Big Boi Mrs. Vandebilt (feat. Wings, Little Dragon & Kelly Rowland)

If you’re wondering how Big Boi has cleared all the samples and legal wrangles likely to result from this collaboration, well… he hasn’t. Mrs. Vandebilt is part of Big Boi’s ongoing mash-up series and takes the instrumental track (plus some of Paul McCartney’s vocals) from the Band On The Run album track as its bed. It doesn’t initially appear like an easy track on which to lay rhymes but Big Boi’s vocal dexterity make it seem the simplest thing in the world. Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano provides wonderfully pleading vocals before a bizarrely treated Kelly Rowland sample sees us into the track’s coda. Somehow, Big Boi pulls all these disparate elements together and makes it work. Many rappers would kill to be able to do something this innovative and fresh-sounding, and Big Boi just casually throws it online like it’s nothing.