Not much else can be said except for ‘I salute you Mr Harris’.
Confronted by an out-the-blue negative tweet against Calvin Harris’ writing skills from a Twitter user, Harris responded simply yet effectively. Take a look below – brilliance!
Wrote 3 last year chief so fuck ye RT @_jamieoc: @calvinharris you will not get a number one… you jackass
— Calvin Harris (@CalvinHarris) March 17, 2013
Secret shows are not uncommon at the annual South-by-SouthWestl sometimes visitors don’t actually find out the shows have happened until after the performances. The sponsor of this year’s ‘secret’ show, Myspace, managed to let the cat out the bag fairly early, announcing it was Mr Timberlake who was to headline with his ‘Tennessee Kids’ band.
However, as we’ve been accustomed to of late, Timberlake wowed the crowd with some incredible vocals as well as turning up the heat during ‘Suit & Tie’, mixing in Trinidad James’ ‘All Gold Everything’ halfway in. Check out the videos below:
Pusher Love Girl
Suit & Tie
Whilst the world waits in hope for Lil Wayne’s recovery from almost-critical condition after his bouts of seizures this week, president of YMCM Mack Maine has released the long-awaited video to new track ‘Celebrate’.
The track was originally released almost a year ago (in leaked form), but it’s time to get excited again now the official video has been released. As well as featuring Maine and Weezy, Talib Kweli also makes a guest star along with Young Money Cash Money signings Birdman, Future, Jay Rock, Cory Gunz and more.
Check it out below – it’s sure to be an anthem. Get well soon Weezy!
There’s times in your life when you look forward to something so much that eventually the end result will not live up to expectations. Damage’s performance tonight at Camden’s Jazz Cafe spun that on its head – we were all looking forward to it; and well, the end result surpassed even the highest of notions.
The 90′s group were one of the first ‘modern-day’ true RnB boybands; breaking onto the music scene with debut Anything way back when in 1996…. scrolling forward almost two decades later, you realise how many hits the band had written.
This was the band’s second major stint over the past 12 months – with an astounding set at Jazz Cafe last July to start of the proceedings, expectations for tonight were too far up to see.
Before the set had even begun, the crowd’s spirits were sky-high; beats of ‘old school’ UK garage filled the sound system, whilst pre-performance hysteria ensuing once the crowd spotted the likes of Leigh Frances, Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell in the audience.
At 9pm, the band graced the stage. Appearing from the green room with mics to hand, the group opened up with album banger Good Folk; then followed 90s classic Love II Love. The crowd were well and truly warmed up.
I’m not going to go through every track, but there were some fab highlights. The guys took it back Spanish-style with a fantastic performance of [Stagedoor FM] Maria, bringing on the beautiful Kele Le Roc to do her thing, whilst Emma Bunton graced the stage on I Don’t Know – the crowd went wild.
Mid-set, the four-piece decided to slice up the evening with a homage to some of the great RnB acts of the past (including a short rendition of En Vogue’s Hold On – complete with the Jackson-intro!!).
Finishing off with an encore of Rumours (bringing Alesha Dixon onto the stage) and then of course their smash Ghetto Romance, there was not one person sitting down the whole evening.
This was a graceful return for the band – after splitting around a decade ago, they’ve returned more polished than anyone could have imagined. The choreography was great, vocals were tight, and the crowd participation was brilliant.
What the evening also showed us was how strong and how ahead-of-its-time Damage’s sophmore effort Since You’ve Been Gone actually was. Music back then was much simpler and more emotive – the crowd seemed to agree to wanting to hark back to yesteryear. To go back to the times where great music was made using real instruments as opposed to a guy on a Mac is really what’s needed – Damage showed they could pull it off with minimal effort.
Kudos chaps, looking forward to the next date!
G.O.O.D. Music protege Mr Hudson has returned to the scene after a long hiatus with new track ‘Fred Astaire’.
The cut, which features a strong sample of Jimmy Ruffins’ Motown classic ‘What Becomes of the Brokenhearted’ goes some way to show off the British artist’s impressive falsetto.
It’s a fantastic track; not earth-shattering, but it definitely takes music back to some kind of roots.
Listen below and enjoy:
Roots drummer/frontman Questlove has accidentally let slip that the follow-up to Justin Timberlake’s forthcoming album ‘The 20/20 Experience’ will be released in November 2013. The artist ‘accidentally’ made the announcement on an online forum, whilst responding to a New York Times review of JT’s forthcoming long-player.
The idea of the album being a dual-release is hardly a surprise; with only ten tracks it’s obvious more would have been recorded. Check out the post in full below. ‘The 20/20 Experience’ is set for a UK release this forthcoming Monday, 18th March.
i will say the album is OVERLY ambitious. like a LOT of ideas crammed into one.
spoiler alert. 20/20 Vol 2 comes out in nov. (10 songs now…..10 songs later= 20 vision)
i admire the balls it took to make this record. cause he coulda easily urshurd his work in and made diplo his teddy riley to 20/20′s dangerous instead of sticking with timb’s Quincy.
feel me?
i like throwback Timb. (he played me songs out of order and off both records so i don’t know what made the final cut) so i was shocked he wasn’t 4 on the flooring it like the timb of 2005 was doing. like these joints were straight up missy/magoo timb and justin said he wanted timb to “get back in his real zone” even if it meant alienating the tweens born after 86 who never ever heard of the sly slick and wicked
i mean suit and tie is the MOST UNLIKELY james brown production reference
US rapper Lil Wayne is said to be in a critical condition after suffering a further seizure, according to reports by news site TMZ.
The rapper, real name Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. has had a well-documented history of fits, with the previous one being less than 12 hours ago on-set during a video shoot.
According to the site, the star is currently unstable and has been placed in an induced coma. The site then further mentions that the situation “doesn’t look good”.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the rapper and his family and we hope for a quick recovery.
More as we get it.
UPDATE: YMCM rapper Mack Maine tweets that the story could well be false:
Wayne is alive and well! We watching the Syracuse game…thanks for the prayers and concern..he will update you all soon. #love
— Mack Maine (@mackmaine) March 16, 2013
We will be releasing an official statement shortly but dont believe the nonsense about comas and tubes to breathe…that’s false!!
— Mack Maine (@mackmaine) March 16, 2013
Ex XFactor finalist Daniel DeBourg has just unveiled his fantastic cover of Justin Timberlake’s ‘Pusher Love Girl’.
The singer, who is widely known as the chap who wrote Jamelia’s ‘Money’ when he was only 18, has done a superb job in making the track his own, whist still paying homage to Mr Timberlake’s signature falsetto-style.
Check it out below:
There are times, understandably rare, when the release of a new album is considered an event more than anything else. Justin Timberlake’s return to music is one of those times.
It’s been almost 7 years since Timberlake’s previous solo effort, the anthemic ‘FutureSex/LoveSounds’ was released. The album heralded a new direction for the former boyband star; not only driving far more diversification than his debut release ‘Justified’, but also signalling an invite for an increased fan-base along with a permanent eradication of the tiresome question “when are N*Sync reforming?” by naysayers. It earned him the ‘cool’ credential as well as ‘credible’ – a word rarely given to any ex-boybander.
What’s more, the album, whilst not initially ‘loved’ by existing fans, became one of those that actually enriched some form of future legacy. Inclusions such as ‘My Love’ and ‘Losing My Way’ drove longevity, whilst standout ballad ‘What Goes Around (Comes Around)’ helped cement Timberlake along the road to music royalty.
In essence, FutureSex/LoveSounds set the bar and raised the standards of what would be acceptable in a mainstream musical release.
In the seven years that has passed, we’ve seen some mammoth changes in the music scene; the rise, and [subsequently dark] fall, of Amy Winehouse, music piracy reaching record levels (and then plummeting again), Myspace highs [then lows], the introductions of the ‘new-wave’ of mobile phones, and the impact of instant streaming, and the web, in driving new artists into a previously unheard-of space.
Earlier this week, Timberlake took advantage of his ‘always-on’, web-connected fanbase and opened his new album ‘The 20/20 Experience’, up for global streaming 7 days before global release. There’s 10 tracks on here (Deluxe Editions will feature 12), with seven of them going on for more than 7 minutes apiece, so whilst it’s not a large album in terms track numbers, the songs are clearly topic-led as opposed to time-led.
One major point to note, is that this is a Justin Timberlake release. He could easily have gone through the ‘easy’ [yet quite frankly irritating] route of soul-destryoing Guetta-esque beats and cranked up a Platinum seller. However Timberlake being Timberlake used this opportunity to create an album both amiable and beautiful versus a plain rehash of the aforementioned DJ-beats. To be clear, there’s fairly little in the way of innovation here – Timberlake left his sophmore effort to do that. ‘The 20/20 Experience’ is, essentially, an ode to the kind of styles of music that JT likes. He’s made it fairly transparent that this is an album for him, not anyone else. If you want to go with him to enjoy the journey, then he’ll invite you, but he’s happy if you want to sit this one out too.
As most of you will have realised, ‘Suit & Tie’ grows with every listen – it has similar tones in neuro-progression that SexyBack did; a ‘what the hell’ to begin with, and then a complete change of mind when you hear it in a different situation. ‘Suit & Tie’ is wondrous; just like the album it’s not for everyone, but it’s a fantastic song, combining the right levels of orchestra with JT’s smooth vocals.
The album’s opener, ‘Pusher Love Girl’, sounds very, erm, ‘Prince’. That’s no bad thing whatsoever. It’s a funky ballad that properly gets your head nodding and your foot tapping. It’s not exceptional, but then neither is the album, however it’s a completely different pace than what we’ve come to expect (or endure) from other mainstream albums over the past few years.
Long-time producer/friend Timbaland turned up the Bollywood-heat with ‘Don’t Hold The Wall’ – Timberlake’s voice really does work across that space, something you’ll need to hear to believe, whilst the funky ‘Strawberry Bubblegum’ contains more than a hint of pre-Bad Michael Jackson. That’s a great thing and works incredibly well. It harks back to the 60s, with the keyboards taking centre-stage; nice touch.
Then it’s onto ‘Tunnel Vision’, one of the ‘shorter’ tracks on the album, at just under seven minutes. It switches between a multitude of different sounds without any kind of story connecting them together. One of the shortest on the album, yet also one of the weakest.
Next track ‘Spaceship Coupe’ just feels fairly ornate, however it’s the masterful ‘That Girl’ where the soulfulness becomes omnipresent, and again sets to raise the bar. Tracks ‘Mirrors’ and ‘Suit & Tie’ you all know fairly well by now, but they’re both great bookends to the album.
To its credit, whilst ‘The 20/20 Experience’ may not have been the third album many were hoping for, it is still by far and away a brilliant piece of work. It has given listeners a shield against the trash that’s been charting of late and that’s no bad thing. The album will make your head bop and your toes tap, and hell, isn’t good music meant to make your body move anyway?
I’ll leave you with two more thoughts:
1) This is still only his third debut album – Rihanna’s carved up more 6 albums in the period of post-FutureSex/LoveSounds. There’s still progression there for Timberlake, he’s just taking his time.
2) Justin is a musician AND an entertainer. For anyone who has been to his live shows, you’ll understand how much he draws you into his world – it’s a skill that very few modern-day acts can proudly say they can achieve.
Just like Timberlake fit the boyband mould some 15 years ago, he’s now earned his place amongst solo royalty. Welcome back.
‘The 20/20 Experience’ is available to purchase here
Sam Smith’s fantastic ‘Lay Me Down’ has been given the remix treatment by 4/4-garage/house supremo Todd Edwards.
Widely-known within the industry as ‘Todd The God’, Edwards’ unique production techniques which employ vocal reconstructions across 4/4 beats has given him global stature. Fusing the DJ’s expression with Smith’s laid-back smooth musical style has created some seriously funky results.
Check out the remix as well as the wonderful acoustic of the original single edit below:
