Kanye West + Rihanna + N.E.R.D. + Lupe Fiasco
Madison Square Garden
May 14, 2008

A few years back, I read an interview with Dr. Dre in which he talked up his next big touring idea: a bastardized rap musical. The idea was that the songs would somehow fit the show's narrative logic; an undercover cop would get shot, say, and Snoop and Dre would emerge to do "Deep Cover." "It could work," said Dre, and I remember thinking No. No, it couldn't. Needless to say, it never did, and maybe the sheer galling logistics of the challenge were what ended up driving Dre into permanent semi-seclusion. But on his ridiculously ambitious new Glow in the Dark tour, Kanye West is trying something analogous, delivering his set in the form of a loose narrative and waiting until the very end to break character. That Kanye's tastes tend toward stylized sci-fi rather than grimy gunplay only renders the very concept more insane. And yet there Kanye was, standing alone amid dry ice and elaborate lights, talking with an on-board spaceship computer named Jane rather than the thousands assembled to see him. In a show-opening voice-over, Kayne outlined the story's relevant details: Earth is dead, and so Kanye and his spaceship leave to search the universe for inspiration, crashing on an alien planet as the narrative begins.

TV tapings are weird. They're not so much live shows as simulations of live shows, and even if you're legitimately amped to be there, you can't help but feel like an extra in someone else's movie when people are telling you to applaud on cue. Before last night, I'd only ever been to one of these things: Jay-Z's episode of VH1 Storytellers, which I've never written about at length because the VH1 people who let me in told me that they wanted me to sit on a review until the episode was about to air. At that show, Jay ran through about half of American Gangster with his touring band, telling stories about how these songs related to scenes from specific gangster movies, not scenes from his actual life. When he finished his set, he restarted it from the beginning and did the whole thing over again so the cameras could get some different angles. That night, I was totally happy to be there. It was a Jay-Z show, after all, and I was hearing most of these songs for the first time. It was only sort of boring in retrospect. The Roots, who taped an episode of VH1 Soul's SoulStage last night, can't coast on that sort of mysterious starpower. They've got the tightest, most furious live show in rap, but it's exactly the sort of show that the intangibles of a TV taping might derail. It's hard to build up any sort of momentum, after all, when you have to make room for commercial breaks every ten minutes or when an assistant director might run onstage mid-song, waving his hands and asking you to start it over from the top.

Reasons that Scarlett Johansson would want to record an album of Tom Waits covers abound. From the most cynical possible angle, she's an indie-film actress who needs to ramp up her cool-chick bona fides after getting engaged to Van Wilder and appearing on every lad-mag hottest-chicks-ever countdown and making a Michael Bay movie (though The Island, I'll argue, was a whole hell of a lot better than Match Point). More to the point, though, I know at least five people who, given the money, time, and fame necessary to record Tom Waits tribute albums, would do the exact same thing. And in any case, Johansson proves on Anywhere I Lay My Head that she's a better junk-blues weirdo than Waits is an indie-film actor these days; see Wristcutters: A Love Story, or don't. Even the most sympathetic critics have to concede that Anywhere I Lay My Head Johansson's Waits love-letter, is a fundamentally ridiculous enterprise, almost stunning in its total lack of need to exist. (Sean Fennessey: "This album is sort of like if the 25-man roster of the New York Mets came to my office and rapped the Pharcyde’s 'She Said' at me. Two things I love dearly coming together - and it’s not quite right.") It also seems guaranteed to vengefully piss off a certain segment of the population; when I mentioned that I really like the album at the Voice editorial staff meeting today, a howl of protest went up. The people who people who deeply love Waits's bruised, scraggly rambles, after all, are generally exactly the people who won't take kindly to a rich and famous and mindbendingly pretty actress offering her interpretations of these songs. But there's something to be said for the sheer ballsiness of the exercise, and something more for the fact that the end product sounds nothing like a Tom Waits record.

If there's one overarching reason why I write about music the way I do, it's the Singles column that Charles Aaron wrote in Spin in the mid-to-late 90s, so assign blame accordingly. Back when the entire rock-critical universe had set up shop on Eddie Vedder's dick, Aaron danced across the pop playground with total impunity, using that singles-review format to unload on whatever caught his ear. Given that there's no one music thing happening today that really demands comment, I thought it'd fun to completely rip off Aaron's column for a day. I might even make this a regular thing, unless Aaron tells me to stop or something.

Coldplay: "Violet Hill"

A hamfisted attempt at canyon-spanning big-rock catharsis that endears on the strength of its overbearing puppydog earnestness. These guys are totally going for it! Searingly meaningless lyrics! Impeccably manicured squalls of fuzzed-out guitar! Brian Eno organ-sustain, courtesy of the real Brian Eno! Overwrought, ambitious stadium-rock silliness like this is always a noble endeavor, especially considering that these guys could absolutely get away with soundtracking very special Grey's Anatomy episodes for the rest of their lives.

I'm going to miss Jason Castro. I'm not going to miss him because he was a particularly great American Idol contestant or anything; in retrospect, he was a pretty terrible fit for the show's ballad-hawking chops-intensive blueprint. In terms of pure vocal skill, Castro couldn't come anywhere near any of the other serious contenders this season. He had no particular range, cooing everything in a near-whisper and never letting loose with the big crashing song-ending notes that have long been the show's money-shot moments. As a performer, he rarely ventured out from behind his guitar, awkwardly bobbing across the stage whenever he wasn't parked on a stool. And he showed no real acumen for the show's PR-hustle element, famously telling Entertainment Weekly that he didn't especially care how long he lasted on the show. But that last point is actually what made Castro a fascinating figure in an otherwise near-unwatchable season. I can't think of a single other contestant in American Idol history who so visibly disdained the whole structure of the show.

- Hotstylz: "Lookin' Boy [feat. Yung Joc]"
- Bun B: "Damn I'm Cold [feat. Lil Wayne]"
- Montgomery Gentry: "Long Line of Losers"
- Nine Inch Nails: "Discipline"

Jay-Z + Mary J. Blige + The-Dream
Madison Square Garden
May 6, 2008

So Jay-Z has officially entered the bourgie Vegas-glitz stage of his career, the part where he can happily, triumphantly coast on past achievements from now until whenever. He doesn't make music for kids anymore; he makes expensively produced grown-folks soul-rap that leans enormously on his own iconic persona. This is Sinatra/Billy Joel territory; he'll be able to effortlessly sell out Madison Square Garden anytime he feels like it for the rest of his life. Entering center-stage alongside Mary J. Blige with a massive dressed-up twenty-some-piece band behind him last night, getting the obligatory "Can't Knock the Hustle" out of the way first, he looked like someone with nothing to prove. Every past Jay-Z hometown show I've seen has been a staged spectacle of some sort, a deluge of surprise guest-appearances and headline-grabbing pyrotechnics. This one wasn't like that; it was the second of a three-night Garden run, another stop on a long tour. I've heard reports from other cities that Jay seemed detached and unmotivated onstage, as well we might expect. Since this tour started, after all, he's married Beyonce, signed an absurd $150 million LiveNation deal, and entangled himself in a bitter quagmire of a blood-feud with Washington Wizards shooting guard DeShawn Stevenson. And still he's routinely responsible for great moments like this YouTube clip of him and Bun B in Houston. Jay just might become the first rapper to successfully enter that classic-rock arena-staple zone where he can tour on past hits forever and nobody cares whether or not he's still putting out new music.

Maybe it's insane to quibble when one of your childhood musical heroes dumps a gang of almost-free music on the internet, but I wasn't one of the overjoyed faithful when Trent Reznor unleashed the 4-CD Nine Inch Nails song-sketch marathon Ghosts I-IV on the world a couple of months back. For all the middleman-cutting democracy of its release, Ghosts struck me as a massively indulgent and vaguely ridiculous rock-star move, Reznor clearing out his not-quite-there file and trusting that it was worth something. By itself, none of the set's 36 tracks made for more than a half-interesting rumble; taken as a whole, the whole thing blurred into an indistinct fog of vintage Reznor production-tricks. Reviewing the thing for Pitchfork, I wondered whether Reznor's break from the major-label system that spawned him meant we'd never get a good song out of him again. With a hardcore fanbase willing to buy his leftovers and no music-business military-industrial complex tutting over his shoulder, Reznor was now free to keep puttering around his studio from now until infinity. Turns out I needn't have worried. Reznor might not still be the brilliant slither-pop mind he was when he made Pretty Hate Machine, but he's still writing songs, and now he's giving them away without even asking us for five bucks in return.

Matthew Fluxblog posted an interesting piece today about No Age, the LA dreampunk duo currently basking in the sort of critical adoration usually reserved for shitty Animal Collective descendants. Matthew's point resonates for me: No Age is just now releasing its first proper album, and they're maybe still figuring out who they are as a band; these immediate critical hosannas aren't going to help them get there any faster. Even on a day when Nine Inch Nails have suddenly dropped a late Easter present of a surprise free album, No Age have completely dominated internet music-chatter. Matthew's post might, in fact, be the first ambivalent critical reaction I've seen to anything No Age-related. Full disclosure blah blah blah, but Pitchfork today gave Nouns its highest numerically-rated review of 2008 thus far, and even the cranks over at Decibel are on board. They're playing another giant outdoor festival just about every weekend this summer, and half the nightly patrons at the Smell, the LA DIY venue they've come to embody, are probably journalists honing trend-pieces at this point. This band is loved, and I can mostly understand why.

Last year was a bad year for rap, but at least a few people got to put out albums. We're in the fifth month of 2008, and the first thoroughly solid major-label rap album, the Roots' Rising Down, only just hit stores on Tuesday. Nobody's making any money anymore, and labels are habitually pushing records back until they get the vaguest indication that the things might move a couple of copies; I'm already looking forward to the third straight fourth-quarter deluge. These days, practically every working rapper considers himself a scrappy underdog whose label doesn't understand him, and that includes relative commercial titans like 50 Cent. But rap albums are still coming out; they're just coming out on indies that know better than to commit actual money to marketing these things. A whole left-behind generation of mid-90s NY rappers and their stylistic descendants are now shifting indie, releasing low-overhead product to devoted fanbases and realizing that their chances for crossover stardom are over. And considering the surprising number of comments-section denizens requesting that I say something about Guilty Simpson's Ode to the Ghetto, these guys are doing something right, so let's have a look.

- Young Buck: "My Interview"
- Prodigy: "I Want Out [feat. Un Pacino & Havoc]"
- Atmosphere: "Your Glasshouse"
- No Age: "Sleeper Hold"

And now the one I recorded yesterday. Songs:

- T.I.: "No Matter What"
- Kidz in the Hall: "Driving Down the Block Remix [feat. Cool Kids, Pusha T & Bun B]"
- Killer Mike: "2 Sides [feat. Shawty Lo]"
- Constantines: "Brother Run Them Down"

T.I. has had some time to think. Since his ridiculously dumb machine-gun arrest last fall, he's been on house arrest, lounging around his mansion in his bathrobe and slippers, possibly watching a whole lot of TV, occasionally issuing reassuring YouTube missives to his faithful. And working on music. For the first time since his debut album, T.I. is reportedly writing down his lyrics rather than arranging them in his head. We first heard the results on the remix of Lupe Fiasco's "Superstar," were Tip slip-slid his familiar slur all over the track with a newly joyous mastery. T.I. shared that track with Lupe and with Young Jeezy, both at or near the top of their respective games, and he managed to outdo the both of them by finding a way to fuse their best qualities: Lupe's showily convoluted verbosity with Jeezy's domineering confidence. That track emerged weeks before the the details of T.I.'s blessedly lenient plea-bargain became public, and already Tip sounded completely rested and refreshed. Last year's T.I. vs. T.I.P., even with its handful of highlights, felt like a forced lurch toward introspection, but the T.I. on the "Superstar" remix was miles removed from that one, a near-miracle considering all the time he was then staring down. Well, that T.I. is apparently here for at least a little while longer. "No Matter What," the first thing we've heard yet from the forthcoming album Paper Chase, leaked earlier this week (Nah Right has the mp3), and it might herald a new chapter in this guy's artistic life. And given that his plea allowed him to take a whole bunch of personal time before he starts serving his year in prison (enough time, incredibly, to finish his album and to film a role in some bank-heist movie) we'll probably get to hear a whole lot more of this T.I. I'm seriously amped about it.

OK, so something really actually bad happened on American Idol last night, and nobody seems entirely sure yet what it means. This was Neil Diamond week, and all the contestants had to sing two songs, which made for a completely rushed and chaotic show. The judges withheld their comments until all the contestants had a chance to sing one song each, but Paula Abdul, when she finally got a chance to talk, talked about both of the songs Jason Castro had sung. After a long, uncomfortable pause, Randy Jackson had to jump in to tell her that he'd only sung one song. Ryan Seacrest tried to make a joke out of it. Paula said, "This is hard!" Paula is, of course, a notorious space-cadet, but hallucinating a whole other song out of thin air is some real other shit. The clip made all the morning news shows this morning, and conspiracy theories are circulating all over the place. It's entirely possible that Paula slipped up like that because the show's producers have been telling her what to say before every show and thusly manipulating the results. This explanation would seem to jibe with plenty of the show's other problems this season. Paula and Randy, for instance, have been riding especially hard for David Archuleta, who's been straight-up awful for the past several weeks, and plenty of anonymous internet types are speculating that the show's producers consider Archuleta to be the most potentially marketable of this batch of contestants. And this week, Syesha Mercado effortlessly outsang everyone else on the show, and the judges all patted her on the head and said she'll do great on Broadway, the purgatory that will always embrace former Idol castmembers.

The new Atmosphere album is called When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. The album cover is just that title and the group's name printed in gold-leaf against a plain black background on a cloth-bound book the size of a CD. In between the CD and a bonus DVD that I'll probably never watch, we get the full lyrics to every track on the album along with a fully illustrated children's book, which might've even been illustrated by Slug or Ant. The only guests credited on the liner notes whose names I recognize are TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe, who coos wordlessly deep in the mix throughout "Your Glasshouse," and Tom Waits, who beatboxes on "The Waitress." Convincing Tom Waits to beatbox on your record is something like getting Paul McCartney to crunch on celery in the background. (Waits, for the record, beatboxes like a fourth-grader during recess. Absolutely nothing about his appearance gives away that it's him mouth-farting.) No non-Slug rappers show up on Lemons; we don't even get the customary battle-rap throwdown with Brother Ali. I'm not sure why Slug didn't go ahead and scream that this album is a serious artistic statement at the top of the first track; he does everything else possible to pound that message home.

When I first did one of these things last month, I had this idea that the iTunes singles chart was this total batshit free-for-all, and I'd have to write these entries all the time just to keep up with the constant flux. Turns out that actively watching this chart is a fairly boring exercise. Little hits, for reasons explicable and not, will flit briefly through the top ten's lower reaches. Trace Adkins's transcendently goopy maturity-ballad "You're Gonna Miss This" had a moment because of something to do with the celebrity version of The Apprentice, and American Idol launched at least one dead Hawaiian ukulele player into the top ten for a week or so, but the top spots have been stuck in a "4 Minutes"/"No Air"/"Lollipop"/"Bleeding Love" stasis for weeks now. In the past few days, though, there's finally been a bit of movement, or at least enough for me to do another of these things.

Chris Brown: "Forever." This comes from one of those bullshit special-edition album-reissues where a sputtering record industry tacks another track or two onto one of their few earners and sends it back out into the world in the hopes that it will convince a few dumb kids to re-buy the thing. Contemptible origins aside, though, this is a pretty good example of the R&B radio's sea-change shift toward Euro trance-pop. That shift remains endlessly fascinating to me: Hey, look, we now have a post-race strain of pop music! And it's not very good! This is OK, though. I'll take CB's doe-eyed vulnerability over T-Pain's mechanized squeak every time, and here he's even more fake-naive than usual. Polow da Don produces and, as usual, steals whatever he wants from the last two years of Timbaland: clippity-clop woodblocks from "Say It Right," dippy emo house-bleeps from "My Love." Vocoder isn't excessive. Lyrics concern dance as personal liberation, which never gets old. Questionable lyric: "Tonight is the night to join me in the middle of ecstasy"; that grammar just looks wrong. Someone stands to make a whole lot of money from this song. 6.1