Listen: Rye Rye's First Mixtape is a High-Energy Intro to M.I.A.'s Protégée

Rye Rye performs on October 12, 2010 in Oakland, California.

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty

Baltimore rapper Rye Rye's debut album Go! Pop! Bang! is due out next month on M.I.A.'s N.E.E.T. Recordings label. In the meantime her first mixtape RYEot powER serves as a fine introduction to her gleeful, highly energetic style of hip-hop.

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The mix, which can be downloaded below, includes strong new tracks such as the bass-heavy "Witchdoctor" and the immediately catchy "Chase Money," as well as remixes of hits by Ke$ha and Miley Cyrus.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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