Sunday 29 June 2008

Jay-Z on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross



Can i get an encore?



I came I saw I conquered from record sales to sold out concerts

Jay-Z silenced the haters (once again) with his performance at Glastonbury yesterday. After all the hype surrounding him headlining Jay-Z stepped onto the stage with a guitar and did a rendition of Oasis' wonderwall before launching into 99 problems. Would have loved to see Noel Gallagher's face at that moment, he got offically sonned as Jay went on to perform a medley of hits and showing why he is one of the greatest to ever do it.

Jay's song selection was pretty predictable although he did throw in a few little gems along the way. Right after the line in Blue Magic where he says "money over broads you got it fuck bush" he dropped the acapella for Minority Report of Kingdom Come and he also dropped his verse for A Billie which I wasn't expecting either. As always his performance of Nigga What, Nigga Who was impeccable although it probably went over people's heads abit.

I must say I didn't actually get a chance to watch the performance all the way through as i was sitting in a room full of Jay-Z haters at the time but from what I saw he did a solid show and was a good representative of hip hop culture.

Tuesday 10 June 2008

Tha Carter 3 Review



Ok so I've been listening to Tha Carter 3 for a couple of days now and I'm having trouble finding anything particularly amazing about it. Considering all the hype surrounding the record for me it could do either one of two things. 1)Be a certified classic solidfying Lil Wayne's claims as the best rapper alive or 2) be a complete flop and prove to many that he is not as good as he claims and overrated. It did neither of these things. As I listened more and more I still ended up with the same conclusion. All the tracks I had liked upon the first listen were still the ones I liked after a few more listens (Dr. Carter being the highlight). There weren't any songs that grew on me (Shoot me Down still sounds as boring as it did first time sorry Kanye) with exception maybe to "A Millie" which doesn't sound quite as generic as it did when I first heard it.

All in all this is just a ordinary album. Nothing particularly amazing about it yet not utterly terrible either. Wayne seems to be the kind of rapper you either love or hate and I struggled to come to some sort of conclusion on how I feel about him as an artist. While at times I can't doubt his ability on the mic he seems very inconsistent with it. Sometimes he spits sharp punchlines and cleverly put together rhymes and other times he can ramble incoherently about nothing.

Much like The Game's album The Documentary The Carter 3 is littered with star studded production from the likes of Just Blaze, Kanye West, Cool & Dre and Alchemist to name a few and as far as making the album that will place him among the top artists of today he has most certainly done that. We will just have to see how well it does sales wise to really judge the impact of it but as far as musically I think Weezy has done what he intended to do. Make a good album that people can bump right now but whether we will be playing it in a year or so is debatable.

highlights: Dr Carter, 3 Feet, A Millie, Nothin on Me (Fab & Juelz murder dis beat)

tracks to avoid: Phone Time, La La (who actually likes David Banner's beats?) Got Money