Aug 30
Elvis, Johnny Cash, B.B. King, Al Green, Three 6 Mafia, Justin Timberlake . . . and now –
Lord T & Eloise pioneering the new genre — Aristo’crunk’.
Last night, the group began production of their latest video. Stay tuned.
Aug 28
It’s nearing the 1 year anniversary of JB’s passing. Most of my friends will remember this video from me emailing it around the morning after we heard he passed on Christmas Day.
No commentary really, just amazing to watch. The architect of modern music, modern dance.
R.I.P.
Aug 23
Another week in commercial hip hop’s slow decline into irrelevance has passed. Was there anything worth talking about?
We learned that Kanye and 50 Cent’s feud over who would sell the most records was nothing more than a publicity stunt (yawn!). XXL, a leading hip-hop rag, shared the news that the two would be posing on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine together.
The Billboard Top 10 singles chart this week was high on samples.
There were a few bright spots:
Aug 22
What to say about R. Kelly? His latest release is either the most brilliant thing ever or the dumbest. There’s also the possibility that it could be both at the same time. If he goes to prison, please send him with a microphone and pro tools rig.
Love him or hate him, I know you were on the edge of your seat for the past two years. Well wait no more, the ghetto R&B-opera has returned! R. Kelly’s Trapped In The Closet series is back for its exciting conclusion.
We’ve got the series lined up here for your easy viewing and commenting. Enjoy!
13
Aug 19
“Thank You”
“Creature”
“60 fingers, 12 legs, 6 mouths - 1 voice.”
- reads the opening line of Mosaic’s bio. I wish I’d read that before I caught them for the first time at a Grammy party earlier this year. What I heard that night led me to believe that there were also 2 or 3 synthesizers, a drum machine and maybe a CD player backing them up. The performance was so impressive that when someone in the audience told me it was all done with their voices, I caught myself actually peeking behind the backstage drape and lurking by the front of house engineer in disbelief. There just had to be a catch.
Aug 18
Beyonce “Crazy In Love”
Chi-Lites “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)”
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
– Alphonse Karr
Is your favorite ‘new’ song, not really that new? No matter how hip, new school or bleeding edge you are, listen to the radio these days and you can’t avoid samples, interpolations and re-works of the classics. Imagine if commercial radio were formatted the way a DJ mix-show might be, playing the originals and the original ‘inspiration’. I experiment with this premise every now and then in my live sets.
DJing has always been an interesting activity for me, a balletic, high-wire tightrope act, balancing the desire for creativity with the public’s desire to dance to the ‘hits’. A pride surrendering, (often) thankless avocation, nearly every club-goer thinks they can do a better job than the DJ. How much better they think they are is often proportional to the ounces of alcohol imbibed.
Increasingly, crowds pressure DJs to spin the 20 to 30 ubiquitous songs being played on commercial radio and TV at the moment. Many people want to hear exactly what they’ve been listening to in the car on the way to the club and will listen to again on their ride home. They want the DJs to not only play the songs, but to play them all back to back and when the DJs played them all through, well, play them all over again.
Aug 15
NYC’s Eli Escobar applies his deft touch to re-editing the Jackson 5 classic, “What You Don’t Know” from the Dancing Machine / Moving Violation album. The result is danger.
Besides this gem, his latest exploit is teaming up with Diplo to form the Boogie Down Bottle Nose Dolphins for Hollertronix #7.
Aug 15
Michael Vick, facing federal charges related to his alleged participation in dogfighting, has been hit with a “$63,000,000,000 billion dollar” lawsuit according to Fox News. A South Carolina inmate filed a complaint against Vick alleging: “Theft and Abuse of My Animals”, that Vick “subjected [the plantiff] to microwave testing” and “stole [the plaintiff’s] identity from his coat” for the purpose of opening charge accounts at Petsmart and Doggie Warehouse.• Click here to read the filing against Vick.(pdf)
Jonathan Lee Riches (the Plaintiff) alleges that Vick stole two white mixed pit bull dogs from his home in Holiday, Fla., and used them for dogfighting operations in Richmond, Va. The complaint goes on to allege that Vick sold the dogs on eBay and “used the proceeds to purchase missiles from the Iran government.”
The complaint further alleges that Vick needed missiles because he pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in February of this year.
Riches wants $63 billion dollars “backed by gold and silver “ delivered to the front gates of the Williamsburg Federal Correctional facility in South Carolina by “UPS”. Riches is an inmate at the facility serving out a wire fraud conviction.
Parting Shot:
- U.S. District Court, Virginia. Civil Filing Fee - $350
- 2 Fighting, mixed breed pit bulls - $20,000
- Damages for “microwave testing”, “dashing hopes” and “theft of my animals” - $63,000,000,000
- Ability to frivolously sue famous people while serving time for fraud - Priceless!
Aug 15
My personal blog will be up and running soon. Please be patient while we get our house in order. In the interim, wanted you guys to catch this photo of the future all-time rushing leader of the University of Tennessee.
what do you think