Continuing his efforts to prove to fans that the club and the rock show can, indeed, coexist, Chris Cornell has released a mixtape in conjunction with DJ Skee based on his new solo album Scream. In addition to the Fray’s American Idol-enshrined cover of “Heartless” and a version of “Outshined” credited to Audioslave, the 63 tracks include a selection from that Jay-Z/Linkin Park album, a mashup of the “Lollipops” wielded by Lil Wayne and Framing Hanley, “Kids” so as to fulfill the required-in-2009 MGMT quotient, songs from a few bands that played Bamboozle, and a remix of Nirvana’s “Love Buzz” cover. There is also something called “Trent Reznor Speaks,” which I am going to guess is some sort of meta-Twitter dis. (The zipped version is 219 megabytes, so it’s taking a while to leech from the Internet.) Full track listing after the jump. More »
Chicago Reader music writer Miles Raymer rightfully lampoons a new contest from such halcyon musical minds as Saliva, Burn Halo, and Framing Hanley called The Dirty Tourney. (Keep in mind that if you visit that site, you have to allow popups for www.dirtytourney.com, which left me forever ashamed of myself.) In this fight to the death, Saliva and their fellow cro-magnons are on the hunt for the Queen of Unclean:
Submit pics and your profile between 3/25 and 4/2 and tell us why you or your girlfriend is [sic] the dirtiest, craziest, sexiest girl around and the band you think rocks the hardest. If you’ve got what it takes, and you show off what ya got, you could be crowned Queen of the Dirty Tourney.
The gap between hip-hop and rock, whether musical or cultural, is often greatly exaggerated. There are simply too many people who enjoy large amounts of both genres, too many musicians from either discipline who have crossed that gradually disappearing line. But every time a rapper tries to rock or a rocker tries to rap, we go through the same familiar motions. The artist invariably behaves as if his actions are as bold and groundbreaking as the first time Aerosmith stood onstage alongside Run-DMC; sometimes, fans and critics agree, but more often, the reaction is of the “omg lol wtf” variety, with enough feigned outrage and distaste to make one think none of these people had ever seen peanut butter in their chocolate before. “Why do rappers like Coldplay so much?” may very well be the inane watercooler observation of the 21st century.
As I noted when I proclaimed him pop music’s new Prince of Darkness, Lil Wayne has been doing everything possible in the past couple years to act like a rock star. He plays guitar (badly); he got a lip piercing; he joins Fall Out Boy and Kid Rock onstage at awards shows. But while the rock charts are just about the only singles charts his collaboration with Kevin Rudolf, “Let It Rock,” haven’t raced up, Wayne has finally seeped into Billboard’s Hot Modern Rock Tracks–as a songwriter. That’s because the Tennessee band Framing Hanley has recorded a cover of “Lollipop,” Wayne’s No. 1 single from Tha Carter III, and it’s currently at No. 37 in its second week there.
