G5 - August 26
- Big K.R.I.T. shows us all how to make a video on the cheap. The “93 ‘til Infinity” beat that “Somedayz” borrows is just as breezy as it was in, well, 1993. Audio at the bottom of the post.
- Slate’s Jonah Weiner wrote a tongue-in-cheek profile of Kanye West, based entirely on West’s Twitter feed and various videos and outlets that West has used since his mother’s passing (since which, he’s only given two interviews). It’s an enjoyable read and highlights the rapid change in music writing throughout the last few years. Zach Baron thinks on it over at the Village Voice: “…there’s the rub. Artists don’t need magazines like Slate to convey their words to the public anymore; these days, they’d rather do it themselves, and the technology is at point where they can.”
- Our boy Jared at Playtonic Dialogues takes issue with Rolling Stone’s Greatest Beatles Songs list. Lists are an easy way to organize things, but I’m with Jared… we don’t need to categorize something as better than the rest. (“Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, uh, your opinion, man.” In music, our ears and tastes are subjective. “Favorites” is the ticket, ladies and sirs, not “bests.”
- Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” is going to becoming “Forget You” in its radio edit. This will likely not help the song’s popularity. New York Magazine looks at some songs helped by conspicuous radio edits.
- Here’s an interesting take on Apple’s dominance of the digital download market, more or less saying that it’s good for consumer and terrible for the industry. (My thoughts? I thought you’d never ask. I’m pro-iPod and pro-something like iTunes, but anti-iTunes store. I say “something like iTunes” because iTunes, in its current incarnation, sucks, but the premise is on point. There aren’t any alternatives that will work with iPods, which are far and away the best portable music player on the market, so we’re stuck with iTunes as a program. And I’m anti-iTunes store not because I don’t want to pay for music, but because they quality of file they sell — 128 kbps .m4a — sucks. I’m no audiofile, but that’s a low-quality file, and provides a noticeable difference in sound when compared to 256 kbps and 320 kbps .mp3 files.)
Big K.R.I.T. - Somedayz
