Entertainment

Ke$ha cashes in on ‘Sleazy 2.0’

Download of the Week

KE$HA

“Sleazy Remix 2.0 Get Sleazier”

4 STARS

Call it slow burn 2.0.

It’s an unusual song that gets released in 2010 to little notice and with a remix re-emerges as a milestone hip-hop event a year later. But that’s what pop vocalist Ke$ha has accomplished with an update of her tune “Sleazy” — first out on her EP “Cannibal.”

Like the original, “Sleazy Remix 2.0 Get Sleazier,” out today, features the electro pop star, now 24, working the song in her sing/rap style. In a bit of irony, the tune finds a girl who spells her name with a dollar sign brushing off wealthy men, letting them know how unimpressed she is with the size of their bank accounts. A sassy Ke$ha coos: “I don’t need you or your brand new Benz.”

That chorus hook is familiar 2010 “Sleazy” ground.

Things get more interesting in the new version, with Ke$ha enlisting an A-list quartet of MCs who supercharge the song. The rappers include T.I., Lil Wayne and Wiz Khalifa, as well as Andre 3000 from Outkast. All, except for Andre, try to boast their ways into Ke$ha’s, let’s say, heart, with claims of Kama Sutra swagger and Fort Knox (rather than hard knocks) accomplishments. Andre 3000’s rap is the most wholesome, about a kid coming to grips with a deadbeat dad, and Lil Wayne, whose nickname is Weezy, gets slightly sleazy for his double entendre-filled boudoir boasts.

Album of the Week

NAUGHTY BY NATURE

“Anthem Inc.”

3 STARS

On their first full-group album in 20 years, New Jersey rap trio Naughty by Nature is back with a record of new music peppered with a handful of Naughty classics. Their best-known tune, the 1991 sexually charged ode to infidelity “O.P.P.” — one of the first rap tracks to become a pop hit — is here. Plus, previously released “Hip Hop Hooray,” “Feel Me Flow” and “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.”

Those vault tunes hold up, but vocalists Treach, Vin Rock and Kay Gee show that their skills are still sharp on a dozen freshly minted tracks that precede the classic material. The record’s first single, “Perfect Party,” featuring R&B singer Joe, best recalls the group’s early work, and on “God Is Us,” Queen Latifah takes off her crown and gets down and dirty with Naughty by Nature.

One of the most entertaining elements of the album is in the liner-note thank yous. Vin Rock and Kay Gee are pretty straightforward in their acknowledgments to pals and the people who support them. But Treach is as cantankerous as ever saying: “Thank God for keeping me from putting my foot in a lot of a – – es.”