While NYC residents are relieved to have been spared the worst of Hurricane Irene (we’re thinking of you, Vermont), I must admit to shallow disappointment in her pulling a robbery on my social life this weekend. Forced to stay indoors, I was able to spend some time with Lil Wayne’s recently-leaked Tha Carter IV while suffering through meteorologists and weather anchors overusing words like “hunker [down]” and “pounding [wind and rain],” wanting to throw a thesaurus at my television. After closing the MTV VMAs last night, the New Orleans native, who is unfortunately all too familiar with hurricanes, officially dropped his ninth solo album digitally before running off to host an after-party that coincided with Tha Carter IV’s release.

Because it’s dropping in such close proximity to Jay-Z and Kanye’s Watch The Throne, Tha Carter IV is a an easy target for direct comparisons. Wayne is a one-man show, and despite having a bushel of features (from the likes of Andre 3000, Nas, Bun B, and Bob Rick Ross), facing off against Jay and Kanye’s well-marketed collaboration LP certainly isn’t apples to apples, but the pot will inevitably be stirred! One of the songs on Tha Carter IV contains a verse directed at Jay-Z and talks about kidnapping newly pregnant Beyoncé, so speculations were high that some sort of altercation would occur at the VMAs last night. Likely retaliation for Hov’s “baby money” verse on “H.A.M.” back in January, Wayne’s verse on the C4 track, entitled “It’s Good” (also featuring Jadakiss and Drake), sounds like it’s just come to term; the passion in Wayne’s voice and use of verbs in the present tense suggest it was recorded many months ago, not recently. That, mixed with the fact that Jay didn’t respond publicly last night, might mean it’s water under the bridge.
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Get More: Jay-Z, Otis, Music Videos

“Otis” is huge. (As Funkmaster Flex put it, “This record might keep the summer warm till December.”) Kanye West and Jay-Z‘s Watch the Throne is almost omnipresent and all but guaranteed to hit #1 on the Billboard 200. How do you make a music video for the Otis Redding-sampling single off the record that drips with signifiers of wealth, without turning out some sort of baroque grotesquerie?

Hiring Spike Jonze is a good start. The acclaimed director is also quite the stylistic shapeshifter; the child-acted “Sky’s the Limit” was a clever way to make a Notorious B.I.G. video after the rapper’s untimely death, but it was also a spot-on homage to the Hype Williams videos of the mid-1990s (including a kid version of Busta Rhymes on a television showing a kid version of the Williams-directed “Woo-Hah! Got You All In Check”). Jonze’s “Otis” runs down a short checklist (using that Hype Williams fisheye, of course):

1. Best buddies Kanye and Jay-Z (don’t miss the part where Jay-Z’s right behind Kanye, mouthing along with Kanye’s lyrics about his Benzes. It’s freakin’ adorable);

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The hotly anticipated Watch the Throne dropped on iTunes yesterday at midnight, and the entertainment world has been abuzz about the Jay-Z-Kanye West project for the not-yet-thirty-six hours since. Here’s what’s on everyone’s minds, lips, Twitter accounts, and RSS feeds:

Sales: According to Billboard, industry sources project that Watch The Throne will sell upwards of 500,000 copies (an upward revision from yesterday’s 400K-500K estimate). At the same time, the album has dropped to #9 on the iTunes Charts, suggesting that a majority of this week’s digital numbers will be first-day sales. (It’s also more expensive on iTunes than it will be at Best Buy, which the Los Angeles Times is calling an “iTunes tax.”)
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The first thing you need to know about Frank Ocean is that he’s a singer-songwriter, not an “R&B singer.” Seriously: he may be African-American, but please don’t genre-pigeonhole him; not only does he hate it, but his skills at penning intricate, category-less songs are far more expansive than what parameters of contemporary Urban radio will allow. That’s not a shot at R&B, though; we’re just stating a fact.

Raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the 23-year-old music aficionado began writing for artists like Justin Bieber, Beyoncé, and John Legend when he moved to Los Angeles after Hurricane Katrina in 2009. Linking up with hip hop houligan collective OFWGKTA (aka Odd Future) around that time, Ocean (who was born Christopher, and formerly performed as Lonny Breaux) then secured a deal with Def Jam, but like many artists in the early phase of their careers, was put on the waiting shelf. Luckily for us, the talented songwriter turned insubordinate and rogue, releasing his now critically-acclaimed mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra via his Tumblr.

The mixtape may have been an unconventional move for most up-and-coming singers, but for Ocean, it created a compelling word of mouth domino effect. Taking songs like The Eagles’ “Hotel California,” MGMT’s “Electric Feel,” and Coldplay’s “Strawberry Swing” and making them very uniquely his own, Ocean was able to showcase his songwriting abilities and allow the audience that was hanging on his every word to get to know him, well. Back in May, when we were fearing for our lives during the Rapture, we suggested the MGMT re-worked cover “Nature Feels” as being a delightfully sexy Garden of Eden tune to “go out with a bang” to. But the tape possesses plenty more gems where that came from: a romance with a porn star dental student is illustrated beautifully on “Novacane,” an exorcism and disposal of broken hearts turns into an enchanting car ride to the ocean on “Swim Good,” and a snippet from Nicole Kidman’s character in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut anchors the end of fan favorite track, “Love Crimes.”

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