Reimagine “Life Round Here” with Ellie Goulding and Angel Haze
There’s a certain kind of beauty in unlikely (and surprisingly good) collaborations. This time it’s UK pop songstress Ellie Goulding teaming up with up-and-coming Detroit rapper Angel Haze for a new spin on James Blake and Chance the Rapper‘s spooky “Life Round Here (Remix)”.
The track was originally featured on Blake’s Overgrown LP which earned him a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist this year. With her distinct breathy pipes, Goulding shines and creates the atmosphere for the fire Angel Haze (who recently released her album Dirty Gold) spits in her impressive verse. Chance the Rapper recently told NME that he and Blake were moving in together to make more magic. Based on the brilliance of this cover, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Ellie and Angel Haze to do the same. Get tickets to Ellie Goulding’s March 14th show at the Liacouras Center here.
(Hear More – Ellie Goulding goes unplugged for Free at Noon)
UPDATE: And so we thought the story ended here. Two excellent contemporary pop artists, one solid collaboration, something our contributor Katrina Murray dug up in her regular music digging for The Key. Show coming up to make it timely; good stuff all around, yeah? Then I saw a tweet in our direction from Ryan Schwabe aka ONEdependent from the Philly / Brooklyn production duo Subglo. “You forgot to add ‘made in Philly'” he wrote.
I re-tweeted his comment, not entirely sure what it meant, and that led to us exchanging Twitter messages about the background.
“Life Round Here” was produced by Schwabe and Noah Beresin aka Noah Breakfast (previously known as Xaphoon Jones of Chiddy Bang) in West Philly for Schwabe’s raremp3 production company. They previously worked with Spank Rock, and the band Wet, and got their start mixing Goulding’s cover of the Alt-J hit “Tessellate” last summer. That led to this more recent collaboration. The more you know, right? Dig on “Tessellate” here. -John Vettese, editor, The Key