korn ft xzibit - fight the power

elvis was a hero to most but he elvis was a hero to most but he elvis was a hero to most but he



ahhh remember them days when the world was real? honestly i thought everything was different-shaped now but listen: a hot new system of a down song on the radio, three six mafia busting double-kickdrum powerful-calfed vinnie paul patterns on the spizzong to ur left, and lil jon producing korn and xzibit on a cover of "fight the power" for the new xxx movie ! crazy. it's like lil missy just said to me, 'i don't even know who these people are!'

i can't really do it justice so i'll just break some things down:

- lil jon gets his own hysterical-synthed intro and then NOTHING ELSE apart from trademark vaguely spacey electro drums for the verses

- which segues into big bad krashing korn drums for the chorus!

- the spizzazzz-endorsed fav korn video is probly that "blind" one where the song ends and they break into some hot nu metal beat, just playing it relentlessly in their dingy squat with the huge korn banner behind them, no doubt the only non-musical posession they had at the time, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT NU METAL DUDES DO!!!



- but the one we still see all the time is that shit where there's bullet holes everywhere so jonathan 'korn' davis blows on a bullet to trigger the hot percussive-bass breakdown



- i hate xzibit! well ok "bitch please" was good one million years ago but his current mtv omnipresence grates no end! jack cable mysteriously loves that wack "hey now" song

- oh yeah, "fight the power"! x and j davis share the verses, passing the mic in racially harmonious fashion - x probly sounds best but then j davis gets nearly the whole chorus so call it a draw on the battlefield with lil jon, as ever, secretly winning the war

- and i'm done

50 cent / tony yayo - i run ny



(recent new york dudes falling out stories have been boring but styles p's response was good where he was like, erm i better stay out of it as i'm on interscope too and 50's bigger than me! spoken like a true second most popular member of the lox! i wonder if sheek louch could be even more pragmatic)

inevitably (rightly!) there's not much talk about the beats on dis songs, tho by nature they are the hardest and most purposeful you'll hear on a rap show right now. and if you listen to rap shows a lot you're gonna hear them all the f-ing time! let's look at the recent 50 dis sequence: "piggy bank" was a bit useless but the awesome opening strings, the distortosynth and general clatteringness won me over; jada's reply had a sleazy funk-rock gallop (he is v good at dis songs coz hypnotically never altering your rhyme scheme is good for long verses!) and fat joe busted over a super-dramatic string loop.

all deadly functional and carefully chosen for once; no need for a wack timbaland beat or whatev tho maybe because big producers are afraid to tie themselves to disses. and now the "i run ny" beat (originally mobb deep's "cobra" ahh nobody cares coz they're not glamourous): horrendous saw slicing thru metal noise, palm-muted guitar, controlled-explosion drum track - a release from dull producers endlessly recreating real-band dynamics of melodic lead instrument plus drums and bass. bands don't have a saw! well maybe rammstein does or something but you know wot i mean. this is my fav beat for ages.

1, 2 brap



or: 1, 2 dexplicit; c-oh-lder; eski-oh; b-oh; baddies; griairam

ciara ft ludacris - oh (spizz blend one)

ciara ft ludacris - oh (spizz blend two)

we haven't had a pic on spizzazzz since mad cobra?!

so here's babygirl ciara drawing a magic o.

sleazy dance motherfuckers

you know what i'm talking about! videos sprung from the juggernaut success of "call on me": michael gray - "weekend", sunset strippers - "falling stars", kabin kkkru - "star to fall", studio b - "i see girls", max graham - "owner of a lonely heart", even "my my my" by my man armand! (where are the ghetto mandivas??). plus at least a few more. they all feature roughly the same cheap-looking film stock/dv processing, the same speedup/slowdown fx offering a respectable real-music-vid sheen to endless tit-jiggling shots, the same vaguely fashionable-haired women in flight attendant/secretary/undefined glamour model roles. all have the traditional british bawdy-humour getout clause. just a bit of fun! WE LOVE IT etc

are these all from the same director/company? ministry of sound? i dunno.

the "owner of a lonely heart" clip is interesting as meta-critique of this whole sequence of vids: two barely secondary skool-kids put up ad for ladies in bikinis to come audition for them (for some reason - i can't remember if it's explained!) after they see bikini'd mannequin in shop window; bikini bitches, delighted at opportunity, dance for them in mysterious audition room; kids get picked up afterwards by mum and share cheeky we-got-away-with-it look when asked what they've been up to.

these kids are clearly the perpetually juvenile dance twats behind the scenes, forever cheekily getting away with their wearying extreme objectification. arse-pinching their way right back to innocence. this i spose is what nuts magazine is like.

it's also wack because "weekend" and "my my my" are amazing songs. and twenty wonky-faced actually-singing trance ladies just got put the fuck out of work.

mary j blige - mvp / cassidy ft mary j blige - i'm a hustla rmx

ok sometimes i think it's endless industry complacency and a probable network of grizzled old-timer djs with their hiphop-soul 90s glory days that allows mjb to instantly get buzz for stuff like this, but it's also coz she actually bothers innit. mary bothers to make the connections and bothers to love (in the case of "mvp") "hate it or love it" enuff so she can spin it full of r'n'b goodness and bothers to make bold choices - come on, you never thought she was gonna be on the "hustla" rmx! it hasn't just got pretend hard drums like "lose my breath"! and it's a bold choice that comes off too; there's a back and forth type section with cassidy that is just like, yeaaaahhhh i should have known she would kill it like this! (also swizz refs his early o.t.t. programming with a one-bar doubletime flurry like wot he used to do on every song ever, cool!) sorry i doubted.

evans ft pusha t - goin out

oh faith, if anyone should get out of the bleeding house it's you. doo doo doo-doo doo-dooooo. me and my girls are goin out tonight / me and my girls are goin out tonight. a fabolous song to sing along to but i'm always singing girl-specific songs! where is the man-track i can put my heart into?

so, songwriting mechanics! "goin out" has that fing where you have a cool little one-or-two bar motif, if you run it over one bumping never-changing uber-chord then it's always hot, but if you hit it over pharrell-caressed descending / ascending chords it kind of moistens and makes the one-chord bump you just heard seem strangely poignant. an easy trick but so effective, especially for updated latin freestyle splurts as sticky-sweet as on "goin out", in fact it is probably the least miniature neptunes track for ages; i like "drop it" etc ok* but i feel rigorous questions must be asked of anyone poiposely lo fidelitizing their sound - like what reason is there not to make it sound as big as possible / why must you hate / plz don't reinvent weedsmoke boombap for the mid-00s! sorry that last one isn't a question.

and that brings us back to faith! because when not being real on ballads she has consistently killed it over hard r'n'b tracks with proper low-end ("love like this" "burning up" "you gets no love" loads of rmxs etc). it seems fair to credit her with saving the neps from their lame selves! also from her own personal drug hell so she can go out again and stuff.

*ahhh god i just remembered that "tit 4 tat" one though! terrible.