First song is a new, leaked track from Prince, the 2008 Coachella headliner and the artist formerly known as “the artist formerly known as Prince”.  It’s called “Colonized Mind” and it kind of sounds to me like a cross between Tom Petty and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  That might just be me.  New album is due out sometime in 2009.  I got the chance to see Prince at the 2008 Coachella show and I was really impressed.  He is a ridiculously talented guitar player and an amazing, albeit somewhat strange performer.  One of the YouTube links in the Visual Absinthe section shows why he is considered one of the greatest performers in rock history and why women can’t get enough of the Napoleon-size rock legend.

Prince – Colonized Mind

Second song is Peter Gabriel and Hot Chip’s cover of Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”.  Gabriel and Hot Chip did a great version of the hit single off VW’s self-titled album and it’s been a really popular download online.  The VW album was impressively successful but I kind of thought everyone was talking about them a little too highly.  And I don’t necessarily think they’re overrated, because I do think they’re great and I liked the album a lot, but I think people overreacted to the album.  Let’s see what they do on their next album.

Peter Gabriel and Hot Chip – Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

Third song is a new, leaked track by Eminem and it’s called “Crack A Bottle”.  From what I can tell, it sounds like this track was supposed to be a Dr Dre track featuring Eminem.  Back when people were calling the leaked version “Number One”, it sounded a lot like a rough draft.  The version linked here is a lot more cleaned up.  Eminem sings the chorus in his typical circus hip hop style- which hasn’t lost any popularity in about 10 years- but Eminem also raps the verse which it seems like he wrote for Dr Dre to rap.  It’s always sounded pretty obvious to me in the past when Dre’s rapped verses written by others.  And I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all.  He has great writers and he’s got a great and very recognizable hip hop voice.  Ice Cube wrote the verses in Dre’s NWA days (listen to “Express Yourself”), Snoop Dogg wrote them in Dre’s The Chronic days (listen to “Let Me Ride”), and it was Eminem later with Chronic 2001 (listen to “The Watcher”).  So this track could be showing the process behind the making of songs featuring Dr. Dre rapping.  He probably records the artist who wrote the lyrics to hear how they meant it for Dre to rap.  Then he records himself and it’s a hit.  But I’m just guessing here…

Eminem – Crack A Bottle (Produced By Dr. Dre)