I’ve gotta say, I’m a little disappointed with this video. Not that I had high expectations, but when the word leaked that Kanye West would be directing this joint, I figured he might have some tricks up his sleeve that would attempt to give this video more of an epic feel (like we generally see in Kanye’s videos).

Instead, we got some story about a basketball team stacked (literally) full of models. And I’m not complaining about that part, but figured one of the best songs of the year would also have one of the best videos and this isn’t even the best video I’ve seen today.

Try again ‘Ye or better yet, go back to making music without auto-tune, please.

I found this record in my inbox when I woke up yesterday and figured it would be the talk of the town, as was the case when these 4 teamed up for the Swagga Like Us record a few months back.

I’m not sure if this is leaking slow, everybody’s on vacation or people really aren’t feeling the track (*raises hand*), but it hasn’t made much noise at all from what I’ve seen.

This is supposedly the newest record from Lil Wayne’s Rebirth album coming June 23rd.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This is a pretty funny illustration about the absurdity of Twitter. Not to say there’s anything wrong with Twitter (follow @djxplosive!), but giving a play-by-play of your entire life in 140 characters or less may be a little too much information. At least that’s what Kanye thinks.

Next!!!

Actually, this was pretty funny. What’s with all the celebrities suddenly having a sense of humor (see Kanye’s Trip to Cheesecake Factory)?

This video is just wrong for so many reasons, but also kind of brilliant too. My buddy came to find out about it after hearing his drunk neighbor’s rendition and had to go to Youtube in order to verify this was actually a song.

Looking past some of the racist undertones of the video, the music reminds me of something Kanye would sample before he went crazy made 808’s and Heartbreaks.

THERE ARE NO MORE ROC-STARS!!!
Maybe the world is balancing out.
Finally the leader of the free world is cooler than any musician/artist.
- The Broke Mogul

This quote was pulled from a funny review of the abomination that Kanye apparently pulled on American Idol this week (which I’ve yet to watch because I want to keep loving Kanye).

I’m not sure who the Broke Mogul is, although his profile says he’s the Music Supervisor for Entourage in which case I think we have a mutual friend, but check out his whole review on the Kanye performance. It had me

These are the days in hip-hop that I miss.  The days when remarkable things occurred spontaneously with the music that left us speechless.

I still remember the first time this performance aired. Chappelle’s Show had just started to reach the mainstream and had us glued to our TV every week because we knew that everyone was going to be talking about the show the next day. As if the show wasn’t good enough in itself, it was always exciting to see what Dave had up his sleeve for the grand finale when he would roll out the musical guest for the week. Even when you knew who the musical guest was in advance, you never knew what they had cooked up for those raw performances that always brought us something unique compared to a standard television appearance.

I may be wrong about this, but I believe Common was originally announced as the musical guest of the week when this episode aired. This was at a time when Kanye West was just breaking through, having achieved success with his production and the College Dropout album, but was still quite an enigma to most mainstream audiences.

You could hear the excitement in Dave’s voice when he announced his guests for the week, as if he were a DJ about to drop an exclusive joint he knew we were going to love.

And love it we did. This performance reminds me of how simple hip-hop really is. This no-frills video with two great MCs and a DJ posted up in a kitchen delivering something remarkable that had the hip-hop world talking.

We need this sort of thing to happen again in hip-hop!

Last week I mentioned that I was hesitant to write a complete eulogy for the packaged collection of recordings we’ve come to know as an album. Well, I’ve reconsidered. Here it is.

The album is dead. At least in hip-hop this is the case and, from what I hear, the same is true for other genres. So that Detox album you’ve been holding your breath for – forget about Dre. Blueprint 3? Move it from TBD to RIP. And for all the new signees that keep talking about their debut albums, they need to adjust their marketing and acknowledge the mixtapes are as close to an album as they are going to get.

The demise and death of the album should not surprise anyone. We’ve all done our part to deconstruct the machine that made this sort of packaging sell and we did it for a reason.

Personally, I’m not sad to see the album go. I believe a lot of us have this romantic idea of a classic album that can be listened to cover-to-cover, and that leads us to overvalue the concept as a whole. For every Illmatic, The Chronic or College Dropout CD that you purchased how many albums weren’t classics? I’m guessing a lot. If you’re like the majority of us whose purchases made the music business one of the strongest forces in entertainment, you probably spent a lot of money on a lot of CDs that had 1-2 songs you actually wanted to hear.

When Napster came along, Shawn Fanning became a hero for those of us with towers full of CDs gathering dust. He opened the gate to a world we didn’t know existed by giving us the freedom to pick and choose the songs we wanted and the ability to stop wasting money on things we didn’t need. Some say he killed the music industry; I say he saved the consumer.

What Napster has led us to is an open market of free distribution. The major record labels have all but given up on policing the situation and are counting their blessings every time they make a dime from one of their artists. The current state of the music industry looks something like the legalized drug market on The Wire known as Hamsterdam. We have people craving good music like a drug. We have capable artists, producers and labels able to supply these fans with what we need. And we have the means to make sure the suppliers and customers can find one another. Much like the fictional environment of The Wire in which a renegade commander took the City’s drug problem into his own hands, this same landscape has been created by the bloggers and file-sharing sites, and users have found themselves portrayed as criminals because of bureaucratic bullshit that offers no solution to the problem and would much rather pretend it doesn’t exist.

A lot of us in the hip-hop community like to portray ourselves as progressive thinkers. We kick and scream about how this artist is killing hip-hop, or how that executive is holding us back or how that label won’t embrace change. Then we simultaneously start talking about album releases. It’s one of the biggest contradictions one can make. You can’t be thinking progressively about this industry if you’re still talking about albums.

This sort of thought is what has brought us to the point we’re currently at in hip-hop — on life-support with a DNR already signed. I’m not going to go into the old “hip-hop is dead” cliché. What’s driving people away is that it’s boring. There are very few artists giving us anything to be excited about anymore. Fans have all but given up while waiting to hear material from promised albums that have had release dates pushed back repeatedly. It’s no wonder fans are marking time watching 50 Cent cartoons. If this trend continues, those of us who work in the music industry will need to start improving our drawing skills because while everyone is watching cartoons we’re losing jobs.

I’m proposing a stimulus plan that calls on some of hip-hop’s most powerful names to start releasing the music they have been holding back (and, by the way, do it for free). Dr. Dre, we need you right now. Jay-Z, let’s start getting those tracks from Blueprint 3 out to the masses. This message applies to everyone who is holding back gems because they are waiting for the climate to improve. I’m here to tell you the climate for releasing an album is never going to get any better. Hip-hop fans need to be hit by a barrage of new music that reminds us of why we fell in love with this culture to begin with. Our morale couldn’t go any lower.

The old heads and the new heads need to work together and ensure above all else that what they’re delivering is what the fans want to hear. Hence the word fans in that last sentence, as I think the powers that be seem to have forgotten who they are working for. I mean it’s time to cut out the bullshit, the “I’m a perfectionist” excuses that are given about project delays. This is what caused Guns N’ Roses to take 14 years to create an album that no one gave a shit about by the time it finally came out.

The artists and labels need to give up on the idea that they’re going to recoup the money invested in these projects and begin liquidating what they’ve got. Where are they going to sell these albums they’re talking about? I live in the heart of New York City and if I wanted to purchase an album, I wouldn’t even know where to look.

I believe that getting fans excited about the music again is the first step in revitalizing hip-hop culture. It would provide a renewed sense of optimism among hip-hop fans, which I believe would improve conditions throughout the industry. Much like the stimulus plan recently passed by the Obama administration, the results of this stimulus also may not be immediate.

This stimulus plan involves improving our psyche, rather than serving to benefit anyone financially. The money will come, but that’s not what is most important right now. We as fans need to love hip-hop again. Improving the quality of music and providing the industry with something we can truly be excited about will most certainly lead to a revised plan from the hip-hop community as a whole. While sales may not improve, it will actually encourage people to start thinking of ways to become profitable in this new age of music whether it’s from becoming smarter in tour packaging to creating new online revenue streams. The desire to fix the problem will grow stronger once the overall morale is improved.

Right now everyone is dumbfounded, looking for a solution to the problem of the internet. In case you haven’t noticed, the internet is anarchy. There is not going to be a solution, formula or even a game plan that works because we can’t control an environment that evolves through unfettered innovation. The best the industry will be able to do is quickly adapt to change. That means if your label, management company or agency isn’t staffed primarily by a bunch of internet geeks that are able to identify trends, stop on a dime and shift gears in the way they’re working, then you’re fucked.

The labels will no doubt eventually figure out that everything has changed, but what do fans do until then? Fans have to start pressuring the artists directly and demanding quality music. With citizen journalism at an all-time high thanks to blogs, twitter and other technological advances, it is now possible to create an instant world-wide buzz for a record. The smart artists will take advantage of this capability while the others will continue letting their records gather dust in the studio.

What we truly need right now is for every hip-hop artist to try to do something remarkable and to do it soon. Stop thinking about the dollar signs and start thinking about who you owe your success to. You owe it to hip-hop to do everything in your power to save the culture that created you.

…or is a fake blogger lying about Kanye’s Twitter account???

Operation Humble Kanye= Mission Accomplished!

Spotted at FSD