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  • New Release of the Week 5/12/09: Green Day

    green-day

    They’re ba-a-ack!

    After a five year layoff, America’s favorite punks have returned with yet another “rock opera” sort of album, called 21st Century Breakdown. First single Know Your Enemy is already burning up the charts (it’s currently the #1 modern rock single in the country), and this release has the potential to be huge (or at least what passes for huge in the music biz circa 2009). Strangely, Green Day’s record company isn’t putting this one out until Friday, not the typical new release day in America. Let’s see how many folks out there start off their weekend with some Green Day.

    Here are some other notable titles hitting store shelves this week:

    Cam’ron Crime Pays: The Harlem bred-rapper was big in the mid-Nineties, took a bit of a layoff, came back strong with singles like Oh Boy and Hey Ma in 2002, and then fell off the radar again, even as his proteges Jim Jones and Juelz Santana spawned hits on their own. He’s back again, with what he hopes will be another comeback album, Crime Pays. I haven’t heard anything from this yet, and Cam’ron’s penchant for wafer-thin lyrics and simplistic rhyme styles means I probably never will!

    Steve Earle Townes: Those of you who can get your hands on a copy of last Sunday’s New York Times should check out an article that was written about alt-country main stay Steve Earle and his relationship with the late Townes Van Zandt. Earle served as kind of an apprentice to Townes, and now the apprentice salutes the teacher with a tribute album.

    Paul Wall Fast Life: Who knew this guy was still around? Asher Roth may have displaced him as America’s second-favorite white rapper, but Houston’s Paul Wall isn’t going to take that challenge lying down. The man with one of the most ostentatious grills in rap music (and quite possibly dental) history is back with a new album. Will the fans who were around for Houston rap’s moment in the sun three or four years ago come back?

    The Crystal Method     Divided by Night: This electronica outfit has a pretty interesting guest list for their current album. Among the featured artists are Hasidic reggae-rapper Matisyahu, New Order’s Peter Hook, and…wait a second. Is this the same Justin Warfield who recorded the Q-Tip-esque Season of the Vic back in the early Nineties? Apparently not. This Justin Warfield is 1/2 of She Wants Revenge. Oh well. A man can hope.

    Get a complete list of this week’s new releases here, and for those who don’t know who the hell Justin Warfield (not the She Wants Revenge guy) is, here’s a video for you.

  • Timberlake & Samberg Do It Again: “Motherlover”

    It may be a little late to properly celebrate Mother’s Day, but Justin Timberlake & Andy Samberg have the perfect Mother’s Day gift.

    This is from Timberlake’s latest turn as the host of “SNL” and good Lord does he need his own show.

    If you’ve got a case of the Mondays, I suggest you watch this.

  • Watch Out: Nick Cannon’s Coming for Eminem

    cannon

    So, Eminem and Mariah Carey (of all people) have been firing volleys back and forth for the last couple of years. Eminem claims that he dated Mariah, she denies it. Em lampooned her on the single “Superman”, while Mariah fired back with “Clown”. Now, Em’s not only got Mariah back in his crosshairs, he’s going after her husband Nick Cannon, calling him a “prick” and Mariah a “fucking whore”.

    Nick fired back on his blog, calling the record trash (no surprise there) and basically calling Eminem a racist, bringing back up the comments “The Source” magazine captured a few years back where he went off on black women.

    Corny as the dude is, I’m riding with Nick on this one.

    The fact of the matter is that not only has Eminem fallen off, but he continues to prey on easy targets. Remember back in the day when he was dissing people like Christina Aguilera and ‘Nsync (funny now that Justin Timberlake has more street cred than Em does). Now, he’s going off on John Mayer and Jessica Simpson? And carrying on about Mariah Carey? (no pun intended) And this is supposed to be artistry? Let’s not forget the fact that Eminem is now in his mid-thirties (36, to be exact), an age when one would figure the childish rants would stop. When has Eminem ever sounded off on someone that could actually rattle his cage? (his joining in on 50 Cent’s beef with Murder Inc. excepted). This is the musical equivalent of the kid in middle school who bullies everyone smaller than him but won’t go near someone his own size.

    I also, like Nick, wonder if it’s cool among Eminem’s black fans (I’m assuming he has some left) that he’s calling a black woman a “whore”, which according to Nick is “way worse than anything Don Imus could have ever said”. Of course, folks are quick to call Mariah bi-racial because she looks white, but as Nick points out, she’s the same racial makeup as Barack Obama (white mother, black father), and as I’m now going to point out, she’s the same racial makeup as the definitively black Alicia Keys. So if we’re gonna go with the party line of “if you’ve got a little bit of black in you…”, then Mariah’s as much a sista as Angie Stone or Janet Jackson. And there would be hell to pay if Eminem went off like that on one of those ladies, right? (something tells me that with the hip-hop community turning a blind eye to obvious racial transgressions-see Fat Joe and DJ Khaled’s continued use of the word “nigger”-, it wouldn’t matter, but I like to dream).

    The funny thing is, I’m not even that big a Mariah Carey fan. I just think that Eminem gets over on stuff that should kill his career. He hasn’t made a good record since 2002, and he sells them, by and large, to the same type of angry kids that are only tough from a distance (or through a computer screen), and imagine themselves as “tough” as Eminem imagines himself to be (now that he’s surrounded by the “gangsta” 50 Cent and his crew). How tough would Eminem be confronted one on one? And how many people are going to be disappointed when “Relapse” comes out, they buy it, and find out it’s a stinking piece of shit?