Jamie Foxx-who will be hosting-Â and a slew of other artists were on hand last night to announce the nominees for the 2009 BET Awards, and Beyonce and T.I. turned out to lead the pack with 5 nominations each. Beyonce scored 2 nods in the Best Video category and also was nominated twice in the Best Female Actress category. T.I. picked up nominations for Best Male Rapper and Best Video (for “Live Your Life”) among others.
Lil’ Wayne, T-Pain and Keri Hilson are right behind with four nominations apiece.
As usual, I’m left scratching my head at some of the nominations. Why have categories like Best Group and Best Female Rapper if the pools are so thin? The nominees for Best Group are Day26, The GS Boyz (of “Stanky Legg” fame), N.E.R.D., The Roots and Three Six Mafia, while the Best Female Rapper nominees are Trina, Lil’ Mama and M.I.A., who is also curiously nominated for Best New Artist, although she’s already on her second album. Looks like the BET Award nominating committee is sipping on the same sauce as the folks who do the noms for the Grammy Awards.
Ne-Yo and Maxwell are among the artists scheduled to perform on the show, which will air on June 24th. SonicClash will, as usual, be live-blogging the event.
Kris and Danny are playing for second place right?
Paula isn’t sitting with the rest of the judges. Is she performing again? Ok, there she is. She must be dressed up as an empty chair.
Katy Perry at YouTube LiveJordin Sparks and Katy Perry are performing tonight.
Cause you’re hot then you’re cold
You’re yes then you’re no
Right now Perry is hot. But I have a feeling that she is going to be cold very soon in this fickle music landscape.
Noah is singing I’m The World’s Greatest. Who is Noah? I’m not sure, but Alicia Keys introduced him after talking about donating money to Africa. Is it really good to be having young kids perform R. Kelly songs these days? Yes, Noah is male. I guess that makes it better.
Do you think that Kris Allen wishes he wasn’t quite so married these days? I think it will be great for his marriage when he doesn’t win this.
Jordin Sparks is out singing her new single, Battlefield. It’s an ok song and is more dramatic than anything on her bubble gum rookie album. It’s what you’d expect her first single off her sophomore album to be. Thankfully she’s singing here because she needs some publicity badly. No, not like Cassie and Rihanna. You’ll see naked pictures of Adam Lambert before you’ll ever see pictures of Jordin Sparks. Ok, maybe that was a bad example.
Before we find out who is eliminated, Katy Perry is singing Waking Up In Vegas. She’s wearing an Adam Lambert cape.
Perry is neck and neck with Anne Hathaway in the contest to determine who the pastiest celebrity on earth is.
And the first person who will compete next week for all the marbles is Kris Allen. His wife has to be upset.
And the person who will compete next week against Kris Allen is Adam Lambert.
This might be the hardest “Home Sweet Home” ever to watch. Danny dude, you walked tall.
No disrespect to Bob Dylan (or Smokey Robinson, who Dylan thinks is America’s greatest living poet), but no one writes songs better than Stevie Wonder, and that crown was sewn up back in 1976, when he was the biggest thing since sliced bread. In the thirty-plus years since “Songs in the Key of Life”, his run of classics has slowed, but it hasn’t stopped: “Lately”, “All I Do”, “That Girl”, “Overjoyed” and “These Three Words” are just a handful of the lyrical and vocal masterpieces that have come from a post-Seventies Stevie.
I won’t even get into the stuff he made before then. Let’s just say that “Talking Book”, “Innervisions” and “Songs in the Key of Life” are albums every human that’s into music should own (and “Fulfillingness’ First Finale, trippy as it is, isn’t a slouch, either). It’s an achievement to make one classic album; Stevie made a DECADE’s worth of them. No wonder the man has won more Grammy Awards than any other pop, rock or R&B performer in history.
One way you can judge a great song is by how many times it’s remade, and you could fill a box set with nothing but Stevie covers: everyone from Barbra Streisand to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to 2Pac to Wayne Brady has covered (or heavily sampled) Stevie. He has to be, apart from Dylan, the most covered songwriter of the rock era.
Those too young to remember Stevie in his Grammy-winning, slimmer phase and want to know who the dude with the sunglasses was that performed with the Jonas Brothers was definitely need to be schooled. His music, for the excellent lyricism, pioneering musicianship, stellar vocals (every R&B singer that doesn’t sound like Marvin or Michael sounds like Stevie) and positive message, is as relevant now as it was when it was first out.
I was fortunate enough to see Stevie live about 18 months ago, and with no light show and no choreography, blew the roof off of Madison Square Garden. I’ve been going to concerts fairly regularly for 15 years now, and I have never seen a better show.
In 1980, Stevie wrote and recorded a song called “Happy Birthday” in dedication to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Stevie was one of the most responsible forces for getting King’s birthday recognized as a national holiday). The song has also become a standard of sorts-go to a black birthday party and I guarantee someone’s gonna break into Stevie’s song either right before, during, or right after the candles are blown out!
Here are two of my favorite songs by him. One from his golden era (the lyrics to this song are among the best-and yet simplest-ever written), one from more recently.
Jamie Foxx-who will be hosting-Â and a slew of other artists were on hand last night to announce the nominees for the 2009 BET Awards, and Beyonce and T.I. turned out to lead the pack with 5 nominations each. Beyonce scored 2 nods in the Best Video category and also was nominated twice in the Best Female Actress category. T.I. picked up nominations for Best Male Rapper and Best Video (for “Live Your Life”) among others.
