Flex

"Te Quiero"

(EMI Televisa)

Forget Vampire Weekend: Nowhere in current pop is there as deep a minefield of cross-cultural appropriation than the lousy-voiced young Latin pop singer behind this trifle, which made its Billboard Hot 100 bow a couple weeks ago, at number 99. What's wondrous isn't his singing, though it's pretty remarkable: Search YouTube for his song "En Este Mundo" and zero in on the "note" he "hits" at 2:48—even if you think the guilty pleasure is a chicken-shit conceit, anyone with a taste for the big ol' WTF moment needs to experience it. No, what's truly remarkable about Flex is that the U.S. seems to be the only place he's called Flex. What he's known as all over Latin America is—wait for it—Nigga. I'm not making this up. That's his name. And even if Flex is what Amazon's MP3 store lists his album as (it's also titled Te Quiero, though the cover also carries the imprint "Romantic Style in da World...," itself ripe for deconstruction), the N-name is what shows up under "artist" on all of its tracks. (The other holy-shit moment of the "En Este Mundo" video appears at 0:29, and involves his moniker.) Nas, call your agent. (Hat tip: Rodney Greene.)

The Bug, ft. Warrior Queen

Poison Dart EP

(Hyperdub)

How about that: a remix EP on which every version is worth your time. The original is good, menacing dub-skank, and it's enhanced by South Rakkas Crew's hot-stepping groove (my favorite); DJ Baku Mega's swamping echo; the lean, hard, electro-tinged version by Skream; and siren-tweaked dubstep from Stereotyp. "Stampin," the B-side (well, you know what I mean), features MC Flow Dan replacing Warrior Queen on the microphone and suffers mostly by not being "Poison Dart" or last year's brilliant "Skeng" (also featuring Flow Dan), though the massed, refracted chimes in its last 40 seconds almost make up for it.

Growing

Lateral EP

(The Social Registry)

This Brooklyn instrumental outfit has an effects pedal or 12, and on this four-song EP they utilize them on just about everything. The guitars are tricked up until properly alien, especially the ones that join the group's hazy aural beds midway through. These beds are plenty enough on their own, though: grinding, slow-rise, buzz-saw/helicopter drones ("Swell"); buzzes, beeps, and bzzzts ("First Contact"); staticky, ninth-generation orchestral hum ("Lateral"); and backwash from My Bloody Valentine's Tremolo EP ("After Glow"). Lovely stuff.