“It was inevitable, time marching on as it does, and yet it also hard to believe: Half a century has passed since the Beatles touched down in New York for the first time, on Feb. 7, 1964, and seduced the country with three performances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and a pair of concerts, at the Washington Coliseum and Carnegie Hall. Everything about them — their pudding basic haircuts, their Cardin suits and pointed boots, their sharp, irreverent sense of humor — seemed outlandish, compared with American pop groups. And though their music was firmly rooted — as they were always quick to point out — in American rhythm and blues, soul and rock, they produced a sound that was fresh, energetic and unmistakably their own.”

– http://ift.tt/1fz4Lsr

“The battle over the merit of trap isn’t about quality control. It’s really a collision of differing sets of criteria for what makes a good MC. Much of the objection to the Futures, Keefs and Flockas stems from the prevailing view that they can’t rap. This is a line of thinking steeped in a very specific and restrictive idea of what makes a good MC. It prizes lyrical dexterity almost to abstraction. Rhyming words really quickly is an important building block of good rap, but awful rap has come along that treasures it, and great rap has happened in its absence. Eminem’s last three solo albums are master classes in wordplay whose soullessness and stringency make them hard to listen to. Flockaveli’s lyricism is chantlike and methodically simplistic, but it is the gold standard for modern aggressive party rap. There’s more than one axis for measuring good rap, and classifying a Keef as awful just because he doesn’t stack up on the lyrical miracle axis ignores the terse and subtly influential brand of pop rap songwriting he mines on Finally Rich.”

– http://ift.tt/1eaP0ZZ

“

More crucially, the rap awards are given out before the broadcast begins. This is odd. Many, many people enjoy rap. (The opening of the official ceremony was a performance by Beyoncé, who was accompanied by a rapper named Jay Z, who is now of note mostly because he is Beyoncé’s husband, and he got to stand near her while she performed “Drunk in Love”; she set the bar unpleasantly high for the rest of the night by melting people with her voice and presence.) But all three rap Grammys went to the Opie Taylor and Andy Griffith of rap, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Macklemore’s “American Graffiti” hairdo and crushing earnestness make him very easy to mock, but it is almost impossible to indulge that feeling because the song that made them famous, “Same Love,” a duet with Mary Lambert, is a clever, well-crafted song about homophobia—particularly, that within the hip-hop community.

“Same Love” is a tough one—it’s basically impossible to be against this song, as cheesy as Macklemore and the song and the untempered sincerity of the project are. Hip-hop’s problem with homophobia is more than minor, genetically linked to thousands of bias crimes, reported and not, and when you’ve got teen-agers growing up listening to hip-hop (I do), it’s not so bad to have a straight guy stand up and say homophobia is uncool, and to be celebrated for it. So I am happy Macklemore is there, and for this song. But he didn’t need to win all three rap awards, or, at the official ceremony, be awarded Best New Artist over the m.c. Kendrick Lamar or the country singer Kacey Musgraves, both of whom will be relevant long after Macklemore has left music for talk radio.

”

– http://ift.tt/1liN1qb

“

Last week, Complex published an article by a Grammy voter detailing some parts of the system, which included this behind-the-scenes tidbit passed from one voter to the next: “Be careful about greenlighting an album by someone who was really famous if you don’t want to see that album win a Grammy.”

Macklemore isn’t more famous than Jay Z or Mr. West, but the nature of his fame is different — it’s likely to have registered with a wider swath of Grammy voters who would be comfortable voting for him in a way they might not have been for Mr. Lamar.

”

– http://ift.tt/Mb5c13

“Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died Monday. He was 94 and lived in Beacon, N.Y.”

– http://ift.tt/1f97kil

Buffalo Gals – Malcolm McLaren (aka – The Pharrell Hat Video)

Chvrches cover Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope” Live at Billboard Women In Music 2013