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Hip Hop Premiere Singles

Premiere: Tony Montana’s “I Like It” is the summer song for smiles

Release date: July 10, 2020

Dan Ray July 10, 2020
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Premiere: Tony Montana’s “I Like It” is the summer song for smiles July 10, 2020

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Photo courtesy of Tony Montana

Let’s be serious — shit is heavy right now. Coronavirus is seemingly never-ending, learning how to be anti-racist is a full-time job, and the looming election is, well, the looming election. It’s times like these that we need something to bring us a little joy, lest we crumble underneath the mounting pressure of being an alive human in America.

Enter: Tony Montana. The hip-hop artist released his debut album, Got Geeked just over a year ago (in May of 2019) and now the Cuban American is back with a fresh summer bop, “I Like It.”

The track is a fun, flirty, sunshine-infused jazzy jam with a plucky guitar line and saxophone solos that would bring a smile to even the most down-and-out coronavirus conspiracy theorists. The video starts, quite literally, with big smiles from Montana and his crew — select members of the Marshall Law Band, including frontman Marshall Hugh, drummer Matt McAlman, and aforementioned saxophonist Marty Thordarson — but, even without the video, it’s easy to hear the smiles encased within Montana’s flow. As he chimes, “Let’s be young and free and in the moment / We ain’t getting older ‘til the morning,” it’s hard not to remember and rejoice in the glory days where we could gather with our friends and run free until the wee hours.

The best part about this song, though, is how wholesome it is. With the opening and titular lyrics of, “Do it again, baby, I like it / I’m tryna hide it, but I want you right now,” it’s hard to say where the track will go. But as Montana and crew sweetly galavant across the beach, wooing guest vocalist Scarlet Parke, his words are just as saccharine in the absolute best way: “Girl, you got me humming while I’m walking.” Sure, MLB rolls up a few joints in the video and the whole crew can be seen drinking Papa Bueno and some never-not-funny-again Coronas, so it’s maybe not family-friendly, but the whole thing has an air of love and acceptance, like anyone walking down the beach would have felt like Montana was singing directly to them in a whole-hearted effort to boost their mood.

Even at four minutes in length — in today’s hip hop world, about twice as long as the average track — “I Like It” begs to be replayed. Montana expertly lays out his flow, from chorus to rap verse to chorus before Parke comes in with a chorus and a verse to herself. With her signature sultry groove, Parke adds a powerful feminine aura to the track. Throwing the most sexual line of the whole song, “The way you grab my hair, boy, has got me so excited,” immediately coupled with “I could see this going all the way to the grave,” positions Parke as a woman in charge of both her body and her heart, and I can’t say I’m not a fan. As she harmonizes over Montana’s final chorus, the track comes to a head, with the lover wooed, the couple blissful, and Thordarson playing their way “ ‘til the morning.”

Check out the video below to feel like you’re rolling down the beach with your boo, even if you’re eating ice cream alone in your kitchen bed — and make sure you watch past the credits for a fun blooper from McAlman. 

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Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).