It starts off a little slow, but find out what happened to Jay Z and Co once they graduated and left town. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiGJG8XcEnc]
[Via]
Viewing entries in
Music
B-Boy battles between a Japanese and a Korean crew. At times it resembles rhythmic gymnastics or tumbling set to a beat rather than an actual dance, but they are still dope. Here's another one between a Korean group versus a Russian one (wow, talk about the global appropriation of localized culture...) at a big competition: Part 1 [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=EyJMUxJcYnw]
Part 2 [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=aIZBdrMc2T4]
I was clued into this world by Angry Asian Man who alerted his readers to an interesting Salon article written by Jeff Chang (author of Can't Stop, Won't Stop) who pretty much knows his shit when it comes to this topic. Chang explores why the Koreans are pretty much dominating the hip-hop dance and b-boy battle scene around the world.
B-boy Robin, Russia's assassin in a brown Yankees hat, oversize polo shirt and cargo slacks, circles the floor and then taunts the Koreans by pulling back his eyes. Some in the crowd gasp at Robin's slanted-eye dis. But his subsequent solo, featuring a Tony Hawk-style hand plant and surging rolls broken up with one-armed freezes, is flawless. In what b-boys call a "commando" attack -- a routine in which a run is begun by one or more b-boys but finished by another, named for the post-gang-era Bronx dancers who invented it as a tactic to prevent the other crew from immediately responding -- C4 dives through two Rivers members and leaps straight at Robin, pulling his own eyes back, then miming a castration of Robin. The crowd roars.
Read more here.
Here's a segment on Koreans from the recent documentary Planet B-Boys which looks at this dance and lifestyle as its impacted youths around the world on nearly every continent. I haven't seen this movie yet but I've heard great things about it.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=gNh6qpsuo58]
And this video titled "Run DMZ" featuring a dance off between North and South Korean guards at the DMZ zone is pretty much the best b-boy "music video" I've seen from concept to creation. It's spot on:
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=zKoXG0RjC7E]
I can do exactly .1 percent of the moves shown in any of the aforementioned videos.
Someone had way entirely too much time on their hands. (Beat.)
Thank god for that because this is awesome:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0i3ZigYK4I]
[Thanks N]
A few days ago I was randomly browsing Muxtape and just started listing to one for no particular reason. I don't recall when the realization occurred, but at some point it dawned on me that I had discovered what may be the most depressing collection of 12 songs ever. I hope the compiler of this mux is doing okay. Here is his or her playlist. Note the name of each song. There is nothing subtle here.
- Belle & Sebastian - I Don't Love Anyone
- The Radio Dept - I Don't Need Love, I've Got My Band
- Neutral Milk Hotel - Song Against Sex
- Ballboy - Sex is Boring
- Kind of Like Spitting - Sex Ruins Everything
- The 6ths - Falling Out of Love (With You)
- New Order - Love Less
- The Get Up Kids - No Love
- The Magnetic Fields - I Don't Really Love You Anymore
- Squarepusher - Love Will Tear Us Apart
- The Velvet Teen - No One Will Ever Love You
- Ryan Adams - Love is Hell
Listen here.
The UK music video of Leona Lewis's pop song Bleeding Love: [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=_f8nJSAzsH4]
versus the US version:
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=j7HHspl65g8]
First aired in 1956, it is considered one of the most popularly viewed non-sporting television events in the world. The Eurovision is an annual international music competition held between European countries, where each country submits songs into a contest to determine the single victorious song. Winners have gone on to successful careers, most notably ABBA who won in 1974 with "Waterloo." In 1958 Italy submitted this song which is now widely familiar, "Volare":
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z-DVi0ugelc]
Wired takes a look backstage of the new Weezer music video which "has amassed an impressive 4 million views on YouTube -- and that was even before its televised debut on MTV." [Thanks Moye]
You would have thought that Muxtape (previously mentioned) would have included a "search" functionality, but I suppose the lack of this feature gave the site a certain charm or "authenticity" that reflected the linear nature of the original cassette mixtapes. On the other hand it's the 21st century and it's a real pain in the aural arse to not be able to directly find a particular artist or song.
Someone addressed this issue by creating Muxfind which allows you to search Muxtape for specific artists (no songs). Yay!
And I'm only the messenger here folks: But someone else created a Greasemonkey script that allows you to download, theoretically, as mp3s the songs that others have uploaded to Muxtape.
This Weezer music video features practically every YouTube meme and star from the "dun-dun-dun Hamster" to the Coke+Mentos guys to "Leave Britney Alone" to "Numa Numa guy." [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI]
You can listen online for free to Wilco's performance at The Pageant in St. Louis (Quicktime required). On a personal note, listening to this makes me nostalgic.
Along with every other website and YouTube surfer, a few days ago I posted a creative music video created by Dennis Liu for the band The Bird & The Bee which has created quite a "buzz" (har har) on the Internets in a short period of time. As a result, Liu is attracting a lot of attention as well. In addition to job offers from Yahoo, Microsoft, and HBO, here are other highlights:
- Head nods from several known Hollywood producers and directors.
- Talks to getting a manager/agent at a major talent representation agency.
- NYU, USC, and Berkeley requesting the video to show their film/new media students.
- E-mails from major corporations, including marketing directors and employees of Yahoo, Microsoft, HBO, Pixar, Disney, and of course Apple.
- Invited to screen at film festivals world wide, from the UK to Australia.
- An apple store manager in IL showed all her employees the video as an example to artfully show the power of the macs to customers.
- The author of “Stickies” wrote to congratulate, as well as a lead developer of OSX.
Read more here.
I wrote back in February about arena rock band Journey's new lead singer, Arnel Pineda who they found off various YouTube videos from Pineda's bands performances in the Phillipines. Well, it looks like GQ picked up on this musical Horatio Alger story for this month's issue.
The members of Journey talk about Pineda like he’s given them their youth back, the way thrice-married men talk about the young wives who’ve got them doing wheatgrass shots and yoga, listening to the Killers. It’s never too late to feel like you’re going to live forever. “I think we’re reborn, right now, with Arnel,” Schon says.
He talks about the band’s first show with Pineda in Chile, how Arnel was all over the stage, jumping around, surprising everyone, and making Schon—who’s playing a cordless guitar for the first time since the ’80s—feel the need to step his game up. “I’m gonna be riding my bicycle a lot, and skating,” he says, “and getting myself in tip-top shape so I can keep up with this little guy.”
Read more here.
From analog to digital: Go to this brilliant website, www.cassettefrommyex.com, to listen to various cassette mix tapes people held on to that they received from past relationships and crushes. Along with a photo of the actual cassette tape, each mix is prefaced and contextualized with its surrounding circumstances and back story.
Kate was sweet enough to present me with this cassette after I had one-third of my toenail removed. The growth cells were cauterized so there’d be no future growth, but this also meant hours in front of the TV with my feet soaking in epsom salts. Her dedication, too, was kind and considered: “Music to Soak Your Toe To:”
Making a mix tape for a crush or someone in the early stages of dating is an engrossing act that requires all your facilities and time. One can't just half heartedly or flippantly create a mix tape. No. It's a gift that contains your aspirations, fears, and indeed a part of your soul.
Of course, for those of us who still remember using cassette tapes, that medium specifically heightened the drama or significance of the act of creating a mixtape: It stemmed from the permanence and the forced ordering of the songs. There was no shuffle option or mixing within a larger music library the way you do today with iTunes. When you picked up and inserted that tape into the boombox you were going to listen ONLY these songs in a predetermined order as established by the mixtape giver.
The only agency or choice the receiver had was to start with side A or side B.
Who needs MTV when I can watch brilliant music videos like this one for "Again & Again" by the Bird & the Bee on YouTube? Featuring two sexy fronts--a lip synching chick who I now have a major Indie hipster crush on and Apple's operating system with all the various peripheral software--this music video is another one of those creative endeavors that I really admire and simultaneously slap myself for not doing first already.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kxDxLAjkO8]
The YouTube page has a listing of all the software seen in the video, which is pretty neat. I just like the usage of the Photobooth--that alone would have made a cool video.
Here's what this song would have looked like on a PC:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOEKASLb4lM]
Haha.
A contestant on show Britain's Got Talent puts a cool refreshing spin on a tired Michael Jackson impersonation routine. Keep watching it past the initial dance routine for the surprise twist. The pay off is worth it. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA2B5X0LhMY]
The music "Nachna Onda Nei" is by Tigerstyle--two brothers classically trained in traditional Punjabi folk music and instruments who later joined the Bhangra scene in clubs in Scotland and England. Check out their MySpace page to listen to and download a nice set of their songs. And you can watch a bunch of this dance entertainer Suleman Mizra's pop impersonation acts on his YouTube page.
I saw this on a couple websites first (Sorry Kaizar), but here's a surprisingly entertaining rap homage to the weekly newsmagazine The Economist that incorporates samples from the magazine's online podcasts.
The chorus of the rap runs: "He reads the Economist so he can get the gist, its solid competence gives him confidence that his intelligence is correct."Other lines praise editorial standards such as "The style in which they write is simple and concise, how do they get their sentences so precise?"
Listen to the mp3 here.
Akon calls T-Pain. It's a lot more funny than it sounds. [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=5AB7qL3volo]