Nobody. Does. It. Better.

Rachel Stevens, "Crazy Boys" - Jesus. JESUS. I mean, JE. SUSZ - this is the one I've been waiting for. I've been hearing for months that (a) the new Rachel Stevens album is going to be world-beating futurepop, and (b) "Crazy Boys" is one of the flat-out best things ever to jump out of Richard X's head, and they were right. I mean, at this moment I've heard - what - five? songs off of Come And Get It, but that's as many as it took for me to get all feverish about Late Registration, and "Crazy Boys" alone might have been enough to put it over the top. There's about forty different parts of this song that send me screaming to the keyboard to post everywhere that'll listen to me about how much I'm getting beaten up by "that little synth swirl in the background", except for then I have a moment of clarity and snap back to the reality that this song is nothing but little swirling synths in the background that exist only to beat my ass. It's easily the best thing I've heard out of RX since the clip of his mix of "No More Conversations" came out in that godlike Freeform Five Misch Masch mix earlier this year, but that was just a few months ago and it feels like I'm damning this incredible Thing of a pop song with faint praise by keeping the timeframe that short. At the very least, it's worlds better than his recent remixes for Gwen Stefani and NIN, both of which are fun, clever little genre workouts but neither of which can ever hold a candle to Richard Fucking X going his own kind of ballistic. Lord knows he tends to bring out the best in Ms. Stevens, who continues to make the least embarassing purely girl-pop music on this planet - she doesn't try to come off all cute & pouty, just goes out there and nails it, just nails it. It's actually kind of remarkable how little she tries to diva up here - Come And Get It is clearly a make-it-or-break-it moment for her after her recent success (or lack thereof), but even with her back against the wall she still knows better than to try and overpower something like this.

Right now this is my single of the year. Jesus Christ. (Click here to pre-order Come And Get It from HMV)

Twista, "Lavish" (feat. Pharrell) - My friend David was calling Pharrell the scion of Puffy back in 2002, and I'm still not sure it's unfair - lord knows whenever I see "feat. Pharrell" I tend to roll my eyes and assume the beat must have just been too expensive straight out. Well, I've heard a fair bit of Puffy (not by choice, mind you), but he's never killed a verse like Pharrell does here - I mean, he outshines Twista like crazy here, and this is the first song in a good minute that's made me go "well, okay, yeah, Twista". It's so surprising that it's nearly shocking. Also of note: HOLY SHIT @ the beat. Best weird-ass Neptunes beat in a good long while, and I really liked "On & On". (Click here to purchase the Mobb Town Mixtape from MixUnit)