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Album Of The Week

Album Of The Week: Vince Staples Prima Donna

10:21 AM EDT on August 23, 2016

The first voice we hear rapping on Prima Donna, the new Vince Staples EP, does not belong to Vince Staples. Instead, it belongs to André 3000, and it comes from a song that André made before he added the 3000 to his name. It's the whole final verse from "ATLiens," the title track from an album that came out 20 years, almost to the day, before Prima Donna. That verse, chopped up and made more hectic, opens "War Ready," the first proper song from Prima Donna. James Blake, producer of the song, hacks up and distends the final two lines from that verse: "Put my glock away, I got a stronger weapon that never runs out of ammunition, so I'm ready for war, OK?" Blake really glitches those lines up, treating André's voice the way he treated Aaliyah's back in 2009, when people still talked about Blake as a dubstep producer. Then the beat locks in, and we hear Staples chanting: "Born ready, waaar ready." It sounds like he's channeling a Master P banger or something, but that André quote, repeated so many times, gives it new context. Staples is going to war with his voice, and he's doing it by making the weirdest major-label rap EP we've heard in years.