Archive for the Music Category

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Music I Love: The Gossip

Posted in Music, NYC with tags on May 17, 2009 by illdielaughing

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I’m very much into Gossip these days and not the bad kind. Gossip is an alternative rock band originating in Arkansas but finding most of it’s success in Europe.  Ever since watching “Skins” this past winter, whose 1st series theme was Gossip’s “Standing in the Way of Control”, I’ve been interested in Gossip’s releases. They’re next album, “Music for Men” is set for digital release in the United States on June 23rd. I’ll definitely be buying it but for now I’ve made do with the great single off of the upcoming album, “Heavy Cross”.

And the first single off of their last album, “Standing in the Way of Control”

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Is 2NE1 on Fire?

Posted in Music, Music Video with tags on May 6, 2009 by illdielaughing

Guess who’s back…back again… lol (that would be MOI) It’s summer so let’s see how long I can keep this up!

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There’s definitely some smoke rising off of new girl group, 2NE1, but is their first digital single “Fire” hot?

It is a good summer song, the beat is interesting and the girls look like they’re having a lot of fun in the “Street MV”. However, the song is repetitive and the whole sound of it is underwhelming. The music video, on the other hand, is great, mostly because the girls look like they’re having a ton of fun and they can dance their butts off. As they move forward, though, someone should remove the crooked fitted and durag from Sandara’s head. That’s just ridiculous.

I also take serious issue with Park Bom looking like an overgrown baby in that onesy, Sandara wearing those baggy pink sweat pants and all of them, save CL, looking unfit to walk around in the real world.

My impression on the group, after seeing them in action, is CL is the bomb, Minji is fierce, Park Bom has finally got some spunk and Sandara Park is kind of useless. She’s not singing…but she’s not rapping… Darn, there’s always one person in the group that doesn’t really do anything. We’ll see, as time passes, whether or not these girls are a good group but I’m giving all of them the benefit of the doubt and hoping to see great things.

Watch the Street version of the “Fire MV”

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Happy Birthday, Lupe Fiasco [The Cool]

Posted in Music, NYC with tags on February 17, 2009 by illdielaughing

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So, I really wanted to write a post about Lupe Fiasco’s latest Grammy nominated album The Cool but then I read that it’s his birthday so I’ll kill two birds with one stone. 

For those who don’t know Lupe Fiasco he is a rapper and a pretty darn good one at that. The Cool is a great album and one of the best ones from 2008. He’s a great writer, he has great collabs with Matthew Santos, his beats are solid.  Songs like Gold Watch, Gotta Eat, The Coolest and Hip-Hop Saved My Life (featuring Nikki Jean) speak to the social critic in all of us. Songs like Paris, Tokyo and Go Baby (featuring Gemstones) are sweet talking mostly about love. He tells stories with his music, it’s not just a masturbatory album full of dance tracks with no substance.  All I can say is, give this album a listen, even if you don’t like rap or hip-hop. 

Fave tracks, hard to choose but I love Superstar, Go Baby, Go Go Gadget Flow, The Coolest and Paris, Tokyo. I really can’t choose one.

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KBS Bans Again

Posted in Music, Seoul with tags on February 10, 2009 by illdielaughing

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I LOL all over from the news that KBS has banned singer Achoo AJOO from KBS Music Bank because of his song Wealthy 2nd Generation’s supposed worship of materialism (or something to that affect). 

HA.

HA.

HA.

I swear, I’m not cynical. But come on, what a horrible excuse to ban a song. Read more »

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Teriyaki Boyz release “Serious Japanese”

Posted in MV, Music, Music Video, NYC, Tokyo with tags , , , on February 8, 2009 by illdielaughing

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I love the Teriyaki Boyz and this is a very, very, very recent love after watching their music videos for “Zock On!” (Featuring Pharell Williams and Busta Rhymes) and (the painfully low-budget) “I Still Love H.E.R” (featuring a confused Kanye West). They’re a hip-hop rap group on crack. Meaning, they’re campy, high-energy and tons of fun to watch with good music to boot.

M-flo’s frontman, Verbal, is a member of Teriyaki Boyz along with Ilmari and  Ryo-Z (Rip Slyme), WISE and Nigo, the DJ and the man who brought them together. The group has always had high profile artists producing tracks on their albums, including Kanye West, Daft Punk and the Neptunes (to name a few). They’re latest album “Serious Japanese” dropped in Japan at the end of January and last Monday in the States. I want it! Hopefully a track-by-track review will be coming up.

“Zock On! (Featuring Pharell Williams and Busta Rhymes)” music video:
 

“Work That! (Featuring Pharell Williams and Chris Brown)” music video (beware, copious amounts of female ass below):

(I think embedding of this mv is disabled so you’ll you to double click it to watch. Once again, I’m serious, most of the above video is just butt.)

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G-Dragon leaves earth

Posted in Concert, Music, Seoul, ^_^ with tags , on January 31, 2009 by illdielaughing

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From Borbes Magazine: G-Dragon is being beamed back into the mother ship and he’s returning to the planet he came from. They decided he’s caused to much fashion damage to continue his existence on earth. The mother ship retrieved him quickly and left their deepest apologies to the citizens of Earth. 

I love this picture of G-Dragon. It’s hilarious. It also made me want to post which I’ve been having a hard time doing lately. More pictures from the Big Show to come!

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Big Bang going solo: A Refresher

Posted in Music, Seoul with tags on January 24, 2009 by illdielaughing

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I’m no longer very excited about anything that Big Bang does. I slowly fell out of love with them over the course of the Stand Up EP and the Remember album. But I’m interested in what their solo endeavours will bring. Read more »

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“After School” is a bit too much

Posted in Music, Seoul with tags , on January 19, 2009 by illdielaughing

Man these girls are trying hard. 

There are a few things I really like about this group. They’re all age appropriate ranging from 20-29. I like that there are older women in this group because I’m sick of the obsession with young talent in the music industry. It’s nice seeing older women being sexy and not 16 year-olds feigning sexy. I mean, the Wonder Girls aren’t this blatantly sexy but So Hot left a really bad taste in my mouth. Anyway, in After School, they can all dance better than most of the girl groups in Korea and they are actually good performers. But on the flip side they are obviously trying to be the Pussycat Dolls and they’re pushing the Sexy past it’s limits into trashy. Read more »

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Oh “Gee”, what an SM creation

Posted in MV, Music, Music Video, Seoul with tags on January 7, 2009 by illdielaughing

SM has not let the saccharine sweet cute image die for SNSD. And they wouldn’t because it would be ridiculous to completely drop a groups concept just because it sucks. Gee is actually a rather cute, addictive song until they start with the high-pitched whining. Beware: after a while your ear will be leaking….something. Here’s the mv:

God, that horrible dancing puts those gorgeous pumps to shame. I hope their feet bled after daring to do such choreography in them. Just kidding, guys. The girls of Girls’ Generation continues to fuse cute with skimpy. Now skimpy is a strong word but I promise I mean to use that adjective in the least offensive way possible.

Pairing up the booty-shorts with cutesy dance moves that would be cute on a toddler is rather interesting to watch. It’s not remotely unexpected from SNSD. SNSD has become less blatant lolitas but they are still the mascots for the team. 


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No more “crack” for Seungri

Posted in Music, Seoul, WTF? with tags , on January 5, 2009 by illdielaughing

 

Seungri was banned from performing Strong Baby on KBS because he used the word “crack” in the song. The nitwits at KBS believe that he is alluding to crack cocaine. 

I laughed for a while after reading this. I wrote a post about it on Seoulbeats and I still can’t get it out of my system. This is one of those WTF moments that you have every once in a while. Or more often, it seems, when involving Kpop. I wish these people would make more educated decisions when it determines someone changing their work. DBSK having to change “under my skin” to “under my sky” is almost as ridiculous as this. In the DBSK, there was absolutely nothing wrong with “under my skin” the people just didn’t know enough English to make an educated decision about it. In Seungri’s case, there were so many other reasons that they could have banned the song but they chose the use of the word “crack”. WTF.

Before all the bannings, I wouldn’t even have thought that anyone would have banned this song. To me, it’s harmless. But after the banning crusade of the Family office of welfair of whatever it’s called I expect anything from a male artist to be banned nowadays.

Still in perplexed shock. The worst is that I’m sure that some KBS employee thinks they’re really intelligent for “catching” that meaning of the word crack. Well, guess what, you’re an idiot.

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