If all you knew of Himanshu Suri and Victor Vazquez was their stoned spoof "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell," you might dismiss the rap surrealists as an amusing waste of a liberal-arts degree. In fact, their debut mixtape, Shut Up, Dude, was a hyperliterate good time, kicking flavor like "W.E.B. Du Bois/We be da boys." This new mixtape feels more pro, bringing in name producers (Diplo, Dame Grease) while joking about Dwight Schrute and Peggy Noonan. On "hahahaha jk?," they ponder a Middle America takeover: "We're not racists/We love white people/Ford trucks, apple pies, bald eagles." They're a Beastie Boys for the Tea Party era.

“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.