Every Monday, I make myself a playlist of (mostly) new songs. It gets me in the habit of hunting for new music and hopefully gets me embracing fresh trends. This is the Monday Mixtape.

Missy Elliott, “Why I Still Love You”
Caught up in the fervor over the release of Taylor Swift’s Lover was the arrival of Missy Elliott’s new EP Iconology, her first collection of new songs in a decade (she’s put out singles here and there but this is the biggest single batch of Missy songs since The Cookbook came out in 2005). The single “Throw It Back” is a reasonable enough blast of hip-hop beat science, but Missy still has a knack for turning modern R&B on its ear as it bridges the past and the future.