Last Night: MC Chris, Totally Michael and Sirah at Chain Reaction in Anaheim, Oct. 21, 2008.
Better Than: All three of the "Star Wars" prequels. Sorry, "Revenge of the Sith" apologists.
Download: Totally Michael's self-titled debut, released last week and on iTunes.
MC Chris isn't a fan of the "nerdcore" label that's followed him throughout his career. Writing at length on the subject in his MySpace blog, he essentially doesn't want to be the figurehead of any movement, or associated with the
T-Pain
Thr33 Ringz
(Nappy Boy Entertainment)
How has T-Pain done it? He’s not attractive, his fashion-sense leaves much to be desired (for those without Dr. Seuss/ LSD fetishes, in any case), and without the benefit of auto-tune his voice is nothing special. And yet, considering his hip hop and R&B radio dominance, his claim to be “ringleader of the game” can’t be argued with.
The circus theme informs Pain’s third album, Thr33 Ringz, in which his task is moving beyond singles towards
BY ANNIE ZALESKIPop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious. The following ten singles saturated the Top 40 -- or what passes for hit-oriented radio in this topsy-turvy musical climate -- while proving that accessibility doesn't necessarily preclude creativity.
You don't need a half-wit music critic to tell you it's been a remarkable year for America, one historians will be discussing and researching for centuries to come. War, financial collapse, politics, technology: All have been dinner-table topics for many Americans. Racial barriers in 2008 were demolished by a Midwestern black man, and gender barriers were hurdled by an Arkansan and an Alaskan.Democracy has a few awesome new dance moves rolling into the Obama presidency, and it'll be a feast f
Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry and synthetic to wet and gushy), rhythm tracks can be tempo-tweaked with an upward toggle to change a Timbaland beat into a Chromeo one. Add some T-Pain-esque pitch-correction vocals to your between
Jamie Foxx, leave something for the rest of us. He can act, he can tell jokes, he can sing the hooks of smash-hit Kanye West tunes, and now he's got his own solo career going, too. His third studio album, Intuition (not to be confused with the Jewel song of the same name, not that anyone would), came out late last December, and hit #3 on the Billboard 200 despite some middling reviews.Sure, it would be easy to make Eddie Murphy/"Party All the Time" jokes if he wasn't working with legit hip-hop s
