Music’s 3Rs 3.17.13: Three Little Wrongs By My Doorstep
Posted by Sean Comer on 03.18.2013
From Lil Wayne's near death experience due to cough syrup and Justin Timberlake possibly releasing a second album this year to David Bowie being neck-and-neck with Bon Jovi in album sales and more, 411's Sean Comer breaks down the Right, the wRong and the Ridiculous from the week in music!
"BROUGHT TO YOU BY…"
Vandelay Industries and 411mania.com present this week's Music's 3 Rs with limited suckitude, brought to you by the Southern & Longmore Starbucks in scenic Mesa, AZ, as well as the following...
Lily Allen, "Who'd Have Known?"
Lindsey Stirling, "Lord of the Rings Medley"
Moby, "Porcelain"
Dropkick Murphys, "Barroom Hero"
Tori Amos, "A Case of You"
Welcome back, one and all. I'm Sean. You're not. Remember, fellow Babies: I didn't break the news. It was that way when I got here.
"Maybe I'm wrong, but just maybe, maybe you're Right…"
Justin Timberlake: sequel to The 20/20 Experience to come?
Yes. Bring this to me.
If you read this past week's Music Buy or Sell, I made something abundantly clear: despite my feeling a bit tepid toward Timberlake's second single released from this week's debuting third solo album, The 20/20 Experience, he's composed a stellar, unique work of R&B-inflected, pop-music art that cements him as his generation's heir to the late Michael Jackson.
Despite the 10-song set officially hitting shelves Tuesday after streaming for free last week on iTunes, The Roots drummer ?uestlove hinted via the Okplayer.com forum Saturday while DJing prior to Timberlake's SXSW performance that The 20/20 Experience is only the herald of something bigger.
"spoiler alert. 20/20 Vol 2 comes out in nov. (10 songs now.....10 songs later= 20 vision)," ?uestlove wrote.
Alas, into every Right, a little dumbshit must sometimes fall.
Later, ?uestlove demonstrated that he really has no idea at all how journalism works. He responded to direct quotes of the post that bore his name, "friggin mofos done ran with this info snitching and shit. this is why i really can't eff with this site no more. back before social media i was all sharing treats and happy in our insular world. now mofos all using my position to get their blogs posting on. im going back to the shadows."
You said it publicly. You attached your name to it. If you wanted anything to remain "insular," the solution is to shut your word hole, not be a butt-hurt bitch when you say something and someone listens.
Neither Timberlake's label, RCA, nor Timberlake himself has come forward confirming or discrediting ?uestlove's "spoiler." If it's true, though, I couldn't be happier.
Over the past seven years between FutureSex/LoveSounds and Timberlake's newest album, the pop genre has made it abundantly clear just how badly it needs Timberlake's sincere love of making inventive pop on his terms and with a blending of influence that nobody pulls off quite as he does. I say this as somebody who took years to really forestall some certain hipster posturing and admit that even if he's not always my flavor, Timberlake can cook and I absolutely grasp his appeal. Most tellingly, he's achieved something not every artist pulls off.
Artists fade in and out of relevance in no genre faster than in pop. You remain visible, or you become forgotten. Timberlake might've taken seven years between albums, but that was time spent experimenting, honing and crafting. The resulting sense isn't so much that popular taste has passed Timberlake by, but that we can all appreciate the TLC and unique personality he gave this project. I can't imagine a "part two" to this album doing anything except cementing just how busy and motivated he's kept himself between recordings.
One half of LMFAO giving professional tennis a try
Nope. Really. This is happening.
LMFAO member RedFoo told Tennis World recently that he'll soon be throwing his hat into tennis' U.S. Open playoffs. RedFoo apparently played as a junior, and is presently in a relationship with ex-#1 woman player Victoria Azarenka. From June 18-23, he'll have his chance when he enters the United States Tennis Association's Northern California Sectional Qualifying Tournament.
Know what? I'll cave. Why not? Good on you, RedFoo. I've lived to see Herschel Walker and Dave Bautista win MMA bouts, Mark Hunt go from the UFC all but begging to buy him out of his old PRIDE contract to one puncher's-chance win from title contention, Ben Affleck win a Best Picture Oscar, and Diamond Dallas Page seemingly becoming the one to finally get through to Jake Roberts and Scott Hall. Stranger things have happened, and what a story it would be. Plus, I have a soft spot for anybody who decides to take one shot at a dream.
OK, I'll say it. There's a lot of the above in my sentiment, but there's much more simply never wanting to hear LMFAO ever again.
"I don't wanna fight, Jack, but you ain't ever right, you know you wRong…"
Lazy Bon Jovi album may barely outsell new David Bowie release
I hate spending too much time fretting over chart positions, since sales in no significant way impact how much I enjoy or loathe a song or album.
In this case, though … I will simply never understand people.
In a late-week turn, Billboard reported this past week that Bon Jovi's new album What About Now? might barely slip past David Bowie's return album The Next Day and claim the Billboard 200 crown. Though Billboard initially project that Bowie's 80,000 units sold would lock up the top spot, new projections have Bon Jovi actually selling 90,000 units and bumping the legend's first full-length release since 2002's Heathen into the #2 position.
This will be a reasonably short rant, fellow Babies. Oddly, I've never fallen as deeply in lesbians with 80's hair-metal kitsch as many around my same age. Nonetheless, I love classic, prime Bon Jovi. As with their contemporaries, the music they make isn't brain surgery at all, but it's fun and arguably better written than most of what came from the genre around the same time. On completely different merits, I love David Bowie for his transformative creativity.
Here's the difference: Bowie recorded new material once he realized that he had something more to say, and signs point to the result being an introspective portrait of a man and artist arriving upon another new era in his life. Bon Jovi, on the other hand, will sell more albums despite clearly coasting their way through the motions and sounding John-Mellencamp lazy and bereft of any motivation to produce a truly great album.
It's wRong because I hate that Jeremy Thomas was absolutely right in this week's Buy or Sell: Bon Jovi could indeed piss on a CD and have it go at least gold. Unfortunately, Bon Jovi understand this, too.
Original Iron Maiden drummer Clive Burr passes away
Heavy metal lost a titan of a drummer this week.
Members and fans of Iron Maiden mourned the death of former Maiden drummer Clive Burr. After fighting multiple sclerosis since 2001, Burr died in his sleep at his home on March 13. He was 55 years old.
Burr drummed for Maiden on the English metal legends' first three albums after joining in 1979: their self-titled debut, Killers and The Number of the Beast. Founding member Steve Harris on the band's official website remembered Burr as "a wonderful person and an amazing drummer who made a valuable contribution to Maiden in the early days when we were starting out."
Adding to Harris' sentiment, lead singer Bruce Dickinson said, ""I first met Clive when he was leaving Samson and joining Iron Maiden. He was a great guy and a man who really lived his life to the full. Even during the darkest days of his M.S., Clive never lost his sense of humor or irreverence."
"Now, how could I possibly be inconspicuous when my flow is f***in' Ridiculous?"
Lil Wayne fails at Drugs
Lil Wayne, Ladies, Gentlemen and Others: your appallingly low standard-bearer in Hip-Hop Dumb-Motherfuckerdom.
The Young Money rapper that no less than Kanye West recently anointed a living, working all-time great alongside no less than Jay-Z and Eminem nearly became the richest entertainer to ever succumb to a crippling cough-syrup overdose.
Once more, Dumb Luck gives Darwin the finger.
Paramedics rushed Wayne to a local hospital when a bodyguard found him unconscious on a hotel room floor following an apparent seizure, his second such recent incident. Keep in mind, this was hours after his relief Tuesday following a previous such seizure.
If you haven't been tracking this story, you are about to feel infinitely less sorry for him.
Following ample disputed reporting by TMZ that Wayne had fallen into critical condition and was standing at Death's door, it turned out he just lit a sack of dog crap on fire, rang the doorbell, and made a break for it. A spokesperson later clarified via Twitter that he and Wayne were in fact watching the Syracuse University basketball game in the rapper's hospital room, where his condition had apparently stabilized.
As reported by Us Magazine this weekend, and paralleling earlier reports that doctors had to pump Wayne's stomach three times to purge the accumulated Codeine, Wayne collapsed following an apparent Sizzurp binge that followed his first seizure.
For those who haven't face-palmed yet, here's where the explanation of Wayne's sad Mount Fail might require an explanation: Sizzurp, to be blunt, is the sort of cheap-ass high you'd expect to be favored by little miscreant high-schoolers who can't afford quality drugs of abuse, not necessarily a vastly overrated celebrity rapper who makes enough inexplicable bank to pay off John Belushi's descendants and get the go-ahead to get blitzed snorting his ashes. It's a depressant, narcotic mix of prescription-strength cough syrup (hence the ocean of Codeine), sugared soda and crushed hard candies. It's about a step above whippets in terms of ingenuity.
Of course, as with just about any substance every found in nature or concocted by some idiot-savant ghetto chemist with a bathtub and nothing to do on a Saturday, it's also often been mixed with alcohol that augments the dozy, euphoric high.
Let me reword and reiterate: this middle-finger to common sense could afford Jamaica's GDP in premium marijuana, but apparently resolved, "Fuck THAT noise…COUGH SYRUP!"
"Wayne is fine. He drank too much sizzurp to get a better high," Us claims a spokesman said. "He needs rehab but he's not close to death or anything. He's fine and just coming down off the high."
Sure. He's fine. He went to town on the most ghetto mish-mash high he could throw together and is only alive because a bodyguard found him floored and twitching, but have no worries. He's just coming down.
A quick check of the 411mania.com store room turned up no f***s whatsoever to be given. Piss right off, Wayne. You're pretty much proof that the American Dream indeed yet thrives: a living, breathing cornucopia of hip-hop clichés and self-parody sporting questionable common sense on his best day, and even more questionable actual talent, who proves album after album that no one will ever go break underestimating just how dumbed-down some people love their music. Despite all this, you nearly croaked an undignified death on shaking on the floor because you drank too much cough syrup.
Saddest part? The ensuing grieving would be guaranteed to demonstrate, next to "irony," the most misused noun in the entire lexicon is "tragedy." I don't wish death or grievous bodily harm upon nearly anybody. In this case, that's because there are few people in the world I'd rather be less than the first family member to have been told by police or a doctor, "We're sorry, but he died because he apparently understood nothing at all questionable about drinking enough Codeine-laced prescription cough syrup to fell a healthy sumo wrestler."
The sun's comin' up…I'm ridin' with Lady Luck
Thanks for stopping in this week, Babies. Keep your stick on the ice. I'm Sean. You're not. Never dull your colors for someone else's canvas.
