Last week, Southfield native Mike Posner released his free mixtape, "The Layover," his first music since 2010's "31 Minutes to Takeoff." While there are several bangers on the record, which you can cop here, one track in particular establishes Posner's potential as one of Detroit's next heavyweights. Posner, at his best, brings pop music and hip-hop together with the same inspiration as mash-up artists like The Hood Internet (they're the cooler version of Girl Talk).
"I'm kind of like a rapper trapped in a singer's body," Posner told Mixtape Daily. "That was the whole idea of me starting to sing in the first place. It took me a long time to stumble upon a sound, and I figured out I wanted to kinda sing rapper's lyrics."
Listening to Posner's "Layover" mix, even considering its high-profile cameos from spitters like Twista and Bun B., soars when the young producer digs into his own iTunes collection for inspiration. "Wonderwall," the classic Oasis sing-along is on there. So's Elton John's "Rocket Man." They're not hip samples -- more like the songs a young man with a crush might cobble together for a mixtape he's giving to a girl. For a young man who made the Billboard charts for "Cooler Than Me," his ode to a woman who wasn't impressed by his charms, it's a continuation of Posner's public personality. Hip-hop head without (too much) ego -- the kind the ladies call a "charmer."