LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy will soon be marketing his own espresso blend, and he probably blazed up a blammo batch of it for this zippy future-freak soul summit. Putting this many visionary types in one studio could’ve made for a mess, but they lock in for a three-man weave – like the Bird-McHale-Parish of avant-R&B. Damon Albarn lays down a double-time funk charge and lyrical patter about being a "pale imitator of a boy in the sky," while Murphy unspools tweak-y falsetto silliness and Andre 3000 drops a devastating freestyle – "I’m an Outkast but you’re into me/Summer got mad 'cause winter blew me" – before taking us to the rivers of Mars like a sweetly zonked Al Green. The comedown from this must've been brutal.

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• Photos: Random Notes

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."