Readers' takes on which artists have fallen off after the '90s

On NYE I wrote about hip hop/R&B artists who I think have gotten stale after 1999. Zuodi sends me his list:

• Joe
• Dr. Dre
• Wyclef Jean
• Nelly Furtado
• Shyne
• Lauryn Hill

Here are my responses/comments:

•  Joe: I first heard Joe when I was 11. The song was the remix of "Stutter" that featured Mystikal; I thought Mystikal's rapping was very scary back then. In my freshman year of high school I then discovered "Still Not a Player" by Big Pun featuring Joe, who sang the chorus of "Don't Want to Be a Player" for Pun's song. The following year  I joined the "4 Elements" hip hop club in high school (where I met Zuodi) I began listening to Golden Age music, including the song that the "Stutter" remix sampled, "Passin' Me By" by the Pharcyde. Eventually I stopped listening to Joe; I have just now learned about his '90s songs like "All the Things (Your Man Won't Do)" from the 1996 movie Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. Definitely Joe sounded more original in the '90s than '00s, especially since Joe began collaborating with talentless hacks like G-Unit and was a featured artist on Mariah Carey's horrible 2002 album Charmbracelet. And apparently Joe had a single "If I Was Your Man" in 2007...of all the time I spent from 2005-2008 listening to KMEL I don't think I even remember that song!
• Dr. Dre: In the past decade, Dre has been doing more producing than MC'ing, so I don't know if he really "fell off" this decade. In the early 2000s he had some decent productions like "Family Affair" by Mary J. Blige and "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" by Eve featuring Gwen Stefani...both of which are way better than any Nicki  Minaj "you a stupid hoe, you a you a stupid hoe" songs you heard on the radio. Unfortunately, Dre was responsible for spawning 50 Cent's sellout Get Rich or Die Tryin', a dull, lifeless drop from 50 Cent's earlier underground career (like "How to Rob", "Ghetto Quran", or "Your Life's on the Line"). And of course 50 Cent pretty much tarnished mainstream hip hop for the next 5 or so years...hip hop became more meaningless with all the Lil Jons, Soulja Boys, D4L's, Gucci Manes, and every crunk/auto tune/ringtone crapper. At least Dre, from his experience behind the Golden Age of Hip Hop, managed to produce music better than most, such as "How We Do" by the Game or "Like Toy Soldiers by Eminem. Finally, Detox, the forever-delayed album that fans have waited for near a decade now.
• Wyclef Jean: Like I made my case earlier with Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest, Jean was best when he was with the Fugees. His solo stuff has been very uninteresting, and I've got to question his creative streak with his 2007 single "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" where the chorus sung by Akon straight up rips off Wu-Tang's "C.R.E.A.M."...and did Wyclef really have to bring in Lil Wayne of all rappers in the song? If not for the alleged misuse of funds, I would have praised Jean for his recent humanitarian work in this blog.
• Nelly Furtado: Oh my, please don't take me back to the bad old days of 2006 and 2007 when "Promiscuous" and "Maneater" got non stop airplay on every top-40 radio station in the country. Apparently she had an indie career in the late '90s since her senior year of HS and also sang on a Jurassic 5 album in 2002. I haven't heard too much from Furtado after she was on Timbaland's 2009 album, so I guess going dance-pop in 2006 must've hurt her musical reputation a lot.
• Shyne: I don't listen to Shyne so I can't comment about him. But because of the December 1999 nightclub shooting (where Puff Daddy and Jennifer Lopez were present), Shyne never even had a real career beyond album releases of super-old recordings in the 2000s.
• Lauryn Hill: Hill, also of the Fugees, hasn't released very much new music since her MTV Unplugged concert in 2001. Again I can't comment since I don't listen to Hill beyond the Fugees or The Mis-Education.

Robb also commented on my facebook page where I posted my original blogpost: "Lil wayne has had numerous great albums in the last 10 years. Usher is still popular but I like his old stuff way more." I guess Robb means the Wayne mixtapes like Da Drought series. And glad to hear someone agrees regarding Usher.

Some 90-stalgia: Which hip hop/R&B stars from back in the day have fallen off now?

I'm thinking of such a list because of that new song "Put It Down" by Brandy featuring Chris Brown. I think Brandy was better when she was up-and-coming in the '90s with "I Wanna Be Down" (geez, how many Brandy songs have the word "down"????) and "Baby". Her song with Kanye back in '04 "Talk About Our Love" is mediocre. The aforementioned singles are the only Brandy songs I'd ever keep in my mp3 player. Oh yeah, the talentless hack Ray J (with a terrible singing voice and star of the Kim Kardashian sex tape) is her younger brother (Ray J's real name is William Ray Norwood Jr.).

So I've decided as a new year comes and hip hop progressively gets worse (but at least the fact that Kendrick Lamar's new album Good Kid, MAAD City has outsold 2 Chainz' Based on a TRU Story I have hope...and the new GOOD Music compilation Cruel Summer is also pushing 100k's of units) I wonder how many rappers or R&B singers who were in their prime in the '90s are just stale in the new millennium?

- Usher: I like "You Make Me Wanna" and "Nice & Slow" from his breakout 1997 album My Way. And I just now discovered his debut single recorded when he was just 13, "Call Me a Mack" (from the soundtrack of the 1993 film that starred Tupac and Janet Jackson, Poetic Justice). In his '90s songs, Usher even rapped verses! 8701 (2001) was alright, Confessions (2004) was way overplayed in its time and was a step downward because now I think "Burn" is essentially "U Got It Bad" with more RPM. "Caught Up" is better though. Oh, one time I was listening to Detroit's hip hop/R&B station WJLB on iHeartRadio (another sign I need to go back to Michigan, haven't been there since May 1997) and heard Maxwell's "Fortunate" and that was the first time in my life I realized that "U Got It Bad" interpolated the chorus of "Fortunate". Nowadays Usher always puts out party music as singles, like "Love In This Club" [2008] with a beat ripped off of GarageBand software! Then he hopped on the Auto-Tune bandwagon in 2010 with "OMG" featuring will.i.am and did a super poppy club anthem "DJ Got Us Falling in Love" with Pitbull (a rapper who's a traitor to his genre, but that's a whole 'nother story). And "Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home)" went far on the raunchy side especially with annoying rapper Plies. I'm not too fond of "What Happened to U", ESPECIALLY since if you were listening to radio the beginning fools you into thinking you're hearing "One More Chance" by the Notorious BIG! "Hot Tottie" (2010) rips off the beat of Jay-Z's "On to the Next One". Usher has had a HUGE creativity issue for the past several years.

- Members of the Wu-Tang Clan: 8 Diagrams (2007) was one hell of a generic album...nothing that Wu-Tang or its members does in the future will ever KO Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993), Wu-Tang Forever (1997), Method Man's Tical (1995), Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (1995), etc.

- Fat Joe: I can listen to his 90s songs like "The Shit Is Real", "John Blaze", "Flow Joe", "Watch Out", or his parts in songs like "Twinz (Deep Cover '98)" on repeat especially with the heavy, deep, street lyrics and flow with genuine hip hop beats. However, Fat Joe became way too commercial and generic after J.O.S.E. in 2001 especially with getting pop-&-B singers like R. Kelly and Ashanti singing hooks. From that album "My Lifestyle" is a hard track, but "We Thuggin'" is just guilty pleasure even though hearing that song on KMEL back in October 2001 helped me get into hip hop when I was younger. "What's Luv?" wears out as well. Loyalty (2002) was a very low creative point before Fat Joe returned in 2004 for the second Terror Squad album True Story with number-one hit "Lean Back". He went solo again All or Nothing (2005), the lead single featuring Nelly "Get It Poppin" is wack but the album had other harder tracks like "So Much More" or the anti-50 Cent song "My Fofo". Me Myself & I (2006) marked the time when Fat Joe abandoned his NYC roots for the trendy Southern sound in "Make It Rain" featuring Lil Wayne and then doing guest performances on DJ Khaled's album. Even the deeper cuts like "Damn" and "The Profit" were getting more dull. The Elephant in the Room (2008) = rock bottom. I was never into "I Won't Tell", which sounded more like POP MUSIC than hip hop (especially since pop-&-B J. Holiday sang). Even the deeper cuts like "K.A.R" and "The Fugitive" were getting generic and tiresome. And look what the hell Fat Joe is doing now with super-lame party music like "Another Round" with Chris Brown (tell me again WHY he still gets prominent spots after beating Rihanna?) and not even "Pride N Joy" featuring Kanye and a bunch of others like Jadakiss and Mos Def is worth listening. "Instagram That Hoe"? By the title itself that's straight garbage. Fat Joe has been using the same old same old formula for theme and rapping for nearly 7 years now. How many songs about hot women, the club, and luxuries can he do creatively anymore? At age 42 maybe he should think about doing less music.

- Master P or any other artist signed with No Limit Records: I remember hearing "We Like Them  Girls" by Silkk  the Shocker on the radio in 2004 (when I was in 8th grade and basically liking pretty much any crap I heard on Wild 94.9 or 106 KMEL). At that time I'd also discovered "Make Em Say Uhh" by Master P on the compilation album MTV the First 1000 Years: Hip Hop & then thru sites like MSN Music and Amazon.com the other No Limit rappers and other songs they did in the late '90s such as: "Bout It Bout It" by Master P and "I Got the Hook Up" by MP. Thinking back on it, there's a reason why Master P and the other No Limit rappers ended up on Koch Records (which later became E1 Music). I mean, how is Master P's "Them Jeans" (2004) any different from Lil Jon's "Get Low" (2002)?

- Lil Wayne: A rapper since 1993 (when he was just 11), Wayne found his big break in 2008 with Tha Carter III. Sadly in order to achieve such a high-sales album with many Grammys and top singles Wayne abandoned his gangsta rap sound from his earlier career for a more mainstream (and of course the dreaded AUTO TUNE) sound. Examples of Wayne's earlier stuff from Cash Money Records: "The Block Is Hot" (1999),  or go to 0:55 for his part in B.G.'s "Bling Bling" (1999), or 1:00 for his verse in "From Tha 13th to Tha 17th" when he was known as "Baby D" in rap duo The B.G.'z back in 1995 (when Wayne was only 13), or 3:20 at "I Need a Hot Girl" (with his group Hot Boys in 1999). In 2004 Wayne's rapping style became softer and more structured, like in "Bring It Back" and "Go DJ" (both '04) and "Fireman" and "Hustler Musik" (2005). Wayne's career took an interesting turn in 2006. That year he did just mixtapes and guest performances: both on the poppier side ("You" by Lloyd, "Make It Rain" by Fat Joe, the remix of "Gimme That" by Chris Brown) and on the street side (like the anti-George W. Bush mixtape cut "Georgia Bush"). And then in 2007 came The Leak EP with such underground tracks like "I'm Me". Unfortunately in 2008 when I first heard "Lollipop" on the radio with all the auto tune I knew Lil Wayne went beyond selling out. Things only got worse with his fake "rock" album Rebirth in 2009 (STILL with that auto tune), Wayne putting Drake in the spotlight, and the very boring album I Am Not a Human Being  in 2010. These days Lil Wayne is doing far more lame pop music like "How To Love", "Right Above It", or "Mrs. Officer" than tracks where he actually cares about rapping like in "John" or "6 Foot 7 Foot".

- Members of A Tribe Called Quest: Tribe was VERY great when they were together in the 90s. However the solo stuff that Tribe members put out isn't very memorable. "Gettin' Up" by Q-Tip was better than any of the mainstream hip hop overplayed on radio back in '08. But does that stand up to Tribe classics like "Scenario", "Buggin' Out", "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo"? NO!

- R. Kelly: Transformed from slow jam soul singer in the early 90s ("Bump n Grind") to mainstream urban contemporary singer in the late 90s ("Home Alone") to straight up baller in the 00s and beyond (his many many guests spots/collabos with rappers). Oh, don't forget that child porn trial too. R. Kelly's attempt at being everything to every audience gave him a whole bunch of repetitive uncreative stereotypical mainstream rap songs..."Supaman High", "That's That", the Jay-Z collaboration albums. "Playas Only", etc.

Any others? Comment below.

US v Canada trade

from today's news:

"US trade deficit reaches six-month high" (Financial Times)

"Canada's trade surplus doubles in December" (CBC)

Conspiracy theory time: Super Bowl halftime shows and election years.

(This post isn't serious it's just for kicks.)

2004: New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Justin Timberlake exposes Janet Jackson's breast during Super Bowl halftime show. FCC fines CBS. Republican incumbent George W. Bush wins re-election, and exit polls show that moral values were the leading concern issue in the year's election.

2012: New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. M.I.A. flips the bird during the Super Bowl halftime show. What happens next...

In 2004, the Democratic nominee for president was John Kerry, a US Senator from Massachusetts. This year, a Republican contender for president is a former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. However, former US Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum has now taken a temporary lead in the primaries.

Massachusetts. Super Bowl halftime shows during election years. Obscene incidents during those shows.

Could it be that the New England Patriots, M.I.A., and Justin Timberlake were acting as Republican undercover operatives during the Super Bowl?

Also the Chicago Sun Times reports about a man named Robert Dewey Hoskins who escaped from a California mental hospital. Hoskins was convicted of stalking and threatening Madonna in 1996. I think this Hoskins guy may be an operative too if he takes retaliatory action against Madonna regarding the halftime show.

Another moral outrage failure for Bozell

Brent Bozell, founder of the Parents Television Council, finally has written a column condemning NBC over M.I.A. giving the middle finger during this year's Super Bowl halftime show: "Another Fleeting Failure for NBC". Of course it's predictable he'd be outraged, but this column is stilted in several ways. He opens: "Super Bowl XLVI was a good football game, marred once again by the bohemian elite at NBC." Well, the last time the "bohemian elite at NBC" played the Super Bowl (that was in 2009 with the Cardinals and Steelers and halftime with Bruce Springsteen...but I don't recall Bozell complaining that NBC had a commie pinko labor advocate perform!). I personally disagree and see this game more a carbon copy of the 2008 one with the same teams (Patriots and Giants) and a similar ending: Eli Manning with a last-minute winning drive and Tom Brady failing to reach the end zone as time runs out.

Of course after reporting how NBC couldn't blur out MIA's middle finger on time this conservative Christian activist must play the persecution card: "The same network skillfully edited God out of a clip of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance during last year's U.S. Open golf tournament." Funny how he dismisses complaints from Muslims about drawing Muhammad yet leaving God out of the Pledge of Allegiance (by the way the ORIGINAL Pledge didn't include "under God")!

First he misleads readers into thinking that M.I.A. used a similar routine from the halftime show in the music video:

While she was launching the obscene gesture, she was rapping, "I'm-a say this once, yeah I don't give a (S-word)." That's in the newly recorded Madonna song they were performing ("Give Me All Your Luvin'"), and it's also in the video. How does NBC not prepare for a bleep and a camera shift when it knows it's coming?

I rewatched and then noticed at 2:17 mark of the video (that's during Nicki Minaj's performance) M.I.A. had her middle finger up albeit with a bandage on the finger:



HOWEVER, during her rapping part of the song (including the "I don't give a..." line) she actually uses her index finger, as Bozell concedes: "In the Madonna video, [M.I.A.] points her fingers like a gun."

Concluding his column, Bozell dismisses Sasha Frere-Jones's criticism of the PTC (but Bozell didn't mention that the PTC declined to file complaints formally with the FCC): "[Frere-Jones] tried to be offended instead that the Super Bowl show featured 'ad after ad that likened women -- negatively -- to sofas, cars and candy.' He raised his middle fingers to 'anyone who thinks profanity is somehow more harmful to our children than images of violence and misogyny.'" Bozell lets his mindless authoritarianism get in the way of addressing the issue of misogynistic ads like the GoDaddy ads and the Teleflora ad featuring Adrianna Lima. Bozell has complained about media misogyny in the past (see "MTV, Both Sleazy and Sour" from Dec. 10, 2011; "Exploiting the Teen Temptress" from Dec. 18, 2010; "Moms vs. Hip-Hop" from Oct. 20, 2006). But somehow, Super Bowl ads get a free pass even if those blatantly objectifying messages reach millions of children. Where's Bozell's outrage? (I don't want to know where his hands were on Super Bowl Sunday.) Maybe football is such an obligately macho sport that you can't have it without the cheerleaders or woman-hating ads. Plus, apparently Bozell is more scared about kids who are scarred for life because of an unnoticeable middle finger! (Case in point, that middle finger registered so slowly in many people's eyes including to NBC's control room staff.)

Credit to post #18 on Free Republic's repost of Bozell's column: "M.I.A.'s bird-flipping is far less offensive to me than the behavior tolerated by the NFL of so many of their players." (Michael Vick, Donte Stallworth, Plaxico Burress, and other players with criminal records come to mind.)

The real context of MIA's finger gesture at the super bowl halftime show

If you watched the halftime show of this year's Super Bowl (rather unexciting, more of a carbon copy of the one after the 2007 season) you might've seen rapper M.I.A sticking up her middle finger for a moment. Then the screen suddenly cuts to an aerial view of the field and blurs very quickly. If you were wondering why NBC blurred the whole screen for a second after MIA finished her performance it was because the network realized what MIA did and thought the blur could censor the action on time. It didn't, and I presume that NBC had some sort of tape delay system. But it does confirm the opinion that MIA's action was so quick that many people wouldn't notice exactly which finger she was sticking up. In fact, Time magazine TV critic James Poniewoznik commented: "M.I.A...apparently briefly flipped off the camera in a gesture so shocking that I had no idea she even did it until NBC issued an apology for it." An Associated Press report also quoted a viewer who only realized the next morning what MIA did.

Here's the video.

And here's the official music video for Madonna's "Give Me All Your Luvin'". Go to the 2:39 mark, where MIA's part is. When she raps "I don't give a sh..." she points out her index finger as in mimicking firing a gun. Hmm. So could it be that MIA might've accidentally moved her wrong finger? A possibility. UK tabloid The Sun quotes an anonymous insider: "M.I.A. did nothing similar in rehearsals," and also alleged that Madonna disapproved of MIA's action.

And of course, the good ol' Parents Television Council had to weigh in. (No long-winded column yet about "OOGA BOOGA DECLINING DECENCY STANDARDS IN AMERICA!" by PTC founder/former president/now advisor/continuing columnist Brent Bozell.) Current PTC president Tim Winter was quoted in the same AP source: "Most families would agree that the middle finger aimed directly at them is not appropriate, especially during the most-watched television event of the year."

The PTC's full statement is here, and furthermore Winter stated: "It has been eight years since the Janet Jackson striptease, and both NBC and the NFL knew full well what might happen. They chose a lineup full of performers who have based their careers on shock, profanity and titillation." The performers in this year's halftime show indeed don't lack controversy. Headliner Madonna has been provocative throughout her nearly 30-year pop music career and has especially inflamed the "pro-family" crowd, for example in 1989 soft drink brand Pepsi canceled a planned TV commercial with Madonna because the American Family Association complained about the singer's "Like a Virgin" music video using Christian symbolism and boycotted Pepsi for planning the ad. And as i blogged about earlier Brent Bozell had gripes with co-performer Nicki Minaj, who also had a wardrobe malfunction on a Good Morning America TV performance last year. Cee-Lo had a popular hit with "Fuck You" (on the radio "Forget You"), of course that would inflame Bozell's sensibilities (the golden passage in this column? "Any radio edit is just a lame Band-Aid for a pus-filled boil."). Another Bozell-founded Cultural Guardian, the Culture and Media Institute, also targeted MIA over her song "Lovalot" because its chorus sounded like "I love Allah"...oh no, those evil pop musicians can NOT be singing about ALLAH and MUSLIMS to our precious kids' ears!!!! But other than the performers' controversial backgrounds, what other evidence does Winter have to claim NBC knew another Janet Jackson moment would happen? In fact Winter had nothing to say about the suggestive dancing in the halftime show, and had the middle finger incident not occurred would he even have issued a Monday morning statement? Furthermore, the song selection wasn't highly offensive (unlike the Super Bowl show with Janet Jackson with songs like "Rock Your Body" and "Shake Ya Tailfeather"). From wikipedia: The setlist included "Vogue," a medley of Madonna's "Music" and LMFAO's two largest hits ("Party Rock Anthem" and "Sexy and I Know It,"...), followed by "Give Me All Your Luvin'," "Open Your Heart," "Express Yourself" (in a duet with [Cee-Lo] Green), and the finale, "Like a Prayer"."

Wonder why PTC doesn't have a complaint form to the FCC on its front page (even as of right now) unlike back in February 2004 after the Janet Jackson incident? The "Hilicon Valley" blog at TheHill.com explains: "A spokeswoman for the Parents Television Council said the organization won't ask the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fine NBC over the incident, but "we're certain others will do so whether we encourage them to or not."" In fact, if the FCC decides to fine NBC over this incident, MIA is contractually bound to pitch in. It seems by not actively pursuing formal complaints over MIA's middle finger, PTC is silently acknowledging that this is a weaker case than Janet Jackson's breast.

Bozell, take your blindfold off.

The conservative cultural crusader Brent Bozell's latest column "The Double Standard on 'Hoes'" attacks Nicki Minaj's horrible new song "Stupid Hoe". In a way as a heavy Republican-hating lefty I wish I could actually agree with him for once! But I take issue with this passage:

It seems rather clear that Imus deserved some punishment, even if his dismissal might be excessive. So why were the Reverends [Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton] applauded universally for their activism?

Because all of their fuss wasn’t about “public decency” or “degradation” or media companies “mainstreaming racism and sexism," not really. It was about race, and about how whites cannot say “indecent” things about blacks, not even in jest. But blacks can use those very same words, however they wish, with the ugliest of intentions if desired, with impunity. Where are Jackson and Sharpton over 'Stupid Hoe" now? Cricket, cricket.

Did Bozell and the other CONservative pundits miss how the black activists also took rappers to task after the Imus controversy? Like Sharpton's march on May 3, 2007 calling for an end to the use of the B-word and N-word in hip hop lyrics? Or Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons calling on record labels to drop the B, H, and N words? Or Sharpton's National Action Network having a Decency Initiative that "advocates against the entertainment industry’s use of capitalizing off of denigrating lyrics to describe black culture."

Funny how Bozell warns his readers: "Don’t hurt your brain trying to make sense" of the lyrics of the Minaj song. Well, I think that many people have lost more brain cells reading Bozell's selectively-researched rants and Catholic apologetics. Furthermore, Bozell contradicts himself by asserting that rappers can advance their careers by using "ho" but then pointing out "YouTube watchers gave the Minaj video about twice as many Dislikes as Likes" (as I type this the video now has 111,027 likes and 232,539 dislikes.) Given that reaction I don't think Bozell has much to whine about now.

Furthermore, on the Dec. 23 edition of Fox News' Sean Hannity TV show Bozell called Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead". So after that instance Bozell has lost his right to call for decency in culture.