The mixtape: Tkay Maidza, FourPlay, Bluejuice, Mariah Carey and more

Tkay Maidza – U-Huh

Adelaide-based Tkay Maidza has been turning heads with her dancefloor-friendly rap, which belongs squarely in the camp of MIA and Azealia Banks. This month she stepped into the international arena with a tour of the US and UK. Word is she was the standout performance at CMJ 2014’s Australian showcase. Her new song Switch Lanes (produced by Gold Coast’s Paces) throws in some soulful R&B singing – something different from her usual “bratty rap” (as she calls it) – care of the very radio-ready U-Huh. She returns home in November for a national tour.

Bluejuice – I’ll Go Crazy

I’ll Go Crazy doesn’t sound like a band in its death throes. But with Sydney punk-hop band Bluejuice calling it quits after 13 years of semi-nudity, sequinned leotards and deranged debauchery, consider this track a parting gift to their legion of fans. Co-written by frontman Jake Stone and Sparkadia’s Alex Burnett, it’s a contagious pop song in the truest Bluejuice tradition – testosterone-fuelled crowdsurfing fodder that might give you an STI if turned up too loud. It’s one of a handful of new tracks on Bluejuice’s greatest hits album, Retrospectable, and the accompanying clip is a montage of career highlights, taking in raucous live shows as well as taste-defying videos involving unbridled granny pashing, religious cult lampooning and jumping out of aeroplanes. The sound of an act going out with a gigantic exploding whoopee-cushion bang.

FourPlay – Have Your Cake

This is one of the more cinematic tracks on This Machine – the long-awaited fourth album from Sydney rock band-cum-string quartet FourPlay – and we’re struggling to come up with a convincing argument for why it isn’t the most beautiful piece of music ever written. Back in the day, FourPlay made their (very saucy) name performing instrumental covers of Rage Against the Machine, the Strokes, Radiohead and Sufjan Stevens, and This Machine marks the band’s first album of entirely original material. Have Your Cake was penned after an afternoon of gorging on cheesecake (the track’s original name was Don’t Blame the Cheesecake – but the band deemed that “too cheesy”). The piece starts off with tip-toe pizzicato, then builds to a melodious orchestral middle before reaching the kind of choral-layered climax that inspires bald eagles to soar over fjords, or something.

Run the Jewels – Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)

“Fuck the slo-mo,” says Zack de la Rocha at the beginning of this standout track from the new Run the Jewels album, recently released as a free download – and it certainly lives up to that maxim. The Rage Against the Machine frontman also provides the hook of the song – a chopped-up, staccato “run them jewels fast” which is repeated in the background throughout Killer Mike and El-P’s latest attack on the police and the criminal justice system. Against a breakneck beat, the song covers black imprisonment, child sex abuse in the church … and cunnilingus. This is angry, fun and fast.

Mariah Carey – Always Be My Baby

She of the five-octave range, Ms Mariah Carey will touch down in Perth on Sunday to begin her six-city tour of Australia. Those of us old enough to have sported a bouncing head of Carey curls, with a faded crop top or a pair of cutoff denim shorts stashed away in the attic, will be in due attendance. Expect stupendous displays of melisma and those signature breathy vocals from the lady of 90s R&B. Guardian Australia will personally incite a riot if Always Be My Baby, Fantasy, Hero and Honey are not trotted out.