Posts Tagged ‘rap’

Kanye West is about to release his pop album 808’s & Heartbreak on Monday November 24th.  Albums are usually released on Tuesdays but Kanye is breaking with tradition with a Monday album released in stores and online. Here is an excerpt from the album press release.

808s & HEARTBREAK by Kanye West,
including "Love Lockdown" and "Heartless" One-time only Monday in-store
date for physical and digital marketplace anticipates big Thanksgiving
weekend holiday gift shopping In an unprecedented move that brings change to a decades-old practice
in the record industry — "Tuesdays in-store" — the Island Def Jam
Music Group will break with tradition when its three biggest year-end album releases by three of IDJ’s most important multi-platinum acts.

Myspace has an exclusive first listen which is also available on Kanye’s blog. Click here to stream and download the album on the Kanye Blog.   

The Telegraph UK offers their overview of the emo album from the hip-hop star. Binside TV will post an album review soon.

The break-up album is one of pop music’s finest genres, perfected by
the masters – Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Otis Reading, Bruce Springsteen
and Marvin Gaye.

Now the ever-ambitious Kanye West is attempting to
join them with his saddest work yet. Apart from a couple of songs about
the loss of his mother, the entire album chronicles the disintegration
of West’s relationship and his ensuing loneliness and early mid-life
crisis.

Offsetting these dramatic emotions, he
sticks to a monochromatic musical palette, singing through an
electronic voice tuner on top of retro-synthesisers and drum machines.
The artificial sounds heighten the sense of his very human pain and
isolation, sometimes to poignant effect, sometimes claustrophobically
so.

West has, thankfully, dropped the pantomime
hip-hop wars with rapper 50 Cent and made a pure pop album. The music,
as on brilliant lead single Heartbreaker, is often better for this,
graphically representing the sound of a tormented psyche tossing and
turning on a restless military beat. Yet, the lyrics, while admirably
honest, and occasionally hilarious (as when he compares his ex-fiancée
to Robocop), become monotonous and solipsistic. source

Congrats to T.I.!  The hip-hop star topped the charts and made history with the release of his album Paper Trail.  This is great news for the King.

PAPER TRAIL," the new album
from Grand Hustle/Atlantic recording artist T.I., has made a phenomenal
arrival atop the Billboard 200, marking the multiple Grammy
Award-winning superstar’s third consecutive #1 chart entry (following
2006’s platinum-certified "KING" and 2007’s platinum-certified "T.I.
VS. T.I.P."). With total first-week sales in excess of 568,000, "PAPER
TRAIL" also enters at #1 on a number of additional Billboard charts,
including "Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums," "Top Rap Albums," and "Top
Digital Albums." The album’s unparalleled first-week sales success
represents a personal best for T.I., as well as Atlantic Records’
biggest-ever one-week scan since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking data
in 1991.   

As if all that weren’t enough, T.I. has literally exploded into the top spot on Billboard’s "Hot 100" with "Live Your Life (Feat. Rihanna)," the second single from "PAPER TRAIL." In only its second week on the chart, the single has ascended into the pole position from last week’s ranking at #80 — the biggest-ever one-week leap to the top. The #1 success of "Live Your Life" shatters the previous record for largest ascent to #1 — a feat set just six weeks ago by T.I.’s own "Whatever You Like," the RIAA platinum certified first single from "PAPER TRAIL." That track rocketed to #1 from #71 the week of September 6th and has remained there until this week. This remarkable achievement establishes T.I. as the first artist to replace himself at #1 since Usher in 2004.

With sales of nearly 335,000, "Live Your Life" has logged the biggest-ever first-week digital singles sales in history. "Live Your Life" is now rocketing up the airplay charts at Urban and Rhythmic, where it earned the week’s "Most Increased Plays." What’s more, the single received this week’s "Most Increased Plays" at Urban Mainstream — T.I.’s biggest increase to date at this format. A companion video clip for "Live Your Life" is now in post-production and will premiere sometime in the coming weeks.

The first solo chart-topper of T.I.’s remarkable career — and second overall following "My Love," his Grammy-winning collaboration with Justin Timberlake — "Whatever You Like" is currently dominating multi-format radio outlets nationwide. The single is now in its fifth week atop the Urban airplay ranking, as well as its fourth week at #1 on the Rhythmic airplay chart. "Whatever You Like" is also blowing up at CHR/Top 40, where it is poised to enter the top 10 after only four weeks on the chart. In total, the single’s combined national radio audience is nearly 140 million, with a cumulative audience for all tracks from "PAPER TRAIL" exceeding 200 million.

source

Rapper Snoop Dogg went country and now he is going to Bollywood in his new Indian music video.

Dogg, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus, sings and acts in a romantic comedy called Singh is Kinng.

Fusing hip hop and bhangra, Dogg appears in the film with leading Bollywood star Akshay Kumar, singing the eponymous title track.

The song has already made it to the top of the Bollywood music charts and is a hit at Indian nightclubs.

The producer of the film, Vipul Shah, told the BBC that Akshay Kumar, the star of the film, and his friends approached Dogg to sing and act in the $11m film.

"When Dogg was satisfied with the scale of the film, he agreed to be a part of it. The song was filmed with his sensibility and he had creative control," he said. Mr Shah said the song cost $475,000 to record and film.  Wearing a tradition Indian turban and a tunic, Dogg and Akshay Kumar were filmed for the song in Chicago.

In the track, Dogg sings: "This is Snoop Dogg/Singh is the king/This is the thing."

The words in the song are a combination of English, Hindi and Punjabi language lyrics and rap.  The rapper’s introduction to the song gives an indication.

He says: "Yo, what up. This Big Snoop Dogg. Represent the Punjabi. Aye ya, hit em with this."  source

Rapper Snoop Dogg went country and now he is going to Bollywood in his new Indian music video.

Dogg, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus, sings and acts in a romantic comedy called Singh is Kinng.

Fusing hip hop and bhangra, Dogg appears in the film with leading Bollywood star Akshay Kumar, singing the eponymous title track.

The song has already made it to the top of the Bollywood music charts and is a hit at Indian nightclubs.

The producer of the film, Vipul Shah, told the BBC that Akshay Kumar, the star of the film, and his friends approached Dogg to sing and act in the $11m film.

"When Dogg was satisfied with the scale of the film, he agreed to be a part of it. The song was filmed with his sensibility and he had creative control," he said. Mr Shah said the song cost $475,000 to record and film.  Wearing a tradition Indian turban and a tunic, Dogg and Akshay Kumar were filmed for the song in Chicago.

In the track, Dogg sings: "This is Snoop Dogg/Singh is the king/This is the thing."

The words in the song are a combination of English, Hindi and Punjabi language lyrics and rap.  The rapper’s introduction to the song gives an indication.

He says: "Yo, what up. This Big Snoop Dogg. Represent the Punjabi. Aye ya, hit em with this."  source