Cut 4 Me

Cut 4 Me
Mixtape by Kelela
Released October 1, 2013 (2013-10-01)
Genre
Length 49:22
Label Fade to Mind
Producer
  • Bok Bok
  • Jam City
  • Kingdom
  • Morri$
  • Nguzunguzu
  • Girl Unit
  • NA
  • Napolian
  • Tariq & Garfield
  • MikeQ
  • Massacooramaan
  • Rizzla
  • Neana
Kelela chronology
Cut 4 Me
(2013)		 Hallucinogen
(2015)String Module Error: Match not foundString Module Error: Match not found
Alternative cover

Deluxe edition cover

Cut 4 Me is the debut mixtape by American singer and songwriter Kelela. It was released on October 1, 2013, by Fade to Mind for free download on SoundCloud.[1] Seeking to make the mixtape sound like a remix album, Kelela sung over instrumental tracks by producers from Fade to Mind and Night Slugs.[2] Spin has described the sound of these sister imprints as "one of the most distinctive sounds in UK dance music, a mutable hybrid of grime, house, electro, R&B, techno, hip hop, and dubstep."[3]

A deluxe edition featuring a new interlude and eight unreleased remixes by the Fade to Mind and Night Slugs producers was released on April 6, 2015 on CD, vinyl and digital download.[4]

Composition

Time Out London characterized the mixtape as "future R&B."[5] Similarly, The Guardian described it as "twisted R&B," adding that "the songs are twisted both sonically – warping 90s R&B melodies with club beats – and emotionally, thanks to her ability to undercut mainstream pop tropes like love and seduction with such dark devotion you get the sense she's singing from a bush outside her ex-boyfriend's house."[6] The New York Times compared Kelela to Aaliyah, while calling the mixtape "bubbly club music of the early 1990s."[7] Exclaim! said the mixtape is "a credible cohesion of '90s house-ish sounds and soul."[8] Time noted that the mixtape "is built on the half-time beats and unsettling negative-space arrangements of the "bass music" collectives Night Slugs and Fade to Mind. It's forbidding stuff, but it meshes with the sweet '90s R&B inflections of Kelela’s singing."[9]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic81/100[10]
Review scores
SourceRating
The 4058/10[11]
AllMusic[12]
Exclaim!8/10[8]
Fact4.5/5[13]
Pitchfork8.3/10[14]
Resident Advisor3.5/5[15]
Tiny Mix Tapes[16]

At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the mixtape received an average score of 81, based on 6 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[10] Fact stated that "there is nothing about Cut 4 Me that doesn't challenge the listener's expectations of what R&B can be in 2013 and beyond."[13] Given their "Best New Music" label, Pitchfork said the mixtape "is an ambitiously catchy record as well as being an aesthetically ambitious one."[14] CMJ said the mixtape is a collection "of flawlessly crafted R&B pop gems, squeezed dry of any sonic excess that tends to signal uncertainty."[17] Calling the mixtape "excellent", The Guardian said, "across 13 tracks Kelela travels from angered to paranoid, horny to high. She will sound fine, then terrible, then merely quite unhappy until finally, for a while at least, she sounds at peace," adding that "the next 12 months are undoubtably going to be awash with a similar structure of falsettos, surreal beats and eerie minimalism. But let's not forget: Kelela's Cut 4 Me did it first, and almost certainly did it best."[6] Spin said "there's been no shortage of hazily hi-tech R&B over the past couple of years, but none of it sounds as eerie or as ominous as Kelela's does. The music is full of hulking, square-wave bass lines, digital chimes, desiccated claps, and jagged rhythms; synth leads waver queasily around their target pitch, and open-fifth harmonies suggest a faintly Asian air."[18] AllMusic said "Kelela fulfills her desire to make what resembles a remix album," but added that unlike most remix albums, "there's never any sense of a disconnect between the music and the vocals. Kelela's expressive and athletic voice easily slithers between and coasts over the beats."[12]

Accolades

Publication Accolade Rank Ref.
Complex The 50 Best Albums of 2013 28 [19]
eMusic 100 Best Albums of 2013 33 [20]
Fact The 50 Best Albums of 2013 5 [21]
Gigwise The 50 Best Albums of 2013 20 [22]
The Guardian Best albums of 2013 7 [6]
The Quietus Quietus Albums Of The Year 2013 23 [23]
Spin SPIN's 50 Best Albums of 2013 36 [24]
Time Top 10 Albums of 2013 7 [9]
Time Out London The 40 best albums of 2013 5 [5]
Urban Outfitters Top 50 Albums of 2013 22 [25]

Track listing

No.TitleProducer(s)Length
1."Guns & Synths"
2:56
2."Enemy"Nguzunguzu4:17
3."Floor Show"Girl Unit4:38
4."Do It Again"NA3:00
5."Go All Night (Let Me Roll)"Morri$1:43
6."Bank Head" (Extended)Kingdom5:02
7."Cut 4 Me"Kingdom3:53
8."Keep It Cool"Jam City4:10
9."Send Me Out"Kingdom4:12
10."Go All Night (Let it Burn)"Morri$1:46
11."Something Else"Nguzunguzu4:07
12."A Lie"Bok Bok3:39
13."Cherry Coffee"Jam City5:59
Total length:49:22

References

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