The long-awaited debut EP from this Harlem MC is four tracks – including her breakthrough single, "212," and more shit talk than you'd get at a Friday night nail salon – that spin hip-hop backward and forward. Banks kicks things off with chatty Franglish rhymes, but she also quotes A Tribe Called Quest and spits fire over bulbous deep-house jams cooked up by progressive Brooklyn producer Machinedrum. More, please.

Listen to '1991 EP':

Related
• Photos: Random Notes

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.