu at her most blunted or Odd Future's The Internet with actual melodies and sonic variety. It's jazz, it's hip-hop, it's Earth, Wind & Fire, it's cerebral, it's banging. Critic, memoirist of the hip-hop stars and filmmaker dream hampton directed the video for "QueenS," which does a really good job of evoking what it feels like to walk through a New York apartment.

In the spirit of today's ‘90s musings, here's my favorite R&B one-hit wonder recording of the post-new jack swing era (well, maybe second favorite after Adina "Freak Like Me" Howard). The ‘90s were a big time for gangstas-are-people-too sentiment, but it mostly just came via cinema like Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society. "Gangsta Lean" was the rare example of this in song, providing a nice counterpoint to the superheroic (or vigilante-esque or whatever) imagery of gangsta rap.

Last month, on one of those rogue, summer-like mid-March days (kind of like the summer-like mid-April day we're experience in New York), I smoked a little something and made my way out into the blazing sun with the Addison Groove's Transistor Rhythm in my ears. At one point, the sensory overload had me nearly hallucinating. I didn't see or hear anything that wasn't there, but reality started to feel like reality was melting, only to be sucked back into shape seconds later. I'm not saying that's what will happen to you if you listen to this, I'm just saying try it. (But don't do drugs.)

Company B's weird freestyle/house hybrid "Fascinated" (from 1986) contains my second-favorite first line in pop music: "I want to play with you tonight." Really into the direct approach here. (The last line of the first verse is hilarious, too: "Maybe we could play tonight." I get the feeling that maybe this lady really wants to play?) And don't even get me started on the "love toy" part. This song is a national treasure.

Whenever I hear electronic music this caustic, I like to imagine my (now dead) grandparents listening to it (when they were alive). Try it, it's fun. Rest in peace, guys (unless this is playing).

There's been lots of Pulp talk this week, thanks to frontman Jarvis Cocker's show at the Whitney (under his Relaxed Muscle guise), an appearance on Jimmy Fallon and two concerts at Radio City Music Hall. I'm seeing them there tonight to get a hit of the narcotic that is nostalgia.

Did you see that insane report from a questionable insurance agency on a fishy study suggesting that marijuana users are actually "safe" drivers? This contradicts older studies/common sense suggesting they're a hazard or at least no more dangerous than your average sober driver. I don't know what to believe, but I do know that I now feel less guilt about posting a song whose entire premise involves smoking and driving (it's a theme on the Wiz Khalifa mixtape from which it's taken, Taylor Allderdice). It's a dubiously scientific miracle. Enjoy the Jermaine Dupri-inspired 808 glide.

We wrote about Nicki Minaj last week, but I don't think I properly salivated over this little monster, which had its video debut over the weekend. Minaj's laid-back (though varied) delivery underscores the innate greatness she's claiming and the track is ferocious despite being a deceptively calm design of ricocheting sonar sounds and growling sub-bass. It's all testament to the virtue of not trying to hard, and as such, it's the first Nicki-led song that I've found compulsively listenable. Even if this is the only good thing to come out of Roman's Revenge, the otherwise underwhelming project will have been worth it.

Thinking about Scandal put Prince's "Scandalous" (from the Batman soundtrack, haha) in my head. That song's...all right. I feel like he perfected its template two albums later with the similarly slow and explicit "Insatiable." This is my second-favorite sex ballad of Prince's. The incomplete progression goes something like:

L.A.-based leftfield soul singer Georgia Anne Muldrow's collaboration album with beat genius Madlib, Seeds, is so fucking good. It's a collection of terrific songs that are well said, well sung and often anchored by boom-bap breaks. (Why don't more contemporary R&B singers work with vintage-sounding break beats? It's such an easy trick and the result is a terrific unclogging of the block waveforms we've come to accept.) "Best Love" intersects disco and hip-hop, injecting both inherently political, increasingly depoliticized genres with a message...about pacifism and building wells in India. Whatever, it's good.

From now on, I'm going to post my favorite song of the day, everyday. It may be old, it may be new, it may be my favorite of what has flooded the music blogs in the past few hours. You never know. Anything goes with Anna Nicole.