Rihanna takes over as our cover artist on the slow-disco pre-party vibe mix that is Despacio (Vol. 5!). It's the 73rd achievement she's made since releasing ANTI! This honour is bestowed until she makes another album!
Recently, Spotify’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek caused a furore among the music creator community by suggesting artists should up their work rate. Well, he actually said that artists should release music more frequently, which kind of amounts to the same thing. What Rihanna makes of Ek’s comments who knows, but we can express here from TSS towers our utmost concern about Rihanna’s work rate. Her last album was the all-conquering ANTI, incept date January 18 the year 2016. That record contained the certified banger ‘Work’ which just seems to be a bit rich at this point. The track has the infamous middle eight (and only appearance in the vaults of TSS) by Drake in which he raps “I know you need to get done, done, done, done [with work] if you come over”. Did she get done with work and stop right there?
Of course, there is an explanation. In the four years since ANTI’s release to the beginning of 2020, Rihanna had ticked off (according to the LA Times) at least 72 separate tasks on her to do list (including becoming an ambassador for Barbados, launching a beauty empire, starring in several Hollywood movies - that type of thing). She was even rumoured to have played an actual vocal ‘cameo role’ in an actual song (N.E.R.D.’s Lemon, 2017). But then look: she did it again on PARTYNEXTDOOR’s single BELIEVE IT in March of this year 2020. Side-hustles notwithstanding (which also included meeting French President Emmanuel Macron to fund global education) this is slow work. So slow in fact that we are adding to Rihanna’s list of ‘in-between album’ achievements by honouring her as our cover star for our Despacio ‘slow disco’ mix series. Starting now, this honour is bestowed upon the singer until further notice or the release of her next studio album (whichever happens to be the sooner).
So there we go, Despacio is back (Vol. 5!) after more than a whole year (we are slow, but not that slow). The idea of Despacio is as follows: a mix of music from all of pop’s genres by artists new and old, ideally played during the ‘cocktail hour’ - an early evening pre-party sort of vibe. It wasn’t even our idea to be honest. Despacio is Spanish for slowly, and this playlist series was inspired by James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem) and Soulwax, who created the Despacio Disco — epic, hours-long sessions that feature slower ‘dance’ numbers, mixed with tracks that might be previously more associated with ‘yacht rock’ or guilty pleasures.
We just took the concept to a slightly different place, with the idea that it doesn’t matter whether you are middle-aged, party-deprived and stressed-out, or whether you are a box fresh 16-24 year-old (and therefore, probably party-deprived and stressed-out) music fan. Point being, you are old enough to enjoy a Dark & Stormy (with or without the rum), stare at the ocean, chat with close friends and cool people and sway to the music. And you could care less whether that music is old or new, or cool or uncool (Billy Joel anyone?), because the tracks are so damn good they make you feel just perfectly fine.
So there we have it, it may have taken a short while but Despacio 5 is here just in the nick of time before the weather turns. We’re squeezing the very last drops out of summer and, in the spirit of taking your sweet time (and the fact that James and Soulwax probably haven’t had a marathon Despacio Disco event in quite a while) we’ve put together a mega-mix of volumes I-IV which comes to a monster 9 hours of relaxed, jovial partying music, for you and your locked-down friends to enjoy. Find it on the music themes page here.
And here’s something we don’t advise too often, play on random.
Speaking of partying, do you recall the chaos of the 90s and those times when sweaty, crazy gigs were all the rage and good ship Albion sailed on the wild oceans? See you next time.
Madonna, our cover artist up to this point, is not fired or retired. She has been overdoing it and needed a rest. ;)