With the Down Guillotine

When Swedish pop icon Robyn revealed her unique plans regarding a long-awaited followup to her smash 2005 self-titled album - namely, plans to release no fewer than three albums by the end of 2010 - even the most loyal Robyn fans (myself included) met the news with a mixture of giddy excitement and, frankly, varying degrees of incredulity. Body Talk Pt. 1 dropped in June following by as much as three months the individual releases of no fewer than four of the eight tracks on the album, and though appetites were whetted, timing still caused even major Robyn proponents like Pitchfork to refer to the three-album project with tentative vocabulary. Then came the word, as the diminutive Swede was rounding up a successful U.S. mini-tour with newly dance-oriented American singer Kelis, that Body Talk Pt. 2 was ready for a September 6 UK release (a US release date of September 7 followed, albeit not quite swiftly enough to calm some nervous hearts stateside), and a track listing coinciding with the release of the second album's lead single "Hang With Me" (accompanied by a charming if not exactly wave-making video) confirmed that the penultimate offering of the proposed trilogy would contain the much buzzed-about collaboration with rapper Snoop Dogg, best known recently as the other culprit behind Katy Perry's inescapable summer number one "California Gurls."

Fortunately for this impatient Robyn fan, a certain resourceful significant other of mine has managed to acquire a rather advanced copy of the second of what now looks like it may actually be three albums Robyn drops in 2010. And it's GOOD. (More on that later, but trust me.) And for you, my loyal readers, I hereby offer you a first listen to the fabled collaboration with the D. O. double-G, a raucous, boastful display of entirely deserved superiority sprinkled with plenty of expletives, obligatory and fabulously cringe-inducing rhymes, and carried along by a high-tempo, speaker-bursting bass line. This is not the first time the two pop music giants have shared the same track, although Robyn's participation in the Fyre Department remix to Snoop Dogg's 2008 single "Sexual Eruption" was subsequent to the original track's release and not a "collaboration" in the same sense.

The plot of the new track, you ask? Well, it's essentially four minutes of Robyn and "Big Snoopy Dogg" alternating verses (with the occasional chorus thrown in) delineating all of the supposed tough guys of the world who "know better than to fuck with" them. Among them: the French, the Russians, the LAPD, the CIA, the FBI, the Vatican ("I sat down with the Romans," Robyn says, "And said we need a black pope, but she better be a woman"), the music industry, and the Devil himself.

Sounds pretty badass, but what else would you expect when two of the most consistently enjoyable artists working today team up to throw it down? Check out the new track and let me know what you think!

There have been several periods in the past thirty or so that modern pop music as we know it today has been around that saw an apex of talent, popularity, quality, freshness, and momentum. Among these high points in pop music history began around late 1996 and early 1997, ending a five or six year spell of stagnation - in the wake of controversy surrounding Madonna's sexually exploratory, envelope-pushing musical and literary output at the turn of the 1990s - something of a pop music dark ages.

Then suddenly from out of the swamps of repetitive minor ballads from a young Mariah Carey and an increasingly erratic Whitney Houston, a new generation of pop music emerged, bringing with it an infectious and sorely needed energy that revived and revitalized pop music in ways not seen since the early- to mid-80s ascent of the likes of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. Best of all, the renaissance seemingly offered something for everyone: Alanis Morissette, Jewel and Savage Garden conquered the moody adolescents and their parents' dollars by the barrel, while No Doubt and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones ska'd their way onto the scene and kept many a trumpeter employed; meanwhile, British import girl group the Spice Girls charged in from across the pond to tick the dance-pop metronome up a few notches, laying the path soon followed by the Backstreet Boys, together being the first acts of what would become the hugely lucrative subgenre of bubblegum/teen pop. Heck, even Mariah Carey lightened up a bit, scoring a top single on the Hot 100 with "Honey" in the fall of 1997.

Amid this surge of new or reinvigorated talent, a charming midtempo track by a new, unknown teenaged Swedish singer known mononymously as Robyn made its steady ascent up the U.S. singles chart to its eventual peak comfortably within the top ten. "Do You Know (What It Takes)" was the kind of perfectly recurring but not over-saturated hit that hardly exists anymore in these days where a handful of tracks get played to death by a monopolistic Top 40 radio empire (*cough*  ClearChannel *cough*): when it came on the radio, as it did quite often, it was unsurprising but always welcome, time since its last rotation seemed much longer than it really had been. Unless we'd sought out the video (rather minor even by '90s standards) most listeners had no visual image of this imported (but not imported-sounding) teenage chanteuse; only the sweetness, smoothness and skill of her voice and the eager naivete of the subject of which she sang. Or in my case, the happenstance of sharing a name (and spelling) with a dearly beloved godsister.

For whatever reason, Robyn made a good first impression nearly fourteen years ago, so much so that when late in 2009 a horrified friend and fellow pop music apologist alerted me to the fact that this Swedish gem had in fact continued working after seemingly disappearing as suddenly as she'd arrived, I was particularly pleased. And that was before I discovered that Robyn hadn't just been working: she'd become an artist comfortably living on the edge of genius; or, as she has proclaimed (to no argument I know of), "the killingest pop star on the planet."

Robyn's sixth studio album, Body Talk, Pt 1, drops June 15 - which happens to be the 26th birthday of your friendly blogger. It is to be the first of three albums due out within the next year, following up at long last the 2005/2007 self-titled album AllMusic called "the pop tour de force that Robyn  has always had in her," and combined with the European and U.S. tour scheduled this summer and fall with R&B champion Kelis, it even has potential to awaken an unsuspecting and unprepared American musical consciousness to this thrillingly superb pop icon for the first time in thirteen long years. But never fear: Vertigo Shtick is here to help as well as to honor. That is why for the next two weeks before Body Talk, Pt 1 arrives to blow your minds, Vertigo Shtick will be your Guide to Robyn, providing the newcomer and the long time fan alike with a thorough course in the star and her work, and strive to answer the unimaginable question of why you should care. 

So stay tuned; there's plenty of Robyn on its way to go around. I'll open this two-week smorgasbord with the hit that won me over to the Robyn side thirteen years ago and still adore as much as I did when I first heard it. Plus, of course, one can only hope that someone like Robyn will "always be around."

"Do You Know (What It Takes)"

Robyn 

Robyn is Here

(BMG, 1996)

\"Do You Know (What It Takes)\" - Robyn

Robyn, With a Dash of Salt N Pepa

They say opposites attract, and it's certainly been demonstrated that the convergence of two individually meritorious but outwardly disparate entities tends to result in something fantastic, like H.B. Reese getting some peanut butter on his chocolate, or Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan, or Catherine Zeta-Jones doing Sondheim.

Send in those clowns already!

Or, how about Robyn the killingest pop star on the planet, mixed with the groundbreaking girl rap pioneers Salt N Pepa? Swedish music blog Stockholm Beat Connection today posted this mashup of Robyn's recent single "Fembot" from her new album Body Talk, Pt. 1 (out June 15 - my birthday! - and I've heard it and it is killer) and the 1987 Salt N Pepa classic "Push It." New Directions, eat your heart out! Check out the mashup here or at the link below.

\"Fembot Push It\" (A Rokk Pie N Mash Up)

You Wanna Rumble In My Jungle?

Back in 1997 I was totally smitten with what to me at the time was a faceless Swede behind my favorite song, "Do You Know (What It Takes)." It helped that she shared a name (and, more importantly, a spelling of said name) with my godsister and close friend Robyn, and perhaps that was the reason that despite never hearing anything from the artist again over the next twelve years, I still felt a fondness for her. Thankfully, a friend of mine with her Europop radar much stronger than my own, introduced me earlier this year to the bonafide masterpiece of a self-titled pop album Robyn put out in 2005 (in Sweden), 2007 (Europe and Australia), and 2008 (US, kind of). Robyn is an embarassment of pop riches, but for the final day of 2009 I think I want most to be rocking to this sweetly foul-mouthed joy.

Konichiwa Bitches - Robyn

"Konichiwa Bitches"

Robyn

Robyn

Konichiwa Records, 2007

Trivia: The reason I hadn't heard anything from this fantastic artist for so long was that poor Robyn has gone through the messiest of quagmires with her former labels, before finally getting fed up, buying herself out of her contract, starting her own label, and sending Robyn out into the world in bits and pieces however she can. Multiple tracks from the album appear on Pitchfork's notoriously indie rock-centric Top Singles lists, including their Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s megalist, and Robyn receives almost unanimous praise from any US critic who manages to come across her recent work. But even if all that weren't true, I'd still adore this woman for the brilliant video that accompanies this surprisingly raunchy track...but it gets better. Once after one of my repeated viewings I felt inclined to express my approval via Twitter, jokingly asking where I might get a similar killer bee outfit. I almost died when I received a reply from Robyn herself: "it´s in my attic babes locked up saving it for a rainy day."

DEFINITELY get the fantastic self-titled pop opus by Robyn.