As much the Four Evangelists as they are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Britney, Jay-Z, Kanye, and GaGa – our proud and prestigious pillars of Pop – stood tall and held rapturous court this year as the cause and cure for our ailing culture…
I’m sitting here about to get my next tattoo at a popular tattoo shop in downtown Atlanta. This next tattoo is the one with the most meaning. It’s maktub. Maktub is Arabic for ‘it was written’. A strong, spiritual sentiment that eludes many to think of faith and destiny, all heavy religious concepts automatically once the denotation is learned. I picked up the phrase from one of my favorite books, The Alchemist. But I’m getting it tattooed on me. So, a religious thought is becoming a fashionable trivial decoration on my body. This trend is not rare in our society. I’m participating in seemingly the bastardization of a sacred world. Making things that are of God be also in vogue, no matter what the eventual results may be. Even when those results are most commonly breaking the sacred and holy.
Just like any other year, 2011 was a musical hodgepodge. We had our queen bees and our wanna be’s, our good, bad, ugly, uglier, and everything in between. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say this year brought the tears, the pain, the Acid, and the rain. And then of course, there was “Ni**as in Paris.” On that note, I’ll leave you with the music. Ladies and Gentleman, the Soundtrack of 2011:
If Miami had a beat, Urban Noize produced it. After years of tirelessly remixing tracks by the best artists in Urban and Pop Music, the Miami-based twin producer duo has perfected their version of the Mash Up.
FAMEKILL$, a conceptual mixtape presented by GREATeclectic & Swiper Bootz which, intertwines the music of Kanye West & Lady GaGa is finally available for free download now.
Graduation is that “October Song” masterpiece: a piece of art that needs no external interpretation because it is complete in and of itself. At the most superficial and benign level, Kanye is Alec Trebeck and Graduation is Jeopardy: a series of answers engaging you to question. It is a fact that when immersed in the surreal, people’s ability to make sense of the world around them is increased. The fragmented fantastical enhances our ability to connect themes and build structure — when given fantasy we are best equipped to perceive reality. Thus is Kanye’s Graduation. An artist of West’s caliber is beyond “this world;” his ability to connect words, ideas, art forms, the abstract and concrete is unreal. Nowhere is this more present than in his masterful encapsulation of modern life – above and below: Graduation.
Right now it seems we are caught in the midst of a massive sea change, most glaringly evident in our Transatlantic home-away-from-home… time and space clash radically across the pond’s many currents… on one hand we have a tale of two cities upon a hill: London on behalf of Mother England, and DC on behalf of Lady Liberty… on the other we have a tale of two soundtracks… Watch the Throne versus The Adventures of Slick Rick… as Jay-Z and Kanye tout the impact and rap/hip-hop’s monarchical status of late – literally now - it would seem as if the future looks back to its golden age. As our generation’s defiance was defined by a one Posted Bill’s existential debate over “what the definition of ‘is’ ‘is’” – young subjective somethings mulling monotone over the “whys” of contemporary ills, micromanaging small fires, hyperfocusing on the nuanced semantics, preserving their fame, sealing their shame, and talking themselves out of a hole they inevitably talked themselves into needlessly… Essentially, just as Slick Willy’s surgically precise wordsmithing paved the way for triumph through hazy abstractions, it seems now as we spearhead our generational voyage towards an age of post-post-modernism, so we shift focus to our literal forefathering England – five hours, and seemingly lifetimes – ahead for ear-to-the-concrete countercultural guidance…
Welcome to VMA 2011: no host, west coast, teenage dreams, saccharin-infused schemes – welcome to the odd future #bonjournaggers
Pop is pastiche at its finest; sometimes you need nothing more than to collect the right pieces and be the sound canvas. Half of Pop is creating the story, the other half is capturing the stars in that momentary align when the stories converge to recognize themselves
“How many people do you know can take it this far?” Beyoncé howls on the second track of the collaborative effort of Jay-Z and Kanye West. Her soulful bragging about going to Mars and being magnificent is accurate, though. We live in a generation with very few and select bonafide superstars. Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, and Beyoncé are in an exclusive group of musical forces that not only garner success, but to whom people look to see the new wave of where pop music will be orbiting.
