Last week, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of A Tribe Called Quest’s seminal album, The Low End Theory, and after spending quality time with the LP, it became clear that many artists may have snagged sonic gems from the trendsetting hip-hop quartet over the years. If you’re a fan of rap music, you already know that sampling and re-working existing songs is commonplace in the creative process; similar to contemporary art’s idea of the “readymade,” producers will lift elements from one song and add them to a new canvas to re-envision their use. But what happens when the same thing is done with lyrics?
One little-known fact: Lil’ Wayne’s“A Milli” is a slowed-down sample of one of Phife’s lines from a remix of “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” off Tribe’s first album, 1990′s Peoples’ Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. Sometimes referred to as swagger-jacking, a rapper re-purposing the bars of artists before him or her can in other circumstances be seen as a salute-beckoning sign of respect. And in Tribe’s case, it should be! In addition to sitting down with ATCQ for their first joint interview since 1998, we also got to chat individually with in-and-out, behind-the-scenes group member Jarobi White to scoop his brains for memories on the group’s incredible second album. In honor of its Album-Versary, we present you with Jarobi’s exclusive interview clips, and the Top 5 Recycled Lines From The Low End Theory.
Young artists, it seems, loveLil Wayne. Hot on the heels of Demi Lovato’skiller rendition of “How To Love” for VH1′s Top 20 Live, Justin Bieber has recorded his own cover of the single, which he shared via Twitter as a “happy birthday” message for the rapper. Bieber’s cover is a studio track, complete with double-tracked and backing vocals and his own guitar and percussion. Even still, Lovato’s cover (which, if you haven’t already seen it, is below) is one heck of a live performance. So we leave it to you: who covered it better?
Conrad Murray Trial For Manslaughter Of Michael Jackson Begins
The doctor, Michael Jackson‘s personal physician, stands accused of administering a fatal dose of propofol to the singer. Prosecutor David Walgren opened his case by showing the jury a postmortem image of Jackson‘s body on a hospital gurney, which The Smoking Gunalready has. The proceeds are being televised and webcast, so expect a lot more rubber-necking coverage like this on gossip sites, especially when Murray’s attorney calls Jackson’s eldest son, 14-year-old Prince, to the stand.
Lil Wayne’s VMAs Stretch-Denim Inspires An AP Trendpiece
The attention-grabbing headline Latest Trend in Hip-Hop: Women’s Clothes disguises a lengthy meditation on the performance of masculinity by none other than celebrity stylist June Ambrose, who’s got a show premiering this winter on VH1. And yes, the piece may refer to Kanye West as “hip-hop’s ultimate metrosexual,” but at least it didn’t misidentify Lil Wayne’s bottoms as “jeggings.” [AP] [click to continue…]
Twenty nine years ago today in New Orleans, a young boy named Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. was born. He appeared to be a normal baby, happy and healthy, with one major exception: He was born with a diamond grill in his mouth! Just kidding; it would still be a few years before Dwayne would fully transform himself into Lil Wayne, but not that many. He wrote his first rap song at age 8, was signed to Cash Money when he was just 9, and had his first platinum album (as part of the Hot Boys) at only 17. After Guerrilla Warfare debuted at #1 on the charts, Lil Wayne went solo. And, as they say, the rest is history.
Today, Weezy is one of the biggest music superstars in all the world. His latest LP, Tha Carter IV, sold more copies during its first week in stores than any other album released this year. He’s also a figure of immense controversy, one who has been arrested multiple times while in possession of both drugs and guns, the latter of which led him to an eight month, all-expenses paid stint on Rikers Island. However, he remains the most popular solo artist, both on the streets and in the suburbs, in the rap game these days.
We’re excited to wish Lil Wayne a happy 29th birthday. To celebrate, we rounded up 29 of our favorite pictures of Lil Wayne being awesome, and below the cut, we resurfaced a hilarious clip from our 2008 series, “Ask Weezy.” Enjoy!
VH1 debuted the latest countdown in our long-running The Greatest series, the 40 Most Shocking Hip Hop Moments, this evening. If you missed it, don’t worry; it will rerun tomorrow night, Monday, September 19, at midnight. If you’re looking for the complete list, look no further. Here are the 40 Most Shocking Hip Hop Moments … so far!
50 Cent Changes His Movie’s Name After Chinua Achebe Protests 50 Cent‘s new movie just got a namechange thanks to a critically lauded Nigerian novelist. Chinua Achebe, author of 1958′s English-language riposte to Joseph Conrad, Things Fall Apart, threatened legal action against 50 Cent, whose new film has the same name, and turned down a $1 million settlement offer. Considering that the idiom comes from a Yeats poem, the novelist’s case isn’t necessarily that strong, but “Got sued by Chinua Achebe” is probably not something 50 Cent wants on his resume, so the movie is now titled All Things Fall Apart. (Sidenote: Does this mean Achebe is a Roots fan?) [The Guardian]
Lil Wayne had 964,000 reasons to celebrate yesterday, and on BET’s 106 & Park he got eighteen more—one for each of his nominations for the 6th annual BET Hip-Hop Awards, which air Tuesday, October 11 at 8PM ET. Lil Wayne is so heavily nominated, in fact, that his toughest competition may be himself: he’s twice-nominated in the categories of Best Hip-Hop Video, Best Club Banger, and Verizon People’s Champ, and three-times-nominated for Reese’s Perfect Combo (Best Collab) and Track of the Year. In fact, only three songs account for eleven of those nominations: his own “6 Foot 7 Foot” featuring Cory Gunz, DJ Khaled‘s four-times-nominated “I’m On One” (also featuring Drake and Rick Ross) and Chris Brown‘s “Look At Me Now,” which is nominated in all six song categories (though the Best Featured Verse nomination goes not to Lil Wayne but to Busta Rhymes). “Look At Me Now” is an unsurprising frontrunner: back in June, the song won Best Collaboration, Viewer’s Choice, and Video of the Year at the BET Awards, and when it lost the Best Collaboration VMA to “E.T.,” Kanye West (himself nominated for ten BET Hip-Hop Awards) took to the mic to say that the Chris Brown video deserved to win. Voting for the Verizon People’s Champ Award will open soon; until then, watch “Look At Me Now” and, below the cut, check out the full list of nominees.
The 2011 Video Music Awards had quite the effect on this week’s charts. Adele, Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga were among the artists posted who posted sales bumps after performances a week ago Sunday. Possibly none of them benefited as much as Lil Wayne, whose album Tha Carter IV went on sale less than an hour after the show wrapped on the East Coast. His performance of “How To Love” and “John” was one of innumerable factors that led to a monster first week sales tally of 964,000.
These numbers are no joke. The album not only hit #1 with a bullet on the Billboard 200 (followed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers with 229,000 copies of I’m With You) but it also could become the second-best-selling album of the year. Granted, the fourth-quarter schedule is packed with heavy hitters like Coldplay, whose Mylo Xyloto drops October 25, but Lil Wayne’s album has already sold more than half in its first week of what Gaga’s Born This Way has sold since its release, without the help of the type of loss-leading that scored Gaga the year’s biggest first week. We doubt any album (from anybody) will come near the three-million-and-counting sales of Adele’s 21, but the race to second place just got significantly more crowded (and more interesting), as we suspect Tha Carter IV will have not-insignificant legs.
For the last 14 weeks, we’ve been tracking the race to see which track would become this year’s Song Of The Summer. Since people consume music in so many different ways these days, our goal was to put together a democratic formula that compared how a group of over 70 songs performed across five of the primary channels that people frequently use to listen to their favorite jams: the Billboard Hot 100 (radio play & sales), the iTunes charts (pure sales), Last.fm scrobbles (listening on computer and mobile devices), the YouTube music charts (streams) and, of course, our VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown. Each week, we tracked how our group of competitors fared in each of these different platforms, and then added up the results.
So, without any further ado, we are psyched to announce that Katy Perry has taken home the first place prize in VH1′s first annual Song Of The Summer competition! When the summer began, it looked like Adele‘s “Rolling In The Deep” was going to be an unstoppable force, but as soon as Katy dropped her 80s-tastic “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” video during the week of June 27th, she dominated the countdown from there on out. Katy was gracious enough to film an quick speech for us while she accepted our totally awesome Song Of The Summer trophy, which we’ve got for you above.
For you completists, here is our final Song Of The Summer countdown chart (that is, until Memorial Day 2012 rolls around!). And you’re on Spotify, you can subscribe to our VH1 Song Of The Summer 2011 playlist and re-live the summer whenever you want.
Sad to say, but the impending arrival of Labor Day weekend means it’s time to put another summer in the books. All summer long, we’ve been keeping a close eye on the race to determine this year’s Song Of The Summer, following how songs have performed in terms of the Billboard Hot 100, iTunes sales, Last.fm scrobbles, YouTube streams and, of course, our VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown.
We’re going to announce this summer’s winner here on the VH1 Blog on Tuesday, but before we do that, we’d love to find out what YOU, the VH1 audience, felt was this year’s Song Of The Summer. What song did you jam the most on the beach? Which track was blasting when you put your ragtop down so your hair can blow? What jam got you and your friends pumped up for a night out on the town? Vote as many times as you like in our poll below. (Oh, and congrats to You Oughta Know artist Foster The People for being only the third song all summer long to hold the top spot in our countdown with their zeitgeisty smash, “Pumped Up Kicks”!)
