Tag Archives: kanye

Cool Music

Kanye Joins Twitter, Releases Decent Single

August 12 – 7:07 pm

Yesterday, Kanye released his newest single, “See Me Now” featuring Mrs. Jay-Z and Charlie Wilson, the man who provided cash and Stinger missiles to the Afghan Mujahideen founded the Gap Band.  Kanye’s raps cover the usual ground: equating himself to the font of Western philosophy (“I’m Socrates/But my skin more chocolate-y”) and Jesus (“This the Christ year/Last year was magic, 32” … “Imagine the direction of this immaculate conception”).  The beat is a buoyant vocal sample that keeps things moving along, and Beyonce does a decent job on the hook.  Charlie Wilson, meanwhile, spends the song’s last minute and a half wailing his ass off and sprinting up and down scales like this is 1998 and his name is Babyface.  Anyway, if you want to give the track a shot, visit Kanye’s blog: http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/blog/2010/08/see-me-now-feat-beyonce-charlie-wilson/.

Kanye also made news recently by joining the Twitter and his tweets must surely rank among the funnest ever*.  Seriously, dude is a comedic genius.

Here are some gems:

“Is it to early for a bellini??? Too late, already ordered”

“It is Monday right???”

And the best one:

“Tell everyone at the label only use Gothic or Helvetic fonts for email blast unless I otherwise approve”

Of course, it would have been criminal to let Kanye’s hilarity disappear beneath Twitter’s daily avalanche of mundanity, so someone equally as funny preserved his tweets, and generated an awesome if short-lived meme, by turning them into New Yorker cartoon captions.  Here’s the best one.

*I found the grammar and spelling errors in this sentence improved it dramatically, so I left them in.

Photo by Troy Holden (http://www.flickr.com/photos/troyholden/4839081050/)

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Music

Hip hop puppets – Kanye loves them

November 2 – 7:30 am

It’s Pitchfork week here or something, but here we go again.

So now the ‘fork has let us know that Kanye has joined forces with Rhymefest to produce a puppet show.   Apparently, it’s literally a hip hop muppet show called Alligator Boots.

Different celebrities will host it each week and I guess it’s meant to be more of a comedy.  Rhymefest gave an interview to  SOHH.com where he expanded on the idea a little bit.

It’s kinda like ’30 Rock’ and ‘Saturday Night Live’ put together,” Fest continued.  “The show is about these puppets that are trying to put on this sketch parody variety type of show and you see sketches and pieces and bits but you also see behind the scenes them just trying to get to work.”

Anyone who has read Kanye’s blog

So picture this, but better:

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Music

Kanye arrested for assault

September 21 – 5:31 am

Apparently, Kanye West was just arrested for assaulting a photographer. He and his assistant were in the LA airport and I guess Kanye got into a little beef with a random camera dude. He seemed upset, and smashed the camera to the ground.

The annoying celebrity gossip website TMZ was there taping the whole confrontation, so Kanye’s assistant confronted him. The whole thing seemed to go out of control real fast. He’s out on $20,000 bail for “felony vandalism”. It sounds like a serious charge, but since it’s a super-famous celeb versus the paparazzi, I have a distinct feeling he’ll get off just fine.

Pitchfork, the source of this wonderful little article, actually has a link to the video of the incident. So click here if you’re in the mood for some violent voyeurism.

Frankly, I’m not really surprised about this whole thing. Kanye’s got a pretty big ego, and he doesn’t quite seem to understand that the same rules apply to him. So keep an eye on this one, Kanye’s always good for a hyperbole-filled rant (“George Bush doesn’t care about black people”), so you know this one will be good too.

[Source: Pitchfork]

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Music Politics

Hip hop and Politics at the DNC

August 27 – 10:01 am

Those of you following the Democratic National Convention in Denver may have noticed a couple of interesting guests lately.

Kanye’s probably the biggest name to grace the stage, at least in terms of commercial success.  But Wyclef and Pharrell are expected to make appearances as well.

It should prove to be interesting, to have hip hop artists alongside a lot of the other musicians who’ve been backing Obama.  The Black Eyed Peas are also making an appearance, but there’s no real surprise there after will.i.am’s Yes we can music videos.

We’ve been doing a lot to cover the tremendous influence music and hip hop has been having on this election.  You’ve seen everything from bands refusing to have their songs used as campaign songs, to Obama brushing the dirt off his shoulder.

[Source: Vibe]

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Music

Everyone is getting sued

May 30 – 12:01 am

Or so it seems.

Joe Farrell is a saxophonist who produced a track called Upon This Rock back in the 70s.  Not normally that big a deal, I’d say.  Except for the fact that this song was sampled in everything.  Some of the biggest hip hop groups have used this sample to make some killer hits

But now there is trouble.  His daughter has brought a suit against Kanye, Common, Method Man, and Redman.  Also their labels.  She’s alleging that they used the sample without permission.

It’s a sad story, and Pitchfork has a bit more of the details.

“Those tunes? Kanye’s “Gone” from Late Registration, Common’s “Chi-City” from Be (incidentally, also produced by Kanye), and Method Man and Redman’s RZA-produced “Run 4 Cover” from 1999’s collaborative LP Blackout! The lawsuit claims that the tune was used without approval, a familiar story in the annals of rap history.”

I guess I understand the desire to protect your father’s work, and no one likes being “ripped off”.  But everytime something like this comes up I always get that brief flash where I assume it’s a money thing.  The fact that the daughter is only suing for 1 million would, at first, belay that suspicion.  But then again a mil is a lot fo money, even if  these guys are worth a lot more.

[Source: Pitchfork]

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Music

Common and Q-Tip Join Forces

April 8 – 12:37 pm

Yes, this story is a year old. Yes, that means we suck at staying on top of things. And yes, sadly it means it may not happen. But we’re not giving up hope.

According to XXLMag, Q-Tip and Common have decided to form a new group, to be called “The Standard”. It’s groundbreaking news, or rather it was when the news first came out last September. The rumor was that after the Abstract and Common came back from touring together, they’d get in the studio and start recording an album.

In fact, it sounds pretty dope if you ask me.

As far as the production on the album, though, fans can expect Q-Tip to handle the majority. “I’m probably gonna do a lot of it,” ‘Tip says. “And we’ll get Kanye [West] on a couple things, but you know, that cat is busy.”

I’m not even a huge Kanye fan, but since he’s got what I like to call the “Timbaland touch”, it really can’t hurt to have him on your album. Kanye and Common have done some magic together on his last few albums, so i guess I really can’t complain too much.

Still, as far as I can tell so far nothing has really developed from that news story, but I’ve still got my fingers crossed they’ll come out with something. Since so many of these stories just fizzle out, I’m not going to hold my breath, but you never know.

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