So Necessary: Blood Orange Goes to Memphis, Yellow Days Finds Love, and Tyga Pays Homage

Because he has nothing better to do with his time, each Friday, Micah Peters riffs on the most awe-inspiring, confounding, addictive, or otherwise hilarious moments from the week in music. This week:

Project Pat and Gangsta Boo on Blood Orange’s “Gold Teeth”

One thing you could do with your time is to watch one of the many Project Pat interviews on YouTube—there’s a really good one with DJ Smallz Eyes where the Memphis legend spends half an hour, give or take, just talking about his gold teeth. Around the 34-minute mark, Pat discusses why he still wears his top row, even though he’s convinced his golds indirectly led to a four-year bid in federal prison, and even though he’s nearly 50. If you’ve been listening up to this point—about trips to TV Johnny’s, about when he first got his teeth done, about his plans to do another set in the near future—it’s evident that part of Pat’s reason is that gold teeth make him feel more himself. But also: “It helps me to relate to my people … to my younger guys out there on the streets.”

On Blood Orange’s last project, 2018’s Negro Swan, Project Pat was window dressing—a sample from “Tommy Wright III” plays off “Chewing Gum.” His presence during Dev Hynes’s performance of the song on SNL was somewhat awkward; he didn’t have much to do but nod his head and add the odd ad-lib or two. On Angel’s Pulse, out Friday, Pat adds live vocals to the mix on “Gold Teeth,” tag-teaming Hynes’s hazy, formless production with none other than Gangsta Boo. At the end of the hook he says, “And where I’m from / Grown men don’t take no ass-whuppin’,” which is exactly the kind of homespun and subtly meaningless truism you might get out of an elder.

All of 03 Greedo and Travis Barker’s Meet the Drummers EP, but Especially “Cellout”

Meet the Drummers is the latest 03 Greedo project to trickle out since the Los Angeles rapper was sentenced to 20 years in prison in April 2018 after pleading guilty to charges of drug and gun possession by a felon. It’s an unlikely pairing, but Barker works well with Greedo as a producer, providing a serviceably tinny, spacey, booming backdrop for Greedo’s marble-mouthed verses. “Cellout,” the opener, is almost celebratory. When Greedo warbles, “I ain’t gon’ sell out, knock this time inside the cell out,” you briefly forget about the dispiriting changelessness of his situation. Free Greedo.

ASAP Rocky Detained in Sweden

ASAP Rocky is being held at a Stockholm detention center while Swedish authorities investigate an altercation. The incident occurred on the street after a recent tour stop. After TMZ provided footage of the fight, Rocky posted two videos to his Instagram account for context, depicting two men following his entourage for several city blocks. There’s nothing in either video that explains how either party came to be in the situation, although you can plainly see Rocky’s security guard repeatedly asking the men to leave. At the end of the second, a woman offscreen explains that one of the men touched her inappropriately as he passed by.

Rocky volunteered to go to the police for questioning, and soon after was ordered by a Swedish court to be held for two weeks in pre-trial detention. He was also denied bail. In the intervening time there have been disturbing reports about the conditions of the holding facility, and duly a public outcry for Rocky’s release. At the time of publishing, a #JusticeForRocky Change.org petition has gathered more than 558,300 signatures.

Tyga’s “Lightskin Lil Wayne” Video

Completely unprompted, Tyga released a “tribute to the G.O.A.T.” this week, referencing a handful of Wayne’s most chart-gripping singles like “A Milli,” “Fireman,” “Go DJ,” and “Lollipop” in his new music video. Not so sure about the actual, lyrical averments made by Tyga here but—lovely visuals, beautiful visuals. (Wayne himself is, according to Instagram, a fan.)

(Wayne is also on the road with Blink-182 as a companion act at the moment, and it’s going about as well as that time Wiz Khalifa awkwardly toured with Fall Out Boy in 2015. At a recent stop in Bristow, Virginia, Wayne indicated that he “might” quit the tour.)

The Way Yellow Days Stretches His Vowels on “It’s Real Love”

Yellow Days melts down mournful indie pop songs and pours them into love ballad molds. George van der Broek’s music became the subject of internet intrigue after “Gap in the Clouds” landed on the bumper for Season 2 of Atlanta. It’s a woozy piece of dream rock befitting a hallucinatory clip where Earn physically rotates, up and down, ticking over the seasons of his life, like a flip clock. The voice of Van der Broek—a 19-year-old from Haslemere, England—is urgent, throaty, and soulful, making happiness and relaxation sound like hard work.

Love, also, has been treated as strenuous-to-distressing in the past, but on “It’s Real Love,” love begins to come easy for Van der Broek. So much so that he nearly wags his finger at people who struggle so mightily with it. When he sings, “Many people don’t show where their hearts want to go / No they hide, they hide awaaaaay,” listen to the way he cheekily leans into that last syllable.

BONUS: Drake OVO Fest Sunday Lineup

Having taken last summer off to slap-box with Pusha T, Drake and his OVO Fest return this summer and would you just look at the street-harassment all-stars lineup he’s trotting out for Sunday evening. Mid-2000s dancing-after-women-on-the-sidewalk R&B will never die.