The brainchild of production duo Jungle, the moniker of British music makers Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland (perhaps best known for their 2014 sleeper Busy Earnin’), it’s Good Times that should solidify them as dance floor staples. Kicking off with a celestial-sounding intro before exploding into what could become the hit of the sweltering summer of ’22, the rollicking Good Times strikes a perfect balance between throwback jam and modern day smash.
Someone get the lad another caipirinha, stat. Bad Bunny doth protest too much on a song whose title translates as I Am Not Jealous, as he surveys his ex with someone he doesn’t like, but even if you don’t know Spanish his pain is so palpable in the wounded “ouch, mi corazon” that ends the chorus: chest-out bravado caves to reveal a hurt little boy, in one of the musical moments of the year. Tucked amid the brilliant reggaeton, mambo and more is this gem, with a bossa nova-adjacent rhythm picked out on acoustic guitar and a drum rim a wistful early-evening track cut with small-hours melancholy. Free-pouring tequila into your friends’ mouths, making eyes at people in swimwear, brooding at the pink-ening sky: there’s a song for every mood on this all-inclusive record, and thanks to Bad Bunny’s similarly broad vocal range – from breathy entreaties to barked orders – all are kept as buoyant as a long volleyball rally. Kate Hutchinson Bad Bunny – Yo No Soy Celosoīad Bunny didn’t just try to make the song of the summer but the album, saying Un Verano Sin Ti should be played “in the summer, on the beach, as a playlist”. The rest is, as they say, pure fire: though Skeng’s patois is distinctly thick and fast, it unfolds with serpentine precision over the instrumental’s plucky strings the guttural purr of its refrain – “Lon-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun’ – lingers for days. It has a whiff of the People Just Do Nothing About it, opening with the line “Hello mate (bloody hell)”, while the video shows Skeng and friends waving around bottles of bubbly on quad bikes in a London park. It’s hardly a picnic tune but this track – which he apparently wrote in celebration of his first UK tour here in spring – hints at his comedy chops. Skeng is a rising and yet controversial dancehall rapper from Jamaica whose sound is far darker and more menacing than his peers it shares stylistic touchstones with popular London-centric rap styles like UK drill and similarly to many of those artists, Skeng raps about the realities of street life and has been accused of glamorising weapons and gang violence. In the midst of your darkest times, you will discover that lament leads you back to a place of hope-not because lamenting does anything magical, but because God sings a louder song than suffering ever could, a song of renewal and restoration.Go down a Hackney backstreet or stroll along the River Lea this summer and at some point you’re likely to hear this gnarly celebration of the city blaring from a car or loudspeaker. Lament recognizes the existence of evil and suffering-without any sugarcoating-while simultaneously declaring that suffering will not have the final say. Lament anticipates new creation but also acknowledges the painful reality of now. Lament minds the gap between current hopelessness and coming hope.
Lament leads us between the Already and the Not Yet. It’s not easy, but God will use it to lead you toward healing. There is a pathway through this suffering. Here, you are raw before God, an open wound. In the next, you might descend into fatalism. In one breath, you may be able to say that God’s got this and all will be well. You want to tie up pain in a pretty little package and hide it under the bed, taking it out only when you feel strong enough to face it.
When you’re in the midst of suffering, you want answers for the unanswerable, resolutions to the unresolvable.
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