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Popping Up is our recurring look at new artists making noise on the music landscape. Because, hey—Madonna and Britney were once unknown, too.
We're 85% sure that Chris Glover, now known professionally as synth-enthusiast and remixer extraordinaire Penguin Prison, is not an aquatic bird. Nor is he incarcerated. This 28-year-old New Yorker is, however, an artist who cut his teeth by dabbling in hip hop and remixing tracks for such artists as Goldfrapp ("Rocket"), Darren Hayes ("Talk Talk Talk") and Ellie Goulding ("Starry Eyed") before releasing his self-titled, groove-slathered first LP under his Penguin Prison monicker last fall. (He previously had an album out under his real name six years ago.)
Having been born in 1983, it makes perfect sense, then, that Chris, who attended school and played in bands with Holy Ghost!'s Nick Millhiser and Alex Frankel, first found an appreciation for music courtesy of Michael Jackson. "I remember having a Michael Jackson doll when I was around 5 years old," he tells us. "And I remember having the Thriller album on vinyl and playing it on a Fisher Price record player."
Head below to why just why Penguin Prison is on our Popping Up radar, and why we think he's one to watch in 2012.
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Posts Tagged ‘Q-Tip’
Kanye West Joins Q-Tip On Stage At Brooklyn Hip Hop Fest
Sun Jul 17 2011 by Idolator Staff
The crowd at the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival got a nice surprise during Q-Tip's set yesterday — one of the biggest names in the game, Kanye West, made an unexpected appearance. The A Tribe Called Quest rapper brought the throne-watcher to the stage (under the Brooklyn Bridge) for "Award Tour," much to the delight of all the hip hop fans in attendance. Check out the performance below.
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Kanye West Weighs In With “Chain Heavy”
Sat Nov 13 2010 by Idolator Staff
While Kanye West may be luxuriating in Abu Dhabi, he's found time to post another G.O.O.D. Fridays track (on Saturday, as has been his custom lately). "Chain Heavy" — which he debuted live at Facebook's corporate office this summer — is back as a fully produced track featuring Talib Kweli, Consequence and Kanye himself rhyming about the heavy burdens they bear (cultural and otherwise). You won't be seeing 'Ye perform this one on the Today show anytime soon, but it's worth a listen. Add a link to your chain and grab the track below.
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Mark Ronson & The Business Intl Make David Letterman Go “Bang Bang Bang”
Tue Oct 12 2010 by Robbie Daw
A Tribe Called Quest rapper Q-Tip and New York singer Amanda Warner of MNDR took center stage on last night's Late Show With David Letterman to perform with Mark Ronson & The Business Intl. The musical conglomerate offered up a rousing rendition of their retro synth-pop jam "Bang Bang Bang," which appears on Ronson's new album Record Collection and became a UK Top 10 hit over the summer. Watch below!
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Circuit City’s Going Out Of Business Sale: Everything (Especially Those Janet Jackson Albums) Must Go
Mon Dec 15 2008 by Maura
Two years ago, this site chronicled the long, slow demise of Tower Records painstakingly, with notes on what albums were burrowed away in the deep-discount bins. Well, in the current era, there are fewer music-specific stores left standing, but it would seem like there’s a similar, if slightly more depressing, story unfolding with the Chapter 11 bankruptcy and substantial closures borne by the electronics chain Circuit City, which, you may remember, sold records now and again.
Q-Tip Returns To The Fold
Tue Nov 4 2008 by Dan Gibson
Music Industry Trying To Rebrand “Election Day” As Something More Than An Arcadia Song
Fri Oct 24 2008 by Maura
Today’s Wall Street Journal story on how the entertainment industry is treating Election Day as “another retail holiday, when adults are sprung from work and kids are out of school–and presumably in stores” is full of cringeworthy moments–for starters, we have Brad Paisley calling his current tour The Paisley Party, which I thought was a weird Prince reference but is actually some “funny” political “joke” that I guess will mobilize all the graphic design-challenged types out there. But perhaps the best evidence that Fall Out Boy’s decision to move the release of Folie A Deux from Nov. 4 to mid-December was a smart one comes from the excruciating Oklahoman butt-rockers Hinder.
The New Q-Tip Makes Me Miss The Old Tribe Called Quest
Fri Sep 19 2008 by Dan Gibson
The new Q-Tip single, “Gettin’ Up,” sounds more like the classic Q-Tip that was missing during the brief “Vivrant Thing” era, and it’s hard to complain about the Madlib beat, but something seems missing. I can only assume it’s the artistic hole left by Phife Dawg–if there’s not a five-foot-tall guy roaming around next to Tip, and occasionally dropping a verse, it’s hard to get too excited. A collection of more on point tracks from the A Tribe Called Quest days behind the cut.
Idolator Rocks The Bells, Develops Kyphosis
Tue Jul 29 2008 by Jess Harvell
Greetings from “at large”! Like any good penitent, my self-imposed blogging exile has included certain dietary restrictions. Fer instance consuming as little music released in 2008 as possible. But spending the day slopping about in music-related nostalgia is still OK, because otherwise I would have to turn to Jack Van Impe reruns or honest work. That’s why this weekend, while Maura was taking in the horror what Fat Mike and/or the Get Up kids wrought, I was at the Rock The Bells tour, a package deal involving hip-hop’s geriatric giants that is not a “festival” but a “hip-hop platform,” presumably because it’s easy for socially conscious rappers to steal juice from political terminology in an election year. We (meaning me and photographer Frank Hamilton) scammed our way in with Idolator’s press credentials (and strategic puppy dog eyes), so the usual guilt meant I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself if I didn’t type something up after the fact. (Plus Maura made me.) What did we learn? Well, for one thing, we learned that if your blog ass tries to stand on concrete in a “golden age of hip-hop” gulag for 12 hours, it seriously fucks your back up. (According to Maura’s account from emo-ville, this is a pan-genre festival problem.) Two, that if our nation’s enemies (except for those Iranian fibbers) had targeted Columbia, Md., with their nuclear whatnot on Sunday, they’d have evaporated just about every rapper that made my high school years tolerable. To wit:
