Tagged: 8008hb

The title piqued my interest. Well, I figured, he's going ahead and making it explicit: "grown and sexy," that restrained-allure masterwork of recent phrasemaking, and the title of the 2005 album by Babyface (to whom we'll return), would be the outright theme of Ne-Yo's third album. I figured I'd like it. He'd been a great singles guy but I never got all the way into the first two albums, but maybe I would with this one. I hadn't thought much about "Closer" either way, but my hunch demanded I buy the album day of release. I played it five times [...]

What didn't Lil Wayne do this year? Well, he didn't run for president, but that's about all. He played guitar (badly) . He launched a champagne brand , because when we think of Lil Wayne imbibing something, it's champagne. (Additionally, many Americans listen to Wayne's music while they drink champagne , too.) OK, he had some E as well . (And he got arrested again, that time with guns .) He got remixed a bunch of times. He didn't die . His "Daddy" gave him a million dollars in cash . The [...]

I contributed a few blurbs to Spin 's October feature "Strange Bedfellows," which detailed the odd nexus where rock music and politics convene. One entry was about the first copyright-snubbing cut-up artist Dickie Goodman and his 1973 assemblage "Soul President Number One." In it, the first "soul" president is elected, quotes Barry White and the Temptations, and appoints Superfly to head of the FBI. Here's Dickie's skewed take on the 1980 presidential campaign: I mused then that—were Barack [...]

Here are Big & Rich, in 2004, on what still might wind up the best album any human beings make in the '00s: "People getting' mad on CNN/Who's right, Democrats or Republicans?/I don't care who's right or wrong/I know a way we can all get along." Well, the getting along didn't last long, did it? John Rich actually spent the first half of 2008 on a promising mission, positing that Gone Country winner Julio Iglesias Jr. and Nashville [...]

They may not save the music industry, but this year rhythm games opened up new possibilities for how people interact with music. As game designer Jesse Fuchs has pointed out , Harmonix (which originally developed Guitar Hero , and created Rock Band ) put out far more inventive games earlier. But since the GH / RB model has proven to be a hit, it appeared that we were stuck with a simple six-button interface that didn't allow players to fiddle with the music itself awfully much. [...]

As Idolator vets may remember, my mother has been a hardcore R&B fanatic through every format change, from the days of worn Philly International vinyl to the CD-Rs of mod urban radio hits that she now forces me to provide like a soul-slinging street dealer. At heart she's a classicist, but she's also an Erykah Badu fan, one who enjoys the odd, slo-mo stoner funk of Worldwide Underground as much as the comfy, terra cognita qualities of Baduizm . For me, my mom's thumbs-up for New Amerykah cemented Badu's near-singular status as a [...]

Prince got added to the Coachella bill some 15 days before the desert festival was slated to kick off, a move that was simultaneously totally awesome and slightly reeking of desperation. Ticket sales for the 2008 installment of the fest had been rumored to be a bit soft (a rumor that was borne out by the tumbleweeds skipping across the Empire Polo Field during Jack Johnson's Friday-closing set), and apparently Prince commanded a lot of cash to help goose the Saturday-night till. "So what?" you might ask. "He's Prince . He's worth it." I wholeheartedly agree, but [...]

I was never much of a Star Wars fan, so the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that accompanied the forever-awaited release of The Phantom Menace passed by me at the time. But when I finally sat down with Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy —a long-awaited follow-up to a cultural moment that, for better or worse, defined my adolescence—I finally got what my Star Wars friends were all up in arms about, namely the casting of a newer, harsher, and daresay aged light on a once-cherished talisman. [...]

When it's a rough year, some people instinctively reach for the serotonin-spike of all-smiles pop . Though I did play the hell out of that Alphabeat song, I'm generally one of those listeners who'd rather wallow in my funk. Give me hard times and I want a wrist-scarring playlist to match. And to go by the ever-reliable iTunes "Most Played" metric, my favorite new record of 2008—a year that felt poised for planetwide batshit breakdown—was the sonically variegated result of comically extended woodshedding by a much-mourned but presumed-mothballed trio who'd previously minted a very specific brand of drizzly Brit [...]

In the final weeks of one of the most high-intensity elections in the history of American democracy, both left and right were able to put their differences aside for three minutes and 56 seconds, thanks to a group of students at the Ron Clark Academy taking over YouTube, Good Morning America , and even the most hardened political observers' hearts with their election-themed version of T.I.'s "Whatever You Like." It turns out that celebrities doing voter-registration PSAs weren't nearly as effective as [...]

While watching Jarvis Cocker command the crowd at Chicago's Union Park this summer, I knew I was watching an old pro at work, and I was glad. I'd already seen plenty of young bands—the Dodos, Fleet Foxes—strum and harmonize their way into indie-rock hearts with maximum earnestness. All fine and dandy, but I felt like they lacked gravitas. They didn't own the big stages; they just rented them for a while. Despite some early troubles, Public Enemy had that weight, that importance about them during their Friday-night set; Jarvis had it tenfold. The minute he snaked his way onto the [...]

After many a false start (and a few traffic-related delays ), R. Kelly's trial for child pornography finally got under way this past spring, some six years after he was arrested for allegedly doing the dirty with a 14-year-old and videotaping the whole sordid affair. What followed was a courtroom circus that many pointed out would have made excellent fodder for another series of Kells' "Trapped In The Closet" series, or at the very least an episode or two of Law & Order : It had conspiracy theory-obsessed jurors , First Amendment arguments involving music critics [...]

Remixes have been a constant since the late '70s. Artists have been holding remix contests since at least 1983, when Tommy Boy advertised for a prize to the chancer(s) who best recast G.L.O.B.E. & Whiz Kid's "Play That Beat, Mr. DJ" and inadvertently birthed unto the world Double Dee & Steinski, the latter of whose What Does It All Mean? overview was released this year to great (and deserved) acclaim. R&B and hip-hop and disco and indie rock and house and techno and dub and mainstream pop with its different mixes for different formats and even country (what's [...]

The never-ending slough both the people who deal with music directly (making it, releasing it, booking it) and those of us who cover it for a living have been dealing with is made even worse by the simple fact no one likes admitting: we've seen this coming. For years. And those of us who are starting to feel the pinch—not to mention my many peers and colleagues who've lost their jobs outright in recent months—are to some degree kicking ourselves for not, you know, getting out of the business earlier. I can speak only for myself when I say that [...]

Let's face it: Wonky Pop has not exactly moved mountains in the past year. America has not yet gone down to its collective river to pray to the shiny Nordic purveyors of high quality throwback pop, and at this point it appears as if this country likely never will be saved by scary-good Scandinavian music. (No, not even Annie.) But that certainly doesn't detract from Alphabeat's aggressive charm. "Fascination" still glistens every bit as much as it did this summer , and [...]

I left Slumdog Millionaire during the mansion scene—I couldn't watch someone be that stupid anymore, sorry. Flimsy framing device, too. But even I had to admit that when "Paper Planes" came on it matched the images perfectly—even if I also think playing the entire song in the middle of the movie was, well, kind of unnecessary. Nevertheless: great song, and there was little as heartwarming in Big Pop this year as watching it hit the Top 5 [...]

Oh, sure, the phenomenon of "rickrolling"—in which an unsuspecting Web browser is led to an online rip of Rick Astley's Stock/Aitken/Waterman-penned hit "Never Gonna Give You Up," for the sole purpose of bringing lulz—originated in 2007. But it wasn't until 2008 that shocking people with a little bit of gleaming, synth-drum-laden blue-eyed soul really took on a life of its own outside of the Internet's echo chambers, perplexing baseball fans, Thanksgiving parade watchers, and other people who were inadvertently reminded of the redheaded British crooner's existence by the ever-increasing hordes of people who were in on the joke. [...]

I can understand why "Single Ladies" might be horrifying on an ideological level, but anyone who's followed Beyoncé's career can't be all that surprised by it. For B, romance has always been a cold and materialistic thing, a battle of the sexes in which traditional gender roles are used as secure battlements from which to achieve victory. Love is never trusted, and needs to be constantly reaffirmed; the only way to achieve balance is for both parties to become financially independent, at which point any emotional violations become essentially meaningless. Should the partnership be dissolved, there will be no regret [...]

Originally I was going to put "African," not "Global," in the title of this post. (I haven't thought of anything better than MABEL or ANABEL yet either.) You could well imagine that between three Nigeria Specials from Soundway, one Nigeria 70 from Strut, not to mention two double-CD Franco overviews—one messy and fun, one chronological and really fun—plus Sir Victor Uwaifo (also Soundway's) and the African Analog series, and the blurbs write themselves, right? [...]

In 2008 it was hard to find feel-good stories about the music industry—you know, the type that populate your local trade rags and second-tier business sections, or at least did until the world economy went kerplooey—which was probably why the popularity of the "vinyl is back" piece, in which a somewhat statistically significant jump in the sales of vinyl got turned into the latest harebrained scheme to save the music industry, remained high throughout most of the year. After all, what wasn't to love about these stories? Not only were they [...]