Herman Cain's chief of staff Mark Block has made a new campaign ad.
Just kidding. Actually, that's a new video from Detroit rapper and producer Quelle Chris, whose album Shotgun & Sleek Rifle comes out next week. The first single from album, "Symbolic (Basquiat)" came out a few weeks ago. And it's good, but not as good as its B-side, "Shotguns" (sort of a title track to the album, I guess) which features Chris's friend and frequent collaborator Danny Brown and long-toiling Long Island MC Roc Marciano.
"Arne May's team at the University of Hamburg, Germany, applied heat to the arms of 38 volunteers over six days. Half of them were told the heat would get more intense, and they reported constant pain levels. The rest felt less pain as they got used to the sensation. The first group also had increased activity in a brain area involved in pain perception." So reports New Scientist's Jessica Hamzelou about an interesting phenomenon with an excellent name that I didn't know existed: the "nocebo effect," which, just like it sounds, "describes any case where putting someone in a negative frame of mind has an adverse effect [...]
The great Queens rapper Prodigy was released this morning from Marcy, New York's Mid-State Correctional Facility (where he recorded this harrowing ice-pick of a song, above, over the phone last year), having completed a three-year sentence for gun possession. According to the producer Alchemist, a frequent collaborator, Prodigy will meet Havoc, his longtime partner in the duo Mobb Deep, in a recording studio this afternoon to start work on new music. He has a book coming out, too—My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy—set for release April 19 through Simon & Schuster. He'll be reading from it at the Russian Tea [...]
As much as I love LCD Soundsystem, as sure I am that their final live performance, just announced to take place on April 2nd, will be totally awesome, I'm not sure I can get myself to attend a concert with a dress code. (I know I'm being curmudgeonly here—and a Madison Garden full of everyone wearing only black and white will make for great video and photographs. But still. I'm old!) Nevertheless, the event is even more exciting in that the recently reformed art-disco-rock band Liquid Liquid will be opening the show. It's perfect.
