olivia / 50 cent - best friend rmx



10 THINGS WOT ME AND OLIVIA AND 50 WOULD DO IF WE WERE ALL BEST FRIENDS:

- go for picnics

- hold hands

- get baked

- record mixtape disses

- hang out

- gossip about lloyd banks and to a lesser extent tony yayo

- never ever talk about young buck

- sing our favourite songs

- count 50's money

- draw some new eyebrows for olivia wtf

(what i mean to say is this song is crazy hot and each time we gain a half decent rap banger from 50 like say "whip ya head boy," we lose another day of studio time from one of the secret greatest rnb vocalists of his whole generation)

lazy blog post caps lazy awards show

yeah its all well and good busting some post with catty comments about people looking insane, and it would be better if the whole thing was live on tv yesterday, but i will probly watch the brits later and LOVE IT. you win for now, chris evans!!!

now here's some good arrival pics:

- simon webbe daring the world to front on spangly gold d&g pants

- whatever rtc says, chris brown looks lonely as a motherfucker, sixteen year olds really ought to roll deep

- motherfucking addams family trying to ruin everyone's fun

- joss stone sitting on the one chair that could make her look more of an arse than she already does

- kano forever trying to fashionista-ize 1996 stripey shirt and jeans look

- kt bumstool what have u gone and done this time

- still wary of new sugababe but they look kewl

(post-brits update: actually it was a load of rubbish. oh well. the only good bit was james blunt's performance with the screen behind him apparently showing what happens after he jumps into the ocean in the "beautiful" vid THAT WAS FUCKING HILARIOUS.)

reggie in four simple stepz



1) one day i was listening to semtex on the radio. you know how it is - corona in one hand, book in the other, having some me time. and on came this song, and then this other song, and finally on came no bizzi ft j2k* - yeah yeah. and this song was kinda crazy, it begins with a sample from back to the future and the beat is some silly stop-start ragtime grime and semtex stops it after a minute saying 'wait wait... i don't think the streets is ready for this one' (tee hee!)

2) another day i was listening to ras kwame on the radio. you know how it is - corona in one hand, book in the other, having some me time. i like to have a lot of me time. TO CONTEMPLATE MY MANY MISTAKES. and on came this song, and it was actually very competent brithoppery, some nice squiggly electro sounds, and it also begins with a sample from back to the future (in fantastically nonsensical fashion it is the part where marty talks about how sexless his mum is wtf) and afterwards ras is like (paraphrasing) 'holla! get at me dog! that was no bizzi ft biggz** & sas*** with a song called "too many"... no bizzi of course is also known as man like reggie yates, and the tune is taken from his self released ep 'back to the future'.. now lets slide into some dubstep flavas-'

3) hold up ras! reggie yates of grange hill/cbbc/totp/1xtra/fame academy/radio 1 fame has recorded an ep called 'back to the future' featuring several luminaries of the brit underground? i respect that. i also respect the outdated form of the ep, the use of unrelated samples from popular films to tie together an ep (surely every bedroom dj/producer with a lick of sense has done this cos i sure have****), and reggie's apparent delusional disregard for his cuddly tv persona to forge ahead as a serious urban artist. many hats!

4) the very next week i was once again listening to semtex on the radio. once again he played no bizzi ft j2k - yeah yeah, and once again he failed to mention that no bizzi is his former station cohort reggie yates, perhaps all too aware that some kid in streatham is ready to txt in any moment telling him he's a one-armed joke. i respect that too!



* j2k, he's no one's fav mc but lets be honest we all have a strange respect for him! probably cos of "stop" innit

** just yesterday i caught a biggz video on channel u and let me tell you, he aint lying, guy is as wide as he is tall!

*** sas are them british dudes who once worked with the heatmakerz and will spend the rest of their careers going on about it! move on guys

**** when i was very very young, honest, i was briefly calling myself k2 (holla @ all my brighton graf cousins!) urrr WHY young facelift WHYYYY? and naturally as an enterprising spirit i rented out THE MOVIE K2 (THE ULTIMATE HIGH) in which michael biehn of terminator/aliens fame plays some kind of mountaineer who has to travel up THE MOUNTAIN K2 for STRANGE AND ROMANTIC REASONS, and eventually began my first ever mixtape with biehn somewhat bizarrely asking 'is it oh my god we're going to k2????' U COULDNT MAKE IT UP

black buddafly ft fabolous - bad girl



well last year i was quietly feeling their first single "rock-a-bye" and once again i have tried hard with this post-cnb synth track featuring a pair of typically crisp fab verses to detect some euro-ness that affirms black buddafly's status as quite possibly the only german rnb trio signed to def jam. ('he tried to holla at me, but back then i didn't even know what that term meant!') and i think i wanted to posit a lame theory about increasing globalization of rnb, u know, what with the non-minging one out of floetry hooking up with aftermath and dwele rmxing n bedingfield and ne yo's "so sick" being produced by scando pop gods stargate and erm mariah's "your girl" being constructed around some new zealandist girl group song.

yes the "rock-a-bye" vid looks kinda wim wenders, and texturally both their singles have this sickly dryness which departs from storchian big room expensive/expansive reverb hell. however, bb have been expertly assimilated into defjamrnbworld and their vocals and gently sophisticate approach remind me a lot of total. ("bad girl"s sudden high-register kinda funny chorus - 'i'm a baaaa-aaaad girl!!!' ...yes, yes you are - is sort of like total's "when boy meets girl".) on one hand, hurrah, total were fucking amazing and more music should sound like them. on the other, it is a missed opportunity as a novelty euro-rnb group tryna make it in america who really sound novelty would be great! anyway this song is still very cool.

here is like the only interesting thing i could find on german rnb and here are my top three german acts!

1) die fantastischen vier
2) rammstien
3) the scorpions

nivea ft the dream - okay (red cup remix)

HAD TO DO A REMIX FOR THE WESTSIDE, PIMP! says the dream - but really it was for nivea. if you havent heard this song, shame on you for not buying niveas album, and shame on the radio for not playing it. when i first saw it i thought, what kind of a rap name is 'the dream'? he sounds about 15 yrs old/ or a woman, like lil boosie's goodie 2 shoes younger brother (despite his "a-town killas in the black chinchillas" talk) or maybe niveas grandmother but he is actually niveas new HUSBAND which explains why he chants her name ok remix nivea nivea nivea so infatuatedly at the end of his verse. AND he wrote the original "okay" which sounds like wedding on troll mountain AND he produced this remix: the beat shows his true love for her- nivea sings about her drink turning from blue into green (incredible!) - the beat has the same shimmering miragelike (incredible!) quality (i have probably listened to this song 1000 times and i still love it, because it is a mirage) and the melody is so so pretty. there are not many men i would consider good enough for nivea but i absolutely approve of this union! at the end he shouts out to youngbloodz, monica, tlc, so so def & ATL 4ever.
p.s. niveas daughter is named navy just like me!

moustache - everywhere

remember '2 times' by ann lee? sociopathic 19 yr old me hated that song until i spent a week in thailand summer 2000 where it followed me everywhere (when phil collins wasnt stalking us)- phong's taxi radio - piped into our hotel room - tourbus to the coconut farm and the rubber farm (where i had a dream that furniture was falling on me from a great height because i fell asleep watching the cars and motorbikes zooming fwd in the bus window)- the salt lakes - restaurants - on the beach and finally at the 'shark pool' nightclub in phuket where two white tracksuit finnish b-boys tore up the dancefloor - and then i still hated it til it disappeared and i got a chance to miss it and THEN i REALLY LOVED IT, maybe because i had a few more friends and stopped wearing that hideous monostrapped orange backpack with the beige mooks tshirt with the lightbulbs on it. now i have a great love for every featherlight slightly countrified girl-dance radio song ever (and theres a long lineage beginning maybe with fern kinney's cover of 'groove me', and including every song on dj sammy's album 'heaven'). other reasons to love moustache - everywhere: it looks good on a list, it is australian, it is a well written but kind of jerky fleetwood mac song which is improved by modern technology

the veronicas - everything i'm not



this is supposedly about ppl in a relationship having a false image of one other and therefore no real love a la krishnamurti but its REALLY about how one of the veronicas (the darker one) is more runtish and sour looking and totally jealous of the sister who hogs the camera.

australian pop songs that are american can be identified by
- intricate loving soft focus production craft - ie. the conspicuous absense of an ugly thoughtless midrange australian guitar blur
- the video just looks different. and the sound of the song is in no way at odds with the american look of the video - unlike say those overdubbed dandruff shampoo ads where its SO OBVIOUSLY NOT HER VOICE.
- but surprisingly it doesn't have anything to do with the accent. kylie sings with a weird pseudo american inflection & her songs are never american.
-theres just no embarrassing australianness shining through anywhere, which is both thrilling like seeing anthony lapaglia or jacqueline mackenzie seamlessly integrated into american tv and also disappointing.
-the songcraft itself - fuck whatever shithead wrote kate d'areaoeuogoeuoauuges aussie idol hit and thank god emily didnt have to sing it. and fuck bryan adams for making me like shannon noll.

da brat's face damaged by bf's disturbing appearance



it's that liza minnelli dude?!