1. Accolade: The Music Awards of Guyana
The voting was supposed to begin this week, when the public would be given its chance to rectify some of those really horrible picks, I mean Shelly G? Really? Shelly G? weigh in on the nominees. “Get ready to vote for your favourite artistes (quite possible the most overused–not to mention misused word in the local entertainment industry),” the official Accolade website, themusicawardsofguyana.com, says on its home page. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any word as yet about the internet and text-message voting system that organizers have been touting, although they continued to maintain on Thursday that the process would begin on time. Voting is supposed to run from October 10 to November 20.
Singer/songwriter Fojo leads the list with nine nominations, followed by Yoruba Singers’ producer Bonny Alves with eight, and songstress Timeka Marshall and soca sirens Michelle ‘Big Red’ King and Shellon ‘Shelly G’ Garraway with five nominations, including nods for the Artist of Year award. Leading reggae acts First Born and Natural Black also scored five each, including Album of the Year while X2, the popular Adrian Dutchin/Jumo Primo collaboration have four nominations.
2. A play list. On shuffle. And repeat.
01. “Beggin”. Madcon. A updated version of the 1967 Four Season’s hit by the Norwegian hip-hop duo of Tshawe Baqwa and Yosef Wolde-Mariam. Who knew that Norway produced hip-hop artists? It was love at first sound when I heard this. I dare you not to get on up. All the best love songs are about begging. Aren’t they? The only way I think of to describe this is as a cross between The Black Eyed Peas’ “Don’t Phunk with my Heart” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”. (If you are a fan of retro remixes, you need to check out anything and everything by Pilooski, who has been specialising in music from the 50s, 60s and 70s. So far I have found his original remix of “Beggin”, with Frankie Vallie vocals; the Human Beingz’ “Nobody But Me”; The Pointer Sisters’ “Send Him Back”; and Nina Simone’s “Taking Care of Business”. They are all great.)
02. “Just Dance”. Lady Gaga, ft Colby O’Donis. World, meet your new Madonna. Or at least, Gwen Stefani. With a name like Lady Gaga it has to be good. The song goes a bit too heavy on the synthesizers, but the looping bridge and Lady Gaga’s layered vocals are irresistible. I can’t wait to get my hands on her album, ‘The Fame’.
03. “Swagger Like Us”. T.I ft. Kanye West, Jay-Z and Lil Wayne. Over a grime-laced sample from M.I.A’s “Paper Planes”, T.I assembles a line-up that inspires nothing short of giddiness. He sums it up like this: “You can go see Weezy for the world play/Jeezy for the verb play/Kanyeezy for diversity/And me for controversy.” As usual, Lil Wayne kills, and well Jay-Z doesn’t (though I do admit his remix of Wayne’s “A Milli, A Billi” [what else?], was classic HOVA who else could get away with calling himself “The Hood’s Barack”). This slot was originally going to be filled by “Live Your Life”, the T.I/Rihanna collabo that is burning up the chart (owing largely to the infectiousness of the sample of O-Zone’s Dragostea din tei).
04. “Come Over”. Estelle ft. Sean Paul. Estelle, who you would no-doubt know from “American Boy” (ironically from a Brit), is a musical chameleon. She can easily slip between genres. “Come Over” is a lover’s rock gem, in which her desperate and yet seductive vocals are piercing. Her voice reminds me of Nina Simone and she possesses the same kind of devastating aura. I like everything else about him, but I’m not a fan of Sean Paul’s actual singing. However, he doesn’t distract too much here from the main attraction.
05. “Love Lockdown”. Kanye West. And sometimes they sing: Eminem did it. Jay-Z did it. Snoop did it. Lil Wayne does it. (And although a lot of people have been dying to hear him rap again, Andre 3000 has been doing it since “Stankonia”.) And now there is Kanye West, in what is said to be the first release from a December album. It absolutely scares me. Blame auto-tune. And T-Pain. On the upside, the “Love Lockdown Flufftonix” remix is danceable.
06. “I Will Possess Your Heart”. Death Cab for Cutie. From their new album ‘Narrow Stairs’, this is the ultimate spurned lover’s anthem. It starts quiet and foreboding and then almost breaks your heart when lead vocalist Ben Gibbard utters: “How I wish you could see the potential/the potential in you and me. It is 8 minutes and 25 seconds of sheer brilliance. Not recommended for the potential stalkers.
3. So, Ian McDonald doesn’t like rap…
Wow. And led me add: woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. Granted a lot of rap is bad–very bad–the obvious result of horny record executives who have hijacked the music from the people and created a culture to market it like nobody’s business. But, in between there are some real flashes of genius. So, here’s a list of some thinking man’s (not very PC but it sounds better than thinking-person’s) rappers:
♪ Kanye West (here he is again), rap’s dapper don. Now, I have to admit the novelty of West’s insecure-man-child-trapped-between-doing-good-and-doing-what-feels-good (believe me, the two rarely go hand-in-hand) shtick has worn off. His musicianship has not. If West has anything going for him, it’s not his fashion sense, it’s his ear. From the uneven ‘The College Dropout’, to the brilliant ‘Late Registration’ and the brooding ‘Graduation’, the one constant is his ability to merge what seem like disparate elements into hip-hop, be it old Soul music or French Techno.
♪ Common is the other Chicago rapper (West being The Chicago rapper). Common is the lyricist West is not, though recently he has parked himself firmly in West’s G.O.O.D (Getting Out Our Dreams) Music camp, along with John Legend. And it hasn’t hurt him any, what with two hit albums, including 2005’s ‘Be’ and last year’s ‘Finding Forever’. They are both good and should be a primer for anyone trying to get into rap music. I personally like his old stuff. Just listen to his ode to hip-hop on “The Love Of My Life”, from The Rots’ ‘Things Fall Apart’ (…Caught in the Hype Williams and lost her direction/Getting ate in sections where I wouldn’t eat her/Her under the counter love/So silently I treated her/Her Daddy a‘ beat her/Eyes all Puff/And the Mix on tape N****** had her in the buck/When we touch it was more than just to ****/The Police/In her I found peace…).
♪ And then of course there is Lupe Fiasco, the other, other Chicago rapper (or would that be Talib Kweli?), otherwise known as the best rapper you never heard of (although that’s been changing this year). There can be little doubt that his second studio album, ‘The Cool’, released with little fanfare last December, was better than any of the other mainstream offerings, including ‘Graduation’. Lupe Fiasco is the literate man’s rapper. See also: Lil Wayne (who is quite possibly the best pop artist at the moment–how else do you explain the success of “A Milli”?) The Roots (“?uestlove and company”); Outkast (both Andre 3000 and Big Boi are due to drop solo albums, for real this time); and The Cool Kids (I am now getting into them, but what I have heard so far is encouraging).
