Eccentric producer, songwriter, rapper and pianist extraordinaire Chilly Gonzalez has been holding court at NYC’s Joe’s Pub the past little while, inviting guests like Andrew W.K., A-Trak and Sia to come onstage to chat and play some tunes. To celebrate his residency he just dropped a cool little mix that features him playing piano over Lil Wayne, Clipse and Kelly Clarkson tracks. It’s a nice little juxtaposition of funky beats, hardcore raps and lush piano tinkling that comes with the perfect price tag…free!

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1. Erykah Badu – New Amerykah, Pt 1: 4th World War (Universal Motown, 2008). Downplayed and practically disregarded as it was, 2003’s Worldwide Underground was an excellent and brave follow-up to 2000’s Mama’s Gun. Erykah Badu concedes she had nothing to say at the time — the loose 50-minute “EP” was more about sounds than statements — but she evidently holds herself to a high standard. Perhaps that streak was a factor in her protracted silence from its release to New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War; she even thought she might be through with making music. Her creative energy returned at some point, and then some, with this set apparently just the first in a series of releases. Varied and layered, New Amerykah, Pt. 1 has Badu collaborating principally with the members of Sa-Ra (who are present in almost half of the tracks), Madlib, 9th Wonder, and Baduizm/Mama’s Gun vets Karriem Riggins, James Poyser, and Ahmir Thompson. Read more >>

2. The-Dream – Love/Hate (Def Jam, 2007). When Terius “The-Dream” Nash released his first album, during the third-to-last week of 2007, the Top 30 of the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart contained five songs he co-wrote, only one of which was credited to him as a performer. Four of these singles — Mary J. Blige’s “Just Fine,” J. Holiday’s “Suffocate” and “Bed,” and his own “Shawty Is da Sh*!” — were on their way to the Top Five. Six months earlier, another song involving his input, Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” hit number one on the Hot 100. For Love/Hate’s duration, Nash sticks with close associates Christopher “Tricky” Stewart and Carlos “L.O.S.” McKinney. Not only does it lend the album a unified sound unlike most modern R&B albums, but it has the effect of a suite, with common elements shared between tracks; some of the transitions would make any album sequencing assistant deeply envious. Read more >>

3. Michael Mayer – Immer (Kompakt, 2002). Whenever something arrives in the shops with the name Michael Mayer affixed to it — whether it’s in the form of a remix, a 12″, or a mix album like this one — it’s an event. It doesn’t happen often enough, but when it does, disciples of the warm flavors of tech-house, click-house, micro-house, whatchamacallit-house, and experimental techno dealt out and curated by Mayer pay immediate perked-ear attention. It’s with very good reason. Following four years after his mix for the Neuhouse label, Immer finds Mayer smoothly fashioning tracks from labels like Ladomat, Ultra, Trapez, Force Inc., and his own Kompakt into a luxuriant digital bubble bath of envelopingly rounded beats, misty, atmospheric smears, and the odd tug at the heartstrings. Read more >>

4. Metro Area – Metro Area (Environ, 2002). The right amount of exposure and the right number of open minds would turn this record into the dance-music equivalent of Pulp Fiction. That film and this record are mindbending syntheses of undervalued styles and scenes of the past — both slyly referential and humbly reverential — with mad-scientist approaches that are dead set on being both current and translatable to the future. The men behind Metro Area, Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani, take six tracks from four 12″ releases that left immediate impressions on the dance underground, edit them as needed, and weave them into four new productions for a painstakingly sequenced album that flows constantly and smoothly with colorful, melodic, and deep feeling and simplistic yet full-sounding grooves. Read more >>

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Everyone remember Sally Shapiro, the icy Swedish disco duo? They had a couple albums that were blogged to death, including one that was released this year. Well, if you read the small print on their records, you’ll see the name Roger Gunnarson as the composer of many songs, including “Anorak Christmas.” Turns out he’s also responsible for a whole bunch of very good pop music during the past decade. Gunnarson’s own group, Nixon, made a few really good electro pop albums in the early 2000’s; he was a member of the noisy indie pop groups Free Loan Investments and The Garland; and best of all, he has his own Shapiro-esque set up with a duo called Cloetta Paris. Roger writes the sweet and gentle Italo disco-inspired tunes, wraps them in cheerfully frigid synth pop arrangements, and a female friend of his (not named Cloetta) sings them in a simple but very effective manner. If you like Sally Shapiro at all, you need to check out Cloetta Paris because, confidentially, they are way better! It’s like Roger snatched back the formula and perfected it while nobody was watching. He’s my indie pop hero!

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Cleveland, Ohio may not seem like a hotspot for indie pop but thanks to Afternoon Naps, the city is home to one of the best indie pop bands anywhere in 2009. Parade, their debut album for indie pop stalwart Happy Happy Birthday to Me, is a short, sweet confection made from a recipe of classic pop sounds from the past, able songwriting and breezy performances. The ten songs that make up the album hit the sweet spot between tightly arranged pop from the Brian Wilson school, the loose-limbed jangle of the Postcard Records crew, the sunny harmonies and chords of any number of 1960’s sunshine bands and the lo-fi, high energy patchwork of the Elephant 6 collective.

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Entertainer Sophie Tucker was, among women entertainers, sort of like Al Jolson and Ted Lewis rolled into one: a pioneering singer of blues, popular, Yiddish, and sentimental songs. Her career was so early that, even in the 1960s when she appeared regularly on Ed Sullivan’s show, she was well past her prime. However, there was a time when Sophie Tucker was at the center of the universe in American entertainment, and this time, Sophie Tucker’s time, is finally captured on Archeophone’s release Sophie Tucker: Origins of the Red Hot Mama.

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Previously on Hot Damn Jamz, we were lamenting our cubicle-bound status, but now spring has sprung and we’re back with a mini-world tour of hot damn jamz from acts that criss-cross the globe. From vintage-sounding reggae that conjures Jamaica via Brooklyn, to the finest neo-post-punk and acid house the UK has to offer, to Australia’s new wave disco revolution and many points in between, we’ve got it all covered — with a stop at Christmas Island to boot. Hot damn, it’s like Xmas in April.

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Dent May is an unlikely lad to be cast in the mold of a pop star. Baby-faced, precious and bespectacled in a way no one has been since the demise of Larry “Bud” Melman, May even plays the ukulele, for Pete’s sake. Fortunately for him “dorky” is the new undorky (thanks to fellas like Vampire Weekend) and fortunately for lovers of smart, fun and undeniably collegiate pop, May was discovered by Animal Collective, who put out his lovely new album The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele. The highlight of the record is the incredibly sweet and catchy “Meet Me in the Garden,” which percolates gently like Sergio Mendes gone new wave with a touch of soft rock smoothness. The lo-budget video was shot in a trailer in May’s Mississippi hometown and remarkably features May reclining in a bubble bath whilst crooning the tune. Luckily, there are no sightings of his magnificent ukulele.

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Featuring DJ/producers Tone and Papa Sparks, Version Big-Fi are the Reading, U.K. duo responsible for Stop That Train, a podcast of killer roots reggae selections plus dub cuts old and new. They recently released the Crux Collide Hybridize album, a pay-what-you-want digital download filled with bottomless bass and echoing dub sounds. It’s the follow-up to their debut full-length Everything But which was nominated for “Best Dub Recording or Album” at the 2008 Reggae Academy Awards in Kingston, Jamaica. Check the hypnotizing and almost inert video for the Crux track “Static” plus their truly heavy dub-step remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday”. Stop by their website for all the downloads and to check out the new single “The Hip Gahn Drop” with vocals from his lordship, the one and only Lord Buckley.

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