?uestlove emulates Kanye West's superconspicous-consumptionish blogging style, only with a bit of a populist twist. Sample entry: "i realized how spoiled i've gotten in the past few years with my "one scuff and throw em out" steeze with my kicks. remember when mom and dad made you wear your sneaks until the sole could speak several languages?" [okayplayer.com via Nah Right]
We used to have daily "Britney=crazy!" news to fill the blogging day, but her time encamped in the psychiatric bunker has reduced the volume of her news output. I just want to take a second to thank Kanye West for picking up the slack. Crazed rants against Entertainment Weekly? Playing Connect Four with other celebrities? Rumored fights with collaborators? Thank you, Kanye, from the bottom of my bloggo heart.
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Kanye West had a change of blogging heart after Friday's outburst at Entertainment Weekly's Chris Willman, who had the nerve to give his show a B+. The blog-happy MC deleted his exhortation that Willman off himself from his rebuttal post to the EW review sometime Saturday, possibly out of the fear of stoking bad karma. And yesterday, he put up an "I ain't mad at you" post that explained his onstage tantrum in Houston Friday night, absolved the rest of the EW staff from his wrath and coined a new phrase that invokes the King Of Pop:
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Latest by zaky: People who use '2' instead of 'to' should not be allowed to be rich. more »
Have you ever wondered if Kanye West was the type of kid who, during his school years, would get pissed off when he "only" scored a B+ on an exam? OK, it's probably obvious that he was, and still is. But signing off his response to Entertainment Weekly's pretty-decent-overall review of his tour-opening show in Seattle with "Never come 2 one of my shows ever again, you're not invited and if you see me... BOW!!! This is not pop, it's pop art! Chris Willman, kill yourself!" makes me wonder if he's going to respond to every review that pops up along his tour in this fashion, and if he's stocking up on antacids in order to soothe the ulcers that are an obvious byproduct of said vitriol. [kanYe West: Blog]
Given their love of content control, it's probably not too surprising that Universal Music Group has been issuing DMCA takedown notices to YouTube users who have posted bits of Kanye West's Glow In The Dark Tour to the video-sharing site—for example, Animal, who threw up a few clips from this week's Seattle kickoff show only to have them swiftly removed. But as it turns out, Kanye doesn't want there to be any unauthorized record of his performances on this tour at all—he's not letting "photography of any kind" go down at his shows this summer, possibly because he only wants people to pay $60 and up to see his crazy staging. (Don't worry, Kanye—the picture attached to this post is from the Grammys!)
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Latest by sctrojan84: The show was AMAZING in Sac, rules be damned. Just bring a digital camera in your back pocket, that's what most people did. I can see why he doesn't want to much of his show to be seen if you more »
The Foo Fighters, Jack Johnson, Kanye West, Nine Inch Nails, and Stone Temple Pilots will headline 1999's this year's Virgin Mobile Festival, which takes place at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore on Aug. 9-10. [Baltimore Sun]
I'm disappointed that the last two singles from Kanye West's Graduation have been from the final (and weakest) third of the album (sorry, the "paparazzi/Nazi" line kills "Flashing Lights" for me). At least we got "Homecoming"'s stroll through Chicago, complete with static shots of Common, rather than a visual representation of that giant smooch on Jay-Z's ass Kanye called "Big Brother" (also known as "P.S. We Should Be Together Too").
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Kanye West has been accused of jacking his hit "The Good Life" from Dayna Stagg's "Volume Of Good Life." Stagg, shocked and horrified by the song's "vulgar and offensive" imagery, has filed suit and wants 85% of the profits. According to the suit, "the Infringing master work lasting nearly three and one half minutes, features t-pain and Kanye West singing about women and fast cars and admittingly confessing to switching the style up and watching the money pile up vocally indistinguishable from D. Staggs III 'Volume Of Good Life' [sic, all of this, sic]" Who is Dayna Stagg, you ask? Maybe you know him better as D'Mystro. You know, D'Mystro!
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Latest by FunkyJ: He's horrified by the song's "vulgar and offensive" imagery, and yet wants 85% of the profits...
Profits which no doubt would be massive due purely to that "vulgar and offensive" imagery... more »
British R&B singer Estelle's "American Boy" is a bloke-crazy travelogue across the fifty nifty—even if she seems more interested in checking out the scenery than the local singles scene—with a fur-draped Kanye stopping by for two check-cashing guest verses shameless enough to rhyme "U.K." with "you, K." Five years ago, the song's house-style backing—a vaguely French-style confection too chill for prime time clubbing but perfect for an Ibiza-themed, bikini-bedecked comp—would have meant the song was dead in the water commercially on the Europhobic side of the Atlantic. After West's own "Stronger" and the recent spate of 4/4 -friendly R&B and pop, its U.S. crossover commercial fortunes are less of a given, but Estelle's delivery might still be a little too prim for us downmarket R&B fans who prefer belters to the cool composure of the continental club diva. [YouTube]
Last week we all puzzled over the (hidden?) meanings of Kanye West's new Spike Jonze co-directed video for "Flashing Lights," which prematurely ends with a lingerie-clad video starlet (presumably) offing the trussed-up Mr. West with a few quick thwacks of a shovel. Whether or not this is actually the end for 'Ye—the video's brief running time has led to much speculation that it's merely a teaser for a longer clip to be released soon, though this MTV story claims otherwise—the clip as it stands is pretty willfully obtuse, even for a guy's desperate to cast himself as a Grammy-deserving, capital-A artiste. And it turns out that if you're still scratching your noggin over what it all means, you may just be too ignorant to hang with the auteur's vision. At least according to the video's would-be murderer.
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Latest by HONEYBFLY: And I have nothing particularly snarky to say to this post...
I just hate Kanye.
Like, hate hate.
More than I hate Beyonce.
And that's a lot of hate.
Hate. more »
As many of our readers noted, the video for Kanye West's "Flashing Lights," which debuted yesterday, just sort of... stops, even cutting off before the song it's promoting comes to a close. Surely its Kanye-gets-beaten-with-a-shovel ending isn't, well, the ending of the video, right? I mean, it looks gorgeous—even through heavily buffered Flash—but something tells me that this clip has to be some sort of attempt to bring serialization into the world of single music videos. After the jump, we come up with four possible scenarios for part II of the clip; vote on which one is your favorite, or tell us your own plot for the minute and change that follows Kanye being whacked with a shovel for the last time.
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Latest by bigw: Two months pass and she's at a VMA with another superstar rapper. They dedicate an award to Kanye, he comes out while, he's walking out her face is in dismay. She tries to walk out while her now current superstar more »
Kanye West's video for "Flashing Lights" has premiered on Rocafella.com, and as previously revealed, its plot is pretty simple, if a bit fever-dreamish: A woman drives to an unidentified cliff's edge, gets out of her car, strips down to her skivvies, and sets her discarded clothing on fire. Then, seemingly empowered by her stripping-and-burning, she walks back to her car and pops the trunk, which contains a) a shovel and b) a bound and gagged Kanye. The video's final scenes are a long, sumptuous shot of the clip's antiheroine bringing the two together in a somewhat disturbing way (it's almost like she's using the shovel as a substitute for an icepick), but since we, the viewers, never actually see shovel hit Kanye's prone body—and since the video just kinda ends—I'm wondering if there isn't some sort of sequel on the way in which our hero breaks free of his bounds and turns the tables on his tormentor. [OnSmash / rocafella.com; HT Reed Fischer]
Latest by StuntKockSteeev: @ladysonic: According to Beanie Sigel, Kanye has had various bones deep in his body at one time or another.
+ Watch video more »
Vince Gill on his "na na, I got a Grammy from a Beatle and you didn't" dig at Kanye West during Sunday night's Grammys: "He had said something about how he was gonna win Album of the Year later, and if not him, then Amy Winehouse was most deserving and not me or the Foo Fighters. So I decided to have a little fun. ... I just saw him out of the corner of my eye when I was up there, and I decided I had to do it. He took a shot at Gretchen Wilson when he lost Best New Artist to her a few years ago, and so us rednecks stick together." [MTV / Photo: AP]
"Kanye West stopped the action at the EW party to give guests a sneak peek of the video for his single, 'Flashing Lights.' The clip, co-directed by West and Spike Jonze, has a lingerie-clad woman driving to the desert and opening the trunk of her car, revealing a bound and gagged Kanye. She batters him with a shovel. 'Everybody was in shock,' says a guest. 'They were saying, 'What was that about?'" Um, his persecution complex and penchant for half-dressed ladies? Just a guess. [Rush & Molloy / Photo: AP]
While accepting the award for Best Rap Album at last night's Grammys, Kanye West gave a clinic in How To Make The Producers Stop Playing You Off When You Still Have About Half Of Your Acceptance Speech To Get Through. Of course, the fact that he was paying tribute to his deceased mother probably helped him win sympathy points from the showrunners, a fact that's making me wonder just how many lengthy acceptance speeches at the upcoming Oscars are going to be puncutated by well-timed tributes to family members who passed away "recently."
Latest by thekidbh: It's obvious everyone has an opinion, they like or dont like Kanye. I know I would take a platform like the Grammy's to say "Mom I miss you" (hope you would to). The the music industry (atleast rap) is all more »
Judging by the reactions from my living room, my instant-messenger conversations, and the comments section on our Grammy liveblog, people were more than a little surprised when the Album Of The Year winner was announced... and said winner wasn't Kanye West or Amy Winehouse, but Herbie Hancock, whose Joni Mitchell homage River: The Joni Letters took home the night's final prize. I actually wasn't too surprised by Hancock's victory—to quote myself, "if you didn't at least think that Herbie Hancock paying tribute to Joni Mitchell would sway at least half the people who voted for Steely Dan over Eminem a few years back you haven't been paying attention"—but apparently a lot of people were! (Perhaps they forgot that Norah Jones and Corinne Bailey Rae and Tina Turner and Leonard Cohen were also on the album.) So let's put it to all of you: If you had a vote in the Grammy balloting, what would you have chosen as this Grammy year's Album Of The Year? Poll after the jump.
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Latest by blobby: I believe it was the Guardian who already pointed out, musicians stop making good music as soon as they hit 30. Herbie Hancock is waaaaaay past 30. Therefore, his album sucked.
Q.E.D.
In all seriousness, why the fuck didn't more »
Yes, that's right—Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET is when our live coverage of the Grammys, which will be filled with the walking dead and the incredibly awkward, begins. It'll be my first liveblog from my four-person orange couch! Here's the nominee list, so you can read up on who's in, who's out, and who's up for Best Polka Album. And to get you even more excited for Sunday, here are a few final news items on the show, presented in handy bullet form: More »
Idolator
?uestlove emulates Kanye West's superconspicous-consumptionish blogging style, only with a bit of a populist twist. Sample entry: "i realized how spoiled i've gotten in the past few years with my "one scuff and throw em out" steeze with my kicks. remember when mom and dad made you wear your sneaks until the sole could speak several languages?" [
We used to have daily "Britney=crazy!" news to fill the blogging day, but her time encamped in the psychiatric bunker has reduced the volume of her news output. I just want to take a second to thank Kanye West for picking up the slack. Crazed rants against Entertainment Weekly? Playing Connect Four with other celebrities? Rumored fights with collaborators? Thank you, Kanye, from the bottom of my bloggo heart.
More »
