Day in Pop Report for 09/17/2014
The December fundraiser will also feature performances by Italian singer Laura Pausini and Mexican artist Alejandra Guzm�n. The show will take place during the international art fair, Art Basel, and will be presented by his ex wife Orianne Collins Mejjati and music technologist David Frangioni. In 2000, Collins founded the Little Dreams Foundation with his now ex wife Orlanne Collins Mejjati. The foundation's objective is to help children and teens pursue their dreams of art and athletics. Read more here.
Mayim Bialik, who plays Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler on the CBS (Radio.com's parent company) series and who played the titular character of Blossom on the show of the same name in the '90s, wrote a blog post titled "The Problem With That Giant Billboard of Ariana Grande" for Kveller. In the post, Bialik questions why it is women seem to be selling sexuality more than their talents. "There is one [billboard] for Ariana Grande, and I will go ahead and admit I have no idea who she is or what she does," Bialik writes. "Based on the billboard, she sells lingerie. Or stiletto heels. Or plastic surgery because every woman over 22 wishes she has that body, I'm sure." Bialik continues, "Why is she in her underwear on this billboard though? And if she has a talent (is she a singer?), then why does she have to sell herself in lingerie? I mean, I know that society is patriarchal and women are expected to be sexy and sexually available no matter what we do in society, but I guess now I need to explain that to my sons?" Read more here.
The NBC News investigation did not start with a look into his death, however. It was launched after it became clear he was at the center of a Ponzi scheme in 2011 who bilked a single mother from Mississippi. In February of 2013, news broke that Tim Dog had died from a diabetes-related seizure. A memorial service was planned at Glendale Baptist Church in Harlem and a PayPal donation account launched, reportedly to benefit his daughter. But in the months that followed, no death certificate was made available or discovered in his home state. Many began to suspect his death had been faked. NBC asserts that rumors surfaced on the internet that he had faked his death to avoid repaying the court-ordered $19,000 to the Mississippi woman he had defrauded. Read more here.
Well, Eminem doesn't hate the whole nation, he's just mad at the National political party of New Zealand, and mad enough to file a lawsuit along with his publishing company for the improper use of his song "Lose Yourself" in a re-election campaign ad, The Guardian reports. It seems that they didn't ask his permission to use the song in the commercial, which the rapper finds particularly insulting being that the same political party champions publishers rights. "It is both disappointing and sadly ironic," Eminem's publishers said in a statement, "that the political party responsible for championing the rights of music publishers in New Zealand by the introduction of the three strikes copyright reforms should itself have so little regard for copyright." Read more here.
For her third release, Hudson decided to go with a handful of big producers, including Pharrell and Timbaland. She also secured a few high profile guest spots, Iggy Azalea ("He Ain't Going Nowhere"), T.I. ("I Can't Describe (The Way I Feel)" and R. Kelly ("It's Your World") among them. "It's different expressions of me as an artist, a girl, a music lover," Hudson told CBS Radio station WPGC about the album last July. JHUD is out Sept. 23 on Arista. Listen to the album, via VH1, here.
Alsina was performing at Irving Plaza, Billboard reports, and, in the video below, appears to crumple and fall right off the stage. He did not return to finish his set and the rest of the show was canceled. At this time Alsina nor his representatives have issued any explanation or statement on his well-being. Alsina recently released a video for his track "No Love (Remix)" that features Nicki Minaj. He performed on the BET Awards in June with Chris Brown and Trey Songz, where he also won Best New Artist and Viewer's Choice awards. Watch the video here.
The track kicks off with whistling which just introduces the feel good track. "I'm gonna wear my flip flops and I'm gonna play some flip cup and rock a little bit of hip-hop and Haggard and Jagger," the guys sing at the intro. With a musical interlude mid-song with plenty of banjo picking, foot stomping and hand claps, Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley show a new direction on the track. "All I wanna do today is wear my favorite shades and get stoned / Work a little less, play a little more / That's what this day is for," they sing on the chorus. Read more here.
Bennett and Gaga give the song their own spin on the track, released yesterday (Sept. 16) to YouTube. The song, originally recorded by Nat "King" Cole, starts off with Gaga handling lead vocals, abandoning her more powerful pipes - as she often has on most of the album's tracks - for a more subdued, tempered vocal. Bennett comes in shortly after, followed by a perfect meshing of the duo's voices. A flute solo crosses between them before the pair reconvenes to finish off the low-tempo, jazzy track. The song is the newest taste of Cheek to Cheek, which is scheduled for release next week. It marks the first album of duets between the two and follows Gaga's Artpop in 2013 and Bennett's Viva Duets, which included Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony, Gloria Estefan, Romeo Santos and more. Listen to the song here.
"Welcome to today's news, ladies and gentlemen," West told the audience. "We got Americans getting killed on TV, we have kids getting killed every week in Chicago, we have unarmed people being killed by police officers and we have Kanye West with an ice cream cone." He specifically called out Today's Matt Lauer by name, trying to set him up for when video of the rant, he feels, will be played on the show tomorrow. "Don't try to force me into some, like, fake apology or something like last time I was on the show," he said. "I want you to just run the video that everyone's talking about where I so-called scream and everything. I want you to run that, right? Since it's such big media press news and everything." He went on to ask the attendees if they hear his music on the radio, and if his songs made them feel better - despite maybe saying "offensive s**t" from time to time. "This is rap f**king music," he said. "This is real music. This is real expression. This is real artistry. An artist's career doesn't happen in a cycle of one week of news. An artist career happens in a lifetime, and if you're a true artist, you're willing to die for what you believe in." Read more here.
Earlier today (Sept. 16), Styles took to Twitter to share his current guilty pleasure. Turns out he's a pretty big fan of Musgraves. However, his post did have us all scratching our heads as well as Musgraves. He tweeted, "I It's impossible to listen to @KaceyMusgraves too much. Don't tell anyone." It turns out Musgraves was confused as to whether this tweet was in fact a compliment or an insult as she replied with a "Thank you?" Read more here.
In his April 23 deposition, Thicke said he contributed little to nothing to the creation of "Blurred Lines," admitting that producer Pharrell Williams did most of the work, that he "embellished" about his contributions in interviews and he was "jealous" of Williams writing his most successful hit to date. He reveals a substance-abuse problem that caused, at least in part, his wife Paula Patton to leave him. Thicke's latest record, a get-her-back-themed effort, is titled Paula. In the deposition, Thicke reveals it was he and Patton's split that got him off pills, namely a form of Vicodin. He also admits he was high and drunk doing interviews to promote "Blurred Lines" last year, even during his high-profile Oprah interview. The full deposition text paints the famed R&B singer as by-turns arrogant, dejected, self-pitying, self-critical, combative and apologetic. A few legal notes for context: while depositions are logged in a court record and are used as "discovery," or fact finding, by both sides in a civil or criminal case, they are not legally binding. Still, discrepancies can seriously hurt a plaintiff or defendant's case when it eventually faces a court of law. In the recent past, uncooperative video depositions by Lil' Wayne and Justin Bieber have been released by different courts of law, likely hurting their case in the eyes or a judge or jury. According to one Gaye family lawyer, the presiding court has not authorized release video of Thicke's deposition. This is a deposition as part of an intellectual-property civil case in which Thicke, his lawyers and the lawyers of Marvin Gaye's estate are tangling over whether or not the instrumental of "Blurred Lines" constitutes infringement on the intellectual property of Gaye's 1977 disco-tinged single "Got to Give It Up." If you're thinking, "Wait, that again?" Yes, the public controversy surrounding it has been ongoing for about a year now. Plus, court proceedings can take a really long time. For now, the case is scheduled to finally go to trial next February. Read a lot more here.
On Tuesday, Diamond gave the world its first taste of his new material in the form of a music video for the album's fifth track, which is entitled "Nothing but Heartache." In the clip, Diamond is stripped down and emotionally bare, often looking away from the camera when he sings, so as not to confuse the audience as to what and whom he is singing for and about. It makes the moments he looks straight into the lens hit all the more directly. Read more here.
Collaborating with fellow Atlanta rap icon T.I. seems like a low profile move compared to those recent Migos headlines. To the group's benefit, however, the song is an infectious bounce revolving around its title, both in theme and the repetition of the word for rhyming purposes. T.I. has been popping up in a ton of collaborations as of late, whether that be with Young Thug or Iggy Azalea. The Atlanta-based rapper steals the track with his fast and confident flow, backed nicely with a minimal beat and piano riff courtesy of producer TM808. Check out the NSFW song here.
"I love freaks, I don't care if you're a wild one," she sings on the new single, and this is just one of the standout lines on the new song. The songwriter highlights a different lyric on the YouTube page for the song. "'I'm not the prettiest you've ever seen, but on my good days I'm charming as f-,'" she self-quotes on the page. "Here's 'Moments' - this song, like all of them, is very personal to me� Stay flawed babes!" The Swedish singer will drop her debut LP, Queen of the Clouds, on September 30 via Island Records. It will be broken up into three sections: "The Sex," "The Love" and "The Pain." Five bucks says "Moments" is in "The Sex" section. Listen to the song here.
"Gonna Know We Were Here," also available for listening on Spotify, is a classic Aldean anthem. "No, we may not be around in 20 years, / but they sure gonna know we were here," he sings alongside impressive electric guitar. But "Gonna Know We Were Here" isn't the only song fans can preview. Last week, Aldean released "Two Night Town" and "Sweet Little Somethin'," which are also available for instant download on iTunes. Where "Gonna Know We Were Here" embodies more of Aldean's party vibe, "Two Night Town" has Aldean lamenting of spending three nights in a two night town. Another track recently released last week is the country-meets-EDM track "Sweet Little Somethin'" with plenty of guitar fuzz and banjo beats urging listeners to head to the dance floor.
The remix starts off predictably enough, with Alt-J working in their expected sensual groove. But quickly, the snare snaps tip off a change in direction: a verse from K.R.I.T. The appearance is short lived but pushes the whole of the song into more affecting territory, allowing Alt-J to work as a foil for a completely different musical genre - and vice versa. Alt-J's new effort is a little over a week away, due on Sept. 23 via Canvasback/Infectious. Big K.R.I.T., meanwhile, is working on the follow-up to his studio debut, Live from the Underground, which came out in 2012. Check out the remix here.
Previous singles have featured Mastodon, Future and Giorgio Moroder. The Run the Jewels track is a dark one, though, despite its sensitive, George Harrison-esque title. It's also only one of more to come, as the duo will have a fresh album out on Oct. 27. Additionally, the duo released some amusing new bonus packages for the new album. Check out the details here.
One song in particular, "Grocery Store," was inspired from her days at the cash register when she worked at Walmart and Winn-Dixie, a southern grocery store. "I got the idea when I was pregnant," Presley told Rolling Stone Country. "I found myself standing in line at the grocery store a lot. I've always been an observer. I've always felt that I was kind of hovering above every situation that I'm in, taking notes. But when you're in line at the grocery store, it's just this thing where, in this country anyway, you're just forced to stop. I think it's really neat that we all kind of have that in common. It's like this forced little moment of meditation that we all have in the middle of our hectic, crazy day." Listen to the song here.
The album is the three-piece's sophomore effort, following 2012's An Awesome Wave. That effort earned the band a fair amount of press and critical acclaim including the 2012 Mercury Prize, plus radio play in the U.S. for singles "Breezeblocks" and "Tesselate." Already, the band has released multiple songs from the new record, including the Miley Cyrus-sampling "Hunger of the Pine," "Left Hand Free" and current single "Every Other Freckle." More including a link to the stream here.
In an interview with the New York Times, Mike D addresses his new interests in building design, notably addressing critics of his nice new crib by responding, "What, am I supposed to live in a frat house? It's not like Jay Z's still in the projects." Working on the homes with his wife, director Tamra Davis, as well as architects Jill and John Bouratoglou, has seen Diamond find his niche in the team. "I'm the one interested in function, and he's all about form," Davis says in the interview. "He's all about making sure it doesn't just work, but it's cool." Read more here.
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