Beanie Sigel - "Feel It In The Air"
The first to drop of the five (!) videos Beans shot the week he got sentenced, kind of mellow but not really slick enough to sound like a hit. The video looks real good, though. Heavy D did the beat, but it's not on some weird Cake-sampling shit like "Guns'n'Roses", it's all cheesy Miami Vice sax blowing and super weak hi-hats. I really hope they got a video for "I Gotta Have it" coming next.

Jin - "Senorita"
So is the idea that he's defying Asian American stereotypes by, uh, doing a song full of Latin American stereotypes? Huh? Maybe O-Dub can field this one.

Foxy Brown - "Yeah C'mon"
Pet theory #284 about how the Neptunes fell off: that it all started to go downhill when they dropped the Triton presets and started sampling live drums all the time and quantizing them less or in weird ways to make it sound a little off and more "live". It used to be they'd throw all these old school funk signifiers up, but the sick synth sounds and drums would keep it sounding like, well, the Neptunes. Now they do shit like this where the James Brown biting is so well done it almost sounds like a straight sample and I thought it was for a minute until I recognized that the yelping voice in the background was Pharrell. Foxy sounds more and more like Shyne lately, if anyone wants to start a rumor that he's ghostwriting for her from behind bars, go ahead and run with that.

Keyshia Cole - "I Changed My Mind"
Before Kanye really blew up and started working with anyone besides rappers, I figured his style would be really good with R&B, but aside from the Alicia song, most of the R&B he's done in the past year has been fair or mediocre. This is great, though, stuttery claps and the "Get By' drums, one of the only kits he has that really bangs, and the way the sample weaves in with the vocals is lovely.

Nelly - "Na-Nana-Na"
This and the Aguilera song probably won't help Sweat from sliding further and further down the charts from Suit, but I'm really feelin' this. Real amped up and kinda evil sounding Jazze Pha beat, slightly creepy little girl voices on the hook.

Terror Squad - "Take Me Home"
It looks like Dre from Cool & Dre is the next producer whose plan for getting shine is to be all in the videos and doing obnoxious hooks. I kind of like the "this is, this is, this is" thing he does at the beginning of "New York", though. It's funny that they also did the beat for Angie Martinez's "Take You Home", which flipped a different old song with a similiar lyric/concept.