#Hashtags are probably the bane of your Twitter existence. You no doubt follow people who either use them too much or in the strangest possible ways. Chances are, you regularly do the same. #DGAF. Currently, there are two songs that begin with a #hashtag in the Top 20. it's the most 'sign o' the times' moment of #2013 so far. The concept of a song or album including the little symbol is so new that # is still one of the forbidden characters on Wikipedia, and Will.i.am's #willpower is an example of what Wiki does in the case of an article necessitating the character in its title.

See also: Will.I.Am Kickstarts The Perhaps-Inevitable Trend Of Naming Albums After Hashtags

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Have you been feeling that the National Anthem is getting a bit tired? Feel like you need to spice up your sense of patriotism? Well, then thank God for the internet and R. Kelly.

See also: What's So Funny About A Little Bump N' Grind? R. Kelly, Frank Ocean, And The "Right" Kind Of R&B

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Jeremie Harris as "The Fresh Prince"

By now you've no doubt seen the YouTube video wherein the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is pushed through 64 languages of Google Translate and back into English. The collective known as CDZA--who make experimental music videos--are responsible for the inventive clip. We spoke to CDZA co-founders Joe Sabia, Michael Thurber, and Matt McCorkle as well as actor and Will Smith-avatar Jeremie Harris about how the idea of a multi-lingual deconstruction of the classic theme came to be and why the word "apricot" makes so many appearances.

See also:Will Smith: Not Dead

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Why do people hate Nickelback enough to craft petitions inveighing against their inclusion in the halftime entertainment of a regular-season NFL game? (Even the Black Eyed Peas' Super Bowl appearance didn't inspire such e-ire!) I tried to figure this out two weeks ago and maybe sorta did, at least a little, although the argument put forth also inspired more arguing. (On the bright side, one commenter who had been confusing them with Creed all this time got to have the scales fall from his eyes. Congratulations, dude!) In a video produced by Funny Or Die, the bandmembers themselves try to figure out why they're so despised, and they get an assist from a badly bewigged Paul Scheer (playing one of those slimy music-biz exec types who still exist as a credible archetype even though we're not exactly living in the go-go Phil Collins metavideo era anymore) and, eventually, a bunch of Detroit-themed costumes. Clip below.

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The forthcoming album from will.i.am, lead Black Eyed Pea and tireless trend-rider, is called #WILLPOWER, and yes, the pound sign is intentional; apparently he's so interested in willing (ha!) himself into the Internet-enabled public consciousness, he's named his album in the style of Twitter's "hashtags," which are used to either conveniently organize chatter about particular topics or to provide compressed metacommentary on one's tweeted sentiments. The practice of hashtagging also helped coin the name of the subgenre of "hashtag rap," which Kanye West (perhaps ill-advisedly) takes claim for spawning and which he once defined thusly: "The hashtag rap—that's what we call it when you take the 'like' or 'as' out of the metaphor. 'Flex, sweater red... FIRETRUCK.' Everybody raps like that, right? That's really spawned from like 'Barry Bonds': 'Here's another hit... BARRY BONDS.'" So it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that "Hard," the album's first single, liberally uses the hashtag-rap trope, with one particularly excruciating verse culminating like this: "this beat is the shit/ feces." Hey, Ludacris, you should send will.i.am a fruit basket or something!

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For better or worse one of 2011's most notable music stars is Rebecca Black, the California tween whose warbling of the inanity-filled ode to weekends "Friday" lit up the Internet—and nearly resulted in a slight recalibration of the formula for a "successful" pop song. (Awkwardly pronouncing a common word over the simplest sing-song melody = a sorely underexploited recipe for brain glue. Watch out for this tactic to be used over and over again in 2012, probably over thudding Eurohouse beats.) Her new video "Person Of Interest" has weird crime-scene imagery, a romantic counterpart who resembles a mirror-image Black, and lots of skee-ball shots. But is it designed for the express purpose of profiting off the Internet's negative attention? Our mathematical analysis below.

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If you get into work today and hear people chattering about a young singer named Rebecca Black, no, you haven't been time-warped back to March; the California teen made the jump to the big screen last night, performing an under-two-minute blend of "Friday" and her jab at her detractors "My Moment" on a YouTube-synergistic episode of the still-kicking freakshow America's Got Talent. Black is still in "take me seriously" mode, apparently, and she ditched the nasal, flat, Ke$ha-like affect that she displayed on the recorded version of "Friday" to actually sing the thing. Sigh. Why does nobody know how to have fun anymore?

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Did you call your grandmother today?

Hugs From Drake. So simple, so pure, so necessary. Look at Drake, as he goes in for the diving hug with the Biebs. Look at Drake, as he hugs Rihanna, eyeing his assistant to make sure he's not going to be late for his next appointment. Look at Drake, nestling his head in the crook of Weezy's shoulder, thanking him doing such a great job on their performance. The best part about this Tumblr, besides it giving hope to fans everywhere that one day they will get their hug, is that it will be infinitely updated, because the only thing Drake loves more than sweaters is hugging. Thank you, internet, and special thanks to former Voice blogger/eternal Drake enthusiast @joecoscarelli for the tip.

Bacardi "Like It Live" With Kid Cudi
Terminal 5
Monday, June 13

Better than: Sleeping. Just kidding!

The thought behind Bacardi's "Like It Live" marketing campaign is simple: if people "like" something on Facebook, they must love it in real life. So as soon as you put a bunch of "like"-able things in one big room—say, one the size of Terminal 5 —that event automatically becomes one to remember, a night that will never be topped.

But that's not true at all. You throw a bunch of shit together and you get a Turducken.

You "like" Playboy bunnies? They're having a pillow fight (sort of) in the middle of the crowd. You "like" video games? Here's an arcade in the entryway. You "like" basketball? The very-retired Allan Houston and Ron Harper are going to go on the roof and teach you how to hoop (assuming they remember)!

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Yesterday Brooklyn Vegan posted a query about about British act playing Mercury Lounge on May 27; the act goes by the name the Modern Weepers, and the Merc site claims that the Mancunian act is "well travelled and well known in their native England" and "thrill[s] audiences and critics alike with their electronic melodies and classic Mope Rock lyrics." But thanks to there being little info on the band on the web--there's the bio on the Merc site, the seemingly MS Paint-produced logo at left, and a brand-new, deliberately cryptic Twitter account that follows Okkervil River, Pitchfork, Weezer, and Mike Posner--BV's innocent query (tagged, provocatively, with "secret show") has resulted in 500-some-odd speculative comments, zero real answers as to who this band in disguise might be, and a sold-out show for something that could just be a big old fake-out. (I'm hoping for The Tears, myself--get the play on words??--although Brett Anderson might be tired after three shows in Dublin spotlighting old Suede catalog that week.) 10 answers from the name-eschewing BV crowd and their odds of being true, after the jump.

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