Artist: Major Lazer
Title: Get Free
Record Label: Downtown Records
Rating: 7.5

I am still unsure if even Major Lazer himself can top Major Lazer. Considering DJ/producer Diplo scarce studio production release with the Major Lazer project/moniker (once with Switch) and impressive track record much buzz surrounds his newest album release Major Lazer Frees the Universe. Get Free is the first single out in times of synth evolution.

A valuable lesson was surely learned from his previous experience in collaboration with De La Roux that still resounds every so often in Caribbean DJ sets. This new LP is being introduced with a chiller sound, production finessed into what is the closest thing you will find from dancehall ballad. In this collaboration featuring Dirty Projector’s Amber Coffman the Major distances himself from the gritty afro-Jamaican beats that openly
made Dancehall available to the rest of Europe and North America through his own label Mad Decent.

Lyrics in this single are more political, ethereal and social than ever. Achieving all of this with good taste, regretfully a value long lost in the trans-genre music industry of electronica. With that strain of dystopic mood that has infected indie music for the past three years following the groundbreaking legacy of acts such as Arcade now fused with more club apt percussions. With Amber these words, ‘never got love from the government man’ speak to something deeper than anything ever found before in Diplo’s impressive repertoire. The tendency has been worldly and postmodern, it is closer to our collective consciousness and now you can jump to its reverberated bass line. Is it the project’s godmother M.I.A influence shining through thematically or a conscious intent to expand the borders of the project to a darker niche of listeners? Only marketing will tell.
The dance potential that has made his concerts legendary exists intrinsically, proved exhaustively by the two accompanying remixes included. The two remixes are what you would expect. Beneficial to the main single since they never steal the limelight from the original production. The one by Andy C adding some trending dub flavor and Bonde du Role borrowing heavily from Major Lazer’s own traditional signature.

This single bring forth the important question, specially for every evolving electronic producers, of what makes a Major Lazer production a Major Lazer hit? The answer is plain and apparent in this new collaboration: the capacity to appease the creative instinct of daring without neglecting the quality that made it known and loved in the first place. With this single it is again arguable that with exception of Modeselktor, Diplo is
proactively carving himself a unique category to dwell in. Get Free will leave its sensitive mark in the discography of Major Lazer, raising the bar 4:51 minutes higher than all of his peers.