Anthology movie by, and starring, Michael Jackson in his prime, combining a number of music videos from his bestselling “Bad” album with a fantasy tale of Michael’s confrontation with a ruthless drug dealer known as Mr. Big (Joe Pesci).
Michael Jackson (story) (segment “Smooth Criminal“), David Newman (screenplay) (segment “Smooth Criminal“)
Special thanks to Ms Pebbles & MemorialKeepsakes.com…
Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer, actress, producer and model. Houston was the most awarded female act of all time, according to Guinness World Records. Her list of awards includes 2 Emmy Awards, 6 Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. Houston was also one of the world’s best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide. Inspired by prominent soul singers in her family, including her mother Cissy Houston, cousins Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, and her godmother Aretha Franklin, Houston began singing with New Jersey church’s junior gospel choir at age 11. After she began performing alongside her mother in night clubs in the New York City area, she was discovered by Arista Records label head Clive Davis. Houston released seven studio albums and three movie soundtrack albums, all of which have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification.
Houston was the only artist to chart seven consecutive No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits (“Saving All My Love for You”, “How Will I Know”, “Greatest Love of All”, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”, “Didn’t We Almost Have It All”, “So Emotional” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”). She was the second artist behind Elton John and the only female artist to have two number-one Top Billboard 200 Album awards (formerly “Top Pop Album”) on the Billboard magazine year-end charts. Houston‘s 1985 debut album Whitney Houston, became the best-selling debut album by a female act at the time of its release. The album was named Rolling Stone‘s best album of 1986, and was ranked at number 254 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Her second studio album Whitney (1987), became the first album by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Houston‘s crossover appeal on the popular music charts as well as her prominence on MTV, starting with her video for “How Will I Know”, influenced several African-American female artists to follow in her footsteps.[9][10]
Houston‘s first acting role was as the star of the feature film The Bodyguard (1992). The movie’s original soundtrack won the 1994 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Its lead single “I Will Always Love You”, became the best-selling single by a female artist in music history. With the album, Houston became the first act (solo or group, male or female) to sell more than a million copies of an album within a single week period. The album makes her the only female act in the top 10 list of the best-selling albums of all time, at number four. Houston continued to star in movies and contribute to their soundtracks, including the films Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996). The Preacher’s Wife soundtrack became the best-selling gospel album in history. Three years after the release of her fourth studio album My Love Is Your Love (1998), she renewed her recording contract with Arista Records. She released her fifth studio album Just Whitney in 2002, and the Christmas-themed One Wish: The Holiday Album in 2003. In 2009, Houston released her seventh studio album I Look to You.
On February 11, 2012, Houston was found dead at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in Beverly Hills, California, of causes not immediately known.
Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.
Houston‘s publicist, Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.
News of Houston‘s death came on the eve of music’s biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It’s a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to case a heavy pall on Sunday’s ceremony. Houston‘s longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it was unclear if it was going to go forward.
At her peak, Houston the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world’s best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.
Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like “The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale.”
She had the he perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.
She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.
But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.
“The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy,” Houston told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.
It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.
She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.
Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.
“The time that I first saw her singing in her mother’s act in a club … it was such a stunning impact,” Davis told “Good Morning America.”
“To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine,” he added.
Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with “Whitney Houston,” which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. “Saving All My Love for You” brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. “How Will I Know,” “You Give Good Love” and “The Greatest Love of All” also became hit singles.
Another multiplatinum album, “Whitney,” came out in 1987 and included hits like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
The New York Times wrote that Houston “possesses one of her generation’s most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity.”
Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the “Soul Train Awards” in 1989.
“Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?” she told Katie Couric in 1996. “You’re not black enough for them. I don’t know. You’re not R&B enough. You’re very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.”
Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as pop‘s pure princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had children of his own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.
But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.
“When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place,” she told Rolling Stone in 1993. “You see somebody, and you deal with their image, that’s their image. It’s part of them, it’s not the whole picture. I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody’s angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy.”
It would take several years, however, for the public to see that side of Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed her as America‘s sweetheart.
In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with “The Bodyguard.” Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success.
It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy’s record of the year and best female pop vocal, and the “Bodyguard” soundtrack was named album of the year.
She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with “Waiting to Exhale” and “The Preacher’s Wife.” Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, “My Love Is Your Love,” in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay.”
But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time “The Preacher’s Wife” was released, “(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. … I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. … I wasn’t happy by that point in time. I was losing myself.”
In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.
Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and public meltdowns.
She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next day. Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown’s reality show, “Being Bobby Brown,” was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared “crack is whack,” was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.
Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album “I Look To You.” The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go platinum.
Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album on “Good Morning America” went awry as Houston‘s voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for straining her voice.
A world tour launched overseas, however, only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out. Canceled concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.
Chill Moody x Hank McCoy x Beano present “Who Do You Love” album release party. Monday Feb 13th Bourbon Blue (2 Rector Street, Manayunk)
Live performances from Yufi Zewdu and Suzann Christine as well as special performances from Beano and Chill Moody
Advanced copies of the album will be sold.
Hosted by Hot 107.9′s Darcel and Music by Dj Ricochet
TICKETS FOR SALE ON WWW.CHILLMOODY.COM OR HIT UP CHILL, HANK, OR BEANO.
Following along with their annual trend, Philadelphia Rapper/Producer combo Chill Moody and Hank McCoy bring you another Valentines day album. This time they add RnB Singer Beano to bring you “Who Do You Love?”
The Album drops 2.14.12 on http://www.chillmoody.com/
Face Off’s long anticipated debut album “012 . .. Right HERE
Face Off – Once
James Dewitt Yancey (February 7, 1974 – February 10, 2006), better known by the stage names J Dilla and Jay Dee, was an American record producer who emerged from the mid-1990s underground hip hop scene in Detroit, Michigan. According to his obituary at NPR.org, he “was one of the music industry’s most influential hip-hop artists, working for big-name acts like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes and Common.”
Renowned producer Pete Rock placed J Dilla on his list of the top five producers of all time, while the editors of About.com ranked him #15 on their list of the Top 50 Hip-Hop Producers. Andy Kellman of Allmusic stated that—by 2004, after being active for well over a decade as a producer—J Dilla had accomplished enough to be considered “an all-time great.” J Dilla made the “Elite 8″ in the search for The Greatest Hip-Hop Producer of All Time by Vibe. Also, The Source placed him on its list of the 20 greatest producers in the magazine’s twenty-year history.
Yancey’s career began slowly. He has now become highly regarded, most notably for the production of critically acclaimed albums by Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Common, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde, and Erykah Badu. He was a member of Slum Village and produced their acclaimed debut album Fan-Tas-Tic (Vol. 1) and their follow-up Fantastic, Vol. 2.
In the early 2000s, Yancey’s career as a solo artist began to improve; A solo album Welcome 2 Detroit was followed by a collaborative album with California producer Madlib, Champion Sound, which catalyzed the careers of both artists. Just as his music was becoming increasingly popular, Yancey died in 2006 of the blood disease TTP.
Following J Dilla‘s death, the hip hop community became centered upon his music and image. Many of the artists with whom Yancey worked and performed with recorded tributes, and a large group of followers voiced their support for the late musician. Yancey’s music experienced a rebirth as the producer gained many times more listeners than he had during his life, partly due to media exposure. Though several posthumous albums have been released and others are planned, the amount of unreleased recordings by the producer remain somewhat undetermined. Yancey’s estate has also been controverted.
Create a MySpace Music Playlist at MixPod.com
The Dungeon Family is a hip hop/R&B/soul musical collective, based in Atlanta, Georgia and specializing in Southern hip hop with heavy funk and soul influences. The group derives its name from “The Dungeon”, the name given to record producer Rico Wade‘s basement studio where many of the early members of the collective did their first recordings. Rico Wade, Ray Murray, and Sleepy Brown constitute the production/songwriting team Organized Noize, who have produced hits for the main popular Dungeon Family groups OutKast and Goodie Mob.
Only once has the collective been brought together for a project: the 2001 collaborative album Even in Darkness.
The New York-based Native Tongues crew was a collective of like-minded hip hop artists who would help bring abstract and open-minded lyricism that addressed a range of topics, from spirituality and modern living to race, sex, and just having fun – to the mainstream. Together with the use of eclectic samples that would take on an increasingly jazzy sound, they would be pioneers of so-called conscious hip hop, alternative hip-hop, and jazz rap.
Fostered by Kool DJ Red Alert, the success of the Jungle Brothers would pave the way for De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest; together, these three groups would form the core of the crew and continue the spirit of Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation. By 1989 they had been joined by Queen Latifah and the UK’s Monie Love, and soon by the Black Sheep & Chi-Ali. Collectively, the members of the Native Tongues had a huge effect on the style and trends of hip hop during its most important period, the golden age of the late 1980s–early 1990s. A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul‘s albums of this time are considered among the best and most important in the hip hop genre.
The song ”Scenario” was the final track on the Tribe Called Quest album The Low End Theory and featured the fledging Leaders of the New School—Dinco D, Busta Rhymes, and Charlie Brown. This track simultaneously introduced and legitimized the concept of a new school in hip-hop music, and is arguably the most notable and significant single song of the era.
While featuring an extensive discography, the collaborations of the Native Tongues have been fairly limited: the collective never recorded anything under that name, and the number of notable crew cuts can be counted on one hand. The various groups grew distant with time, and, by 1993, De La Soul‘s Trugoy the Dove proclaimed, “That native shit is dead.” The collective would, however, reunite in 1996 for the Jungle Brothers’ “How Ya Want It We Got It (Native Tongues Remix)”; collaborators in this period, such as Common,Truth Enola, Da Bush Babees, and Mos Def, could be seen as latter-day additions to the crew. In 1998 on A Tribe Called Quest‘s final album The Love Movement, the last track “Rock Rock Ya’ll” featuring Jane Doe, Mos Def, Punchline & Wordsworth. Q Tip states near the track’s end that “this right here is a family”.
There are several collectives today—with overlapping membership—that can be seen as the spiritual heirs to the Native Tongues crew: the Spitkicker crew (founded by De La Soul‘s Trugoy and Posdnuos in 2000), the Okayplayers, and the Soulquarians. Chris Lighty—a member of the Native Tongues-affiliated street crew the Violators, who began his career carrying records for Zulu Nation DJs and later as the Jungle Brothers‘ roadie—now runs the successful Violator Management company, which represents Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip, among other high-profile clients. It has influenced many other artists in the music industry.
Fresh off the critically acclaimed, The Roots ”Undun” album, The Legendary Roots Crew affiliate and Money Making Jam Boys member, Greg Porn, releases his first song from his upcoming project, “American Junky“. The song is entitled “The World Is Yours” and is produced by Ali Bey of BeatKhemist. Greg Porn recently shot the video for “The World Is Yours“, so be on the lookout for that real soon.
Etta James, whose assertive, earthy voice lit up such hits as “The Wallflower,” “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” and the wedding favorite “At Last,” has died, according to her longtime friend and manager, Lupe De Leon. She was 73.
She died from complications from leukemia with her husband, Artis Mills, and her sons by her side, De Leon said.
She was diagnosed with leukemia in 2010, and also suffered from dementia and hepatitis C. James died at a hospital in Riverside, California. She would have turned 74 Wednesday.
” This is a tremendous loss for the family, her friends and fans around the world,” De Leon said. “She was a true original who could sing it all – her music defied category.
“I worked with Etta for over 30 years. She was my friend and I will miss her always.”
The powerhouse singer, known as “Miss Peaches,” lived an eventful life. She first hit the charts as a teenager, taking “The Wallflower (Roll With Me, Henry)” — an “answer record” to Hank Ballard’s “Work With Me, Annie” — to No. 1 on the R&B charts in 1955. She joined Chess Records in 1960 and had a string of R&B and pop hits, many with lush string arrangements. After a mid-decade fade, she re-emerged in 1967 with a more hard-edged, soulful sound.
Throughout her career, James overcame a heroin addiction, opened for the Rolling Stones, won six Grammys and was voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Despite her ups and downs — including a number of health problems — she maintained an optimistic attitude.
“Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don’t know what I’m sorry about,” she told CNN‘s Denise Quan in 2002. “I don’t!”
Through it all, she was a spitfire beloved by contemporaries and young up-and-comers.
“Etta James is unmanageable, and I’m the closest thing she’s ever had to a manager,” Lupe DeLeon, her manager of 30-plus years, told CNN in admiration.
British songstress Adele named James as one of her favorite singers, along with Aretha Franklin.
“If you were to look up the word singer in the dictionary, you’d see their names,” Adele said in an interview.
Etta James was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles to a teen mother and unknown father. (She suspected her father was the pool player Minnesota Fats.)
Her birth mother initially took little responsibility and James was raised by a series of people, notably a pair of boardinghouse owners. But she was recognized from a young age for her booming voice, showcased in a South Central Los Angeles church.
In 1950, her mother took her to San Francisco, where James formed a group called the Peaches. Singer Johnny Otis, best known for “Willie and the Hand Jive,” discovered her and had her sing a song he wrote using Ballard’s tune as a model. “The Wallflower,” with responses from “Louie Louie” songwriter Richard Berry, made James an R&B star.
Her signing to Chess introduced her to a broader audience, as the record label’s co-owner, Leonard Chess, believed she should do pop hits. Among her recordings were “Stormy Weather,” the Lena Horne classic originally from 1933; “A Sunday Kind of Love,” which dates from 1946; and most notably, “At Last,” a 1941 number that was originally a hit for Glenn Miller.
James’ version of “At Last” starts out with swooning strings and the singer enters with confident gusto, dazzlingly maintaining a mood of joy and romance. Though the song failed to make the Top 40 upon its 1961 release — though it did hit the R&B Top 10 — its emotional punch has long made it a favorite at weddings.
James’ career suffered in the mid-’60s when the British Invasion took over the pop charts and as she fought some personal demons. But she got a boost when she started recording at Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Her hits included the brassy “Tell Mama” and the raw “I’d Rather Go Blind,” the latter later notably covered by Rod Stewart.
She entered rehab in the 1970s for her drug problem but re-established herself with live performances and an album produced by noted R&B mastermind Jerry Wexler. After another stint in rehab — this time at the Betty Ford Clinic — she made a comeback album, “Seven Year Itch,” in 1988.
James mastered a range of styles — from R&B and soul to jazz and blues — but she was always one step behind the popular genre of the day, said Michael Coyle, a Colgate University professor who has written about jazz and R&B and reviews records for Cadence Magazine.
“She never really got her moment in the sun,” Coyle said.
But James soldiered on, and by the end of her life she had made so much meaningful music that she was considered a living legend. “By the mid-’90s, she’s survived so long that people start to look up to her,” Coyle said.
James was portrayed by pop star Beyonce in the 2008 film “Cadillac Records,” about Chess. After Beyonce sang “At Last” at one of President Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural balls, James lashed out: “I can’t stand Beyonce. She had no business up there singing my song that I’ve been singing forever.” She later told the New York Daily News she was joking.
Earlier this year, news reports revealed that the singer’s estate was being contested in a legal struggle between her husband, Artis Mills, and son Donto James. (Donto and her other son, Sametto, both played in her band.)
Over the years, James had her share of health problems. In the late 1990s she reportedly weighed more than 400 pounds and required a scooter to get around. In 2003 she had gastric bypass surgery and dropped more than half the weight, according to People magazine.
However, until her latest issues, James maintained a steady touring schedule and appeared full of energy even when sitting down — as she sometimes did on stage, due to bad knees and her weight battles.
Even while sitting down, James gave it her all on stage, singing as though possessed, caressing every note like a long-lost love. If that seemed a little much to critics, well, the legendary singer had a show to put on, she told Quan.
“They said that Etta James is still vulgar,” she said in the 2002 interview. “I said, ‘Oh, how dare ‘em say I’m still real vulgar! I’m vulgar because I dance in the chair?’ What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that?
“I gotta do something.”
Dante Terrell Smith is more commonly known as Mos Def also known as Yasin Bey aka Black Dante aka Pretty Flaco aka Flaco Bey aka The Mighty Mos Def aka Bezé
Regarded as one of hip-hop’s most introspective and insightful artists, Mos Def has shaped a career that transcends music genres and artistic medium. A child of hip-hop’s Golden Era, the native Brooklynite spent his childhood imbedded in the culture surrounding him as well as absorbing knowledge from across the artistic spectrum.
With the release of “Universal Magnetic” (1996) Mos became an underground favorite in the hip hop world, leading to his legendary collaboration with Talib Kweli. The two formed Black Star whose debut album, Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star, would become one of the most critically acclaimed hip-hop albums. Mos followed that release with his 1999 solo debut, Black On Both Sides, which was certified gold and credited by critics as bringing hip-hop back to its soapbox roots.
As with his music, Mos has demonstrated insight and passion with his acting career, appearing in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, MTV‘s Carmen: A Hip Hopera, 2002‘s critically acclaimed Monster’s Ball, Showtime, and the 2002 romantic comedy Brown Sugar, for which he received an NAACP Image Award nomination. In addition Mos has served as the host, music supervisor and co-executive producer for the HBO series Def Poetry and served as a writer, producer and actor on the MTV sketch comedy series Lyricist Lounge. Mos completed his Broadway debut in 2002 in the Tony nominated, Pulitzer Prize winning, Topdog/Underdog. Mos re-teamed with Topdog playwright, Suzan Lori Parks and director George Wolfe for the off-Broadway play, Fucking A, for which he was awarded an Obie Award.
In 2003, Mos Def starred in Paramount Pictures’ The Italian Job, alongside Ed Norton, Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron. Last year Mos Def starred opposite Alan Rickman in the critically acclaimed HBO movie Something the Lord Made, for which he has received a 2004 Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Miniseries Or A Movie. Def was also nominated for both a Golden Globe Award (Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture) and Golden Satellite Award (Best Actor in a Miniseries or a Motion Picture Made for Television) for the same role He can currently be been seen on the big screen in the feature film The Woodsman, with Kevin Bacon, Benjamin Bratt, Eve and Kyra Sedgwick. The New York Times said of his performance, “I hope we don’t have to wait too much longer to see him in a big-screen leading role,” and USA Today heralded him as “the movie’s best performance.” In addition, he recently completed work on Spyglass Entertainment’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, set for release in May 2005. In the film, an adaptation of the classic Douglas Adams Science Fiction novel, Def will star as hero “Ford Prefect.”
Mos Def released his highly-anticipated and critically acclaimed sophomore solo release, The New Danger (Geffen Records), on October 12th. The album was met with praise from both critics and fans alike, with Rolling Stone giving it 4 Stars and hailing the album as “Ghetto rock and righteous hip-hop from dazzingly talented Def” and the New York Daily News proclaimed “No one is doing more to change our notion of how hip hop can sound.” The first single, “Sex, Love and Money’ earned Def a 2005 Grammy nomination for Best Alternative/Urban Performance and the album has been certified gold by the RIAA.
Apple Computers – The Apple Boogie (Mixtape)
Here we have the nearly-forgotten cassette of music that Apple put out in the late 980s.The Next Web tracked it down and you can download all the tracks and lyrics to the songs right here.
“The Apple Boogie” is a collection of 8 tracks that are sure to inspire something in you, whether it’s laughter, nostalgia, or wonder at how simply weird it is to listen to this music 24 years later.
The barn-burner on the album is “We’re So Excited,” an Apple-centric reworking of The Pointer Sisters‘ “I’m So Excited.”
Choice lyrics from this and other songs include:
What are you waiting for?
UGK (short for Underground Kingz) was an American hip hop duo from Port Arthur, Texas formed in 1987 by the late Chad “Pimp C” Butler . He then joined with Bernard “Bun B” Freeman, who became his longtime partner. They released their first major label album, Too Hard to Swallow, in 1992, followed by several other albums charting on the Billboard 200 and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts, including the self-titled Underground Kingz album which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in August 2007. The group has been featured on hit singles by other artists, such as on “Big Pimpin‘” by Jay-Z and “Sippin’ on Some Syrup” by Three 6 Mafia. Pimp C founded UGK Records in late 2005.
On December 4, 2007, Pimp C was found dead in a West Hollywood, California hotel room. Long live the Pimp!!
Donald Glover is a truly multifaceted talent. He is a stand-up comedian. He has written for the NBC show 30 Rock and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, and has attracted significant attention for his role on the NBC show Community. As if that weren’t enough, he also raps under the moniker Childish Gambino, and has just released a new album called Camp.
In an interview with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep, Glover says he made the album for his 13-year-old self. “The things that I said on the album,” he says, “I wish I knew when I was younger.” He writes from the perspective of a kid who is dismissed as a nerd.
He says that idea makes him a “Woody Allen-esque rapper.”
“Everybody is kind of a kid,” he says. “I personally don’t believe people really grow. They just learn stuff when they were a kid, and hold on to it, and that affects every relationship they have. So the album is about learning the good stuff and taking away the good stuff, and continuing to grow — as opposed to staying 12 years old forever with relationships, which sometimes I feel like I still am.”
Glover covers some standard rap topics, plays standard characters (people who are tough, who survive, who think they are “awesome”) in his songs, but some of what he tackles is unorthodox for hip-hop. As a rapper, Glover is constantly vulnerable. A lot of Camp addresses the struggles of a black kid trying to find his own identity without succumbing to external social pressures.
It’s similar to how he approaches his comedy. “I feel like that’s the only reason I’m allowed to do rap and comedy,” he says. “It’s that they’re kind of the same person.”
Glover says it can be difficult for young black kids to find their own identity because so much of black popular culture has become uniform. “Black kids are told every day who they are. Every day,” he says. Straying too far from the norm, he says, can get you ostracized.
“We put stereotypes on ourselves. Everybody does that. But I think it’s just a little harder for black kids to just be who they are,” he says. “Television‘s telling you who you are. Everybody is telling you who you are and who you can be and what your limits are.” Including your classmates, black and white.
“It’s really hard when you’re a black kid and you like a certain thing, but then there’s no other black kids like you,” Glover says. “And you might even get picked on for who you want to be or who you are — but you’re just figuring it out. I felt like high school for me was like a big whirlpool of me trying to figure out what was OK for me to do.”
Glover broaches the topic in his song “Hold You Down,” an attempt to reveal the absurdity in the predicament:
The black experience is blackened serious,
‘Cause being black, in my experience, is no one hearin’ us.
White kids get to wear whatever hat they want,
When it comes to black kids, one size fits all.
Of Camp he says, “Hopefully making this thing will make it easier for little Donalds.” Childish Gambino isn’t your run-of-the-mill rapper; Donald Glover isn’t an artist with many peers. He’s succeeding in many different venues and doing so while remaining candid.
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