Posted by Maura Johnston on 01/24/2011 at 10:30 AM Reviews

The Popdust Files: musiq soulchild, swizz beatz

The flurry of free-music giveaways in the wake of Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Fridays has resulted in a flood of songs pinging around the web in 2011, with mixed results. Some of the entries in the derby feel deliberately unfinished—like Timbaland’s initial installment in Timbaland Thursdays, the Missy Elliott-assisted “Get Ur Clothes Off”—and others are just simply inferior to the rest of their creators’ retail-sanctioned catalogs. To that end, Swizz Beatz has flat-out said that the tracks he’s releasing as part of his Monster Mondays series won’t be on his forthcoming album Haute Living, which might make the whole pre-release roll-out seem like a cheap ploy to just keep his name in the always-in-need-of-content press during the period preceding his album’s release. But the latest entry in his one-song-a-week series is actually pretty good!

The effervescent, Musiq Soulchild-led “Anything” is a lively love song that sounds inspired by a woman who’s alluring enough to take away from important video-game-playing time—thanks to a musical bed that seems directly influenced by a little too much time spent browsing the wares available on the Wii Shop Channel. Musiq’s in loverman mode, promising to open his heart to a woman as long as she returns the favor. It’s hardly reinventing the wheel, but it definitely gets the job done—and it’s good enough to make one wonder just what, exactly, made Swizz’ cut for Haute Living.

POPDUST SAYS:

[starreview tpl=16]

4 BOLTS