Monthly Archives: April 2016

Views Of A Tracklist

Music, ,

Drake announced the tracklist for his upcoming album that is reportedly now being called Views.

  1. Keep the Family Close
  2. 9
  3. U With Me?
  4. Feel No Ways
  5. Hype
  6. Weston Road Flows
  7. Redemption
  8. With You
  9. Faithful
  10. Still Here
  11. Controlla
  12. One Dance
  13. Grammys
  14. Childs Play
  15. Pop Style
  16. Too Good
  17. Summer Over Interlude
  18. Fire & Desire
  19. Views
  20. Hotline Bling (Bonus)

His latest single, “One Dance,” is on Spotify. The full album is set to be released April 29.

Drake, Future Take To The Road For Summer Sixteen

Music, , ,

We’re barely into spring and Drake has already announced his Summer Sixteen tour to promote his upcoming Views From The 6. The tour starts on July 20 in Austin, TX before crossing North America through 30 cities. The tour ends in Vancouver in mid-September. Future is on the bill as a co-headliner.

Future last teamed with Drake for the What A Time To Be Alive mixtape.

LEMONADE ANYONE?

Celebrities, Music, , , , ,

Saturday the world stopped. No not just the people. Literally, Earth stopped spinning on its axis. Birds stopped chirping. Seas calmed. Clocks stopped ticking. Donald Trump stopped talking. The world literally stopped as Beyoncé debuted her video album LEMONADE on HBO.

imageYou know you have the music game on lock when you single handedly made every black household pay their cable bill on time just to make sure they got the HBO free preview weekend.

I must say that from the opening I was captured. It didn’t take long for me to figure out the overall theme for this album, though. RELATIONSHIPS. And in a typical relationship, things happen. People cheat. Tires get slashed. Sometimes you get maced and chased up the street by a crazy woman with a baseball bat. True Story! Hey, shit happens. And for Beyoncé and Jay-Z that’s no different. LEMONADE is personal. Very personal. So personal that I actually thought that the title should have been “Tea.” (Sidenote: You know you got to be hella mad at your man’s “cheating” to put him on blast  premium cable. I am just saying.) This was like a digital divorce at first. My eyes were big.  To be honest, I felt kinda funny watching at the beginning .

image

I remember one time “Bae” and I went on a vacation to Miami with another couple. In the middle of dinner one night the other couple began to argue and tears flowed from the wife as some personal revelations came out. Bae and I knew we shouldn’t be witnessing this but we couldn’t turn away from this verbally violent argument. It was like watching a fight video on World Star.

That’s what LEMONADE is. It’s like that couple fighting at dinner. It’s emotional. It’s violent. It’s jealous. It’s hurting. imageIt’s colorful. It’s forgiving. It’s loving. It’s accepting. It’s beautiful. Its entertaining. It’s honest.  And that is why I think that LEMONADE is the most creative piece of art that I have experienced in this short year of 2016. It was like viewing a Picasso with words, music, colors, and lots of anger. LEMONADE is the kind of project that makes you want to delete all of your DM’s just in case your lady gets the urge to go through them. LEMONADE is the kind of project that makes your woman bring up that shit from 2011 because she didn’t get a chance to address it the way that Beyoncé did. LEMONADE is the kind of project that has the “Bey Hive” trying to decode who the “Becky with the good hair” is, assuming it’s fashion mogul Rachel Roy, only to confuse it with TV Personality/Chef Rachel Ray, and troll the shit out of her with bumble bee and lemon emojis on her Instagram page. Yeah, THATS what LEMONADE is. A beautiful,vulnerable, and intimate look into the humanity of an icon. LEMONADE is the kind of project to make me enter another email address just so that I can get another 30 day free trial on TIDAL

imagejust so that I can view it again, cause you know, I am probably NOT going to pay my cable bill on time next month.

By penner - http://flickr.com/photos/penner/2450784866, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4271027

PURPLE TEARS FOR PRINCE

Celebrities, Music

I have real tears. And they are PURPLE. I am sure you have probably heard by now, the artist formerly known as “Symbol”, but know to all of as Prince is dead at the age of 57. This is huge shock to me and many of his fans around the world, I being one of them.I went through all of the stages of grief.

image Stage 1: DENIAL. “NO LAWD…NOT PRINCE!!!”
Anger Stage 2: ANGER. “ALL THESE WACK ASS ARTISTS AND YOU TAKE PRINCE???”
Bargaining Stage 3. BARGAINING. “LAWD, How about we trade Prince for Hakeem from “Empire”, Future, and Migos? No? DAMN!”
image Stage 4. DEPRESSION. (So depressed, I renewed my TIDAL subscription just so I could continue to listen to Prince hits because that’s the only place you can hear them online. And anyone who renews a TIDAL free membership HAS TO BE depressed.)
And finally Stage 5. ACCEPTANCE. I am not yet at this point and can you blame me? Prince was a wizard. And no I don’t just mean a genius. I mean an actual wizard…Like Harry Potter, knows magic kinda wizard. Lest we all forget the Super Bowl halftime he performed in. It was pouring down raining and Prince sat in the middle of the field, playing “Purple Rain”, and not once did a drop of rain fall him…Yeah. THAT kind of wizard.

Prince was so 80s though. And if you are like me, so much of your childhood was influenced by the purple one. As I look through my life, most of my firsts were associated with Prince in some way. My brother’s first boombox was accompanied by his first tape which was Prince. The first set of titties that I saw?Acceptance Applonia when she tried to purify herself in Lake Minnetonka, only to find out it wasn’t. With? You guessed it. Prince. (Sidenote: Wasn’t that the pimp move of a generation?) First time masturbating? “International Lover” was playing by… Prince. (stop judging) The first strip club that I went to when I was 14, the dancer (and I use that term very loosely) was dancing to “Insatiable.” And yes I went to a strip club at 14. That is not the point. Let’s stay focused here.

Even now before I go on stage to perform I play “Baby I’m a Star” because it gets me hype and I mean come on…the words speak to me. Hell, baby I AM A STAR! True musician is what Pince was. And you can say whatever you want to about antics with Warner Bros, the horrible Batman album (with “Batdance’ on it) or him wearing the pants with his ass cheeks out, but he was second to none. A true pop icon who did things his way is what he was. But as a true music fan, I can’t help but notice that most of the major pop icons from the 80s are all dead. Michael Jackson? Dead. Whitney Houston? Gone on to Glory. Prince? Purple Heaven. All I know is that Madonna and Janet Jackson better be hiding out because they are all we have left… Grim Reaper might be looking for their ass…

Reggie Jackson Gets Bodied Up

Sports, , ,

Reggie Jackson may be Detroit’s best player, but he had a rough outing against Lebron and the Cavs. Case in point:

Of course, this lit up Russell Westbrook’s mentions.

 

Beyonce Is Ready For ‘Lemonade’

Music, ,

On Saturday, Beyonce posted a video on Instagram with the caption “#LEMONADE 4.23 9PM ET | HBO.”

 

One thing is for certain, HBO viewers will find out what all of the fuss is about on 4/23. Tell us what you think below. Is it her latest album? A documentary? A signature drink? The Big Joker wants to know.

photo credit: DSC09795 via photopin (license)