R. Kelly

He's really giving it to the fans isn't he? The Pied Piper just set up a hotline where you can preview songs off his next album. The number is 312-278-3965. Ironically, the first track is called "Blow it UP". Blow that phone line up if you're a true Kelly fan. Once again, brought to you by me, Tatiana.

Music history is now. Open your ears up.

For Your Sonic Pleasure

DJ Khaled feat. T.I., Akon, Fat Joe, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne & Baby

Go white boy

I'm Sick of Hearing Urban Artists Say...

"I've poured my heart & soul into this album" (so what the hell were you doing on the previous albums? Bullshitting me?)

"This album is the real me." (same question)

"I'm about to change the game." (don't count your chickens...)

"I feel like I'm Tupac or Biggie." (nigga please!)

"I don't care about album sales. I make music for the people." (what the hell are you doign on a major label then?)

"This album is gonna be a classic" (again with the chickens...)

"Basically the label didn't do their job as far as promotions go." (why you so lazy???)

The first installment of this ...article (?) is somewhere lost in cyberspace. I can't remember what web site I put it on. But here's the second part. It speaks for itself.

Will the Internet Kill Television Too? (cont)

I KNEW IT!!!

Bill Gates, Nikles Zennstrom, Steve Jobs, Janus Friis. Guess which of these names prompted my copy of Microsoft Word to go crazy with squiggly red lines. People are asking. "Who are they anyway?" Nobody important. Just the founders of Kazaa, that P2P file-sharing network that enabled you to completely fill your old 20 GB hard drive back in 2001. Did you know that before the entertainment industry lawyers moved in, Kazaa was managing over 3 million downloads per month? Per month?! "Whatever. That's great, but everyone knows that Kazaa isn't the hot app that it used to be. No one even uses it anymore because of all the lawsuits and arrests and stuff. Those guys are finished." True. Coming out of 2006 having paid $115 million in lawsuit payouts during the summer must have Zennstrom and Friis backpacking across Europe on $5 a day to get back home to Denmark. "Duh."

But wait, didn't they bail out on Kazaa to form Skype? "What the heck is a Skype?" (chuckles) You have so much to learn, non tech-savvy one. Skype was (is) the free voice-over-IP telephone system that took the web by storm and made the traditional telephone guys sweat all over. Right down to their Gucci loafers. Skype meant free phone calls. "Well I've never heard of Skype, so it must not be that great." Well…136 million worldwide users and a 2.6 billion dollar sale to eBay say different. And these guys still work a regular nine-to-five (Zennstrom and Friis, are the CEO and executive vice president of innovation, respectively for Skype). But in that cute habit that Internet billionaires have of doing whatever they please, ZenFri are starting yet another side hustle: The Venice Project.

Now called Joost, as it nears release to the general consumer population (it's now in beta testing), the two European geeks are embarking on a path to change yet another major industry: television—but this time, they don't want to step on any toes. After losing $115 million from Kazaa and just barely sidestepping a plethora of lawsuits after Skype, Niklas and Janus are sending us another gem from their nerdy minds. Here's what Joost seeks to offer:

..[if !supportLists]-->1. ..[endif]-->Taking the best from the Internet and television (two of the most influential and complex systems of the 20th and 21st centuries) and putting them together. Joost allows users to stream high-quality video clips of their favorite shows (emphasis on high quality) while allowing them to search, view program guides, create infinite numbers of "smart channels", create a buddy list, IM, and options to "Rate it!" and "Share what I'm watching!" Web 2.0? Yes. Television 2.0? We sure hope so.

..[if !supportLists]-->2. ..[endif]-->Make massive amounts of quality live video streams possible. Kazaa was originally slated to include video streams/downloads, but sluggish turn-of-the-millenium Internet speeds made it impossible and MP3s were pushed to the forefront instead. With today's average broadband--or something like it--speeds hovering somewhere around 500 Kbps for U.S. consumers, the use of P2P networks (the same tech behind Kazaa, BitTorrent, and Bearshare) for streaming videos is not only a possibility, it's about to be a reality.

..[if !supportLists]-->3. ..[endif]-->90% less commercial time. "Okay, now the industry most DEFINITELY will not like this." Or maybe they will. Advertising companies need to start looking at the quality advertising time over the quantity of ad time they buy. For example, on the net, an ad agency can buy all of the customers in a zip code and beam a commercial to only those users. The only question is, if this Webivision thing takes off in a few years, will we be able to laugh about all the same commercials as our friends?

..[if !supportLists]-->4. ..[endif]-->Real content that YOU want to see. In the Joost offices, meetings between programming directors and representatives of major U.S. broadcast channels, music majors, and other such heavy-hitters are the norm. One channel will even have a modified PBS strategy: classics, documentaries, and independent dramas in healthy doses. To summarize: the Venice Project isn't trying to push obscure programming through your Ethernet cable. This is real television. Like the kind that says "Samsung" across the bottom.

..[if !supportLists]-->5. ..[endif]-->High-quality video images. "I can already watch all of this stuff. There's Google, YouTube, MetaCafe, E—" Warning. Low-res video, 6-inch viewing screens, and horribly un-interesting user-created content ahead. GooTube, MetaCafe, and the others have their merits (actual good user-created content jumps to mind), but with lawsuits coming down (Is Fox Preparing to Fight YouTube?), it's only a matter of time before they become watered-down shells of their current glory. With Joost, I'm talking DVD-quality, full screen, licensed content here. To quote Friis: ""It even looks pretty good hooked up to my plasma." Touché.

"Okay fine. What's the point of you telling me this? I already pay Comcast for my cable service, and I'm happy. It only costs me $45 a month."

In reply, I'll leave you with a little snippet from Spencer Reiss's article on Joost from Wired News:

"We want to be in the space where people are doing what they do now with TV, watching four to six hours a day," says Henrik Werdelin, 30, another MTV defector who spearheads overall product development. And he can't resist taking a little potshot: "That's a lot of YouTube clips."

To pull that off, the history of both the Internet and television suggest an obvious price point: zero. "The ultimate value of Skype is free phone calls," says Friis, who cheerfully mixes rabble-rousing populism and cold-eyed business. "The ultimate value of what we're doing here is free TV."

Unfortunately, at this time, I have no received an email back from the Joost gods granting me access to their beta testing.

Update: I just received an email from them yesterday saying that my access to beta testing is coming SOON!!! So excited...

Just Thinking About...

.....Kelly Rowland's upcoming album. Hello???? Kelly, what's wrong with you??? The album is coming out on Music World/Columbia Records...a.k.a. Beyoncé World. Good luck getting a promotion budget out of what's left over from the re-release of B-Day (April 4th). Kelly's a talented girl (some would argue more so than Yoncé), but this album is labelled a certified FLOP. to the left.

...Beyoncé's affect on black boys, LOL

...Ugly music icons

...Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five's recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They're the first hip-hop act to be inducted into the Hall. hearts smile for hip-hop pioneers, and these guys are still keeping us cheesing decades after their first break beat.

and

...How I told ya'll niggas to log out your Google accounts before searching for illegal shit two years ago. Maybe now ya'll will listen. People are getting convicted for crimes based on their recent Google searches! There's another story of someone poisoning their spouse, but I coudlnt' find the link. Matter of fact, I'm sure they keep your I.P. address too. so the next time you want to learn how to "torture a nigger", use someone else's computer.

New Music Biz Trend?

It's been a while since we've seen any true collaborations where two semi-rivaling artists get together and make a good song. In urban music that is. (No, all the compilation hip-hop remixes don't count. They're not even in the studio together). And by rival, I don't mean "beefin'". I just mean two artists w/ the same core fan base. Brandy & Monica "The Boy is Mine". Whitney and Mariah "When You Believe". Yes, I'm showing my age (or lack thereof) by only naming '90s collabos, but what do I look like commenting on music from before my time?

Last week, we got the first whiffs of the Beyoncé and Shakira partnership on "Beautiful Liar". I'm sure most of you wouldn't say that they have the same exact core audience, but you can't deny they're both heavyweights seeking the championship in the That's-One-Sexy-Mutha-Fucka circuit. While that song isn't even finished climbing the charts to the top (where it will eventually fall in the next few weeks, mark my words), Omarion goes and recruits Usher for his "Ice Box" remix. I know right? I was like...what happened to Da Brat? This one is a much closer match. While Usher's last album shot him up beyond superstar sex symbol status and into we're-gonna-be-tellin-our-grandchildren-about-him calibur, there's no denying that Omarion is probably the true heir to the Usher Jr. throne. (Sorry Chris.)

That being said, who's next? Jay-Z is on a Nas track. Can we hear Fantasia and J. Hud throw 4.5 minutes of sonic ecstacy our way? Fergie and Nelly Furtado? Keyshia Cole and Mary J. Blige (a hoodrat's anthem)? Bow Wow and Li'l Romeo? Okay I just wanted to make you say "what the fuck???" on that last one. On that note, I'm out of here. Look out for the next classic collabo.


History-making music is now. Keep your ears open.