Posts Tagged ‘will.i.am’

Hot 100 Roundup—12/10/11

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Rihanna
“Talk That Talk” (featuring Jay-Z), #31
“Where Have You Been”, #65
Dance music isn’t designed to stick in your memory, and I have the same problem with these that I have with the last couple of Rihanna’s records: I enjoy them when I hear them, but then forget all about them after. She’s so perfect for this sort of music, her slightly unreal buzz of a voice mixing seamlessly with the synths, that I barely notice a word she says, much less remember any afterwords (the same can’t be said of Jay-Z, though, who sounds newly energized, even if he doesn’t say anything special). She still doesn’t have any real personality on record other than sexy tough gal, and these tracks add nothing to that other than a few more hooks.

will.i.am featuring Mick Jagger & Jennifer Lopez—”T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)”
#36
It takes a certain amount of courage to rap “Oh my goodness/This beat is so hard” when, at the moment at least, there is no beat. And it takes a certain patronizing, disrespectful commercial instinct to end a guest spot by Mick Jagger with a musical quote from “Satisfaction”. Or to put the anonymous Jenifer Lopez on a track at all. With The Black Eyed Peas going on hiatus I thought will.i.am might take some time off to generate new ideas. Turns out he just wanted to milk the old ones without the other three in his way. And let’s face it: Mick Jagger sounds old, old, old.

Chris Brown featuring Kevin McCall—”Strip”
#85
Another step into the past for Brown. This sounds like something he would have recorded five years ago, if the then 16 year-old had been allowed to sing about strip clubs. Is he making up for lost opportunity or something? Or is he just totally out of ideas? He never had many.

Nickelback—”Lullaby”
#89
Not good, but again their subject matter surprises me. This could well serve as their contribution to the It Gets Better Project. Wonder what made them suddenly grow a conscious. Too bad they couldn’t have grown some musical ideas at the same time.

Tyga—”Rack City”
#94
The hook is strong enough to stick in your head whether you want it to or not, and the sparse beat is catchy in its own way, as well. Still not sure whether it’s about actual pimping or just, you know know, pimpin’. I’m not even sure which I would consider worse.

Outasight—”Tonight Is the Night”
#96
Straight from a Pepsi commercial to the charts. It’s not as bad as that makes it sound—I like the high energy touches—but it sure wouldn’t be on the charts otherwise.

Mana featuring Prince Royce—”El Verdadero Amor Perdona”
#100
I don’t know enough about Latin to identify all the cliches, but to my ears this is full of them. It sounds romantic in all the right ways, though, and the way the music and vocals shift mood from line to line is impressive. It just doesn’t sound very original.

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Hot 100 Roundup—11/28/10

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

Glee Cast
“Forget You” (featuring Gwyneth Paltrow), #11
“Singing In the Rain/Umbrella” (featuring Gwyneth Paltrow), #18

Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg and Akon—“Kush”
#49
When a guy spends over a decade making a record about how wonderful dope is, it’s impossible to miss the ironic disconnect. Which isn’t to suggest that Dre is unaware of that irony himself: this is bouncy, funny, and celebratory in all the right ways. As always, Snoop gets off the best lines (“tight as the pants on will.i.am”). Dre has tricks of his own, though, including one of the slyest musical jokes I’ve ever heard, where the piano figure at the end starts coming apart as if it were being played by a stoner searching the keys for notes he could swear he knew just a minute ago.

Rihanna—“S&M”
#53
Having said in interviews that she’s tired of people paying attention only to the dark side of her music, Rihanna opens her new album with a chorus that includes the borrowed joke “Stick and stones may break my bones/But chains and whips excite me”. Mind you, S&M isn’t as dark or taboo as it used to be (though shouldn’t she at least have given us her safe word?), but considering Rihanna’s very public past in regard to sexual relationships, it seems an odd choice at best, a blatant cashing in at worst. This isn’t a bad record, but I find myself hesitant to learn anything else about Rihanna’s sex life, real or imagined. At the same time I keep flashing on Amy Rigby’s song “Year of the Fling”, about a woman who suddenly finds herself enmeshed in the BDSM scene: “At the peak of her binge/A twinge of fear came to unnerve her/But she mastered that/And it served to pervert her further”. What Rihanna went through was horrible and no doubt traumatic, but did surviving it really make her any stronger?

Nelly and Keri Hilson—“Liv Tonight”
#75
I don’t know if it’s this record in particular, or just their overwhelming presence on the charts these days, but I’m beginning to feel as tired of kick drums as I am of electric guitars, if only because they trap artists in a remorseless groove when they might be better off with more rhythmic freedom. That’s certainly true of Hilson, though I have my doubts about Nelly.

Michael Jackson & Akon—“Hold My Hand”
#84
I can understand why people wondered about the vocals on Jackson’s posthumous recordings: he does sound different, though it’s largely because he’s singing in a lower key—his voice was aging, and except for brief exclamations he couldn’t hit those high notes the way he used to. The phrasing, however, is undeniably Jackson, even if it is just an echo of his glory days. What’s more disappointing is his general lack of presence; most likely he hadn’t finished this when he died, but there’s still too much Akon and not enough MJ. What’s more fascinating, and a little creepy, is the homoerotic subtext that runs though the song. I mean, who are these guys singing to? Some unidentified woman? The world in general? Each other? The record is credited as a duet, after all. Who knows? That’s MJ for you—even posthumously, he’s the weirdest guy in the room.

Train—“Marry Me”
#95
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 11/21/10

Ke$ha—“Blow”
#97
The problem with Ke$ha’s records isn’t that they’re loud and dumb, it’s that she isn’t prepared to go all the way with the concept. When she says that she and her friends are young and bored, it’s a distancing effect that she probably thinks gives the song some sort of satirical meaning and depth. All it does, though, is cement her image as a privileged “artiste” who’s slumming all the way to the bank.

Flo Rida—“Turn Around (5,4,3,2,1)”
#98
Despite the evidence of his previous records, Flo Rida does not live and die by the hook; he lives and dies by propulsive forward motion, so much so that this time he seems to have lost the hook somewhere back on the track. Maybe he should ask Bruno Mars for another one; he’s bound to have a few lying around.

Bubbling Under:

Keri Hilson—“Pretty Girl Rock”
#102
Hilson is an interesting case. Her guest spots can seem anonymous (as in “Liv Tonight”), but her own records are defiantly idiosyncratic, always coming out of somewhere that seems familiar but with a twist that makes them difficult to trace. This one appears to borrow ideas from relatively obscure female artists like Santigold, Lil Jackie, and VV Brown, and at times almost sounds like a tribute record. At the same time it never sounds like anyone but Hilson. At least it would if I could be sure of exactly what Hilson sounds like. I’m still not sure she’s a major talent, but she’s certainly an intriguing one.

Billy Currington—“Let Me Down Easy”
#103
Currington doesn’t have an original bone in his body or thought in his head, but that doesn’t mean he can’t sound classier or more sophisticated than his country-heartthrob competition. He seems like a genuinely nice, laid-back sort of guy. In other words, he’s an old-school country careerist, and if sometimes he’s a little boring, well, that just comes with the territory.

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Hot 100 Roundup—9/19/10

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

Selena Gomez & the Scene—”A Year Without Rain”
#35
I’m rooting for Gomez, but this doesn’t work. The song is too ordinary, the techno background doesn’t swell and highlight the melody the way it should (possibly because there is no melody), and Gomez’s teenage voice can’t quite negotiate the song’s not-that-subtle sexual metaphors. Her Disney material had more oomph to it, and nothing can disguise the fact that this is an ordinary power ballad dressed up as a dance track.

Waka Flocka Flame featuring Roscoe Dash and Wale—”No Hands”
#45
Essentially a remake of Dash’s “All the Way Turnt Up” with more, and less interesting, rapping. Even if I could take Flame seriously (I can’t type his full name more than once; it gives me the giggles), recycling one of your guest’s hits barely two months after it left the chart doesn’t seems like the best way to launch a career. A real career, at least.

Michael Buble—”Hollywood”
#55
I didn’t think much of Buble’s last record, “Haven’t Met You Yet”, but I may need to give it another listen, because this is catchy, intelligent, subtly sarcastic, and only occasionally sentimental. It’s full of wonderful musical jokes: the intro’s echoes of Glee; Buble’s phrasing, which somehow reminds me of Billy Crystal’s old Fernando character; a guitar part lifted straight from “The Bitch Is Back”; the background vocals on the third verse. The “find the truth in yourself” advice at the end is a bit of a downer, but otherwise this is almost perfect.

Rihanna—”Only Girl (In the World)”
#75
Rihanna has said that her next album will be more straightforward dance music as opposed to the gloomy half-rock of Rated R, but if this single is any indication, all that means is that the beats will be straighter. In its way, this is even darker and more forbidding than her last few singles, possibly because the beat is so straightforward and machine-like. It’s sex as a battlefield, where power means more than passion, and a proposition sounds more like a dare. This dramatic change in direction is fascinating to watch, and this isn’t a bad record, but it isn’t a great one, either. After what happened I can understand her stance, but she’s either overplaying her reaction or her loss of innocence has thrown her for an even greater loop than people realize.

will.i.am & Nicki Minaj—”Check It Out”
#78
I’m sure a lot of people will hate this on principal, so it’s probably useless to point out that this is the best thing will.i.am has done since The E.N.D. Whether Minaj convinced him to hold back or he’s finally figuring it out for himself, this is less overdone than most of his other records, and he’s perfected the art of isolating his hooks for maximum effectiveness (he also finds/steals great hooks). As for Minaj, she may or may not have anything interesting to say, but her vocals, and the way she shifts timbre and rhythm with pinpoint accuracy, are truly amazing.

Sean Kingston—”Dumb Love”
#84
Having spent a couple of years fiddling with brash electro, straight reggae, dancehall, and even a duet with Justin Bieber, Kingston makes the second best record of his career by going back to his “Beautiful Girls” roots and finding an ancient but undeniable hook—courtesy of The Del Vikings’s “Come Go With Me”—to build his adolescent fantasies around. He also makes the smart move of having the Smeezingtons (aka Bruno Mars and friends) put it together for him—or at least asking them if they had any spare hooks lying around. This could never be as much of a surprise as “Beautiful Girls”, but it’s a pleasant little jolt all the same. And here everybody thought he was a one-hit wonder.

Nick Jonas—”Introducing Me”
#92
From Camp Rock 2, where Nick is apparently learning how to be a member of Plain White T’s. I like the jokey tempo shifts and the grammar lesson, but this is essentially a vaudeville turn for sincere singer-songwriter types, and if you’re trying to impress by spitting out a million words at a breakneck tempo, those words need to be witty. 90% of these aren’t

Florence + The Machine—”Dog Days Are Over”
#93
Her voice is impressive (even more impressive live), but I have no idea what this arty loud-soft, loud-soft is about, and I don’t want to know. Of course, since she doesn’t enunciate much—she’s like a mixture of Annie Lennox and Natalie Merchant—I needn’t worry about it.

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New this week—5/9/10

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Glee Cast
“One Less Bell To Answer/A House Is Not a Home” (featuring Kristin Chenoweth), #53
“Beautiful”, #61
“Fire”, #64
“A House Is Not a Home”, #70
“Home” (featuring Kristin Chenoweth), #90
Though the rest of this week’s crop is made up of the usual sub-par versions of overly-familiar pop songs, I need to be fair and admit that Kristin Chenoweth’s take on “One Less Bell To Answer” (at least the first three minutes of it) is easily the best thing Glee has produced yet. But I also need to point out that in keeping with the show’s growth as a marketing tool, the song is a cross-promotion for the Broadway revival of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David/Neil Simon musical Promises Promises, in which Chenoweth stars. “One Less Bell” wasn’t part of the original show, but has been added to the new production. In other words, it isn’t technically a Glee song at all (by the sound of it, the arrangement was taken straight from the musical), thereby keeping the show’s unbroken record of awfulness intact.

The Black Eyed Peas—”Rock That Body”
#62
It’s too late to convince the haters, of course, but this is my favorite track from The E.N.D. It rocks, it discos, it punks, it calypsos, and it turns Fergie into the pure special effect she was born to be.

Shakira—”Gypsy”
#65
Not as profoundly silly as “She Wolf”, but it has its moments. “I might steal your clothes and wear them if they fit me” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think of gypsies, but that only makes the line jump out even more. Sexy and silly at the same time—a pretty neat trick.

B.o.B. featuring Rivers Cuomo—”Magic”
#83
As bizarre as this pairing may seem, I have to admit that there’s something both wonderful and ridiculous about Cuomo bragging about his flow, especially on a chorus that’s livelier than anything Weezer themselves have done in years. As for B.o.B., once again he gets lost somewhere in the background. Maybe that’s where he belongs. I respect him more for his realizing it.

Mike Posner featuring Big Sean—”Cooler Than Me”
#85
I liked the chorus the first time I heard it, but by the time Posner had rambled through it in his self-satisfied sing-song for the fourth time, with nothing but a mediocre rap to break the pattern, I was already bored with it. Now I don’t care if I ever hear it again.

Jerrod Neimann—”Lover, Lover”
#89
Country has been weird lately, and I mean that in the best possible way. Though loud, good ol’ boy country hair metal hasn’t gone away, there are a whole bunch of sort-of newcomers on the scene who seem to take a more traditional, slightly laid-back approach (they all tend to cite George Strait as their biggest influence). Neimann has been hanging around in Nashville for almost fifteen years, put out a couple of albums on independent labels, wrote a few songs that found a place on big name LPs (Garth Brooks, Chris LeDoux), and now here he is with his first major label single. Lyrically it’s nothing special, but the music, which mixes both soul and country-gospel influences, is wonderful. It isn’t perfect—it gets too soft at the end and starts to drift into early Doobie Brothers territory—but it’s another pleasant surprise in a genre that two years ago was as predictable as they come.

Big Time Rush—”Halfway There”
#93
Another attempt by Nickelodeon to seize some of the tween-pop landscape that Disney has already conquered. They don’t seem to be making the same investment in songwriting, though; even the worst songs on the High School Musical soundtracks were better than this. Maybe someone should tip these kids off to Zeno’s Paradox so they can get out while they have the chance.

David Guetta & Chris Willis featuring Fergie and LMFAO—”Gettin’ Over You”
#95
Up until now, I’ve never been sure what, aside from the occasional rap, Apl.De.Ap and Taboo actually contributed to The Black Eyed Peas. Now, after hearing this garish mess and Usher’s will.i.am-produced “OMG”, I finally have an answer: they tell will.i.am and Fergie when to stop. If only somebody else would.

Alpha Rev—”New Morning”
#100
A couple of weeks ago I suggested that there wasn’t a single song on the Hot 100 that was worse than anything by the Glee Cast. That is no longer true.

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New this week—4/11/10

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Usher featuring will.i.am—”OMG”
#14
Despite the seal of approval provided by will.i.am, this is the lamest Black Eyed Peas rip you could imagine, and as far as I can tell it’s all Usher’s fault. The stylish minimalism that makes the Peas’s records compelling is filled in with meaningless noise, and the lyrics make Usher seem even dumber than BEP haters imagine the genuine article to be. At his worst he sounds like a lounge singer doing a Black Eyed Peas tribute; on the rest he’s a one-time star desperately trying to catch up to a scene that’s passed him by. In that way, at least, you can say Raymond v. Raymond is as true to life as Usher claims it is.

Diddy – Dirty Money featuring T.I.—”Hello Good Morning”
#34
This works, especially when T.I. is on the mike, and it’s a far better Black Eyed Peas rip than “OMG”, but like all Diddy tracks its show-offy and full of itself. When Diddy flaunts his ego with production tricks and flashy arranging rather than cynical fade-out raps or having his female vocalists moan his praises, he could almost be the pop genius he thinks he is. There’s a long way between “almost” and the real thing, though, and it’s a gap I doubt he’ll ever cross.

Lady GaGa—”Alejandro”
#72
I found it difficult to understand all the fuss last week over M.I.A. calling GaGa a “great mimic”. It’s obviously true, and I would say it’s even more obvious that GaGa knows it, often plays up to it, and enjoys doing it. That’s certainly the case on this rollicking slice of camp, in which she borrows heavily from Madonna, the Pet Shop Boys, and cheesy Italian telenovellas and mixes them all together into her own twisted joke. For some reason this makes me think of Tennesse Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer. “Alejandro”, thank God, doesn’t end in cannibalism, but I wouldn’t put it past her.

Travie McCoy featuring Bruno Mars—”Billionaire”
#92
One thing you can say about economic collapse: it’s good for party music, and equally good for comedy. Not a week goes by that somebody doesn’t put another joke track on the chart, creating what might well turn out to be the most interesting trend of what’s shaping up to be a very interesting year. This is the best of the bunch so far, partly because it addresses personal economics head-on, with just enough implied reality to make the jokes sting, and partly because, thanks to Bruno Mars, it’s the most musically accomplished and easiest to listen to for itself. I wonder when he’ll get a record of his own.

Erykah Badu—”Window Seat”
#95
This one takes a while to grow on you, but if you give it a chance and ignore the controversy over the video, it will. Subtle as it is, in both its music and its emotions, it steers perilously close at times to easy-listening. It never goes that far, but I can understand why some people find the new album too laid back and sentimental. I don’t think it’s either, but it may be a little too self-satisfied. Time will tell. (The video, considering the message of the song itself, makes no sense whatsoever—it’s an attempt to shove a political/sociological message into a place where it doesn’t belong.)

Clay Walker—”She Won’t Be Lonely Long”
#99
The surprising thing about this record is how restrained and sympathetic it is. I can think of any number of male country singers who would take the title line for a crude joke, squeezing as many knowing winks and vocal nudges out of it as possible. Walker, though, never evinces anything but respect, concern, and regret, without once suggesting that he’s interested in taking up with the woman himself, and he turns the usual wild-girl-in-the-honky-tonk cliches on their head. The music is too generic to make this a great record, but it’s a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

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