When it comes to totally getting it, rookie producer Doctor Rosen Rosen seems pretty up there. The relative newcomer had already begun turning heads with early efforts at remixing the work of pop progressives like La Roux, Lady Gaga, M.I.A., Natalia Kills, and Jessie and The Toy Boys when he recently announced his ambitious and refreshingly apropos debut project, Girls, which is to arrive in four EP-sized installments over the next year and feature collaborations with some of "the brightest up-and-coming female artists." The first volume landed earlier today and features Jessie and the Toy Boys, Anjulie, Meg Myers, and the blonde and mononymous Kay, who last appeared on the recent Diplo and Datsik collaboration "Pick Your Poison" (I believe I mentioned that she'd be showing up again very soon).
The four tracks sound nothing like one another, but Kay's, the appropriately titled "Hot," was the only one that didn't sound like anything I'd heard before. The song takes Britney Spears' gag in "Hold It Against Me" - inane, frivolous lyrics that serve, by contrast, to magnify an assault of hardcore dance sound - but leaves the safety net behind. The good Doctor provides a bass-heavy beat that's sufficiently menacing and unexpected to keep lyrics like "butter on your mashed potatoes" from landing with the thud of "steaming like a pot full of vegetables." In a way, "Hot" manages what Marilyn Monroe never could (much to her chagrin): while it's easily the most blatantly sexual of the first four "Girls" on what looks to be a fascinating project, and fully satisfactory as such, the one I was still thinking about hours later, the one that titillates me on an intellectual as well as aesthetic level... is the slutty blonde.
That's hot.
GIRLS: VOLUME I, featuring brand new tracks from Jessie and The Toy Boys, Meg Myers, Kay and Anjulie, is available to download now. Get the full four-track EP for FREE here.
