Drake held the OVO (October’s Very Own) Fest in his hometown Toronto over the weekend with guests like Young Jeezy, Rick Ross, Fabolous, and Bun B. But he saved the best for last.
After Drake rapped his opening verse from Forever, out came Eminem, who he called the greatest of all time.
And then Jay-Z came out to do a verse from Run This Town. Drake has stated before that Jay-Z is the most influential MC in his life.
Both superstars are getting ready for a couple of concerts they’re doing together in Detroit and New York in September.
American listeners may not know the name (or they may confuse it with that of the late glam guitar icon Mick), but Mark Ronson was the producer behind one of the hottest musical messes of the last decade, Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black album, not to mention albums and tracks by an impressive cross-genre pantheon of artists as disparate as pop diva Christina Aguilera, British rockers Kaiser Chiefs, and rapper Wale. His signature sound rejected Autotune and all sorts of other sonic CGI in favor of gritty R&B horn sections (no samples please), real life drum sets, and actual singing. The results could be thrilling, but they could also come off sounding unbecomingly gimmicky – a hazard underlined by his 2007 collection of covers called Version. Though that record did yield his biggest hit yet – a cover of the Smiths’ classic “Stop Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before” with Daniel Merriweather on vocals – it was not without a few spectacular duds, like his tedious take on Radiohead’s “Just”, which could only have been worse if he’d recruited Paul Anka or Pat Boone to deliver it.
For his latest album called Record Collection, he’s billing himself as Mark Ronson and the Business Intl. The record’s first single features guest rapper Q-Tip and singer Amanda Warner of the California techno-pop duo MNDR – it’s called “Bang Bang Bang” and re-embraces electronics, albeit in a similarly retro way, building a sleak 80s-inspired sci-fi dance epic out of the disassembled bits of the French children’s song “Alouette”. While as a producer Ronson has been storming the U.S. charts for the last ten years, he hasn’t had an American hit in his own right. This song, as groovy as it is (seriously, it’s been ages since Q-Tip has been this much fun) isn’t likely to change that. But it’s already a Top 10 hit overseas.
Usher’s latest album Raymond v. Raymond is actually performing quite well for the singer. Better in fact than I thought after listening to it and being pretty disappointed with it. On the strength of OMG (which is really one of the poorer songs on the album), it’s gone platinum.
Late in the summer, he’s repackaging the album and calling it Versus. One of the songs scheduled to be on the new album is Hot Toddy, featuring Jay-Z. It’s been leaked and you can listen to it below.