Music's 3R's 10.19.09: Madonna's Possible Eviction, Lil' Wayne Knocks Up Another One, Diddy's $20,000 Ring, More

Posted by Aaron Titan on 10.19.2009

From VH1's celebration of Def Jam Records and the New Moon Soundtrack release to new Smashing Pumpkins music, the upcoming Lady Gaga tour, Taylor Swift hosting SNL, Madonna possible being evicted, Lil' Wayne's fourth child with a fourth woman, and Diddy losing a 20K ring, 411's Aaron Titan brings you all the Right, wRong, and Ridiculous in the music world in this week’s Music 3R’s.



Greetings

What it is!? Welcome to Music 3R's here with your neighborhood friendly 411'er, Aaron Titan. Lots of interesting news this week, more so than recent weeks in my opinion. Therefore, this column seemed to flow up out of my fingertips, to the keyboard, to the MacBook's screen, over the 411 server, and onto your screen with facilitated ease this week. Sorry to all you pessimists out there for the lack of wRong and Ridiculous this week, but I liked a lot more recent music news than I disliked.

Thank goodness writing was a breeze this week. I had a lot of fun this weekend; however, I had driving to do in order to have said fun…a FUCKIN' LOT of driving, but I made it to Chicago's famed United Center. Yeah, my beloved Chicago Blackhawks may have fallen to the Dallas Stars 4-3, but it was my first NHL game and I still had a blast. Overall, we're a strong team overall and if we can stay healthy and get Hossa into the lineup, it's going to be fuckin' impressive some Stanley Cup time.



Speaking of stuff that's awesome, how about this up-and-coming MC Wale from D.C.? While on the road this weekend, I rocked out to Wale's Mixtape About Nothing probably four times through. What a talented MC. I mean, the dude made a mixtape with a Seinfeld theme. He's even got Julia Louise-Dreyfuss on the end of the mixtape saying "muthafucka." He's a keen lyricist and I like the way he delivers, so I'm officially pumped for his major label debut Attention Deficit. Look for that in November.

The Column

For those unfamiliar with the 3R's concept, here's the breakdown. I will be reporting and commenting on happenings in the music world and categorizing all the hoopla into three sections: the Right, the wRong, and the Ridiculous. The Right will feature news, albums, and announcements music-related that I'm personally stoked about. The wRong will be the bad versions of all three of the aforementioned. The Ridiculous is the worst of it all, that which makes good ol' Mr. Titan shake his head in perplexing amazement.

The Right





VH1 Hip-Hop Honors: I thought this was an extremely fun and classy program. It aired last week after I went to press, so I wanted to express what a pleasure it was to see Def Jam's 25th anniversary commemorated in such style today. They had a lot of cool clips with Def Jam founders Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons discussing the beginnings of the label and working with such pioneers as Public Enemy, LL Cool J, and The Beastie Boys. There were also a lot of great performances and collaborations, such as my personal favorite in the video above: the legendary Roots crew performing LL's "Rock the Bells" with Eminem and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Other ones I really enjoyed were Public Enemy's "Rebel Without a Pause" with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello (and fellow Street Sweeper Social Club member Boots Riley) and The Roots backing them onstage and Mary J. Blige and Method Man doing "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need to Get By." DMX even performed, so it appears he's managed to stay out of jail lately. The event was hosted by Tracy Morgan, which was cool considering how big of a 30 Rock kick I've been on lately.

Public Enemy |Public Enemy Video |The Roots |Hip Hop

Oh, and where was Slayer? They were on Def Jam originally. Well, I guess it was a hip-hop show, but just think about what could happen if you would have put Slayer and Public Enemy onstage together. Something tells me that Kerry King and Flavor Flav would've gotten along quite nicely.



New Moon Soundtrack: The soundtrack to New Moon, the second film in the Twilight Saga series was released early last week to counter the early leak of the whole album as well as to meet the huge demand for it. I'm not a die-hard Twilight fan or anything, but I've read the first two books and saw the first movie just to see what it was all about. It's fun and all, I guess. That's not what really impresses me.

I honestly can't remember the last time a soundtrack release was such a fucking event. Usually, studios just kind of phone in the soundtrack and people generally bought them for one or two hit singles that were on them. With the Twilight series, they're featuring big time artists' unreleased songs (mostly written specifically for the soundtrack itself) as well as breaking new acts. Honestly, this is the way a soundtrack should be done. If it's just a collection of old music, why put it out anymore. People can just download the individual tracks anyways, so a studio/record company compiling all the songs for us is just a moot point. Here's the tracklist:

1. Death Cab For Cutie – Meet Me On The Equinox
2. Band Of Skulls – Friends
3. Thom Yorke- Hering Damage
4. Lykke Li – Possibility
5. The Killers - A White Demon Love Song
6. Anya Marina – Satellite Heart
7. Muse - I Belong To You (New Moon)
8. Bon Iver and St. Vincent – Rosyln
9. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Done All Wrong
10. Hurricane Bells – Monsters
11. Sea Wolf – The Violet Hour
12. Ok Go- Shooting The Moon
13. Grizzly Bear - Slow Life
14. Editors – No Sound But The Wind
15. Alexandre Desplat – New Moon (The Meadow)

So here we have new music from Death Cab, Radiohead's Thom Yorke, The Killers, and Muse, all pretty big deals to their collective fan bases. The album supposedly has a decent mood/pacing and enough indie rock to satisfy skeptics. Hell, I'll probably give it a listen or two. If nothing else, I get to hear some new Muse and Thom Yorke stuff. If you download it from iTunes, there's some bonus content available such as a new Lupe Fiasco song called "Solar Midnite," which was inspired by the film. Now if Lupe could only get that Lasers album out for us…

Smashing Pumpkins Coming Soon: Late October to be precise! Billy Corgan confirmed that he will start releasing the next Pumpkins' album Teargarden by Kaleidyscope one song at a time at the month's end online…for free. There are no strings attached or registrations involved, just a free download. Eleven 4-song EPs containing the album in hard copy form will be released down the road, but for now, I think this format of getting the music to the people is a fun idea. Record companies are becoming more and more obsolete, but as long as artists can find ways of getting me the physical album themselves, I'll be happy. I'm pretty sure they could contract that shit out themselves if they have enough clout. I still collect albums of artists I respect. I've got about 600+ CDs in my office room right now and will be adding a few more here shortly. I need to get that new Flaming Lips album for starts!

We've seen that MCs can find fame through the mixtape route and get their name out there like Drake has done sans a record contract. The internet is the best fucking promotional tool ever, so I look forward to more music releases like Billy Corgan is doing and Trent Reznor and Radiohead have done in the past (with The Slip and In Rainbows respectively).

Oh, and Corgan said the first few songs have psychedelic feels to them. Righteous! Supposedly, he's got 53 songs written but doesn't know if all of them will make the 44-song collective album proper.





Gaga Tour: Lady Gaga has announced her own headlining tour which will replace the now dead-in-the-water "Fame Kills Tour" she had originally scheduled with Kanye West. It kicks off in late November and will run through the end of January. I'm going to try my best to check this tour out, especially since she's taking Kid Cudi out with her as the support act. She's describing her set as "the first ever electro-pop opera," and I can totally envision just what that is and how much fun it will be. Her re-release of The Fame, entitled The Fame Monster comes out just a few days before the tour starts and contains 8 newly recorded tracks. Gaga has said the new material will make its way into the setlist for sure.



One of the BEST HOSTS OF ALL TIME!!!: Taylor Swift will make her return to SNL on November 7th, but this time as a host. I think this works on a number of levels.

First off, she's a musician and performer so there's the possibility of sketches that involve singing. I think that was one of the fun aspects about having Justin Timberlake host (such as the Omelette-ville skit). Maybe she can do a Digital Short song with Andy Samberg.

Secondly, we're totally going to get some sort of Kanye West bit, possibly during her opening monologue. I think Keenan Thompson could probably pull off a good Kanye West impression. I've been watching most of the new season of SNL so far and Thompson has really started to come into his own on that show. I always knew he would, as I was a big fan of All That and the movie Good Burger as a kid.

Third, she's popular right now and that's exciting to people. Do you honestly think Taylor Swift would have hosted Saturday Night Live if that whole Kanye West incident and the VMAs hadn't happened? I don't think so. There's a certain novelty to her now given the inundation of sympathy towards her after that happened. What would be extremely exciting is if Lorne Michaels found a way to pull off a surprise Kanye West cameo on the show; however, I just can't see that happening. Kanye's supposedly in India chilling the fuck out right now and his guru would probably frown upon cameo appearances at this time. After all, it's live TV. Kanye doesn't exactly have a good track record with that sort of thing.

The wrong





OK, so please comment at the end of this article if you honestly made it through that whole Madonna tribute video to Michael Jackson, because I'll be really impressed. Watching her open the VMAs with that was so annoying, because it's truly indicative of how esoteric and full of herself she's become. Granted, she knows how famous and well-known she is, but she really buys into it instead of being grateful for her success and staying grounded.

But hey, Madonna has that whole Michael Jackson thing figured out. He was a martyr man! Why did we have to pass so much judgment during the last ten years? Could it have been his questionable behavior and choice in underage circle of buddies? But hey, who am I to pass judgment on something like that. What I find interesting is that if Madonna can truly explain Michael Jackson to the world, why can't she keep a lease? Apparently, Madonna may be evicted from her Manhattan apartment, because she has been driving her fellow tenants crazy, turning the building into her own personal tour rehearsal space. Having lived beneath some assholes during college that practiced group step dance routines, I can completely sympathize with these guys. You want to come home at the end of the day and relax and not have to hear other people's bullshit noise. Madonna can talk about treating Michael Jackson with kindness and decency all she wants, but how about remembering that you're not the only person in your building, dumbass.



Mr. Carter, Tell Me Where You Been?: Lil' Wayne, to answer that question, has been spreading his martian seed all over apparently. He recently confirmed that he will be having his fourth child with a fourth different woman, this time singer Nivea Hamilton. Damn… At least he can no doubt afford the child support, being one of the busiest MCs in the game. You've gotta' wonder if they made some sort of tricked out condoms with tiny her-pleasure bling-bling diamonds, would Weezy decide to actually use one, like ever?

In recent interviews, he said his long-delayed Rebirth album may be coming out in November as a double-LP alongside his Young Money clique album. He's also starting to talk about Tha Carter IV, which sounds good to me. If the whole Rebirth album is entirely like the songs I've heard from it so far – hard rock with auto-tune – I think I'll pass and wait it out for his next Carter installment.

The Ridiculous



Diddy Says So!

Here's some funny shit for you! So Diddy is onstage at an event last week, and he accidentally tosses a $20,000 ring into the crowd. How did he happen to lose the ring? Oh, you know…he was just throwing $100 bills into the crowd while onstage with one of his new acts. So next, he stops everything and orders security to search each member of the audience (160 people or so) until it's found. They of course never found it. That shit's so at the nearest pawn shop right now!

Honestly, he fuckin' deserves what happened to him. Does Sean Combs really need to tend to his ego that badly that he has to prove how rich and successful he is by tossing Benjamins into the crowd? Does he really need to let people know he's still got it, even though he's been relegated to VH1 for his shitty reality show dominating late nights with Ray J's terrible show? For that matter, couldn't he have done something a little better with 20 grand than buying a small piece of jewelry? You deserve what you got, Diddy! Isn't there some leftover Biggie music in the vault you could be releasing instead of the crap you're producing these days? I feel like that would be a better use of your time. Either that or changing your name again? Whatever works!

Hasta Luego
Well, there you have it. Right, wRong, and Ridiculous, that was this week's Music 3R's. Hope you were entertained for the last few minutes. You got an opinion on the above-discussed items? Let's hear what you have to say below. See you here same time next week! Cheers!