Paranoid is one of the best tracks on Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreaks album, and it just got a little better, with the addition of a lingerie-clad Bajan pop star. You know which one I'm talking about (because I wrote it in the headline).

Record label boss LA Reid showed off the video at a low-key event last night, and someone amazingly managed to sneak in a camera and film it. The following bootleg clip is a little shaky and fuzzy, but you get the idea.



Music snob uberblog Stereogum reckons they'll have the real thing in a couple of days if you want to watch it in full High Def pornovision, or whatever they call it now.

Labels: kanye west, links, Music, rihanna, video

When we last saw Mr Hudson, he was writing sepia-tinged musical postcards about suburban British life. Songs like Picture Of You and Ask The DJ marked him out as a talented singer-songwriter in the vein of Aqualung.

But then, somehow, Kanye West "discovered" him and has groomed him into being a 21st Century robot superstar. Out goes the band's idiosyncratic "and the library" suffix, in comes autotune and bling.

It should be a recipe for disaster, a hideous clash of brash American braggadocio and subtle British sensitivity, but Kanye proved on 808s and Heartbreaks that he has a cuddly, sensitive side - and, it turns out, a lot of that was down to Ben Hudson's influence.

"I thought he had a great voice and his melodies. He just had a cool sensibility for hip-hop," West told Zane Lowe last night.

On Mr Hudson's new single, Supernova, West returns the favour - giving some much-needed oomph to the plaintive warbling. "It’s kick them in the nuts time," he jokes. He's not wrong. The song is huge.

Have a listen to the whole thing on the BBC iPlayer or check out this clip. Stick around to the very end. It just gets better and better.

The song is taken from Mr Hudson's second album, Straight No Chaser, which is out in August. Until then, there's a free mixtape up on his official website.

Update: Kanye West just posted a free MP3 of the song on his blog. How generous.

Labels: kanye west, MP3, mr hudson, Music

...but I've grown out of it now.

Kid Cudi, Common and Kanye West have done a rap over the top of Lady GaGa's Poker Face and (snigger) made it about oral sex. Because, you see, "she loves it when I poke her face." These are grown men, by the way.



Whoever said rap was misogynist? As if.

The sample, by the way, comes from this live acoustic version of Poker Face, which is staggeringly fantastic.

Labels: common, kanye west, kid cudi, Lady GaGa, Music

Hello and welcome to Monday! There's a few things to get excited about today, so here they are in a time-saving handy list.

:: Kanye West + Santigold + Lykke Li have an amazing song called Gifted, which they recorded with uber-producers N.A.S.A. We mentioned it before. They've done a video now, but Kanye, Santi and Lykke must have been "in bed" when the director called, as they are completely absent. Result: Awful animated claptrap.

N.A.S.A. - Gifted

:: One of my favourite music magazines, Blender, has been shut down. The US publication always looked a bit like a jazz mag when it landed on my doorstep, but it always contained a good selection of new bands and waspish commentary alongside the semi-naked pop stars. A couple of the former writers have been lamenting its demise online. Read about it on idolator

:: Here is another Annie single to get excited about before it flops / is cancelled / sets the world on fire (delete as appropriate in eight weeks).

Annie - Anthonio


:: Kate Bush is possibly the last great eccentric British pop star. Need proof? Blogger Rich Juzwiak has gathered an astonishing collection of footage from her music videos and TV appearances - which eventually begs the question: "How on earth did social services allow her to escape into the community?". Click here for the lot, or just marvel at this one...



:: I did my first ever red carpet reporting shift at last night's Empire Awards. It was utterly terrifying - from the moment they pushed a completely unknown extra from RockNRolla into my face and expected me to have an intelligent question to ask ("who are you... er, ah, looking forward to meeting" was my best effort) to the end of the night when we were drawing straws to decide who would get to ask Guy Ritchie about Madonna's new baby (luckily, he bailed). Anyway, Empire Magazine were so impressed with my efforts that they put up a picture of me "interviewing" (staring at the magnificent cleavage of) Helena Bonham Carter.

:: Akon and Cassie have teamed up for a new song, Let's Go Crazy, produced by Red One - the team Lady GaGa references at the start of Just Dance. If there is a God, he will ensure a Freemasons remix of this.

Labels: akon, annie, cassie, discopop, kanye west, kate bush, links, lykke li, n.a.s.a., santogold, video

The other day, some nerd was showing me this "like, totally awesome" video, which was basically a corrupted computer file of a thrid-rate indie pop song. It was a bit like watching Freeview on a 60" plasma, lots of pixels and interference, but the overall effect was hypnotically beautiful.



According to Youtube, that video was uploaded on 8th February and, faster than you can say "I bet someone uses this on a real video", someone has used it in a real video.

Appropriately enough, that someone is notorious internet magpie Kanye West, who's gone all blocky in the clip for Welcome To Heartbreak.

Kanye West - Welcome To Heartbreak


You have to give Kanye credit here. Despite his uncontrollable God complex, he does take a lot of care over the visual aspect of his work - and he's constantly on the look-out for new talent. Much like a hip-hop Bjork.

If you want to know more about this technique, which has been christened Datamoshing, this page contains an unusually erudite internet discussion about it.

Labels: kanye west, Music, video

If there's one thing the Grammys does well, it's making rock and roll seem like the planet's most pointless and boring pursuit.

The 2009 ceremony opened in Los Angeles last night with U2 - who played a terribly important rendition of their terribly important new single Get On Your Boots. They projected the lyrics onto a big screen, even though the lyrics are a load of turgid old bollocks. "The future needs a big kiss"?? Whatever you say, Bono.

Things barely improved when Justin Timberlake joined Al Green for a lacklustre Vegas lounge version of Let's Stay Together. We were also teased with twenty seconds of MIA's excellent Paper Planes before TI, Jay-Z and Lil Wayne came out and shouted a load of nonsense all over the top of it. MUSIC FAIL!

Estelle's run-through of American Boy, meanwhile, was notable only for Kanye West's haircut tribute to Bobby Brown.



There was some light in the dark, though. Coldplay got Jay-Z on stage for an awkward/brilliant rendition of Lost+, and Radiohead's Thom Yorke started Vogueing (?!) during a marching band-assisted version of 15 Step.

The best performance of the night was probably the Motown medley, featuring Jamie Foxx, Ne-Yo and Smokey Robinson. You can't really go wrong with a bit of Motown, of course, but as Stereogum noted in it's liveblog, you couldn't see the tracks of Smokey Robinson's tears "because the plastic on his face is water-repellent".

Katy Perry also turned up to do her thing - her thing being the ability to wear amazing costumes (with actual watermelon breasts) while not singing very well. She had at least spent some money on the set, which is why I'm posting her video and none of the others. So there.



All the news outlets are going on about how Robert Plant was the big winner but, for me, the most interesting winner of the night was Jimmy Sturr & His Orchestra. The gourp picked up the best polka award for the 18th time -- meaning he's won it two out of every three years since the Grammy committee invented the prize.

Keen to find out more, I went to Wikipedia, which helpfully notes that Jimmy is the "Irish son of a local bank president" and "the band has also played at many famous casinos".

Here's what you're missing:

Labels: coldplay, jay-z, Justin Timberlake, kanye west, Katy Perry, mia, Music, U2

Have you ever wanted to hear a more tuneless, less funky version of Kanye West's Love Lockdown? Well, here's your chance!

Hotly tipped new rock band White Lies - who are actually quite good - popped into Radio One's Live Lounge on Wednesday and proceeded to beat Kanye's song over the head, shoot off its kneecaps, tie it up in a sack, drive it to the river, dump it in the river, drop a piano on it, drag it to the shore, hack it up with chainsaws, feed it to a crocodile, which they then killed, filleted and roasted over the burning embers of a drum machine they'd stolen from Kanye's studio and done a wee on.

You can listen to the resulting, tuneless dirge on the Radio One website.

But you won't like it.

Labels: kanye west, live lounge, Music, white lies

Yuck!

I've spent the last week hacking my lungs up like a niccotine-addled granddad, hence the lack of updates. Not that there was much to blog about anyway. Little Boots won the BBC's Sound of 2009 Poll, and put up a free single on iTunes - both of which are great, although I'm still not convinced she's doing anything particularly original. And Lady GaGa deservedly went to number one - I'll have an interview with her on the site later this week.

The only new music I came across from my sick bed was a song called Glitter by production duo N.A.S.A. It features vocals by three of the zeitgeistiest artists of 2008 - Kanye, Santogold and Lykke Li, and is surprisingly funktastic. Kanye even remembers to rap, rather than singing love songs to an electrical appliance. Listen below:



By far the worst thing I heard during my week off was by folk-punk nitwit Frank Turner. His single, Reasons Not To Be An Idiot is insufferably smug, but his appearance on Radio One's Live Lounge - in which he plays a skiffle version of Take That's Greatest Day - extended my sick leave by at least a day.

Labels: kanye west, Lady GaGa, little boots, lykke li, MP3, Music, santogold, take that

A lot of people are going to hate the new Kanye West album. I mean, really, really loathe and despise it.

Why? Because it doesn't have any rapping. Because Kanye "sings" the entire record through a computer. Because it is remorselessly downbeat. Because it is so far removed from hip-hop that it might as well be a Daniel O'Donnell record.

But the haters are wrong. 808s and Heartbreaks is astonishingly good. A rule-breaking, paradigm-shifting masterpiece.

You may already know the back story: Mr West's life was turned upside down when his mother died last November. Then, in March, he split up with his fiancee Alexis Phifer. He has, to put it mildly, taken this quite badly.

"So you walk around like you don't know me," he sings on Heartless. "You got a new friend, well I got homies. But in the end it's still so lonely." Later, on Streetlights, the star finds himself unable to sleep, alone, walking the streets, sighing "life's just not fair".

Throughout, West's voice is fed through autotune - a computer programme that corrects the pitch of your voice - helping him to sing when his vocal cords fail him. He uses it more sparingly than, say, T-Pain - who tweaks the controls to make it sound like he's Metal Mickey - so the effect isn't completely soulless. It may not be to everyone's taste but it really works: by stripping away the human qualities of his voice, Kanye shows how isolated and withdrawn he's feeling.

The sparse, desolate songwriting only emphasises his desperation. Minor key piano figures and spooky hallowe'en choirs feature big, while West laments his losses - "I’m exhausted, barely breathing," he exhales on Amazing, which recalls nothing less than Stevie Wonder's Pastime Paradise.

All of this is off-set with the 808 of the title, one of the earliest programmable drum machines, which West proves to be a master of. The drum patterns here are the equal of anything Prince has ever done - intricate, funky and a great counterpoint to the lovelorn melodies.

Of course, it wouldn't be a true Kanye West joint if it wasn't derailed somewhere by his monstrous ego - an entity so big it would move Stalin to say: "Blimey, this guy's a bit confident". Across the record, he chastises Phifer for being cold and heartless, while alluding to the fact that he was doing things "she don't need to know about" behind her back. The resulting (and understandable) paranoia apparently turned his fiancee into a variety of film bad guys, including "Dr Evil" and "the girl from Misery". I wonder why she left?

But it's this same self-belief that makes 808s and Heartbreaks such an audacious success. Who else would have had the confidence to ditch an award-winning formula and risk their huge fanbase to make a soul album starring a rapper who can't sing?

No-one but Kanye West.

Labels: kanye west, Music, Review

"Any critic who has the audacity to subtract even half a star off this show will be smacked in the fucking face," opined Kanye West as his two-hour set at the O2 drew to a close. He then defied anyone in the audience to name another concert that even approached the untrammelled genius of his stage spectacular.

Well, since he asked:
1) Prince - Lovesexy
2) Madonna - Reinvention tour
3) U2 - Zooropa
4) Jay-Z at Glastonbury
5) Sly and the Family Stone at Woodstock
6) Etc, etc

So what went wrong for Kanye?

First of all, despite hiring what he boasted of as "the best lighting designers in the world", there were no spotlights to follow the on-stage action - the result being that Kanye spent most of the night shrouded in silhouette. Even on the video screens. The tour was called Glow In The Dark, not Alone In The Dark. Strike one.

West also described how hard he worked to give the concert a narrative with "artistic merit". The plot, however, was a sub-Ed Wood space fantasy about Kanye being stranded on an alien planet with only a randy computer called Jane (!)for company. Strike two.

Lastly, the evening contained the most baffling, disorientating 15 minutes I've ever witnessed in a live show, as Kanye embarked on a semi-improvised, semi-musical, semi-coherent lament to his late mother.

Over a sparse bass figure, he shouted down God for robbing him of his soulmate, while making detours to discuss the paparazzi, the costs of fame, stage fright, his fractured relationship with Jay-Z, bloggers, the economic dowturn, Barack Obama, trying to sell his house in LA, the possibility of space travel and, frighteningly, the fact that he had recently been "a week away" from comitting suicide. All while staring sullenly at his shoes. It was by turns touching, upsetting and terrifyingly bonkers.

Strike three? Well, not quite...

Having got all tha bile off his chest, West's spirits seemed to pick up and he attacked the show's hit-heavy final segment with frantic brio. Hearing the likes of All Fall Down, Through The Wire, Gold Digger and Stronger performed back to back with such gusto makes you realise what a prolific and accomplished songwriter Kanye is. His earlier assertion that music was the only way to drown out his demons added an extra layer of emotional resonance to the final half hour of the show.

So, while it wasn't the earth-shattering, boundary-breaking audio-visual feast Kamye believed it to be, Glow In The Dark was still a remarkable, memorable and monumentally conceited pop concert.

Verdict: (And I am ready for my beating now).



Best bits: The extended singalong on Can't Tell Me Nothing; Estelle's surprise appearance for an encore of American Boy.

Worst bit: Four 'aliens' (lampshades) telling Kanye: "You're the most famous person in the universe."

Labels: kanye west, Music, Review

Kanye West's career can be charted, on an actual chart, by plotting the cost of his videos in proportion to the quality of his music. Here is the pudding within which the proof is contained.



And here is West's latest video masterpiece / hopeless song.

Kanye West - Heartless

Labels: kanye west, Music, video

It seems Kanye West is persisting in plugging new single Love Lockdown, despite the public's overwhelming reaction to the song being "eh?"

The newly-released video is a Jacko-style expensefest, featuring a huge tribe of African warriors and a pointless CGI spaceship in an attempt to distract from West's horribly weak vocals.

It fails.

Labels: kanye west, Music, video

Kanye West and frequent collaborator / former mentor Common have both released quirky, animation-led videos in the last week.

West's is a technicolour marvel, pieced together by postmodern commericial art wunderkind Takashi Murakami. Common's is almost monochrome, but no less eye-catching, with a grafitti-inspired comic strip feel from Hype Williams protege Lil' X.

Both are smashing, but Kanye's is more of a treat for anime geekboys, while Common's is full of eye candy for da ladeeeeez (it says here).

The question is, which is best? Watch and vote, my lovelies.

Kanye West - GoodMorning (Official Video)


Common - Announcement

Labels: common, kanye west, Music, video

...In his new video, where a Kanye mannequin competes in the Olympics. Except it's not really the actual Olympics at all because of the intricacies of international copyright law.

As regular readers know, we're big fans of puppets in music videos, so we applaud the idea of a fuzzy felt Kanye West. But is it a successful promo in its own right?

Only a mathematical diagram can help to answer this conundrum:



Oh well.

Labels: kanye west, Music, video

Radio One have been playing this for months, but it's only just got a video:

Kanye West ft Chris Martin - Homecoming


Do you know what? It's a great song, but all I think of when I see the video is "Oh crap, Coldplay have a new album coming out this year".

Labels: coldplay, kanye west, Music, video

Only one person in the world has listened to the super-groovesome bubbling electrofunk of Estelle's new single American Boy and thought to themeselves: "Hmm, this song is totally flat and lifeless".

Unfortunately, they hired that person to direct the video.

Estelle - American Boy


Presumably the director suffers some kind of reverse synesthesia (the neurological condition where you experience words and sounds as colours). That can be the only reason he has turned in such an uninspired, one-dimensional black and white video, when the song clearly screams out for a sun-kissed, bleached out, hand-held Super 8 film, with Estelle riding around Miami in an open-topped Chevrolet.

PS: If Kanye West is so great at rapping, why can't he think of a word that rhymes with seats other than... erm, seats?

Labels: estelle, kanye west, Music, video

In order of appearance...

Mika: Insufferable
Beth Ditto: Underused
"The" Osbournes: Grotesque
Take That: Bless
Klaxons: Which ones are the Klaxons?
Rihanna: Hoodie

Fearne Cottons... Now wait a cotton-picking minute (do you see what I did there?)

Why are the public being allowed to decide who wins the Best Single award? The shortlist is already based on the top-selling records of the year, so why not just give the prize to the one that sold the most (Leona Lewis). The phone-in element just ruins the pace of the show, and cheapens the whole affair. They don't let you phone in at the Oscars, do they? No wonder none of the important acts turned up. They thought it was the bloody X Factor.

Adele: Guv'nor
Mika again: Vomitous
Kylie: Not really dancing
Kelly Rowland: Not really Beyoncé
Kanye West: Numbskull
Mark Ronson: Even the voiceover lady points out he shouldn't be given Best British Male
Kaiser Chiefs: Just awful
Kylie again: Best International Female? What must Rihanna think?



Leona Lewis: Wow!



Foo Fighters: Sarcastic
Kate Nash: Fuck off. For the love of God, fuck off.
Foo Fighters: Cheeky
Mark Ronson and Adele and Daniel Merriweather and...
Amy Winehouse!!!!: Jaw-droppingly, monumentally fantastic.



Arctic Monkeys: Girls Aloud wuz robbed
Amy Winehouse again: Wobbly
Take That: Cuddly
Arctic Monkeys: Smirksome
Paul McCartney: Hello, granddad.

And that was the Brits. See you next year, eh?

Labels: arctic monkeys, brits, kanye west, kylie, mark ronson, mika, rihanna, take that

Kanye West has just posted a very odd teaser trailer for his new single, Flashing Lights, on his personal blog.

There's no indication how much of this clip will make it into the finished video, but the basic premise is that a woman drives into the desert with Kanye bound and gagged in the boot of her car. She then sets about his knackers with a giant spade.

Kanye West - Flashing Lights


I once had a dream exactly like that.

Labels: kanye west, Music, video

Canadian musician Colin Munroe has an album coming out later this year. You won't have heard of him, so he's covered Kanye West's sumptuous Flashing Lights in an attempt to "create a buzz on the blogs".

Like Wile E Coyote to his Roadrunner, I have fallen for it.

Colin Munroe - Flashing Lights


I like how he's traded Kanye's braggadocio for a soupçon of self-effacing humour. "Your girls are fine - it seems a dime or two in every dozen / I only wanted one, but I'm no-one, so I get nothin'".

It's a little disengenous, though, as Munroe is definitely a "someone". People with a thing for Canadian urban music might recognise his name as a writer and producer for acts like Ray Robinson, Divine Brown, Brown Saucepot and Frank N Dank (I only made one of those up).

Anyway, the cover version is a great calling card. I'll keep an eye out for his solo material and see how things develop...

[via Mixtape Maestro]

Labels: kanye west, Music, video

Last year, Kanye West got his knickers all in a twist because MTV had the audacity to give a prize to Justice vs Simian instead of him. According to the judges, or the public, or whoever votes for the channels European Music Awards these days, the dance act's lo-fi video for We Are Your Friends was better than Kanye's lavish Touch The Sky clip.

In a moment of unfettered genius, Kanye stormed the stage, grabbed some guy's microphone and ranted: "My video cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it, I was jumping across canyons and shit" (he means 'etc', not that he was jumping over a doggy poo - Ed).

MTV was unmoved by the playground display - Justice got to keep the award and, just to make a point, MTV refused to give Kanye any prizes at this week's US ceremony. Harsh.

As always, however, Kanye has the last laugh. For his new single, he has poached Justice vs Simian's video director, So Me, the very man whose microphone he stole at the MTV awards.

And the results are very, very good indeed. Think of a rap version of Sesame Street, and you will get the picture.

But here's the $1m question: Is it as good as the Justice video? Take a look:

Kanye West - Good Life


Justice vs Simian - We Are Your Friends

Labels: justice, kanye west, Music, video

It's been a long while since I posted a batch of fresh MP3s for your aural pleasure, so here is a selection of the songs I've been playing in the last 24 hours (I left out the Hootie and the Blowfish song, for reasons of taste and decency).

Gabrielle - Why?
I know what you're thinking: Gabrielle? Why? If I told you the song also features Paul Weller, you'd probably be sick into your shoes. But guess what? It's actually really good. So Ner ner ner ner ner to you.

Reverend and the Makers - He Said He Loved Me
I warned you all about this weeks ago. It is still brilliant, and headed north in the charts as we speak.

Groove Armada - Song 4 Mutya (Panic Remix)
This is the extended version of my favourite song of the summer, Groove Armada's Out of Control (Song 4 Mutya). This is a perfect example of how extended mixes used to be in the 1980s, teasing out all the hidden elements of the song into a joyous six-minute dance epic (I particularly love the New Order-esque guitar riff). This mix is also a little bit faster than the original, so your toes may get fatigue from all the tapping.

Bruce Springsteen - The E Street Shuffle
Don't laugh. I was brought up on the Boss and the Boss = ace.

Jennifer Lopez - Do It Well
This is the new single from Jennifer Lopez who, as we all know, is a triple threat. This means she can sing, dance and act, not that she is a terrorist who picks on the handicapped and rapes goats. Probably.

ZZT - Lower State of Consciousness (Justice Remix)
Here we have an instrumental remix of a song I have never heard by a band I know nothing about. It is rather splendid.

The Tough Alliance vs. Taken By Trees - Taken Too Young
An exceptionally pretty / haunting europop cacophony, with "ethnic" percussion, a spooky children's choir and a gossamer melody. It's beautiful, although ultimately destined for a Hed Kandi chillout compilation and nothing else.

All of the songs can be downloaded in one handy batch from zShare or megaupload. You can thank me later.

(Some of these songs were discovered on Pitchfok and disco delicious and Arjan Writes. So thank you to them.)

Labels: gabrielle, jennifer lopez, kanye west, MP3, Music, mutya, reverend and the makers

Some vacuous entertainment for your eyes on a Friday afternoon...

This poster was pinned to the gate of Paris Hilton's home in LA. Particularly nasty / brilliant is the description of Lohan as a "freckle-bellied cokewhore terrier".

Q: Is Salma Hayek still pregnant?
A: No, she is hiding a leg of ham up her nightdress. That is definitely what it is.

FACT: Kanye West is a tit.

US Weekly didn't look closely enough at this photo before they published...
Or perhaps that's a real thought-bubble coming out of Amy Winehouse's ear?

Isn't it sickening that someone could be this hot after a nine-hour transatlantic flight? (Answer: Yes, it is)

Crikey! Haven't the Sugababes let themselves go?
(Er, are you sure this isn't Beyoncé and her mum? -Ed)

Labels: amy winehouse, Beyoncé, Girls Aloud, kanye west, lindsay lohan, salma hayek

Awesome

Labels: kanye west, Music, video

Gold Digger aside, Kanye West's last album was a big ol' bag of bollocks. A self-aggrandising ego stroke, with little of the insight, wit, or playfulness of his stand-out debut, The College Dropout.

Clearly, West thought so too. He reneged on his promise to release three albums in three years and went back to the drawing board. Now he's ready to emerge from his hip-hop hidey hole, and has "leaked" (released) an official mixtape featuring some of his new tracks.

At first, it seems as though he's retreated slightly from the egomania that caused him to proclaim "I'm carrying the whole of hip-hop" in 2005. "I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny. And what do I do? Act more stupidly," he confesses in the first couple of minutes.

But he can't restrain himself for too long. By the half-way point, he has launched into a three minute diatribe about being misquoted in the press. Boo fucking hoo, you big girl.

The songs are rather good, though. West hasn't been refiling through obscure racks of dusty vinyl for his samples - I spotted Daft Punk, Deee-Lite and Peter, Bjorn and John amongst the backing tracks - but he has always been an excellent producer, twisting familiar hooks into audacious new shapes like a clown making a daschund out of a balloon [stop murdering this metaphor right now - ed].

The best tracks, however, are the non-West ones. Lupe Fiasco wrestles Thom Yorke's Eraser into a spooky hip-hop pressure cooker on Us Placers; Kid Sister goes day-glo on her ode to varnish, Pro Nails; and Common once again proves his lyrical genius by dropping in a reference to Finding Nemo on The People.

My guess is that West is behind all three of these tracks (he appears as a guest on two of them), but by contrasting other rappers' flow with his own - rather dreary - delivery, he ends up giving weight to the argument that, College Dropout aside, he should have remained behind the mixing desk.

Download links: (the file keeps getting deleted, so you might have to do a bit of searching on technorati if the links have expired)
Hip Hop Planet
The Rap Up
RJ's GFX and Music
The Leak Source
My Hip Hop

Tracklisting

01. Kanye West - Friday Morning, May 25th, 2007 (Intro)
02. Kanye West - Stronger (Snippet)
03. CRS (Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West & Pharrell) - Us Placers
04. GLC - I Ain't Even On Yet
05. Kanye West - Can't Tell Me Nothing
06. Common feat. Kanye West - Southside (Snippet)
07. Common - The Game
08. Kanye West - Porno (Interlude)
09. 88 Keys feat. Kanye West & Malik Yusef - Stay Up (Snippet)
10. Talib Kweli feat. Kanye West - In The Mood
11. Bentley feat. Pimp C & Lil' Wayne - C.O.L.O.U.R.S.
12. Kid Sister feat. Kanye West - Pro Nails
13. Kanye West - Young Folks
14. Kanye West - Interviews (Interlude)
15. Common - The People
16. Big Sean - Get'cha Some
17. Consequence - Don't Forget Em
18. Sa-Ra - White! (On The Floor)
19. Ne-Yo feat. Kanye West - Because Of You (Remix)
20. T-Pain feat. Kanye West - Buy You A Drank (Remix)
21. Kanye West - Throw Some D's (Interlude)
22. Kanye West - Throw Some D's (Remix)
23. Tony Williams - Dreaming Of Your Love
24. Really Doe feat. Jennifer Hudson - Magnetic Power
25. PM - Hater Family

Labels: kanye west, MP3, Music

I really have very little to say about the Grammys. I watched the 2-hour synopsis of the ceremony last night, and even that seemed like extended aural torture.

U2 clearly had to restrain themselves from killing Mary J Blige as she systematically ruined their one decent song.

There was general confusion, and the air of a ramshackle last-day-of-term show, for the the 'tribute' to Sly and the Family Stone. Sly himself looked particularly discombobulated, probably because of the industrial amounts of coke he's shoved up his nose over the last 35 years.

Stevie Wonder did his joke about taking his glasses off, the better to see a pretty lady (again(. And Madonna displayed her gusset for the all world to see (again).

As is par for the course at these ceremonies, mediocrity was heavily rewarded. Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", for instance, was clearly not the record of 2005. Nor was U2's "Sometime You Can't Make It On Your Own" the song of the year. And what is the difference between those two awards, anyway?

I could ramble on about this for days, but in the end the awards make little or no difference. Especially 'Best Polka Album'. What we're really here for are the frocks - so let's take a look:



Stefani: Hollabump girl



Kanye: Tells it like it is
(In all seriousness, this man needs taken down a peg or two. We used to beat up the cocky kids like him at school. And we were the nerds.)



Sting: "I'll fight you for that mushroom vol au vent"



Madonna: GUSSET!



Joss Stone: "Does anyone know how to get superglue off your chin?"



Jamie Foxx: Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum



Mariah: She's got the horn(s)



Fergie: Face or fish? You decide.
(Oh, alright, it is a fish. Sturgeon, I think.)



Missy: Cool as ice-cream, and the only deserving award-winner of the night (best video for Lose Control)



Beyoncé: Prom queen (again)



Macca: "Help! I've dislocated my hip."

Grammy Nominees: Full list of winners

Labels: Beyoncé, fergie, gwen stefani, joss stone, kanye west, madonna, mariah carey, Mary J Blige, missy elliot, Paul McCartney, U2

Kanye West is hinting that he's been banned from talking about Hurricane Katrina. The rapper is due to appear at an NFL concert tomorrow, and an MTV telethon on Saturday. So until Sunday, he says, he "can't say anything about it [Katrina] or wear any T-shirts that say anything about it." (read more here)

Isn’t this ludicrous? West's comments (that the US is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible" ) merely echo sentiments that have been expressed at length in the mainstream press.

Isn’t there some value in such comments being made on primetime TV to an audience that doesn’t watch political discussion programmes? How much damage could a T-shirt do to American society? And isn’t there something inherently creepy about the media saying "don't listen to that black man talking about racism, he's just a bit emotional"?

Labels: kanye west, Music

1) Craig David's beard is a metaphor for his music: Stylish, but overgroomed and boring.

2) Pussycat Dolls (pictured) look like they've come off the cover of Maxim, and their song has a killer hook: "Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?". Problem is, no self-respecting teenage girl will touch it, teenage boys won't be able to pick it off the shelves without going beetroot red, and 35-year-old pervs aren't a big single-buying demographic...

3) Kanye West has lost the plot. Gone are the socially concious diatribes, only to be replaced with boasts his money. And his cars. And his jewellery. And his fantastic sexual prowess. What a waste.

4) For someone who is ugly on a fundamental level, Gwen Stefani certainly scrubs up well in her videos.

5) McFly really need to be put out of their misery.

More reports from the frontline of music journalism later.

Labels: craig david, gwen stefani, kanye west, mcfly, Music, pussycat dolls

MTV.com reports that Lauryn Hill has been collaborating with Kanye West on some new tracks. Perhaps there will be a sequel to 1999's "Miseducation of..." after all.

Lauryn must be in a forgiving mood at the moment. The collaboration comes only a year after she stopped West from sampling her vocals on "All Falls Down". There are even signs that she's relenting in her feud with Wyclef, which has kept the Fugees from reforming for the past seven years.

What a beautiful tale of human forgiveness. I'm welling up.

MTV: Kanye West Collaborating With Lauryn Hill

Labels: kanye west, lauryn hill, Music