web analytics

Pop Rock Nation

Category: News

music-news-from-breakups-to-the-lastest-buzz

  • No More Rockin’ for Janet Jackson

    One of our favorite pastimes (well, one of mine, anyway) is trying to figure out the exact moment that Janet Jackson’s career went into the toilet. Was it Nipplegate? Was it the relationship with gnome-like Jermaine Dupri? Was it the obsession with sex that was cute 13 years ago and is absolutely boring now? Was it the fact that she seems to have forgotten how to make good records?

    At any rate, the cancellation of Janet’s Rock Witchu tour, following mediocre reviews, tepid ticket sales and a bizarre “illness”, comes as no surprise to most, particularly after opening act LL Cool J bailed out of the tour (dude, are you serious? You’re one of the few people whose career is in worse shape than Janet’s!). Hopefully, this latest career catastrophe sends Janet back to the lab (here’s a hint: bring Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis with you and leave JD at home), where she can make a creative, age-appropriate, non-desperate sounding album and return to the form that gave us classics like this.

  • Jay-Z Tarnishes His “History” On New Single

    Wondering why Blueprint 3 has been bumped into 2009? So am I. Hopefully it’s so Jay-Z can go back to the lab and stop teasing (if that’s the correct term) us with hot garbage like his latest song, History.

    I respect that the song was written in response to Barack Obama’s historic presidential victory. I respect that Jay recites lyrics off the top of his head. But I think that a) he should have gone back to the lab and thought the song out a little better, b) he really needs to start writing his lyrics down, and c) T-Pain? REALLY?????

    Check the song out and let me know what you think. He sounded inspired on American Gangster, bought got weighed down a little by mediocre production. Here, he sounds like he flushed the eye of the tiger down the toilet.

  • In Memoriam: Miriam Makeba (1932-2008)

    Befittingly, Miriam Zenzi Makeba—Grammy Award-winning songstress from South Africa, the “Empress of African Song,” Mama Afrika herself—died as she lived: on stage, and for a noble cause. After concluding a performance at a concert near Caserta, Italy—interestingly enough, supporting a writer opposing the oldest crime organization in the country—she collapsed and succumbed to a heart attack. She was 76 years of age.

    Makeba needs the rest, for her entire life was characterized by struggle—by being in a three-decade exile from her homeland South Africa for speaking out against apartheid; by watching her record deals and tours cancelled as the consequence for marrying radical civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael; by being in prison with her herbalist mother…while still in utero. And Makeba singing became her conduit of struggle. Blessed with a calming, assuring tone that exuded confidence and doggedness, she found her calling in singing, right from the moment she was a child at a training institute in Pretoria, South Africa. From there, she would only soar higher: performing to exclusively black audiences with The Manhattan Brothers in the 1950s; formed her own group, The Sylarks; starred in the anti-apartheid Come Back, Africain 1959; and, of course, her collaborations with Harry Belafonte in the United States, forever linking the struggles of people of African descent everywhere.

    (more…)