"HOTLINE BLING BUT U CAINT USE MY PHONE MIX"

Artists have been in a feverish race to put their own spin on Drake’s "Hotline Bling", but Erykah Badu’s flip on the summer sleeper hit puts them to shame in 15 seconds. With a simple, hopscotching pronunciation of "cellular device" that is as hilarious as it is genius, she sets up what is easily the best remix of the tropical ode to feeling left out.-=-=-=-

Taken from forthcoming mixtape BUT U CAINT USE MY PHONE and co-written by Seven Benjamin (her and André 3000’s son), the 7-minute mix is filled with novel touches that lift the original song’s balmy desperation into her own stratosphere: the brief but immediately recognizable OutKast sample, her ebbing and flowing backing vocals, the phone-recorded breakdown of a Badu hotline ("If you're calling to beg for some shit in general, press 4. If you're calling to beg for the shit but this is that pre-call before the actual begging, press 5."). By the time it winds down with a relaxed outro that would have fit in neatly on New Amerykah Part Two, she hasn’t simply outdone the fleet of copycats—she’s running circles around Drake, too.