Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 03/31/2012 at 5:47 PM News

The Popdust Files: weekend playlist

Tomorrow is April Fool’s Day, also known as the most annoying day on the Internet. We are a website, so we thought about this. We considered constructing some elaborate fantasy world where everything is wrong, where Justin Bieber decided to quit music to binge on ye-ye records or Dr. Luke retired or everyone took cell phone photos of themselves covered in pills, but that’d take up far more of our Saturday nights than we’d like to relinquish. Plus, it’d make the site really annoying for you. Instead, why don’t we do what we do better–recommending songs? There are quite a lot to choose from!

1. JAI PAUL, “JASMINE”

British artist and Adele labelmate Jai Paul released the R&B-or-something “BTSTU,” which got blog love by the barrelful, then not much else. “Jasmine” is much the same; this claims to be a demo but is far too lush for that–as in, if Jai Paul keeps up his unschedule, this might still make people’s best-of lists. Wouldn’t be a bad choice.

2. USHER, “BURN”

Because since he’s off looking for himself, he might want to make sure he finds one of the better versions. “Climax” suggests he is. (We’ve mentioned that track a lot, haven’t we?)

3. MADONNA, “LIVE TO TELL”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThYLTBcrYd4

And speaking of people looking for themselves, don’t you sometimes just want to lock Madonna and all her Interscope buddies in a room with this track on loop? That’s not really a threat. This is a track you’d play on loop inside your room.

4. NICKI MINAJ, “BEEZ IN THE TRAP”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJlVPDe0tqI

And while we’re still speaking of people looking for themselves, Nicki Minaj had much better finds in tracks like this than in RedOne’s leftovers.

5. KAT GRAHAM, “PUT YOUR GRAFFITI ON ME”

Kat Graham’s pretty much found her sound here.

For more mixtape jams, including some fun and/or Fun. remixes, click NEXT.