Showing posts with label OutKast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OutKast. Show all posts

Monday, September 17, 2012

Mystery Andre Theater 3000

Expect the next OutKast album to come out in the same year when Dr. Dre's Detox comes out.
Though I run a film and TV score music station, I don't listen to score albums all the time. In fact, 95 percent of my iTunes playlists is non-score music. When I open Spotify, I don't even listen to score music all that much (plus most of the score tracks that Spotify carries are craptastic re-recordings). On Spotify, I listen to hip-hop and R&B on the regular, plus a bit of indie.

A lot of the mixtapes in my iTunes playlists contain tracks with cameos by Andre 3000, whose flow is one of the most inventive in hip-hop, as well as one of the most ubiquitous. He's been guesting on a lot of artists' joints lately. Two of my favorite tracks from the summer contain cameos by the ATLien: Rick Ross' "Sixteen"--despite the guitar solo by Andre 3K that everyone's been hating on--and recent SNL musical guest Frank Ocean's "Pink Matter" (dig these Andre couplets: "She had the kind of body/That would probably intimidate/Any of 'em that were un-Southern/Not me, cousin"). Below are 10 of my favorite records with guest verses by one of the greatest MCs around, including, of course, "Sixteen," where Andre flashes back to a time when he was "Drawin' LL Cool J album covers with Crayolas on construction paper" and "Pink Matter," as well as last summer's "Party," which Kanye West and Consequence produced for Beyoncé.

I love the late '80s/early '90s sound of "Party." I grew up listening to that new jack sound on the radio. DJ Jazzy Jeff and Mick Boogie ought to include "Party" on their next Summertime mixtape. Like Dwele, I've been racking my brains trying to remember which exact tunes from that new jack era "Party" reminds me of (at times, it reminds me of the slow jams of Keith Sweat). UGK and OutKast's Mack soundtrack-sampling "International Players Anthem" is on the playlist too. Unfortunately, the version of the UGK/OutKast collabo that Spotify has is the censored-for-radio edit.

Does the song you just wrote suck royally? Maybe what it needs is an Andre 3000 cameo to salvage it.





Monday, April 18, 2011

Five rap jams where the rappers drop malapropistic pop culture references that make them sound like John Witherspoon when he referred to "Public Enema" during House Party

The Beastie Boys--multiple offenders in the malapropistic pop culture reference department--are about to drop their first album in seven years. I wonder if they'll mangle the names of '70s TV show characters again in Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.

One of my favorite lines in the original House Party was John Witherspoon's Granddad from The Boondocks-esque neighbor character complaining about the titular party blasting the music of "Public Enema." On a similar note, my favorite line in Zack and Miri Make a Porno is "Han Solo ain't never had no sex with Princess Leia in the Star War" because instead of Star Wars, Craig Robinson calls it "the Star War," as if the fictional conflict were the Civil War or the Vietnam War.

The "Public Enema" and "Star War" lines remind me of an article I read in a hip-hop magazine once. The article listed moments when rappers dropped malapropistic pop culture references or flubbed up celebrities' names. When they flub up the pop culture references like in the following five tracks, rappers suddenly sound old and out-of-it like that Witherspoon character from House Party (the Beastie Boys have been in the game for a while, but hopefully, they won't sound too out-of-it on their promising-sounding new album Hot Sauce Committee Part Two).

Thanks to "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" by Pitbull, I'm in the mood for renting a film by "Albert Hitchcock."

1. "My Weezy" by Lil Wayne
Like Mojo Nixon during "Elvis Is Everywhere" and Sound of Young America host Jesse Thorn, Wayne calls Star Trek's Vulcan hero "Dr. Spock" (a la baby care expert Dr. Benjamin Spock) instead of Mr. Spock.

2. "Oh Word?" by the Beastie Boys
"This is not a fantasy, I'm not Mr. O'Roarke." Wow, I didn't know the racially ambiguous but Latin-ish Mr. Roarke was really an Irish bloke all along.

3. "Shazam" by the Beastie Boys
Mike D misidentifies Fred Sanford's dead wife Elizabeth as "Weezy."

4. "Flip Flop Rock" by Big Boi featuring Killer Mike & Jay-Z
Big Boi refers to Penelope Cruz as "Penelope Ann Cruz," while Killer Mike admires the authority of "Commander Picard."

5. "Blindfold Me" by Kelis and her then-husband Nas
Nas probably meant "Mickey Rourke in 9 1/2 Weeks," but for some reason, it came out as "Gonna surprise you like Hugh Grant in 8 1/2 Weeks." Confusing the works of softcore porn producer Zalman King with the oeuvre of Chris Columbus, the family-friendly director of Nine Months, Home Alone and I Love You, Beth Cooper, is a common mistake in hip-hop. The other day on the street, I overheard a freestyle battle where one MC insulted the other to the beat of Drake's "Over" with "Got a text from your girl saying she wanna ride my penis/Like Hayden Panettiere in Delta of Venus."