Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 12/03/2011 at 12:49 PM News

The Popdust Files: grouplove, lana del ray, nicki minaj, TLC, toby keith, vybz kartel, weekend playlist

Thanksgiving weekend was fun and all, but while you were spending all that time with food and family, you may or may not have had time to appropriately kick out the weekend jams. We’ll we won’t call you out on it this once—don’t let it happen again—but this weekend, we’re here to get you back on schedule. It’s cold out there, and only getting colder, but inside your stereo, the hotness never has to stop. Yo, VIP, let’s kick it.

TRENT REZNOR & ATTICUS ROSS FEAT. KAREN O, “IMMIGRANT SONG”

You remember that Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trailer from a while back with a bunch of rapid-fire contextless-but-vaguely-cool-seeming shots from the movie and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O. wailing on an industrial cover of Led Zeppelin’s classic rock cut “Immigrant Song”? Yeah, that was pretty great—and now, we have the full version of the song, which is about as badass as anticipated. We don’t know much about the book series, but if the Dragon movie gets the unofficial thumbs up from Trent and Karen, that’s good enough for us to be oddly excited for its upcoming release.

NICKI MINAJ FEAT. EMINEM, “ROMAN’S REVENGE”

“Roman in Moscow” is all well and good—though we still want that Michael Jackson cover, dammit—but Roman’s greatest hit to date is still this Pink Friday favorite, with Nicki and Em breathing dungeon dragon fire over one of the coldest, hardest-hitting beats Nicki’s ever worked with. What’s more, the chemistry between the two behind the scenes was evidently good enough to eventually make Eminem go on the record with his specific desires of fornication with Her Minajesty. Good to know.

TOBY KEITH, “RED SOLO CUP”

Old news perhaps, but it deserves official weekend playlist recognition—simply put, everything about this song is great. The banjo plucking, the spoken-word breakdown, the key change, the final “SO-LO CUP!” exhortations, the music video (lord, the music video)—it could be no perfect-er. Normally TK’s boisterousness and general jacakssery causes at least some kind of quandary when it comes to enjoying his music, but the charm of “Red Solo Cup” is so severe that the guy singing it is barely even a factor. Inspired of Glee to recognize.

TLC, “AIN’T TOO PROUD TO BEG”

Not like it’s ever a bad time for a little TLC nostalgia, but if VH1 wants to give us a lightning rod for it in the form of a made-for-TV biopic—which, by the way, is very obviously going to be the greatest thing ever—far be it from us to refuse it. Debut single “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” isn’t the best TLC song by any means, but it is one of the great relics of the early ’90s, with its shrill, amped-up post-New Jack groove and irrepressibly youthful energy. (And Left Eye wearing that condom on her eye in the video, of course—always an emergency Halloween costume idea.) It’s incredible that two months from now, it’ll have been 20 years since hthey released, though in a lot of ways, it feels like way longer than that.

STAN GETZ AND JOAO GILBERTO, “THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA”

How many times do you get covered by Amy Winehouse and Mike Tyson in the same week? Nearly a half-century after its release, Getz and Gilberto, still getting it done. You just don’t get much more timeless than this.

For lots more weekend jams, including Lana Del Ray and a cover of a Christmas classic, click NEXT.