Entering into the well-known "nesting" stage of pregnancy, Beyonce doesn't seem to be doing much lately except staying around the house and making terrific, high-end music videos. Three weeks after "Countdown" had us all WHOOHOO-BEYONCE!!!-ing, here she is mowing the lawn behind her trailer home at midnight in a yellow fur coat and bikini bottoms. It's a shame the video is not the version of this song that features a typically phenomenally guest verse from Andre 3000. But J. Cole is okay, too. And WHOOHOO-BEYONCE!!!
Bay Area rapper Lil B's "cooking" dance seems to be reaching full-fledged ubiquity. We've seen Justin Beiber make reference to it, P. Diddy did it when he introduced Lil B's performance at South by Southwest last week, and lots of other rappers are doing it in their videos. (Above, Atlanta's OJ Da Juiceman gives it a go.) The basics of the dance are mostly hand-and-wrist motion, like you're holding a pot and stirring its contents. It's meant to mimic the actions of cooking crack.
Twenty-one-year-old Bay Area native Brandon McCartney is a rapper of an odd sort. For the better part of five years, since he was in high school, he's been rapping under the moniker Lil B. First he performed with three other high schoolers in the hip hop group the Pack, but he is now probably best known on his own, as a darling of music bloggers and readers of the Fader.
In addition to Lil B, he also calls himself the Based God because he plays Based music—a style he invented and which he is alone in performing. He's biggest on the internet, where his presence is unparalleled; he has [...]
I like this new video for this Low song. But I think it could have been better. Rather than a sped-up video of NYC's bustling subway system, I kinda think a single shot of someone waiting for twenty minutes for the F Train to show up at the East Broadway stop, all frowning and sighing and sweating through his or her clothing, before finally noticing the sign posted on the column down the platform that says service has been cancelled. That's more of what I get from the song. But regardless, it's pretty great. Low are the best.
Another very enjoyable new video is one from Berkeley rapper [...]
The venerable Busta Rhymes shows us what people mean when they talk about an MC "blacking out" on a track. He rhymes so fast, enunciates so clearly, without pausing to take a breath, you'd think he'd lose consciousness. In so doing, he steals this song—with it's huge and spacious beat, which was produced by club music maestro Diplo and sounds like it will explode dance floors like the Yin Tang Twins "Wait (The Whisper Song)" did six years ago—from proprietor Chris Brown and fellow guest star Lil Wayne both.
Here are a bunch of other good rap songs that came out this week.
"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."
"Evolve already," said the button Dan Savage wore to a Gay Pride reception at the White House last night. Well? Oakland rapper Lil B, at least, seems to be listening. His new album, I'm Gay (I'm Happy) came out yesterday on iTunes. I've been listening to it this morning, and it sounds really good.
Proclamations that a certain era is "good" or "bad" for music are always specious. There's both good and bad music being made all the time, of course, in all different genres, and that's been true even during eras accepted as either "golden" or "dead" for whatever style you might be talking about. What's easier to talk about, what I think people are actually assessing when they talk in this way, is what's popular at a certain time in history—stylistic characteristics of the music that happens to be selling the most, or being played on popular radio stations. Of course, people often disagree about stylistic characteristics, too, whether they make [...]
