One to watch: Alessia Cara

Isaac Haye's Ike's Rap II contains one of the most recognisable samples of all time - a querulous violin figure that underpins Portishead's Glory Box and Tricky's Hell Is Round The Corner.

So it takes a brave, or foolhardy, musician to recycle it for a new song. But that's exactly what Alessia Cara has done and, incredibly, she gets away with it.

Here puts Hayes' track to good use, matching its claustrophobia with a lyric about being trapped at an awful house party. She explained it to Fader like this.

'Here' is a song for all the antisocial, awkward, and miserable party-goers of the world. This one time I went to a party and while there, I realized how much I hated it, along with every other party I had ever gone to. We wrote about it the next day.

Aptly, the video attempts to re-create that abominable party, with many of the original guests making an appearance (presumably they hadn't listened to the lyrics very closely).

Listen below, as this Ontario teenager is definitely one to watch for the rest of the year. Having been discovered through YouTube covers of Justin Timberlake and Amy Winehouse, she's just signed to Def Jam and, I'm told, will be in the UK for Glastonbury next month.

Alessia Cara - Here

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Video: Tinie Tempah - Not Letting Go

The sun is out and London looks stunning in Tinie Tempah's new single, Not Letting Go.

Speaking to 1Xtra earlier this month, Mr Tempah said the track was recorded "a while ago" before guest vocalist Jess Glynne became a bankable star in her own right.

"I was doing the session with Bless Beats and Jess Glynne was there," he told Mistajam. "I was like, 'if you like it, put a hook down'. And now we have this record!"

The rapper also confessed the song was about "a romance I had last summer. Summertime in London is the best time in the world."

Apart from cocktail hour in Anguilla, obviously.

Tinie Tempah - Not Letting Go (ft Jess Glynne)

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What face do you pull when you hear Ellie Goulding's made a new record?

I know, I know, I know. The last thing anyone needs right now is a new song from pop's least reclusive guest vocalist, Ellie Goulding.

But, like Love Me Like You Do earlier this year, Ellie's new song is good enough to combat your overwhelming fatigue / antipathy.

Powerful is a squirly, whirly delight, with Major Lazer's dancehall-indebted grooves a perfect partnership for the singer's husky melodies.

There is an obligatory lyric video, and the lyric video looks like this.

Major Lazer - Powerful (ft Ellie Goulding and Taurus Riley)

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Hey presto! Little Mix get witchy in Black Magic video

Hooray! Little Mix's immensely likable video for Black Magic has just appeared on YouTube.

Loosely based on teen movie The Craft, it casts the girls as a set of high-school geeks who learn witchcraft to give bullies their comeuppance.

"It's completely different to what we've ever done before," says Jesy. "Usually we dance and we're all sassy. This time, we play characters, we're acting and it's a mini-movie."

It's still pretty sassy though. 10/10.

Little Mix - Black Magic

Speaking to Nick Grimshaw on Wednesday, Perrie also revealed they'd been in the studio for "over a year", and had written "hundreds" of songs.

"Then we decided they weren't good enough so we wrote another whole album," added Jesy.

If someone could arrange for us to have two Little Mix albums (the good one and the bad one) before August, that'd be awesome.

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Drake, Beyonce and 13 other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round-up of tracks I overlooked over the last week - some good, some bad, some unusual.

This week's star guests include:

1) Drake and Beyonce - Can I
Described perfectly by Vice as "a fat drizzle of maple syrup over an already delicious pancake stack".



2) Little Mix - Pretty Girls
Wondering what the Iggy / Britney song would have sounded like if Little Mix (who wrote the flipping thing) actually recorded it?

Well, wonder no more because The band performed an a capella snippet on Capital FM the other day, evidence of which is below.

Note that they need lyric sheets. Tsk. The youth of today, etc, etc.

New queens! Soooo flipping cute @LittleMix do #PrettyGirls #Instaoki @britneyspears @IGGYAZALEA 👏👏👏😜❤️ pic.twitter.com/H79ujXTUAG

— MAX (@ThisIsMax) May 24, 2015

3) Sigma ft Ella Henderson - Glitterball
More chilled than Sigma's standard sound, but a perfect fit for Ella's liquid vocals.





4) Wolf Alice - Bros
Echoing the lyrics, this is an Instagram-filtered tribute to childhood friends.

It's all a bit Dramarama (ask your dad) but the song brilliant.





5) Walk The Moon - Shut Up and Dance
A big, dumb pop song by a big, dumb rock band. It's going to be everywhere this summer.





6) Kendrick Lamar - These Walls (live on Ellen)
Kendrick turned up on Ellen's chat show for this faultless performance of To Pimp A Butterfly's most melodic moment (accompanied, for no discernible reason, by a portrait artist painting a dancing couple).

Afterwards, the rapper talked "fascinatingly" about his collaboration with Taylor Swift. "I've always been a fan of hers, and she was a fan of my music and she reached out and we got it done."

You can see both below.





7) D.R.A.M. - Cha Cha
Namedrop aleert: This was recommended to me by Lucas from Lionbabe, during an interview for the Beeb (it goes up tomorrow, I think).

It's one of those songs that succeeds despite itself. You'll find yourself involuntarily smiling as D.R.A.M. raps drowsily over an elevator-grade mariachi song and samples from Super Mario Bros.

D.R.A.M. stands for "Does Real Ass Music", by the way. Of course it does.






8) Bonnie McKee - Bombastic
"It’s a summer banger and the video is hopefully going to break the internet," Bonnie McKee told Billboard shortly before this song was released.

The internet remains unaffected in the 48 hours since it premiered, but if you ever wondered what an Avril Lavigne / Lady Gaga duet would sound like, you've found the song you're looking for.




9) Aston Merrygold - Get Stupid
Aiming for: Bruno Mars.
Achieving: Peter Andre.






10) Mark Ronson - I Can't Lose (Duke Dumont mix)
The story behind I Can't Lose is great. Mark Ronson co-wrote it with Jeff Bhasker (Alicia Keys' Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart) but they didn't have anyone to sing it. Instead of trawling Soundcloud, they went on a roadtrip in an Astro Van, driving up the Mississippi and stopping in Baton Rouge, Jackson, Memphis, Little Rock, St Louis and Chicago.

They heard "a few hundred amazing singers but we had a very specific vocalist in mind," he told The Guardian, "and when Keyone [Starr] came in the room in Jackson, MI and started singing, we realised she was the one."

Now the song has some added donk from Duke Dumont. And who amongst us can argue with added donk?







11) Asha - We Can Do This
Former street dance teacher and current vocalist Asha has released this kick-ass soul jam as her debut single.

With a coy, tremulous vocal she delivers the hackneyed line "can't nobody love you like me" in a way that makes it believable. Classy stuff.






12) Alesha Dixon - The Way We Are
Better than it has any right to be, Alesha's comeback slots nicely into the deep house revival while failing to stand out on its own merits.

Great dancing in the video, though.






13) Jess Glynne - Hold My Hand (live at the Big Weekend)
Worth it just to see the two kids, pressed up against the barrier at their first ever concert, gustily singing the wrong words.




14) Blur - Girls & Boys (live du Grand Journal)
"So apparently it was requested, this song," says Damon Albarn, looking for all the world like he'd rather be singing backup for Olly Murs.

Well, screw him. This is excellent.

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Disclosure's new song started out as a ballad

Influential dance act and gap year lookalikes Disclosure popped into Radio 1 last night to play the first single from their new album.

Holding On features guest vocals from jazz singer Gregory Porter and sounds exactly like you'd expect - soulful melodies, cavernous bass and a tedious "get on with it" intro.

Howard Lawrence told Radio 1 he'd written the song with Porter and Jimmy Napes (Rather Be, Stay With Me) in his East London studio, but it sounded nothing like the released version.

"It was half the speed, half the tempo, really, really slow like a ballad," he said. "Then me and Guy essentially remixed our own song."

"They just gave me an acapella," Guy added. "They wouldn't even tell me the chords underneath! "Hopefully one day Gregory will perform the original song, because I don't think people will quite believe which one came first."

I'd quite like to hear the original, too because (whisper it) the Disclosure version is pretty boring.

Disclosure ft Gregory Porter - Holding On

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