NO. He asked for Aaron Carter. AWKWARD. RT @DONDAWorldwide: We found the "Nell Carter" that Kanye requested. READ MORE

To anyone paying attention, it wasn’t really a surprise when blacks didn’t come out in droves to support Occupy Wall Street. Despite the fact that blacks suffer from poverty and the ills accompanying it at wildly disproportionate rates, African-Americans have for a number of uncertain reasons been avoiding most of the liberal demonstrations of the moment. Blacks don't occupy Wall Street (or Denver or San Francisco) just as blacks don’t SlutWalk, or rally at the World Bank. READ MORE

"Lasting about two hours, the show was an almost seamless blend of songs from 'Watch the Throne,' solo material from each rapper and songs they have shared in the past, often used as transitions. If there is any fat on hit-thick solo Jay-Z or Kanye West concerts at this point, it was excised here. They have become gifted at resisting maximalist urges. This show demonstrated how much can be accomplished with a few small decisions: as on the album, Jay-Z and Mr. West worked smart, not big. The heaviest lifting was done by cameras that seemed to encircle the stage, resulting in astonishing close-ups that captured every sweat cascade on Mr. West’s forehead and every scrunched expression on Jay-Z’s face." READ MORE

Part of a series on collaborations that we now take for granted but initially made little sense. READ MORE

Here is the video to the CONTROVERSIAL!!! lead single from the CONTROVERSIAL!!! new album from Jay-Z and Kanye West. I like it. It's a lot the chase scene from the beginning to Back to the Future, except Jay and Kanye have made their time travel vehicle out of a Maybach (and an Otis Redding sample) instead of a DeLorean.

I'm so eye-rolley about the conceit of "Watch the Throne"—the collaboration "album" by Jay-Z and Kanye West, that was thrown together in a few hotel rooms—that I can barely handle listening to it. (Also, did I need a tribute song to ladies in the year 2011 called "That's My Bitch"? Not really!) Despite his usually awesome politics and generally rather wonderful mouthiness, I just don't feel the need to get Kanye's opinions on the state of the world, when he might not have any idea any longer what that state really is. Somehow? On the album, Jay-Z ends up looking clued in, and he's the one banging the political gong, as described here: READ MORE

"Gucci Mane, recently released from prison for the umpteenth time, sounds no worse for wear here, managing impressive nimbleness with his mealy mouth. He has more gears than most rappers do, a versatile stylist with nothing so old-fashioned as a commitment to structure and the integrity of words. He prefers sounds." READ MORE

"Sounds so soulful, don't you agree?"

That's Jay-Z, breaking in to admire the long, pitched-down passage from "Try A Little Tenderness" that opens "Otis," the second official leak from Jay and Yeezy's Watch The Throne. The track on "Otis" alternates between interpolation and staccato bursts, as if torn between literalism (reverence?) and avoiding a lawsuit (its own kind of nostalgia). Since it's 2011, and Otis Redding's estate is well advised of its rights and powers, Redding is credited as a featured artist on the track, a featured role that almost makes it seem like "Otis" is the King of Soul's posthumous tribute to himself, "Unforgettable" minus the filial right, or attachment, to the seance. Except "Otis" isn't about Otis Redding at all, and the use of "Try A Little Tenderness"—a song that hardly begins and ends with Redding's 1966 studio recording—has come to represent "soul" in a way that nearly contradicts the spirit of Hov's ad-lib.

"I mean, really, my grandfather, I consider him the Jay-Z of his time." READ MORE

"I'm ready to give up my old thoughts/I'ma move past what a saw/I'ma do what a want and be happy/I'm not gonna rob or kill to survive/Everything I seen was a lie/I'm not ready to die/I love myself..." — Lil B, "I Hate Myself." READ MORE