Music

One of my favorite artists, Tonedeff, created a remix of Kanye West’s Love Lockdown. Tonedeff states, “It’s not so much a remix is as it is a re imagining of the concept – added a bunch of instrumentation, new lyrics & hook, etc.” Well, whatever he wants to call it, it’s a great song. Make sure you give it a listen and then head on over to QN5.com to find out more about this talented artist or download the track, plus a house remix from the blog post. He is a great rapper, singer, producer, and lyricist. This is what good hip hop is about.

After waking up and seeing this article on the front page of Digg, I was instantly in a Tupac mood. The article does a good job of narrowing down his music to 22 of his best tracks (I’d disagree with some of them there) and it made me start thinking about his true place in history as an artist.

A lot of people dismiss Tupac as a typical thug. In fact, one of the comments on the Digg page stated:

People should forget about this thug and spend more time remembering real men like Dr. King, the Tuskegee airmen and Bernie Mac. Question, how long do you think it would take Dr. King to listen to a Tupac album before he hung his head in shame and walked away? Do you think Dr. King would be proud of the whole thug gangsta mentality? I doubt it. I want to see any man become more like Dr. King, not more like Tupac.

I can see his point to an extent, however, this commenter is limited by what the media saw of Tupac most of the time. They never saw the good things he did, they rarely played the deeper songs on the radio, only the party and gangster tracks, they never showcased his poetry. At least his acting ability garnered positive praise (though, he usually portrayed a thug in the movies, but that’s an issue with Hollywood and typecasting of African Americans and not of Tupac himself). Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always been a fan of all music. In fact, if you look at my last.fm profile, you’ll notice the diversity in music listed there. I have Miles Davis, Tupac Shakur, Frank Sinatra, Incubus, and CunninLynguists listed. My primary musical love has always been hip hop though, especially underground hip hop. When I got XM Satellite Radio, I listened to mostly the hip hop stations. The Rhyme was the channel I listened to the most, as they were an old school hip hop channel. Then I started listening to Ethel. Ethel is the Alternative Hits station. That’s all I’ve listened to in the past month or so. Now I rarely listen to rap. I find myself listening to bands such as Black Kids, The Ting Tings, The Kooks, The Shins, Peter Bjorn and John, M.I.A, Death Cab for Cutie, The Killers, Ludo, MGMT, Phantom Planet and The Raconteurs more than my favorite hip hop artists. One reason this could be is that my favorite hip hop artists haven’t come out with anything in a while. Or maybe it could be that there is some really good and catchy alternative music coming out lately. It could also be that because I’m listening to music a lot more now due to the nature of my job I’m constantly looking for something new. I wonder what other music I’ve missed out on in the past.

In case you haven’t noticed, Last.fm has received a makeover. The new site looks fantastic compared to the old one. It probably has to be one of the best site redesigns by a popular website that I’ve ever seen. The best part about the redesign is the user profile page. If you look at mine, you can see how clean the new design looks. I love how it has thumbnails of the artists (or album covers) next to the recently played songs. The images for the artists in the user’s library are excellent as well.

Last.fm displaying artists I've played (click to enlarge)

Notice how nice and clean they look. They charts are now ajax-ified and are quite nice. The color scheme of the site is much easier on the eyes. They managed to create a new site that totally changes the look but still feels familiar. It goes to show you can have a complete redesign without losing your identity. Overall, it is a really successful redesign. Maybe MySpace and Facebook should take note. Much props to the design team at Last.fm.