Well, well, well. Yeezus is now officially available for download on Kanye’s website. And above is a promo video inspired by a scene from American Psycho that features Scott Disick in Christian Bale’s role and Jonathan Cheban in Jared Leto’s role.
Enjoy!
I’ve never heard of the Cryptic Murmurs prior to today, and I’m guessing you haven’t either, but I have to tip my cap to them for the stroke of marketing genius that inspired them to make a song about Anderson Cooper. The formula is simple: make a song about Anderson Cooper, increase your chances of getting mentioned on his show dramatically. It’s a sure fire formula for success that I’m sure dozens of aspiring rappers will soon imitate.
That said, the song they made isn’t terrible and it’s filled with some pretty fun lyrics. The moneyshot: “Stole his hair from the main of Pegasus.” That’s some inspiring sh*t right there, folks. Enjoy…
For your sake, I hope it wasn’t Tiny Tim. Those are some tulips that should NOT be tiptoed through. Anyway, the good folks at Gorilla Mask directed us to pbump.net, which will tell you “what your parents were probably having sex to when you were conceived,” if you dare. I, for one, am terrified, but here goes nothing.
/types in August 6, 1987
“We’re about to see a goddamned Beatle.” You couldn’t walk five feet without hearing at least one person utter that glowing refrain during night two of Bonnaroo around the What Stage (not that you could walk five feet; by nightfall, the 16-acre Manchester, Tennessee, farm was packed to the silo with 70,000 people). Paul McCartney was about to take the stage, and yes, he was a goddamned Beatle, as well as a goddamn Wing and goddamn one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songwriters of all-time. The man wrote “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” for goddamn sake.
And then we saw him, Mecca, looking a bit looser than in his Beatle days, but still youthful, forever The Cute One. For two and a half hours, he played classic after classic, everything from pumped versions of “Eight Days of Week,” “Helter Skelter,” and “All My Loving” to pyrotechnic power ballad “Live and Let Die” to loving tributes to George and John with “Something” and “Here Today” to the delicate “Yesterday” and “Blackbird,” where part of the stage he stood on rose 30 feet in the air, giving the people a half-mile away a sight line to him and his acoustic guitar.
It was a well thought out, well paced lively show, with the set list divided unevenly, though mercifully between a staggered amount of Beatles songs…and everything else. McCartney knows how to work his audience, whether through well-worn stories about the time Jimi Hendrix tried to get Eric Clapton to tune his guitar, or comments about the delectable smell of marijuana floating through the air, and while it would have come across as useless pandering coming from most, who are we to second guess Paul McCartney? He’s a goddamn Beatle; we’re not even a Ringo.
With that said, though we posted about our 14 favorite sets from Bonnaroo 2013 earlier today, we feel as though Sir Paul deserves some stand-alone recognition, so here ya go. All photos via Nadia Chaudhury.
If you saw the Jay-Z/Samsung promo that ran during the NBA Finals last night, you saw what appeared to be a bare-footed, aging white hippie with a ZZ Top-esque beard kicking it in a studio with the likes of Pharrell, Timbaland, Swizz Beatz and, of course, Jay-Z. The visual contrast between the men was, well, striking, as the aforementioned aging white hippie dude, let’s face it, didn’t really seem to fit in with the rest of the crew. However, he definitely belonged there: that man was legendary producer Rick Rubin.
I’ve found myself sort of fascinated with Rubin of late. It started when I saw Dave Grohl’s documentary Sound City back in February, a documentary Rubin was featured prominently in. At the time I knew Rick Rubin by name and knew that he was a music producer of significant note, but I didn’t know much about him beyond that. (For some random reason, I also knew that he was once in a punk band called The Pricks and got kicked out of CBGB’s for getting into a fight with audience members, but that’s neither here nor there.) I did not know, for instance, that the reach of this “guru” extended far beyond hip-hop, which is where he made his name early in career as the co-founder (along with Russell Simmons) of Def Jam records, and had touched virtually every modern genre of music imaginable. I also had no idea what he looked like and didn’t really expect him to look like at all an aging white hippie with a ZZ Top-esque beard.
In the center of Bonnaroo, the aptly-named Centeroo, lies a mushroom. Not an edible mushroom, though there was plenty of that going around, too, but rather, a fountain in the shape of a mushroom. It was where many thankful attendees cooled off during the sun-drenched four day festival, and where just as many showered, which isn’t nearly as gross as it sounds. It was also where, depending on where you were standing, you could see Beach House on one stage, hear Björk and the Lumineers on two others, and be surrounded by vendors hawking everything from beer to e-cigarettes, not to mention gaze at festival goers conversing, ferris wheeling, hula hooping, and, well, showering, if you were into that kind of thing. Centeroo was where so much of Bonnaroo’s action took place…
…except for the music part. And that’s kind of the point of a music festival. We weren’t able to see every band we wanted to (so mad about missing Wu-Tang Clan and the R. Kelly/Jim James jam), which is also kind of the point of a music festival, but we saw some amazing performances. Here are our 14 favorites, complete with photos by Nadia Chaudhury.
I saw Man of Steel over the weekend. At one point I considered walking out. I’m just not one for special effects and I just thought that it was way too special effects-y. And long. Too many long special effects-laden scenes — especially the fight scenes, which I felt bordered on ridiculous – were starting to get to me.
However, I stuck it out and overall don’t regret doing so. I wound up enjoying the movie more than I did not enjoy it. I was even moved to tears by one scene. (The Costner/tornado scene…those who have seen the movie know what I’m talking about.) But someone else saw the movie over the weekend, thought about walking out, and actually did it. That person was Frank Ocean,
Back in 2007, Kanye West released a song called “Big Brother” – one of his most introspective tracks ever – about his “sibling rivalry” with Jay-Z. The premise behind the rivalry was that Jay-Z was always trying to one-up his younger counterpart. Well, it’s time for Yeezus to dust off his list of gripes and consider a sequel as Jay-Z has just overshadowed little bro again. Read the rest of this entry »
Publicity stunts don’t get much more straightforward than this. Pink Floyd has announced that they’ll release their entire catalog on Spotify, provided you listen to their seminal song “Wish You Were Here” one million times. No, really. Read the rest of this entry »
