Honestly? This is not how I wanted today’s post to go. But sometimes you’ve just gotta testify. On days when I’m plopped in front of my computer for hours at a time—like yesterday, Friday, working from my home office—I start up my computer with four different programs running. Outlook (what can I say? I’m a [...]
So as promised/threatened yesterday, three songs that operate roughly along the lines of the songs suggested by [correction!] faithful fcrp reader Steve: Songs that seem to be moving in one direction, carrying us merrily along, only to dart suddenly in another direction. Or in which a single word or phrase has an undue amount of [...]
All right, let’s actually watch the newest Eminem video, finish talking about it, move on! Back to where Eminem loses himself. I mentioned yesterday that the first verse of “Not Afraid” is cast in the first person, a fact utterly unremarkable in itself: I haven’t done a comprehensive survey, but surely 98% of hip hop, [...]
So yeah, that new Eminem video. Fans and critics are greeting it as a return to form, and for good reason; I don’t think it’s destined to become one of Eminem’s classic tracks, but he’s in superb rapping form, with phrasing that constantly surprises and some of that machine-gun delivery, spittin’ out the syllables, that’s [...]
The “I’m Back” song is one of the standard genres in rap. On “Forgot About Dre” (1999), on which Eminem’s featured spot more-or-less steals the show, Dre complains that fans have forgotten him while he’s been at work in the studio (among other things, introducing Eminem to the music-buying public): “Ya’ll know me still the [...]
You gotta hand it to Lil Wayne: He’s not a man to let a little thing like Rikers Island cramp his flow. Apparently during a blitzkrieg Super Bowl weekend before his internment began, he recorded all kinds of video footage for possible “purposing” into all manner of music video, both his and others’, that might [...]
I’ve been trying for more than two weeks to forget a story I read in the New York Times (April 28); I think it’s time now to declare that effort unsuccessful. So I’ll wash it out of my hair here, with your indulgence, Gentle Reader. The story was in the Business section—where, honestly, I seem [...]
I’ve not to this point followed the Adam Lambert saga closely, though the sophisticated and erudite readers of fakechineserubberplant will, I think, know the general outlines of his story: a finalist in the eighth season of American Idol, Lambert’s chances to win seemed to evaporate precisely at the moment that pictures of him making out [...]