Run-on sentence alert!!! It's like an audio case study profile of an unhinged man gone totally off the deep end courtesy of too many pills.
"Bagpipes from Baghdad"
Hell yeah. Just the level of random, tongue-twisting, pounding dementia that I've been banking on with Relapse. Bonus points for "going in" on Nick Cannon (pause or no pause) and the Children of the Corn reference. And that entire third verse is off the charts.
Then there's this one....."Medicine Ball"
Hits harder than Chris Brown watching Rihanna flirt with Shia Labeouf after CB was struck by gamma rays.
.....has actually made me like the song much more than before. Not sure why I was so resistant to the track since I'm usually all about conceptual lyricism. The visuals brought this one home, no question.
Typically, I try to leave my music/hip-hop POVS off this site, mainly because I spent nearly four years of my post-college-life covering those and I'm trying to open a brand new bag. But every now and then, a project or a song comes along that demands notice, such as this new upcoming Eminem album, Relapse. Mainly because Em has always been the most intriguing, repeat-listenable, and (obviously)greatest rapper of my growig-up-around generation, and his last album sucked so hardcore that I've been waiting five years for the guy to come back and exonerate.
As far as the songs heard from Relapse so far go, unfortunately, the guy is 0-2. His next video/sort-of-single, "3 A.M," has me a bit excited, though, mostly because the snippet I heard, while short and a bit incoherent, sounded much darker and anarchic than those two other records. Now comes news that its uncensored video will make its worldwide debut on Cinemax (a first for the cable channel) this Saturday at 10pm, right before the network premiere of last year's great little horror flick The Strangers. Making me believe that the video's tone is somewhat in line with Bryan Bertino's The Strangers, which in turn makes me happy. There's also this brief trailer that proves my suspicions in ways:
I'll be tuning in, no question. The full version of "3 A.M.", which I've just discovered on good ol' Youtube, is something of a bloody mess, but at least we'll get a video with some WTFness that'll be miles away from the sheer laziness of "We Made You." Part of me thinks I should like this "3 A.M." more than I do, but it's not clicking. We're given a couple more unnecessary, tired celeb namedrops (Hannah Montana and, for the second time now, Kim Kardashian), and what once would've felt creative and striking (Em playing the role of unaware serial killer) here seems like a stretch. The beat, presumably Dr. Dre, actually works, though. Sounds like a comfortably macabre "Eminem Album: Track #2."
The full song:
I'll be posting the full video once its available online, to bring this post home.
Now this is just sad. Upsetting. A cop-out when it could've/should've been a first round knockout. I hate to take the typical "hater" route here, but this is coming from a true Eminem fan, one who wants only for the guy's new music to be great, for both my sanity's and rap-love's sakes. And this is bad, no way around it.
Eminem's new video, "We Made You." It's here, and it's expectedly the same brand of goofy, bouncy, disposable first single he puts out before each of his albums. Part of me had this feeling that Eminem had realized that he could drop a first record produced by DJ Premier and with Jazmine Sullivan on the hook and the shit would still be a smash. He doesn't need lame shit like this anymore....or, does he? This "We Made You" does its job at reassuring fans that Em can still have fun at other celebrities expenses. But, see, the times have changed.....fuck it, watch the video first:
He must've recorded this song at the end of 2008, right? And it was just held by Interscope for time purposes, no? Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan? Sarah Palin? Amy Winehouse? Jessics Alba and Cash Warren? That's just lazy, and obvious, and late. This shit makes "Just Lose It" sound like "Criminal." The main problem here is that celebrity gossip is more accessible and overexposed than ever, between your Perez Hiltons, DListeds, and TMZs; we don't need Eminem to skewer these assholes anymore. Been there, heard that. You can read jokes and slams against celebs on a minute-by-minute basis by simply double-clicking Internet Explorer---what more can Eminem say that we haven't laughed at already when it was presented with much more wit? Any fool with a Blogspot account and tons of free time can be a "first-single-minded Eminem."
Digs at Moby and Christina Aguilera were understandable; they had slighted Em in the press, basically asking for retaliation. Not one person namedropped on "We Made You" has done so; attacking them is unnecessary, kind of desperate. If there was any wit in these verses, however, I wouldn't be as agitated. Lines talking about wanting Jessica Alba's breasts on his mouth are thoughtless. I didn't wait five years for that.
Yeah, he can still ride a beat like none other, even when rapping in this annoying high-pitched British accent. But that's not good enough. This Dr. Dre beat is trash, honestly, and the references to people like Jennifer Aniston and visual jokes about a fat Jessica Simpson are as uninspired as it gets. "Rock Band is the most popular game out, right? Cool, let's have Em rapping on a Rock Band backdrop! Oh, isn't there a new Star Trek movie coming out? Perfect! Em as Spock!" The only somewhat clever idea is giving Eminem the Elvis Presley treatment, but even that comparison is old news.
Please don't tell me that Relapse is going to suck? "Crack A Bottle" still hasn't totally won me over, and now this song hits and misses. I still think that Em has tons of tricks up his sleeve that he's saving for the album, but he's 0-for-2 so far.
It was only a matter of time, really. The most quotable movie ever (Anchorman) pilfered by the ever-unimaginative music industry. I'm sure a few rappers have paraphrased our boy Ron Burgundy before (I just can't recall any specific lyrics off top), but never in this way.
Sad part is, I'm not mad at this song. Has "smash" exuding from its mp3 file. A bit too close in tone to "Bust It Baby," but still works.
Maybe the resemblance is intentional. Dude is definitely one to do such random shit. I'm doubting it's on purpose here, though.
That's a shot from the video for Eminem's new single, "We Made You," set to surface on April 7. 50 Cent isn't on the song (fortunately), he just appears in the video. Produced by Dr. Dre, back to the old Em days (I'm guessing).
I'm psyched. Literally. Seriously. I'd emrabce a mediocre Eminem album with open arms these days. No pause necessary; I'm talking about the album.
Only one quick listen through, and I'm already declaring this man the new King of R&B. Yes, that means better than Ne-Yo. And I'm a big fan of Mr. -Yo, but still. Facts are facts. Proof is in the sonic pudding---the innovation, the winks at the past, and everything else.
This newly-structured album version of "Right Side of My Brain" is better than any other new R&B song you've heard in 2009, I'm sure of that.
Well done, sir. Two albums in, two winners notched. Somebody buy this man a drink.
Now here's a "when two worlds I love collide" happening if there ever was one. Sure, Jake Gyllenhall, Forest Whitaker, Samuel L. Jackson (mean-mugging just because he's a bad mofo like that), and a few other randoms are present, but the real WTF guest star is a total mind-blower.
Ron Howard, in a hip-hop video complete with curvaceous video models, popped champagne, and Hype Williams' direction. Amazing. The filmmaker formerly known as Opie has always come across as a really cool, happy-go-lucky fella, but never before has he been so "pimp." Well played, sir.
Excuse me while I indulge my inner 16-year-old boy....
As terrible the statement I'm about to make is, I must go on the record with it: Eric Nies was a godsend during my adolescent years. Not the man himself, exactly; as a dude, he seemed cool enough, but always carried this air of douchebag-ery that was immovable. Like your boy Dan Cortese, who never struck me as the most knowledgeable pseudo-jock yet was deemed by MTV as their say-all, end-all sports man. Nies, though, did have one thing going for him back in the mid-1990s---he came off as a guy who could genuinely bag any female of his choosing. An awesome ability to possess, obviously, and one that came into play conveniently while he was his MTV-serviced "office," a T&A haven better known as "poolside" or "faux-nightclub stage" where he'd act as host. The general housing of either workplace locale being known as MTV's The Grind.
Without The Grind, my early teen years would've been quite dreary. If memory serves me justly, The Grind aired every day at 4:30pm, a perfect window for me to be able to get home from the nervous social anxiety that was school and park my ass on the couch to watch some unbelievably-sexy ladies shake their stuff to the latest beats. Too young to enter a nightclub and too antisocial to care at that point, my daily ritual of watching The Grind met the "must watch women shake that ass" quota nicely, not to mention introducing me to the wonders of "lust" and "longing." Full of dancing beauties and Guido-ish guys (but we'll forget about the male distractions here), it was like forbidden fruit cooked into edible eye candy. Teeny-weeny bikinis, sun-drenched flesh, sweaty hourglass curves. That douche Eric Nies running the whole show, later being replaced by a pillar of sexiness during these years for me, Idalis De Leon. The Grind was 30 minutes of sin, minus having to perform any debauchery myself.
I look back on the scope of females I've found attractive over the years, and dated, or wish I'd dated, and nine times out of then they resemble the type of woman who would've been seen on The Grind. Meaning, I'll say without any shred of doubt that The Grind is hugely responsible for shaping the "type" of girl I go for, attraction-wise. The evolution of the "rap video chick" can be similarly held accountable in this case, but The Grind came first, therefore it's mostly responsible. Funny to think that some disposable piece of hormonal programming fluff could have such a profound impact on one of the more crucial aspects of a guy's life.
A prototypical female-of-interest....made so by The Grind
I remember there being three, maybe even four, specific Grind girls that I'd tune in specifically for, and boy were they forces of sexual nature. One was named Natasha, and she was a lightskinned piece of visual perfection blessed with curly hair and thickness for months. I have no clue what the other three dancers' names were, but, really, it doesn't matter, or mean two shits anyway. That was part of the show's hook---feeling like you're kicking it with some beautiful minx, yet not having to know anything about her other than the facts that she can dance her tight-ass off and that she's yours for 30 minutes a day, five days a week (and sometimes for extended playtime on the weekends, if reruns would allow such additional indulgence).
No strings attached. No questions asked. There was The Grind's one downside, though: tuning in was just foreplay, sadly going nowhere past the point of "the tease." Even worse than a strip club, truthfully, and I'm probably one of the only heterosexual men alive who'll flat out say that strip clubs do nothing for me, other than offer nice things to look at and subsequent "Never Gonna Get It" spins in my head, and not even that fine En Vogue video along with it. Just wasted money, inflated dreams that'll quickly fizzle, and even furter reminders of the caliber of female-sex-machines that are out of your league. Fuck all that.
This past Saturday night, some friends and I were at some club in the Manhattan, called The Imperial. Not a bad spot. Played a good-enough mix of songs, though tragically lacked The Dream's monstrous "Rockin' That Thang Like..." The girls in attendance were looking fetching, and I was intoxicated to a sufficient level. Guard was down, inhibitions mostly scrapped.
As I watched the ladies do their collective thing on the dancefloor, I couldn't help but think back to the days of sitting on that comfy couch, clicking on MTV, and passing 30 minutes by in the company of Natasha and her lady-friends. Only now, I was inches away from the dancers, able to reach and touch some if my nerves felt up to the task. Of course, that'd be grounds for a chick slapping the shit out of me, so I employed my usual approach: wait for eye contact and that "come hither" smile, and slowly move my way toward her before acting out the lyrics to Next's "Too Close."
As per usual, my luck materialized at least once. Ended up behind a curly-black-haired cutie at the urging of her friends. Proceeded to move our bodies simultaneously to the music. Grabbed each other's hands, kinda-passionately guiding the locked digits up and down the front of her body. Bringing things full circle, as if The Grind's Natasha had taken the form of the equally-gorgeous gal I was intertwined with.
She didn't look like this exactly, but I sure wish she did.
The only problem being, this wasn't poolside in Eric Nies' company, or even on the indoor soundstage close to my boo Idalis De Leon. No, this was The Imperial, smack dab in my reality, and the girl I was dancing ever-so-closely with turned out to be merely 18 years old, and was promptly removed from my vicinity by her older sister once they found that I'm nine years the girl's senior. How the fuck did her 18-year-old ass get into the club, anyway? Buzz...killed.
A cot-damn shame. But a necessary wake-up call. It wasn't The Grind; it was real life. Two totally different realms, one vastly superior to the other in its total land-of-make-believe nature.
I'm guessing the majority of heads who visit my little site here aren't aware of this fella yet, so here's a brief catch-up: A new rapper from a suburb on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Discovered off of Myspace by Scooter Braun, a young, respected industry tastemaker based out of Atlanta. Yes, his voice sounds eerily similar to that of Eminem, and it's conveniently lazy to label him as a "wannabe Em" or whatever. Truth of the matter is, though, that he's a totally different artist than the Mathers fellow; Roth's tunes are much more upbeat, without the bitter angst and back-against-the-wall defiance, and he's more frat-boy-from-the-'burbs than slumdog-turned-millionaire. He's all about drinking, smoking, partying, chasing skirts, and occasionally examining self. As a songwriter, he's quite solid, which is proven by his cleverly-titled debut, Asleep in the Bread Aisle, which I heard last week, and highly impressed.
The actual reason why I'm bothering to post his first video on my little site is a different beast, really. Typically, I try not to bring too much of the hip-hop ish onto here, for my own personal reasons. I've had a couple convos with Mr. Roth, though, and I've realized that it'd be foolish for me to not endorse the guy. Why? Because he's me, in a sense. The sense that he's just a everyday White dude who grew up in the suburbs, had the love of a deep family and both parents, and happened to grow up loving and admiring rap music, without ever letting the culture change who he really was/is. Like me, he couldn't relate to a good 80% of what his favorite rappers spoke of (violence, drugs, inner city struggles, etc, etc.), and never approached the foreign subject matter with anything more than an appreciation of lyrical abilities and a out-of-his-norm fascination. Roth represents all the "Matt Barones" of the world in this respect (of whom I know plenty), so for that I must salute the dude. Also helps that he can actually rap well.
I also love knocking back beers and surrounding myself with drunk chicks, so we have that in common, to boot. Though my college experience looked nothing like this. If anything, I would've been the guy checking IDs at the party's entrance while wearing an extra-medium-sized yellow jacket. Instead of the one scooping up that sloppily-inebriated girl off the staircase and "making her feel better." So not fun.
So, yes, I'm an Asher Roth fan. Curious to see who else shares my sentiment here.
Asher Roth - "I Love College" (extra points if you catch the Weezer sample)
There's a rumor floating around that Amerie has signed with Def Jam, and has a new album on the horizon. I'll believe it when I receive the press release email; for not, anyway, this is much better news.
Miss Amerie (who, if you know me well enough, is a top five, dead or alive in the sex appeal department, on top of being one of the most unfairly neglected and better-than-you-think R&B ladies in memory) has a new photo shoot out. And while it's not her best yet, it's still leaps and bounds beyond any recent Sasha Fierce ish, or whichever other "divas" you prefer. Truth hurts. Remember her, actually? I had a thing for that Aftermath one-hitter-quitter, in an older-woman-fetish way.
Gorgeous, undoubtedly. In some alternate universe, I'd propose to this woman, and she'd actually say "Yes." But then my old chicken ("Woowwww! Yeaaaahh! Hey baaaaby, wake up. Come and dance with me!") would sound, and I'd be sans she.
Yeah, I'm biased as fuck in this case. Wanna fight about it?
Raekwon w/ Ghostface Killah & Method Man - "Wu Ooh"
Unfortunate song title aside, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Give me 13, 14 more tracks like this on Cuban Linx 2, and watch me toss gas-faces to all those who hate on Wu-Tang.
"My family live in the Hills/ They call us Bin Ladens"......"I'm what these kids is killin' to be/ But I don't want my children to be"
Normally, I wouldn't even pay something like this enough time-of-day to discuss it in Barone's World (that's not me being pretentious, by the way; it's just the name of this blog site, 'tis all). But this atom-bomb of a chess move that 50 Cent has hit Rick Ross with deserves as much recognition as possible. It's just that unbelievable, and further proof that, thanks to the almighty Internet, there are no rules of any kind left out here.
For those who are unaware and do actually care, Rick Ross initially went at 50 a couple weeks ago in a new record called "Mafia Music," prompting 50 to respond with "Officer Ricky," named after Ross' pre-rap career as a corrections officer. This out-of-bounds-but-brilliant video is 50's latest (and greatest) strike.
Enjoy:
----
BONUS
Here's another celebrity-soundbite totally worth posting. It's Christian Bale flipping his shit on some poor Director of Photography who messed up a shot while filming Terminator Salvation. Bale's fury is like that damn Energizer Bunny....it keeps going, and going, and going. Seriously, it's pretty astonishing just how long he drags this rant on for:
It's feeling like some sort of Doomsday Project out here. Turn on the tube, and you're met with stories of parents successfully plotting to kill their children; shut the TV off in disgust, pick up a newspaper or sign on to any random news-y website, and something to the effect of "Company Doe, Inc. has just laid off 8,000 employees" greets your eyes within nano-seconds. Flip on the radio, hoping for some audible salvation, and you hear Lil Wayne's spacey ass attempting to make "rock music," causing eardrums to ooze out that inner red liquid that you nearly lost all of a month or so back when Kanye West covered up his terrible singing abilities by Auto-tuning his voice to sound "provocative," yet coming off more "intolerable" than "incredible."
Throw us a bone here. Something, please give already.
In times like these, I'm actually quite proud of myself for being able to maintain a calm sense of "just gotta ride it out and enjoy the things I do have." Such as a job (knock on stable wood, of course, just like everybody else in America), big creative dreams, a healthy loving family, great friends, and a massive DVD collection that'll continue to increase thanks to my insatiable appetite for cinema. Plus, this Monday night officially begins my journey into screenwriting, slowly but surely turning my only-have-been-talked-about dreams into a working-on-it-actively-now reality. Tons of stories bouncing around and grappling within my head, now given somewhere to grow.
All good things, indeed. But you know what my secret weapon for inner tranquility is, though? It's one of many, but the one I want to divulge at this given moment. Guilty pleasure central. Shameless indulgence in crappy product, no question. Here goes....the enjoyment of Harlem World's melted-mozzarella-on-a-provolone-spread jam "I Really Like It."
A video that defies "good idea" conceptualism.
Remember this one? Back in 1999 (ha! it's the 10th anniversary, come to think of it), jolly-old Mase launched his offshoot side group of neighborhood friends and sibling Baby Stace (Yup, that was really her rapping name.....what could be an even worse artistic tag? How about her groupmate's: Blinky Blink? Case shut.). Their album, cleverly-titled The Movement, pretty much sucked, released on So So Def and cluttered with they-wish-they-were-even-near-mediocre rappers and a mish-mosh of soft production and the occasional "hard street" beat. Forgettable, floppage. Totally.
"I Really Like It," though, is just sublime, if you ask me. A song so blatantly cheesy packaged in a video that is pure "ether" to an artist's credibility, "I Really Like It" is the kind of sarcastic-gem that VH1's old Awesomely Bad countdowns were designed for. A lowest-common-denominator spin on then-known-as-Puff Daddy's tried and true sampling bend, perpetrated by one of Puff's very own.
Still, the irony remains---Even the worst of musical sludge can sometimes raise a spirit or two. And "I Really Like It," no matter what time of day or mood I'm in, is a song that puts me in a happy place. It's just so downright perky, that it's undeniably a picker-upper. And when everything around you seems to be in dire straits, why not bask your ears in something that's end-to-end cheerful? Even if it's truly a shit sandwich on wax.
What a monster of a song. The Dream is officially the R&B king...Ne-Yo, a close second now. The proof is in the man's uncanny retro-goodness and unique new-wave soul. I'd post "She Needs My Love" as further evidence, but fudge that.
"The M.B. Remix," sample lyrics: "I'm tipsy, in the zone/ I wanna change her name, to Mrs. Barone"
If this spins at tonight's NYC nightclub destination, the dancefloor won't know what hit it. Promise.
That's what I'm talkin' about. Feels good on the ears, and Jada is still one of the best doing it. Finally, a mainstream rap album for me to get excited about.
Classic song, heard for the first time in years through the open window of a car passing by during an earlier lunch break. Could be a "top three R&B song of all time," after some focused deliberation that I'm in no mood to do at the moment.
I challenge anybody to not smile while listening. Winners will be questioned for having no organ where their heart is supposed to be.
Just when the Notorious movie's soundtrack had reinvigorated my rap-lover's side a bit, I open up a package today at the office and inside is a six-song sampler from these douchebags, which has brought me back to the reality of Rap 2009:
Get it? "C-Lean," as in, he's clean! Go jump off a bridge.
Sample song titles include: "Backpack Fulla Gunz" "U-Turn (Bullet In Your Head)" and "Psycho Maniac"
These three look like kids who would've caught hours of insults and ridicule at the high school I went to, which was ultra-suburbs shit. So I'm expected to, for even one millisecond, believe that these assholes pack guns in their Jansports, and unload in kids' skulls? Fuck. Outta. Here. Looking about as hard as a gay man inside Hooters. The only things these wanksters pack is fudge. Or lunch.
Where's the "King of the Burbs" when you really need him?
And people ask me why I don't talk about hip-hop that much anymore. If you received some shit like that in the mail, would you want to?
This could be grounds for the deletion of any and all Geto Boys material in my possession. Good one, Willie D.
If these dudes even land a song on national radio, let alone score a hit, I may auction off my entire rap CD collection, and ask my mom to dub me that Daughtry record.
My better judgment wants to write this one off as an inventive joke, but, ummm, nope. I've read it on a bunch of different websites, all credible and reliable. So this seems legit, unfortunately.
Joaquin Phoenix, the highly talented actor that he is, announced his "retirement" from acting like a month or so ago. But having been jaded by a slew of celebs' pseudo-retirements in the past, I chalked it up to bullshit. Phoenix is one of the more eccentric cats in Hollywood, no doubt, and always gives interviews bordering on the line of "druggie trying to piece together at least one rational thought." But damn if I never saw this one coming. I'll just let the reporters at JoBlo tell it, which is where I found the picture below, as well:
"Uhh okay pardon me if this doesn't make any sense but I just did a whole lot of LSD and drank 3 gallons of Tide, so I may not be thinking straight.
We all know that Joaquin Phoenix quit the acting biz, and we all saw those photos of him recently that have us thinking that man is stark, raving mad. But did we all know that dude is cutting a rap record? And that P Diddy is producing it? And that his first performance is in a few days in Las Vegas? Is this real, or is this the Tide taking effect? Please tell me it's the Tide. Joaquin's good buddy Casey Affleck is intent on proving that all this is actually going down, and has decided to document it with a camera--an endeavor that will eventually lead to a documentary, that will eventually lead to a standing ovation at Sundance, that will finally lead to Phoenix winning the second posthumous Oscar in as many years (Go Heath!).
Hey Casey: You're a bad friend."
So yeah, this is apparently happening. Casey Affleck has become one of the more exciting actors around, and I'd much rather he film his starring role in The Killer Inside Me (an adaptation of a pretty great, dark book) than follow the drugged-out exploits of MC Joaquin. But I'll at least hope that the resulting documentary (if one ever does come out of this bizarre turn of events) provides delirious laughter, which all signs are pointing to "yes" for at the moment.
See, this is why I love the entertainment business. Just when you're starting to feel like things are getting too predictable, Joaquin Phoenix begins a rap career overseen by Diddy. You know who must be pissed, though? That white dude Kain, remember him? Signed to Bad Boy, got on that one Dream single, and then faded into obscurity. I'd imagine Phoenix, if he were to sign to Bad Boy (fingers crossed) would catch a better one than that.
The name of his debut album: Walk the Cocaine Line
There's always room for some uptempo, feel-good music around here. And this one's tough to grease out of the ears once embedded.
Awaiting the first time I hear this in a girls'-bodies-shaking, poured-drinks setting, while extra-intoxicated off that coffee-flavored Petron. Clear the dancefloor.
