Check out the Frequency cameo...He's the blurry white face on the 1s and 2s in the background.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
NYT pans the Keri Hilson album
“In a Perfect World ...”
(Mosley Music Group/Zone 4/Interscope)
Two years ago Keri Hilson was the sweet-voiced singer on “The Way I Are,” the bizarre song — part soul, part industrial, part rap — that turned the superstar hip-hop producer Timbaland into a pop star in his own right. Singing light lyrics of devotion while buried under sheaves of synthesizers, she barely registered, though, sounding more like an automaton chirping out notes and sentiments on command.
But can you blame her for being a bit chilly? There is no less sexy a duet partner than Timbaland, who, in the vocal booth at least, has no sense of subtlety, rapping in a broad, jolly gurgle. The unfortunate pairing is reprised on “Return the Favor,” which appears on Ms. Hilson’s debut album and encapsulates the record’s shortcomings.
Ms. Hilson is clobbered on all sides by ornate production — largely by Timbaland and Polow Da Don — throughout this album, which favors texture and rhythm over melody or feeling. Sometimes, as on the slinky single “Turnin’ Me On” (featuring Lil Wayne), the busyness coheres, with Ms. Hilson neatly gliding among the song’s many layers. And she may need the crutch; she is a careful, slight singer.
But she’s often inventive, approaching the beat from odd angles and picking unexpected moments for rhyme. She also does much of her own vocal arranging. As part of the writing-producing collective the Clutch, she’s helped shape songs like Omarion’s magnificently gothic “Ice Box” and Usher’s squealing “Red Light.”
Knowing how best to frame other singers, though, hasn’t helped Ms. Hilson make better decisions for herself. Her sharpest moments are also the least frequent ones here: the uncluttered ones. The excellent “Slow Dance” sounds like a mid-1980s Prince ballad, sparkly and psychedelic, and the album’s high point, “Alienated,” is an alluring cloud-covered plea to an ex in which Ms. Hilson alternates between singing and a sort of whispered rap. (It also inspires some of her quirkiest lyrics: “I’m here wishing you would stop by my place/but the only time we talk is on MySpace.”) Notably, these are two of the only songs here not produced by Timbaland or Polow Da Don. Giving Ms. Hilson room to breathe, these producers — King Solomon Logan and Cory Bold — clearly see something in her other than decoration, something she has perhaps yet to see in herself. JON CARAMANICA
(Mosley Music Group/Zone 4/Interscope)
Two years ago Keri Hilson was the sweet-voiced singer on “The Way I Are,” the bizarre song — part soul, part industrial, part rap — that turned the superstar hip-hop producer Timbaland into a pop star in his own right. Singing light lyrics of devotion while buried under sheaves of synthesizers, she barely registered, though, sounding more like an automaton chirping out notes and sentiments on command.
But can you blame her for being a bit chilly? There is no less sexy a duet partner than Timbaland, who, in the vocal booth at least, has no sense of subtlety, rapping in a broad, jolly gurgle. The unfortunate pairing is reprised on “Return the Favor,” which appears on Ms. Hilson’s debut album and encapsulates the record’s shortcomings.
Ms. Hilson is clobbered on all sides by ornate production — largely by Timbaland and Polow Da Don — throughout this album, which favors texture and rhythm over melody or feeling. Sometimes, as on the slinky single “Turnin’ Me On” (featuring Lil Wayne), the busyness coheres, with Ms. Hilson neatly gliding among the song’s many layers. And she may need the crutch; she is a careful, slight singer.
But she’s often inventive, approaching the beat from odd angles and picking unexpected moments for rhyme. She also does much of her own vocal arranging. As part of the writing-producing collective the Clutch, she’s helped shape songs like Omarion’s magnificently gothic “Ice Box” and Usher’s squealing “Red Light.”
Knowing how best to frame other singers, though, hasn’t helped Ms. Hilson make better decisions for herself. Her sharpest moments are also the least frequent ones here: the uncluttered ones. The excellent “Slow Dance” sounds like a mid-1980s Prince ballad, sparkly and psychedelic, and the album’s high point, “Alienated,” is an alluring cloud-covered plea to an ex in which Ms. Hilson alternates between singing and a sort of whispered rap. (It also inspires some of her quirkiest lyrics: “I’m here wishing you would stop by my place/but the only time we talk is on MySpace.”) Notably, these are two of the only songs here not produced by Timbaland or Polow Da Don. Giving Ms. Hilson room to breathe, these producers — King Solomon Logan and Cory Bold — clearly see something in her other than decoration, something she has perhaps yet to see in herself. JON CARAMANICA
Sunday, March 22, 2009
NYT Continues their Hip-Hop Coverage
Straight Out of Hollis
By JAMES ANGELOS
Published: March 20, 2009
IT was a Friday night earlier this month, and Shokanni McKen and Roy Manson, two of the three members of the rap group known as the Hollis Boyz, were sitting in Mr. McKen’s Nissan Maxima off a quiet street in Hollis, Queens, listening to the group’s new recordings in the CD player.
Mr. McKen, a 21-year-old who calls himself T-Y, and Mr. Manson, a 22-year-old who goes by the name R.Dot, bobbed their heads as the sound filled the car, parked in the driveway of a red-brick house on 204th Street where Mr. McKen lives with his mother. Then they began to rap along to a song about prevailing over a life defined by guns and drug dealing.
“Million-dollar dreams with a welfare check,” Mr. Manson chanted in a mellow monotone.
In a deep, raspy voice, Mr. McKen chimed in, “There’s nothing I’m confined to, anything I put my mind and my grind to.”
Together they sang the refrain:
When I was a young boy coming up, dreams to make it big
and live it up.
I wonder if I’ll make it.
The Hollis Boyz are among several Hollis rappers famous only in their neighborhood and struggling to make it big or, as local residents say, to go “from Hollis to Hollywood.” In this pursuit, they are encouraged by the successes of other Hollis rappers and the neighborhood’s remarkably rich hip-hop legacy.
On April 4, the hip-hop group Run-DMC, which emerged from Hollis in the early 1980s and is regarded as among the pioneers of the genre, will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The group — consisting of Joseph Simmons, known as Run; Darryl McDaniels, called DMC; and Jason Mizell, the D.J. Jam Master Jay, who was killed in 2002 — is only the second hip-hop act to receive this honor; Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five from the Bronx were inducted in 2007.
Run-DMC was managed by another Hollis native, the hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, Run’s brother, who helped found the legendary label Def Jam Recordings.
•
Hollis, an enclave of 23,000 people in eastern Queens, not far from Jamaica, is a largely African-American neighborhood with a more recent population of West Indian immigrants and a paradoxical character.
The community has a suburban feel and is home to working- and middle-class families who live in snug one- and two-family Colonials with small front lawns. Yet Hollis has long been troubled by drugs and gun violence, which belie the neighborhood’s tranquil appearance and which became especially severe during the crack epidemic of the late ’80s.
Run-DMC and Russell Simmons are local heroes in a community where a strong sense of small-town pride endures among those who have made good. A notable symbol of this pride is the Hollis Hip Hop Museum, a shrine to the neighborhood’s musical past that opened in February inside Hollis Famous Burgers, a restaurant at Hollis Avenue and 203rd Street.
The museum, whose collection covers the walls of the restaurant, consists most prominently of Run-DMC memorabilia, among which are gold and platinum records donated by Mr. McDaniels. A plastic display case holds the gold chain, black fedora (then known as a godfather hat) and black-and-white Adidas sneakers (or “shell toes”) that were the group’s signature regalia.
“I’m trying to get kids to understand, this is like Motown,” Orville Hall, the restaurant’s owner, said one recent Sunday as he served tilapia and collard greens to a customer, a plastic apron tied around his stomach. “This is one of the most music influential neighborhoods in the country.”
Run-DMC was the first rap group to have a platinum record, the first to have a video on MTV and the first to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. But the rappers were far from the only performers in Hollis in the early ’80s. In good weather, local parks and street corners were routinely transformed into performance spaces, with D.J.’s plugging in their turntables and M.C.’s rhyming over the beats before a crowd of revelers.
Such scenes no longer play out in Hollis. The new generation of local rappers are more likely to take their music to YouTube or MySpace, and many residents speak wistfully about the neighborhood’s bygone musical heyday and lament a lost sense of community.
In some eyes, the restaurant restores a little of that feeling. And for the Hollis Boyz, who can often be found hanging out there at night, it is a shrine not only to the past but also to the possible future.
“These people were like us,” Mr. McKen said one afternoon over fried chicken and pancakes, framed by images of the famous people on the walls. “People just around the corner.”
‘Funky Fresh’
Run-DMC’s first video on MTV, in 1984, was for the tune “Rock Box,” which begins with a professorial-looking man with frizzy white hair asking, “What is rap music?” The following year, an MTV camera crew visited Hollis to film the three as they rapped their way down Hollis Avenue.
READ THE REST
By JAMES ANGELOS
Published: March 20, 2009
IT was a Friday night earlier this month, and Shokanni McKen and Roy Manson, two of the three members of the rap group known as the Hollis Boyz, were sitting in Mr. McKen’s Nissan Maxima off a quiet street in Hollis, Queens, listening to the group’s new recordings in the CD player.
Mr. McKen, a 21-year-old who calls himself T-Y, and Mr. Manson, a 22-year-old who goes by the name R.Dot, bobbed their heads as the sound filled the car, parked in the driveway of a red-brick house on 204th Street where Mr. McKen lives with his mother. Then they began to rap along to a song about prevailing over a life defined by guns and drug dealing.
“Million-dollar dreams with a welfare check,” Mr. Manson chanted in a mellow monotone.
In a deep, raspy voice, Mr. McKen chimed in, “There’s nothing I’m confined to, anything I put my mind and my grind to.”
Together they sang the refrain:
When I was a young boy coming up, dreams to make it big
and live it up.
I wonder if I’ll make it.
The Hollis Boyz are among several Hollis rappers famous only in their neighborhood and struggling to make it big or, as local residents say, to go “from Hollis to Hollywood.” In this pursuit, they are encouraged by the successes of other Hollis rappers and the neighborhood’s remarkably rich hip-hop legacy.
On April 4, the hip-hop group Run-DMC, which emerged from Hollis in the early 1980s and is regarded as among the pioneers of the genre, will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The group — consisting of Joseph Simmons, known as Run; Darryl McDaniels, called DMC; and Jason Mizell, the D.J. Jam Master Jay, who was killed in 2002 — is only the second hip-hop act to receive this honor; Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five from the Bronx were inducted in 2007.
Run-DMC was managed by another Hollis native, the hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, Run’s brother, who helped found the legendary label Def Jam Recordings.
•
Hollis, an enclave of 23,000 people in eastern Queens, not far from Jamaica, is a largely African-American neighborhood with a more recent population of West Indian immigrants and a paradoxical character.
The community has a suburban feel and is home to working- and middle-class families who live in snug one- and two-family Colonials with small front lawns. Yet Hollis has long been troubled by drugs and gun violence, which belie the neighborhood’s tranquil appearance and which became especially severe during the crack epidemic of the late ’80s.
Run-DMC and Russell Simmons are local heroes in a community where a strong sense of small-town pride endures among those who have made good. A notable symbol of this pride is the Hollis Hip Hop Museum, a shrine to the neighborhood’s musical past that opened in February inside Hollis Famous Burgers, a restaurant at Hollis Avenue and 203rd Street.
The museum, whose collection covers the walls of the restaurant, consists most prominently of Run-DMC memorabilia, among which are gold and platinum records donated by Mr. McDaniels. A plastic display case holds the gold chain, black fedora (then known as a godfather hat) and black-and-white Adidas sneakers (or “shell toes”) that were the group’s signature regalia.
“I’m trying to get kids to understand, this is like Motown,” Orville Hall, the restaurant’s owner, said one recent Sunday as he served tilapia and collard greens to a customer, a plastic apron tied around his stomach. “This is one of the most music influential neighborhoods in the country.”
Run-DMC was the first rap group to have a platinum record, the first to have a video on MTV and the first to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. But the rappers were far from the only performers in Hollis in the early ’80s. In good weather, local parks and street corners were routinely transformed into performance spaces, with D.J.’s plugging in their turntables and M.C.’s rhyming over the beats before a crowd of revelers.
Such scenes no longer play out in Hollis. The new generation of local rappers are more likely to take their music to YouTube or MySpace, and many residents speak wistfully about the neighborhood’s bygone musical heyday and lament a lost sense of community.
In some eyes, the restaurant restores a little of that feeling. And for the Hollis Boyz, who can often be found hanging out there at night, it is a shrine not only to the past but also to the possible future.
“These people were like us,” Mr. McKen said one afternoon over fried chicken and pancakes, framed by images of the famous people on the walls. “People just around the corner.”
‘Funky Fresh’
Run-DMC’s first video on MTV, in 1984, was for the tune “Rock Box,” which begins with a professorial-looking man with frizzy white hair asking, “What is rap music?” The following year, an MTV camera crew visited Hollis to film the three as they rapped their way down Hollis Avenue.
READ THE REST
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
NYT reviews Busta Rhymes concert
A Little Nip and a Toast, Before Revisiting a Recession-Proof Songbook
By JON CARAMANICA
Published: March 11, 2009
A few songs in to his set at B. B. King Blues Club & Grill on Tuesday night Busta Rhymes proposed a toast, pouring himself a little nip from a bottle of Courvoisier. He wanted to celebrate the election of President Obama and also the resurgence of New York as a relevant hip-hop scene. “I know it’s a recession,” he said. “If you don’t have a drink, put your imaginary drink up.” He was greeted by as many empty hands as full ones, maybe more.
For well over a decade Busta Rhymes has been remarkably recession-proof, outlasting dozens of artists he has collaborated with by being resilient, flexible and stylistically agnostic — there’s no sound he has thumbed his nose at. Many of his most notable songs aren’t even his own; they’re guest verses on other people’s records. It helps, if you seek longevity, to have no apparent need for superstardom.
His entertaining start-stop tour through his catalog on Tuesday covered more than 20 songs and skipped plenty of great ones. But what he performed was a testament to versatility: songs that emphasize his Jamaican heritage, “Make It Clap” and “Uh Ooh (remix)”; roughneck anthems, “Ante Up (remix),” on which he was joined by the rowdy M.O.P.; collaborations with Mariah Carey, “I Know What You Want,” with Ms. Carey sadly absent. Nothing from his early days with Leaders of the New School, though.
If Busta Rhymes has had a signature sound, it was the digital bounce he perfected at midcareer — “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check,” “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” — party records that also featured impressive, if monotone, vocal calisthenics.
Calisthenics he wanted the crowd here to take note of. On “Break Ya Neck” he repeated his rhymes three times in case people weren’t paying attention. And that was just one of several old showman gimmicks he employed. He and his longtime hype man Spliff Star formed a charming comic duo, like two students in an improv workshop cooking up scenes: dance routines, exaggerated facial expressions, funny voices. During “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,” Busta Rhymes went from loud to soft and back while Spliff Star mimed turning a key next to his mouth, as if manually adjusting the volume.
Several guests joined Busta Rhymes throughout the night: M.O.P.; the dancehall star Beenie Man; and a trio of young Brooklyn rappers, the brawny Maino, the grim Uncle Murda, the surprisingly catchy Red Cafe. They all came back out at the end of the show to form a united front during the glorious, tacky “Arab Money,” which was a minor hit for Busta Rhymes late last year (with an accompanying dance), and is almost certainly the only rap song to ever mention the billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal al-Saud.
They were joined by its producer, Ron Browz, who sang the song’s nonsensical, fake-Arabic hook and wore not one but two diamond-encrusted chains that read “Ether Boy,” the name of his record label. (He had opened the show with a set that was short, clunky and mercifully steamrolled by a guest appearance from Juelz Santana.)
Earlier Busta Rhymes had gathered the young Brooklyn rappers together at center stage — a grouping he referred to as the Conglomerate, after his recent single — and proclaimed a new era for New York hip-hop. He has played with so many teams, so why not this one?
“We’re going to start repping this city right,” he said, boasting that all the rappers would appear in one another’s videos as a show of support, and promising “a lot of cars, a lot of money, a lot of jewelry.” Later he sprayed Champagne over the crowd as if it were still the late Clinton era. For a minute, at least, there was no recession to speak of.
Source
By JON CARAMANICA
Published: March 11, 2009
A few songs in to his set at B. B. King Blues Club & Grill on Tuesday night Busta Rhymes proposed a toast, pouring himself a little nip from a bottle of Courvoisier. He wanted to celebrate the election of President Obama and also the resurgence of New York as a relevant hip-hop scene. “I know it’s a recession,” he said. “If you don’t have a drink, put your imaginary drink up.” He was greeted by as many empty hands as full ones, maybe more.
For well over a decade Busta Rhymes has been remarkably recession-proof, outlasting dozens of artists he has collaborated with by being resilient, flexible and stylistically agnostic — there’s no sound he has thumbed his nose at. Many of his most notable songs aren’t even his own; they’re guest verses on other people’s records. It helps, if you seek longevity, to have no apparent need for superstardom.
His entertaining start-stop tour through his catalog on Tuesday covered more than 20 songs and skipped plenty of great ones. But what he performed was a testament to versatility: songs that emphasize his Jamaican heritage, “Make It Clap” and “Uh Ooh (remix)”; roughneck anthems, “Ante Up (remix),” on which he was joined by the rowdy M.O.P.; collaborations with Mariah Carey, “I Know What You Want,” with Ms. Carey sadly absent. Nothing from his early days with Leaders of the New School, though.
If Busta Rhymes has had a signature sound, it was the digital bounce he perfected at midcareer — “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check,” “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” — party records that also featured impressive, if monotone, vocal calisthenics.
Calisthenics he wanted the crowd here to take note of. On “Break Ya Neck” he repeated his rhymes three times in case people weren’t paying attention. And that was just one of several old showman gimmicks he employed. He and his longtime hype man Spliff Star formed a charming comic duo, like two students in an improv workshop cooking up scenes: dance routines, exaggerated facial expressions, funny voices. During “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,” Busta Rhymes went from loud to soft and back while Spliff Star mimed turning a key next to his mouth, as if manually adjusting the volume.
Several guests joined Busta Rhymes throughout the night: M.O.P.; the dancehall star Beenie Man; and a trio of young Brooklyn rappers, the brawny Maino, the grim Uncle Murda, the surprisingly catchy Red Cafe. They all came back out at the end of the show to form a united front during the glorious, tacky “Arab Money,” which was a minor hit for Busta Rhymes late last year (with an accompanying dance), and is almost certainly the only rap song to ever mention the billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal al-Saud.
They were joined by its producer, Ron Browz, who sang the song’s nonsensical, fake-Arabic hook and wore not one but two diamond-encrusted chains that read “Ether Boy,” the name of his record label. (He had opened the show with a set that was short, clunky and mercifully steamrolled by a guest appearance from Juelz Santana.)
Earlier Busta Rhymes had gathered the young Brooklyn rappers together at center stage — a grouping he referred to as the Conglomerate, after his recent single — and proclaimed a new era for New York hip-hop. He has played with so many teams, so why not this one?
“We’re going to start repping this city right,” he said, boasting that all the rappers would appear in one another’s videos as a show of support, and promising “a lot of cars, a lot of money, a lot of jewelry.” Later he sprayed Champagne over the crowd as if it were still the late Clinton era. For a minute, at least, there was no recession to speak of.
Source
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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