Forbes Avenue » Music

Robin Thicke – Shakin It for Daddy (ft. Nicky Minaj)

negrostotle — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:14:09 +0000

That Robin Thicke-Lil Wayne connection that goes all the way back to Robin Thicke’s The Evolution of Robin Thicke album, is coming in handy…maybe, kind of. Thicke was recently on the Rickey Smiley show to promote his new single “Shakin it for Daddy” featuring Young Money crew member Nicky Minaj. Video is below. (spotted at Nah Right)

Good Morning Forbes

negrostotle — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:00:32 +0000

Can you guess the celebrity spandex? A hint…”Ghost Whisperer” (via IDontLikeYouInThatWay)

Compensated Dating…sounds a lot like being your own pimp in a prostitution ring…but what do I know?

The Simpsons parodied MMA on Sunday…wait. The Simpsons still comes on?

New Hotness? celebrities staying off of Twitter.

New Chris Brown music…For the life of me, I’m still having some trouble moving past that whole Rihanna beating thing. On the other hand, I’m not a 15 year old girl, so I wasn’t exactly his fan base anyway.

Mike Tyson opens up to Oprah about the death of his four-year-old daughter, and it’s hard to watch. Also, if you haven’t seen the documentary Tyson, run, don’t walk to the video store. It’s amazing.

Hillary Clinton says she won’t run for president again.

Al Sharpton is lobbying the NFL to block Rush Limbaugh from buying the St. Louis Rams.

Paul Anka thinks the new Michael Jackson song released yesterday is a rip-off of one he made years ago. If you listen, it’s obvious the two songs are the same, to the point where Sony would have to be crazy to release Michael’s version without all the legal matters covered.

The Independence Day sequel has a script, but FOX thinks it can get away with not paying Will Smith. Foolish.

Good Morning Forbes.

Jay-Z on Oprah

negrostotle — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:07:29 +0000

Sean Carter…on Oprah. In 4 parts. When you really think about it, this is really an interview of completely crazy proportions. These are arguably the only two black people in the last 20 years that have completely blurred the cultural barrier between black & white all races. Suburban white house wives know who both of these people are. At the same time, any black person on “the streets” knows them as well. Not only knows them, but for the most part can accept (yes, I’m excluding Bill O’Reilly, of course)…which is really crazy. Crazier? the fact that I instantly fell into the rich white woman-poor black people comparison. Sad that those years of conditioning still haven’t worn off. I blame “the man” for that.

On a side note, just like the boy Rizoh said…You can almost hear Oprah yelling at the TV…”I can’t promote this, I got sponsors!” whenever the usage of The “N-word” comes up.

Video Courtesy of (rap radar) found at The Rap Up

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Jay-Z “Run This Town” Video

negrostotle — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:11:41 +0000

Jay-Z ft. Rihanna & Kanye West — Run This Town.

The video apparently just leaked.

via Soul Culture

Yahzarah’s Tickler – Best Video of the Year

negrostotle — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:44:15 +0000

Yahzarah’s Tickler – Best Video of the Year

tigger500 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:07:34 +0000

This video is dope. It so beautifully works with the song that you can’t decide if you like the song because of the video or the video because of the song.

Either way, this is a real sister showin all the sisters how sexy is really done. After watching this I realized two things; 1) other chicks are just pretenders and 2) Yahzarah has made the sexiest video since Any Time, Any Place.

Maybe now people will get hip to her. She’s major!

Reality TV; Where Real Talent Goes to Die

tigger500 — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:13:55 +0000

I’m not a reality show fan. And in the spirit of full disclosure, the most recent season of “Making the Band 4″ with Bizarro Qwanell and Cry-Baby Robert sucked me in. Yes, as I type this, my head hangs in shame. It’s okay if you don’t take anything that follows seriously. Just had to be honest.

So knowing that I’m not a fan of reality television, you can imagine how upset I was when three things crossed my radar in a short span of time.

En Vogue wants to do a reality show chronicling the recording of their new album with the original four girls;
Tameka “Tiny” Cottle is in a reality show with some chick who was married to Lil Wayne; and
Kandi Burruss has joined the cast of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” – despite not being a housewife and actually, you know, having a career.

En Vogue on the cover of March 16, 2009 issue of Jet magazine

Let’s just be clear. We are talking about 6 women who are members of the twin pillars of post-70s black female group singing — En Vogue and Xscape.

These women are so synonymous with a kind of vocal group singing – one in which all members can really sing and really sing lead – that there haven’t been any female groups like them to emerge in their wake. It would seem other girl groups have just ceded that lane to En Vogue and Xscape and followed the Supremes model.

I go back and forth about whether or not that’s a good thing. To that point, it’s been said that Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were great, but the genre they spawned? Not so much.

So knowing all that, I ask you:

Why are these peerless artists squandering their talents on reality TV?

There’s something oddly fascinating about the way reality television has evolved over the last decade. It has gone from turning nobodies into somebodies to taking genuinely talented, creative individuals and destroying any ability for the average consumer to take them seriously.

Tameka "Tiny" Cottle

I caught a few minutes of “Tiny and Toya” at a friend’s house and watching Tiny, who is clearly a sad sad individual, was depressing. She’s clearly stifled in her relationship with T.I. and seems to wander about Atlanta aimlessly.

I was watching her in the studio with her daughter wondering if people watching the show had any idea that they were watching a true talent (crazy accent and hair be damned).

Tiny is the woman who, arguably, had the strongest voice in Xscape:

I haven’t bothered to watch “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and the En Vogue show is more or less just an idea in crazy-ass (but so beautiful) Dawn’s head.

But I wonder if the industry pendulum has swung so far in the direction of style over substance that there is no way that any genuine artists can start (or re-start, as the case may be) a career. We are living in the post-consolidation, post-download era where what the industry will sell is even more narrow than it was in the past.

There is no black radio.

There are no boutique labels.

There are no more A&R men.

There is not even the pretense that any artist that comes out is anything more than what he/she appears to be. I mean, Amerie, Ashanti, Ryan Leslie, and T-Pain are defined by their inability to sing.

Kandi Burruss

Where do artists like Kandi, Tiny and En Vogue fit in this world? Do 13 year olds even know what notes and melodies are? Or to be less of an old fogie, do they care? Could they listen to a song these women will likely release in the next year and see any value in it?

What good is it that technology democratizes the consumption of music if the industry is socializing away any ability for a consumer to broaden his/her understanding of what can be consumed?

New Music – Ledisi, Teedra Moses, Usher

tigger500 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:36:11 +0000

There are a few songs floatin out there that are just dope.

Ledisi, Trippin

This song is produced and co-written by Chucky Thompson (of Mary J. My Life fame). Song’s gotta nice midtempo groove and Ledisi’s vocal is tight as a whip. Looks like she’s really gonna switch things up on the new album, which drops in a couple of weeks.

Teedra Moses, Everybody Rock

Teedra Moses is that chick everyone seems to love and yet she’s still an “unknown.” Teedra been rockin this 80’s synth thing for a year or so now, and this song is good, but doesn’t quite match the dopeness of last year’s So Kool and Put It In The Wind. Here’s to hopin the new album drops soon.

Usher, Certified

Yup, this is Pharrell giving Usher the MJ treatment, but really Ursh is the only one who can get away with this — even though at this point he really doesn’t need to. Song is good though. Now that wifee is bout to get gone, I’m sure women will forgive and make Monster, you know, a monster.

Jay-Z, the Hegemon?

tigger500 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:36:52 +0000

Marc Lynch, a George Washington University professor, has a fascinating interview up on NPR (listen here or read the text here…i would listen) where he basically says that Jay-Z can be understood as a metaphor for U.S. hegemony:

See, Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) is the closest thing to a hegemon which the rap world has known for a long time. He’s #1 on the Forbes list of the top earning rappers. He has an unimpeachable reputation, both artistic and commercial, and has produced some of the all-time best (and best-selling) hip hop albums including standouts Reasonable Doubt, The Blueprint and the Black Album. He spent several successful years as the CEO of Def Jam Records before buying out his contract a few months ago to release his new album on his own label. And he’s got Beyonce. Nobody, but nobody, in the hip hop world has his combination of hard power and soft power. If there be hegemony, then this is it. Heck, when he tried to retire after the Black Album, he found himself dragged back into the game (shades of America’s inward turn during the Clinton years?).

But the limits on his ability to use this power recalls the debates about U.S. primacy. Should he use this power to its fullest extent, as neo-conservatives would advise, imposing his will to reshape the world, forcing others to adapt to his values and leadership? Or should he fear a backlash against the unilateral use of power, as realists such as my colleague Steve Walt or liberals such as John Ikenberry would warn, and instead exercise self-restraint?

The changes in Jay-Z’s approach over the years suggest that he recognizes the realist and liberal logic… but is sorely tempted by the neo-conservative impulse.

It’s a fascinating idea, if only because it quickly devolves into an oddly dead serious interrogation of the pros/cons for Jigga and The Game (yes, The Game) if they choose to engage each other in a beef.

I’m all for a serious, critical interrogation of hip-hop culture, but what intrigues me about this interview is that this is not at all about the music, so much as the way in which rappers market themselves in the corporate structure. It’s oddly disconnected from a critical understanding of how beefs have operated in hip-hop culture versus how they have operated as hip-hop has functioned in the corporate structure.

The first question for me: Is there hegemony in hip-hop culture?

Or put a different way: Is Jay-Z’s hegemony, which I concede he in fact has, something that could have happened before hip-hop went completely corporate?

In short? No.

For instance, Rakim is the greatest rapper alive because he’s the man who rethought what emceeing could be. All roads in emceeing lead back to Rakim. This is not to say that someone couldn’t take him out, but to say that if they do they’d be using weapons he fashioned to do it.

But if we accept Lynch’s definition of hegemon to include media dominance, money, etc., then I wouldn’t call Rakim a hegemon since artists like MC Hammer and LL arguably had greater claims to these sorts of things.

Hip-hop has always been about constant innovation. People battled because there was a tacit assumption that you did so knowing at any time you could be destroyed. You battled not just to maintain what little status you had, but because you wanted to preserve the culture as you had helped to define it. So sure LL and Kane wanted to be seen as the best, but they were also fighting for the integrity of the music, the culture as they viewed it.

Not the case nowadays, I would say.

Lynch, bound by his Jay = U.S. construct, goes at it bizarrely:

So what does Jay-Z do? If he hits back hard in public, the Game will gain in publicity even if he loses… the classic problem of a great power confronted by a smaller annoying challenger…If Jay-Z tries to use his structural power to kill Game’s career (block him from releasing albums or booking tour dates or appearing at the Grammy Awards), it could be seen as a wimpy and pathetic operation — especially since it would be exposed on Twitter and the hip hop blogs.

Simply – If Jay can’t take The Game out, then Jay loses his title. There’s no such thing as picking on someone small in hip-hop (well, going after…oh say, Souljah Boy or Mac Daddy from Kriss Kross might fit that definition, but that also wouldn’t really happen).

Someone should tell Lynch — In hip-hop, your title is always up for grabs.

Side note – Lynch acknowledges that Nas was the victor over Jay-Z. He gets props for stating the obvious.

Situating Illmatic in its Rightful Place

Situating Illmatic in its Rightful Place

tigger500 — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:52:55 +0000

Apparently there’s a new book out that attempts to situate Illmatic, Nas’ flawless 1994 debut, in its rightful place in music history.

Quentin Huff, music critic over at Popmatters, wrestles with the book’s implications — and his own ambivalence about Nas’ debut (say what?!?!).

But I have to be honest. My relationship with Illmatic has always been tenuous. I remember the buzz surrounding its release, and I’ve watched it grow in stature and prestige over the years, but I’ve never been able to say I love it or that I’ve played it nonstop. When I first heard it, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. There were a lot of albums I liked more, not only Public Enemy’s aforementioned Nation of Millions and Fear of a Black Planet and releases from A Tribe Called Quest, but also Big Daddy Kane’s It’s a Big Daddy Thing, MC Lyte’s Eyes on This, NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, Ice Cube’s Death Certificate, and LL Cool J’s Bigger & Deffer and Mama Said Knock You Out.

Nevertheless, I kept returning to Illmatic, partially out of a need to understand what I was missing, and partially because something new would grab me with each listen. I still don’t completely love the album, but I absolutely respect it.

It’s a fascinating dissection of the book, so much so that I’m not sure I even need to read it (though I will).