K'Naan's New EP ''More Beautiful Than Silence''It’s hard to believe that it’s been a full three years since Somali-Canadian rapper Keinan Abdi Warsame – that’s K’Naan to jus’ us folks – released his third studio album The Troubadour and scored a surprise international sleeper hit in the song “Wavin’ Flag”. His autobiographical anthem of growing up in wartorn Mogadishu has had several lives in the last three years. Originally a Top 10 hit in Canada, the song got a snazzy new remix in late 2009 featuring a new Spanish language verse sung by Spanish pop hunk David Bisbal for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. For the Euro dance clubs, David Guetta and will.i.am took a shot at the song as well, and then, following the earthquake in Haiti, the song was turned into a all-star Canadian “We Are the World”-type charity single.
It’s all enough to make a guy wonder how an artist can possibly follow up a hit song that, almost in affirmation its own chorus – “and then it goes back, and then it goes back, and then it goes back” – never really seems to go away. Even just a couple months ago, the song got the a capella treatment on NBC’s The Sing Off. And it’s not as if K’Naan didn’t try. He released several more singles from The Troubadour following “Wavin’ Flag” – songs like “Take a Minute” which also hit the Canadian Top 20 but still got swallowed up in its predecessor’s shadow.
K’Naan’s back with a new 5-song EP called More Beautiful Than Silence. From that EP comes this collaboration with Nelly Furtado called “Is Anybody Out There?” A lyrics video for the song has been posted to the youtubes. Play it once and you’ll never get it out of your head:
Since I’m on the West Coast, we’ll pretend this show is just starting.
(By the way, Money Mike posted his own East Coast version up. It’s East Coast vs. West Coast all over again.)
I remember as a kid when I used to count down the time until the AMAs were about to start. Now? Not so much. They don’t make award shows like they used to, but hopefully we’ll get some fun performances.
I expect lots of Jay-Z love, lots of Michael Jackson love, lots of Taylor Swift love, and the opposite of lots of love for Kanye West.
Like Arsenio used to say, “Let’s get busy!”
Janet Jackson– The show started with Janet already in mid-performance. She’s going through the old hits, though not wearing the old wardrobe. She’s wearing a brown outfit that makes her look like a baggy Pocahontas.
– Who seated Mary J. Blige next to Carrie Underwood? I bet they could talk about old boyfriends.
MJ: Girl, you think Tony Romo was bad? Man, I wanted to break K-Ci’s knee caps.
CU: You dated KC from the Sunshine Band?
MJ: Um, no. K-Ci from Jodeci. Forget it.
– The only problem with Janet going through her old hits is that it just makes anything she’s done in the last 5 years look so bad in comparison.
– Paula Abdul is the first presenter. No, she didn’t make any Ellen DeGeneres looks, acts, and sounds like a boy jokes, though you know she wanted to.
– The Black Eyed Peas won the first award which was for favorite group in the pop/rock category. At least this time, Fergie’s face didn’t break the HD tuner on my TV like it did last week.
(I DVRd Saturday Night Live last week and watched it after the fact. The picture was perfect until Fergie started to sing. The picture became pixelated and then was suddenly fixed when the performance was over. Coincidence? I think not.)
– The only thing I can really say about Shakira’s performance is, “Oh my damn.”
– Even though that long dress made her hips and legs look like a pair of parentheses ( ), Kelly Clarkson sung the hell out of We Were Never Meant To Say Goodbye.
– Alex Rodriguez just introduced Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. I bet he and Timberland and Dr. Dre could talk PEDs for days.
– Nope, not sick of Empire State Of Mind yet.
– Kate Hudson is wearing a dress that shows off her 14-year old boyish chest. She could get away with going shirtless and I don’t think anyone would flip.
– Oh man, I hope my TV can take it. The Black Eyed Peas are back on stage. Fergie Ferg ’bout to break my TV again.
– Thankfully, my TV was fine. The performance was actually fine too. And she didn’t piss herself on stage, which is always a plus.
– Your boy Michael Jackson won the award for favorite male artist in the Soul/R&B and you know who accepted it for him. If you answered greasy Jermaine, you were right. Also, you got to see his son Jermajesty, which was a treat in that of itself. I was almost sure that child didn’t really exist. But he did!
– I know nothing about the Zack Brown band. But what I learned today is that some of those dudes have some manly beards.
– Beyonce won an award and then it was announced that she wasn’t there. My heart rate has never been so up and down in a five second period ever in my life.
– Hat makers thank Ne-Yo for keeping them in business.
– Rihanna has the same haircut that David Silver rocked in the first season of Beverly Hills, 90210.
– Carrie Underwood looks good and sounds good, but needs to stay off the salad. Yes, you can be too thin. She and Kate Hudson are trying to out-skinny each other.
– Lady GaGa was carrying something in both of her back pockets, but she doesn’t have any pockets. Hmmm.
– That Lady GaGa performance was just, um, it was just, um, hmm. If I tried to describe it, you wouldn’t understand and I’d just give myself nightmares. This is why YouTube was invented.
– Not sure about you, but I can really do without these Perez Hilton audience shots.
– Some country group called Gloriana just beat Lady GaGa for the Breakthrough Award. I think I saw GaGa walk off in a huff and fly away in her spaceship.
– Ok, I think they edited this show for us on the West Coast. There’s supposed to be a part during J-Lo’s performance and she falls while performing. All I saw is that she jumped, all of a sudden it went into slow motion, and then jump cut city. Again, why YouTube was created.
– You go Whitty. Do your thing. Somewhere, Bobby Brown gently weeps while shaving those lines into the side of his head.
– I’m not sure Whitney did this on purpose or not, but she screamed, “I love YOU,” like Michael Jackson used to do it where you emphasize the “you”. I think that was a shout out to Mike.
– Taylor just won award number two and she’s not even there. I think that if you don’t attend the show and you’re not in jail like TI, or you didn’t pass away before it was given out, you have to automatically give it to Kanye.
– And just as I say that, MJ won for favorite male artist in Pop/Rock. Greasy is back on the scene to accept the award, but this time, sans Jermajesty.
– Lady GaGa was breaking fake glass on her piano that was on fire. Alicia Keys just did her one better by playing her piano in mid air while it was spinning. Supposely GaGa saw that from her space ship and just went into hyper speed.
– It’s pretty telling that Eminem decided to do his verse from Drake’s Forever since nearly everything on his album was garbage.
– Timbo is now on stage and the back of his neck looks like a pack of hot dogs. But I’m not mad because he just let Nelly Furtado join him and she’s still looking foine.
– There’s been a Toni Braxton sighting. Good to see her back and I hope she’s healthy. Jimmy Jackson and Jason Kidd just remembered why they hate each other.
– My main man Ryan Seacrest is out to give out the Artist Of The Year.
Let me run down the candidates quickly:
Eminem – Relapse may be the worst album of the year.
Michael Jackson – Dude sold more records dead than anyone alive is selling this year, except probably Taylor Swift. Also took all the buzz away from the Beatles re-releases.
Kings Of Leon – My friend Christal had to show me their video the other day. I’d never seen it before. Enough said.
Lady GaGa – She’s too far ahead of her time. Like by maybe 500 years.
Taylor Swift – I don’t have a Taylor Swift song in my music library, but she was pretty fun on Saturday Night Live.
And Taylor Swift beats MJ. Ok, maybe she wasn’t that fun on Saturday Night Live. And she talks like Drew Barrymore.
– Adam Lambert is closing the show. However, I don’t think he’s closing it out Mariano Rivera style.
– I wonder if I can get my hair as high as Adam’s. That might be a 2010 goal for me.
Remember pre-“Promiscuous” Nelly Furtado? All cutesy and quirky. A far cry from the sex goddess we now know her as.
She and Timbaland (who, as much as I think he’s overrated, is responsible for 8 or 9 songs on this list) had worked together before (on Missy Elliott’s “Get Your Freak On” remix and a single for forgotten femme-cee Ms. Jade), but “Promiscuous” was the song that revitalized both their careers.
Adding “sexy”, to “sassy” and “spunky”, Nelly and Timbo traded lines in a manner most flirtatious. Furtado proves herself a pretty capable rapper (at least these days), while Timbaland debuted his new Eighties-inspired production style. The result? A jam that lit up dance floors during the early summer of ’06.
Great song and all, but I believe Nelly when she says that Timbaland didn’t know the meaning of the word “promiscuous” when he wrote the song. Who’s gonna go to a club and say “hey, girl who sleeps with everybody, I want YOU!” “OK, guy who sleeps with everybody…let’s get together!” Although, if you’re getting around that much, your game probably is MVP like Steve Nash.
