Earl Sweatshirt (Earlsweatshirt.com)

Odd Future's Earl Sweatshirt—one of most popular crew members along with Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean (according to The New Yorker)—is getting ready to start laying down tracks on his next album. And the list of artists he plans on working with is very odd indeed.

According to FADER, most of OF's posse will appear on the album, which will be released via Tan Cressida, the Sony imprint he created. But it won't just be another infamous mixtape, as the lineup includes: "Tyler, the Creator, Domo Genesis, MellowHype, Frank Ocean ... Pharrell Williams, the Neptunes, the Alchemist and Vince Staples."

Below, Mr. Sweatshirt teams up with Donald Glover's Childish Gambino for a track called "Drop."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMGeuTAFWew&feature=related

Qream, get the money.

Hey, ladies who love flavored liqueurs -- good news! Pharrell Williams announced that he's releasing a vanilla-flavored spirit called Qream, and launched the female-friendly beverage at a giant Beverly Hills party last weekend. He doesn't explain the creative spelling, but he does give a bit of insight into why, as of late, he's focusing on making bottles for the club instead of bangers for the club. Sigh. Day jobs, don't leave them!

Rap-Up TV has brought us the scintillating details behind Qream. Pharrell, he's a markets guy. He knows what's missing from the spread.

“I looked at the market, I looked at the holes out there and it felt like 'indulgence' and 'women' were the two things that were being neglected," he said. "When you pour a glass of cream, it's significantly less calories. It's a thinner consistency, so a woman doesnt feel like she's gained ten pounds just by thinking about drinking it."

Pharrell then describes the delectibilty of the stuff.

"It's definitely in the ice cream world, in the shake world."

Perfect for summer! And it's 95 percent lactose free. So if you're a woman who feels shunned by a market that's ignored "indulgence," this drink is for you. Lactose intolerant women who indulge, you have no excuse.

In 1982, popular music was often whatever Prince Roger Nelson decided it was. Twenty years later, the same can be said for Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, two Virginians who, under their nom de pop , the Neptunes, have produced the work of Britney Spears, Ol' Dirty Bastard and Kelis, and under the rubric of N.E.R.D. have made a new album. Both Prince and the Neptunes produce songs on the new No Doubt record , Rock Steady , and both crossbreed musical idioms by instinct. But guess which of their respective new records is hopelessly convoluted, and which is the very thing you want to put on during a party?

In every sense, Prince has arrived at the place he has quite publicly coveted since the early 90's: The Rainbow Children (NPG) is the work of an unfettered artiste. It is (take a deep breath) a concept album. Using a portentous basso profundo to narrate a sci-fi–fantasy plot line so impenetrable that it would benefit no one for me to recount it, Prince takes 11 tracks to get to a single, solitary hook-in the breezy ballad "She Loves Me 4 Me."

But Prince's hard-won freedom seems to have come at the price of his discipline. The Rainbow Children is full of accomplished but unfocused funk workouts and sundry forays into Ellingtonia and sub- Godspell epics that never quite catch fire. In his favor, Prince sprinkles pungent guitar throughout, and his voice is still an exceptional, feral thing, even when it conveys twaddle.

Prince has earned the right (and more notably, the financial independence) to do exactly as he pleases. But if he keeps producing material that's as unrealized as The Rainbow Children , everyone else will have just as much right to ignore him.

Instead, they can pay attention to N.E.R.D.'s engaging new album, In Search Of (EMD/Virgin), which shows what the Neptunes do to amuse themselves when they're not channeling one of their clients.

On In Search Of , Mr. Williams and Mr. Hugo want to make you split your sides as you bob your head. "Tape You" and "Brain" are both staccato, sprightly bits of lewdness of the sort that Prince is either too old or too in thrall to his Jehovah's Witness elders to dream up these days. And should anyone doubt that N.E.R.D. can craft something more weighty than danceable smut, there's "Am I High," an airy ballad indebted to Donny Hathaway.

N.E.R.D. prefers to use a full band on In Search Of , which is a shame, since the duo's syncopated drum programming is its greatest virtue. But Messrs. Williams and Hugo, modest melodists at the best of times, have nonetheless made a flyweight and eminently fun party record.