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  • Pot, Meet Kettle: Otherwise Known As Ne-Yo

    Ne-Yo’s a talented dude. His pen game is sharp, his voice is pleasant if not powerhouse, and he’s reverent enough to guys like Michael and Prince without going overboard. He’s also got a personality and a sense of humor, something most of his contemporaries haven’t been able to muster. Witness this interview in which he’s asked several questions, including whether Beyonce or Rihanna is hotter (he’s written huge hits for both artists).

    He says that he sees Rihanna as a little sister, and calls her “Bighead” because she has a high forehead.

    Cute, yeah. But, damn. Bruh, have you seen your own head lately???

    Time to bring the mugshot out again…

    Grammy Winner Ne-Yo

    It’s also funny that after sheepishly announcing Beyonce the hotter of the two, he apologizes profusely to Jay-Z. Man, Jay’s not president of your label anymore. You don’t have to worry about him pushing your album back.

  • Friday Throwback – She’s Gone

    Since Money Mike’s earlier post about the mustachioed one, John Oates, made me laugh, I decided to continue with the theme.

    I was listening to sports radio one evening and the host was playing Hall & Oates. Soon enough, I noticed it was their heartbreak classic, She’s Gone. The host was talking about how this song was the greatest song in its class and how it hit him in the pit of his stomach every time he heard it. And then he started singing. And he ruined it.

    I decided to see if there was a video for the song and as it turns out, there is. But it’s the kind of video that makes the song feel a bit creepy. You see both guys staring in a stalker like gaze and I can’t seem to think that they are thinking uncomfortable thoughts. Well, see for yourself.

    – I can’t decide who is more pimp between Hall or Oates. One is naked under a bathrobe and the other is wearing a tuxedo shirt with the sleeves cut off showing off his arms. I’ll call that even.

    – Not only is Oates the stache man, but he has a gnarly beard too.

    – Ha! The devil just walked by.

    – What is Hall wearing on his feet? Striped socks? Sandals with socks on? High heels?

    – They couldn’t even use real money. The must’ve landed on Park Place with hotels.

    – I’m not even sure what playing guitar without linking the cuffs means.

    Ok, so this might be one of the worst videos ever, but hey, it was probably recorded sometime in the mid 70s. Maybe, since the song gets you right in the pit of your stomach, the video had to be the pits?

  • The Falsettometer Presents: Sylvester

    I remember the first time I saw Sylvester on TV. Videos hadn’t officially been “invented” yet, but he’d made a clip for “(You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real” and I was sort of…I guess confused. I mean, I couldn’t have been older than 3. Here was someone with a man’s name (at that point, I’d watched enough Loony Tunes to know that Sylvester was a guy’s name), but…he wore a dress? He sang like a girl too. My brain couldn’t process it. The fact that Grace Jones and Prince both popped up within a year didn’t help lessen the confusion for this music fan in training.

    With Little Richard deep in a denial that he never fully removed himself from and Johnny Mathis still rummaging around in the closet, Sylvester James was pop music’s first (and to date, really pop’s only) out-and-proud black gay man. Of course, as the first audience disco music had was primarily gays and minorities, it had to happen sooner or later. The shock of a black drag queen making appearances in America’s living rooms (backed by the two pleasantly plump ladies called Two Tons o’ Fun, later transformed into The Weather Girls of “It’s Raining Men” fame) was offset by the fact that the music was good. A pair of Top 40 pop hits-“Mighty Real” and “Dance (Disco Heat)” were among the best of the era, and after disco moved back into the margins, James still created classics like “Do You Wanna Funk?” and 1986’s proto-house “Someone Like You”, as featured on this TV performance. Proof that the voice was definitely no studio creation, Sylvester hits some notes here that would shatter the glass beads on a sequined dress. Joined afterwards by Joan Rivers and Charles Nelson Reilly, this might be network TV’s queerest talk show moment of all time.

    Although Sylvester died just two years after this performance, his legacy lives on. There is a biography called “The Fabulous Sylvester” in stores and rumor has it that there’s a movie in the works. Everyone from RuPaul to Boy George owes him a heavy debt of gratitude, and falsetto-voiced dance singers like Jimmy Somerville and Byron Stingily (of Ten City fame) are also descendants of Sylvester (and both artists have covered Sylvester songs).

    Whatever you think of the man and his music, you’ve gotta admit that it takes balls of steel to go out on national television looking like that!!