Pras and O.D.B. featuring Mya - "Ghetto Supastar"

"Ghetto Supastar" came out in 1998 and featured on the soundtrack to the movie Bullworth. It was Pras Michel's only hit record following his time in the Fugees. I was eleven at the time this song was released and I still love every second of it. It's built around the tune of "Islands in the Stream" and features contributions from Mya and two verses from O.D.B.

When the whole crew performed the hit at the '98 (or was it '99?) MTV VMAs, sparks quite literally flew. O.D.B. steals the show with some truly unexpected vibrato vocal stylings (check it out, the guy was actually doing some opera shit). The climax comes right at the end of the performance, when Pras has to grab the inebriated MC and pull him off of a grate near the front of the stage. Fireworks come flying up from that exact spot two seconds later. The first clip below is the VMAs performance, the second is the song's now classic original video.

VMAs:


Original vid:

Electric Shock: CP3's Almost Quadruple-Double

As I mentioned in my end of year post, the New Orleans Hornets' Chris Paul is one of my favorite point guards in the NBA. Well, last night he turned in another phenomenal performance. Paul positively incinerated Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks (the most loathsome franchise in the entire league), ending the game with a near quadruple-double.

His stats for the night:

Minutes: 42
Rebounds: 10
Assists: 11
Steals: 7
Blocks: 0
Turnovers: 2
Personal Fouls: 1
Points: 33

Unreal. At this rate, CP3 is surely headed for the history books. Okay, he's young. Okay, the Hornets aren't the best team in the league or even in their conference. Fact is, the guy plays a tremendous all-around game that defies easy criticism. So give it time. NOLA will likely emerge as a dominant force in the west soon enough. If not, we'll see this budding hall-of-famer burning up the hardwood at the helm of some other ascendant franchise. Whatever happens, I tremble at the mere thought of what a shape-shifting distributor like Paul might achieve.

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Part 2

On an unrelated note, Damon Albarn played some demos for the new Gorillaz album on the BBC the other day. Hit the play button below to rock "Electric Shock," a sidewinder of a track that starts off with a weird orchestral bit before transmogrifying. The final half is a funky little electropop jam that's equal parts Afrika Bambaataa, Cibo Matto, and the music of Sonic the Hedgehog.



One presumes these demos aren't fully fleshed out yet, but they're interesting nonetheless. What'd really be interesting, though, is more info concerning this Blur reunion (new album, guys?)

Anderson, It Was Really Nothing

Today, in a blog post bemoaning the lack of journalistic access to Anderson Cooper's guarded personal life, the Huffington Post finally paid heed to its schoolgirlish sexual frustration over the CNN celebrity news anchor's perceived carnal indifference. Writer Danny Shea, panties obviously in a bunch, could barely control his lusty denouncement of CNN's complicity in what he essentially deems a deplorable example of unjustified P.R. shielding.

He argues, accordingly, that the intimate activities of "America's boyfriend," as he calls Cooper, ought to be inflexibly transparent. How else, friends and countrymen, are we supposed to tell whether or not he's been cheating on us?

In his post, Shea also references the fact that Greta van Susteren and Keith Olbermann have publicly derided this CNN/Cooper conspiracy to mask the truth. Indeed, they have in their own ways jealously referred to the cold-blooded reporter as a shameless "experiment" in mass marketing.

(Ah, but Greta my dear, remember when you, too, were marketable?)

Olbermann, in an interview with Men's Journal, lashed out by saying, "You can't move this big mass of personal stuff out for public display [referring to Cooper's memoirs about the deaths of his father and brother], then people ask questions and you say, 'Oh, no, I didn't say there was going to be any questions.' It's the same thing as the Bush administration saying, 'We're going to war, but you really aren't allowed to know why.' "

This level of outrage seems more than a little disproportionate to the alleged crime. I mean, really Mr. Olbermann? Is Anderson Cooper's (admittedly) prudish reticence over the details of his personal life actually tantamount to the Bush administration's avoidance of explaining the war in Iraq? Let's be honest, now.

Odds are, people will soon get over their restless desires for all the dirty details on this mysterious, slate-gray Aryan. It's just the way of the world in this age of ADHD. The age of iPhones and Blackberries. Sooner or later, though, we'll all have to move on to more important things, like why is there such a dearth of interesting and responsible journalism on TV?

As to the scintillating gossip about Cooper's sexual preference, why not just transfer the issue over to this guy:



It's been done before.

"I skip on the handshakes, I'm straight."

If you're like me, you miss out on a lot of new stuff simply because you can't muster the emotional effort it takes keeping stride with the hype machine (99% of the time a wasted effort). Last year, though, I happened to catch the Cool Kids–a great new hip hop duo out of Chicago–when they opened for Q-Tip at the Highline Ballroom in New York.

Originally MySpace sensations, MCs Mikey and Chuck have gotten a ton of multimedia exposure over the last twelve months. Among the things they've done is appear performing their hit single, "Black Mags" in a recent Rhapsody commercial, tour with M.I.A., and become bonus playable characters in this year's installment of the NBA 2K franchise. Too bad they seem to be Pistons fans.

Released last summer, their album The Bakesale is a compact affair held together by über spare homemade beats and a healthy amount of pitch adjustment. It's real success, though, lies in its infectious, easy-going vibe and catchy lyrics. The songs are positive, cocky, and tons of fun–adjectives you really can't tether to the majority of mainstream rappers these days (and don't go pinning it all on emo king Kanye, either).

"Black Mags"

Lil Wayne On The Fast Track To Becoming the Next David Bowie

A trend that appears to be resurfacing these days is the hip-hop artist crossing over into rock music. Kanye insisted that 808s & Heartbreaks was a pop album and that certain emotions within his heart"couldn't be expressed through rapping". Under the alias Percival Fats, Lupe Fiasco has started a rock outfit known as Japanese Cartoon which lists such indie dignitaries as Hunter S. Thompson and Joy Division as influences. The whole project reminds me of Gorillaz sans the originality and authentic British accent.

It now appears that artiste extraordinaire Lil Wayne is joining the fray:

According to up-and-coming Canadian hip-hop artist Drake, Lil Wayne has been hard at work on a rock-oriented follow-up to last year's blockbuster Tha Carter III "Wayne's coming out with a new album, it's a rock album. A complete rock album," Drake said, before explaining his new direction was partially inspired by Kanye West's ambitious new record, 808s and Heartbreaks

Awesome. Rock and roll is officially cool again with trailblazers like Lil Wayne at the helm. We can likely attribute some of this newfound interest to the phenomena of plastic instrument music games. I, for one, welcome our new musical overlords if it means more of this:

Let's all give a round of applause to the meanest shredder since Fred Durst!