Twenty-three-year-old Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky is a baby-faced young adult who could pass for a teenager. But he's got the soul of a classicist. "Goldie," the first single from the rising star's forthcoming major-label debut (due in July), is his latest exercise in hip-hop basics: It's full of relentless boasts and insults, delivered with low-key wit and admirably little fuss. The beat, by red-hot producer Hit-Boy ("Ni**as in Paris"), is full of keyboard blips and spacey vocal chorales, and A$AP Rocky's rhymes fall in the sweet spot between sublime and ridiculous: "You could call me Billy Gates, got a crib in every state," he raps. "Man on the moon, got a condo out in space."

Listen to A$AP Rocky's "Goldie":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."