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| Kanye West Responds -- Briefly -- To 50 Cent's Mocking, Blogs About <i>808s and Heartbreak</i> Posted: 18 Sep 2008 10:47 PM PDT 'I guarantee this will be 50's favorite album of mine,' Kanye blogs.
On Friday (September 19), Kanye West posted a brief response on his blog to 50 Cent's mocking of him at a concert last weekend.
At a show in Albany, New York, 50 jokingly performed a bit of West's recent single, "Love Lockdown," while G-Unit member Tony Yayo pretended to smash a camera, referring to West's arrest after a dustup with paparazzi in Los Angeles last week. In a post where he enthused about the performance of "Love Lockdown" on an unspecified singles chart (apparently iTunes, where it just took the #1 spot), West blogged about the progress on his forthcoming fourth LP, 808s and Heartbreak, and also made a brief jab at 50. "I just woke up from a quick studio nap," he wrote. "I've been workin' on 808s and Heartbreak about 16 hrs a day and Superman passed out for a little bit ... I'm in Hawaii but I'm still on NY time so I wake up mad early, do some business, blog, jog for an hour, play ball, eat and then hit the stu by noon. While approving the final cut for the 'Love Lockdown' vid, I marvel at the fact that it was written less than 3 weeks ago. I'm very excited about the everything ... I guarantee this will be 50's favorite album of mine. This will be gangster's album of the year." Many are speculating that there will be another SoundScan battle between 50 and Kanye, similar to the one that took place last year when the two released albums on the same day, September 11. West solidly won that battle, and another could be in the offing, as 50 has December 9 slated for his Before I Self-Destruct LP, and Kanye is reported to be releasing his album on the 16th — although those release dates could easily be shifted to the same day. Yayo talked briefly with MTV News about the possibility of another battle earlier this week. "That'll be fun," he said. "In my eyes, I don't think Kanye will never be bigger than Fif, no matter what his numbers do." Related Artists |
| Snippet Of Britney Spears' New Single, 'Womanizer,' Leaks Online Posted: 19 Sep 2008 01:58 AM PDT Snippet is briefly posted on radio station's Web site before being removed.
Gossip blogs and celebrity Web sites lit up Friday (September 19) when a 37-second, static-filled snippet of the first single from Britney Spears' upcoming album, Circus, was briefly posted on a radio station's Web site before being removed. The snippet of disco-inflected track, called "Womanizer," was briefly posted on the Web site of Nashville radio station 107.5-FM The River before being taken down, although at press time the clip could still be found elsewhere online. Based on the brief snippet, the Outsyders-produced song is a bouncy dance track with a sing-song chorus that frequently repeats the title; Britney coos about a possible lover who has a reputation of being a womanizer. According to Britney's label, the station obtained the snippet by recording a phone call in which a radio rep played a rough mix of the song for people at the station — which seems likely, judging by the horrendous sound quality of the clip. At the label's request, the station removed the clip from its Web site. Fans won't have to wait long for the song's official release, which takes place on Monday. The album follows on December 2, Britney's birthday. Along with the Outsyders, collaborators on the album include Keri Hilson, Sean Garrett, Rodney Jerkins, Lil Jon, Nate "Danjahandz" Hills (who helmed "Gimme More") and Dr. Luke (who wrote and produced the album's title track), Guy Sigsworth, Bloodshy & Avant (who produced past hits "Toxic" and the big VMA winner "Piece of Me") and Max Martin (who wrote "... Baby One More Time" and "Oops! ... I Did It Again"). Related Artists |
| Training Center Helps Wounded Veterans Work Toward Media Careers Posted: 19 Sep 2008 05:36 AM PDT 'The world doesn't end just because you're wounded,' student-turned-staffer says of California job-placement program.
SAN DIEGO — They are the few, the proud — the Marines. If you ask one, he or she will tell you they are prepared to fight and die for their country, but most aren't prepared to come back wounded or disabled. That is something Gunny Sergeant Nick Popaditch didn't spend a lot of time training for. On April 7, 2004, Popaditch was leading his tank crew on an assault of Fallujah to root out insurgents. The team was powering through the city taking out the bad guys until, as Popaditch told MTV News, "One Iraqi had a lucky shot." An insurgent managed to fire a rocket-propelled grenade through the small hatch in Popaditch's M1A1 Abrams tank. "The rocket hit me in the head," he said. "It knocked me down but didn't knock me unconscious. It blinded me in both eyes and deafened me in both ears. This overwhelming sensation to go to sleep came over me, so I was concentrating on staying awake and staying alive." Popaditch managed to stay alive and, with the aid of military doctors, regained some of his sight in one eye and most of his hearing. His days as a Marine gunny sergeant, however, were over. "With 8 percent of vision in one eye and none in the other, you know, if you're not pulling triggers anymore in the Marine Corps, you're going to be looking for a new line of work," he said. "I'm not mad about it or anything like that. We're the tough team, and that's what we do — we locate, close with and destroy the enemy." Popaditch left the Marines and, like many other wounded veterans, struggled to find a new career. Then he met Judith Paixo and Kevin Lombard, the founders of the Wounded Marine Careers Foundation, an organization that aims to help wounded and disabled Marine and Navy vets land jobs in the film industry. "I found out when I got in the school, 'Wow, the guys that work on the other side of the camera, this is hard work,' " Popaditch said. "It's a very technical job. They are constantly updating their knowledge. They have to be very attention-to-detail-oriented, and I thought, 'Wow, this is Marine sort of work.' " Lombard and his wife, Judith, secured a production facility/ school in San Diego using private and corporate donations and federal grants. With the aid of top media professionals, they designed a 10-week program to teach wounded veterans all they need to know to get started on a career in the film and TV industry. The vets learned editing, cinematography, lighting, still photography, script writing and sound production. "The vision behind it is that same sort of skill set that makes you successful in the military," Popaditch said. "That attention to detail, discipline, teamwork, dependability — that same skill set makes you successful on a production crew. Obviously, the stakes are a little higher in one than the other, but it's the same skill set that makes you successful in both." He and 18 other Marines graduated March 20 from the program's inaugural class. Popaditch specialized in sound production and has been working as a sound operator since graduation. "It was very encouraging to get out of the hospital on a daily basis," said 23-year-old Lance Corporal Brett Sobaski. "You know, get out of the hospital and go learn something, start working towards your future and start working towards a skill set you can use in real life." Sobaski also fought in the battle of Fallujah. The compounded effect of the blasts in the war zone led to bleeding in his brain. The bleeding increased until he had to have brain surgery, which caused him to lose a great deal of his visual field. Even with a visual handicap, Sobaski graduated from the program with a specialization in still photography. He has been working as a photographer since graduation, but he is keeping his mind open to other opportunities in the industry. "There's so much you can do in the media industry," Sobaski said. "There's just so much room for creativity. The sky's the limit." The Wounded Marine Career Foundation's next class starts in January, but this time, instead of being a student, Popaditch will be on staff as the training center's deputy director. "The world doesn't end just because you're wounded," Popaditch said. "That same skill set that made you a good Marine is going to make you a good soundman and a good citizen. ... There's no victimization here. That is the way the ball bounces. You play the hand you get dealt and move on with your life." Head to Think.MTV.com to find a community where you, your friends and your favorite celebrities can get informed, get heard and take action on the issues that matter to you most. Related Videos |
| TV On The Radio Take George W. Bush And Science To Task On New LP Posted: 19 Sep 2008 03:49 AM PDT Brooklyn rockers lead us track-by-track through Dear Science, which drops Tuesday.
NEW YORK — When word got out earlier this year that the switch would be flipped on the world's largest proton supercollider along the French-Swiss border, it triggered all sorts of mystified reactions. Trying to study the big-bang theory by re-creating the big bang seemed to be, well, misguided. What would happen if they actually succeeded? Would a black hole swallow the galaxy? Would another big bang eat everything in its path? The development also triggered a reaction from TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek that, like others, lay somewhere between anger and absurdity. So he wrote a letter — not to a particular scientist or institution, but to the field of science itself. "Dear Science," it began.
"If I see something that ticks me off, I have a tendency to just really ... find the most absurd aspect of it so I can start laughing at it, and science was a pretty easy target," the scruffy guitarist and noisemaker said recently from a Brooklyn photo studio. "I mean, five really careless guys can wipe out the whole friggin' operation in, like, five seconds." Sitek's letter, written on a yellow legal pad and tacked to the wall of the band's Brooklyn recording studio, subsequently became the impetus for the new TV on the Radio album Dear Science. It's the band's third full-length album and the follow-up to 2006's Return to Cookie Mountain, which saw the band grow out of the New York art-rock underground. (Sitek's entire letter serves as the liner notes to the new album, to be released Tuesday.) While much of the band's music has dealt with the relationship between people — as lovers, as friends, as members of a community — Sitek's diatribe is part of the subtle rage against the machine that also serves as an undercurrent to TV on the Radio's contained musical chaos. The song "Crying," for example, is about "dismantling civilization, about taking responsibility for the world that we live in and figuring out a way to tear it down," according to guitarist and songwriter Kyp Malone. Meanwhile, "Red Dress" is the band's reaction to the last eight years of a George W. Bush presidency, because, as Sitek said, "There's no way in hell that we're ever going to get the opportunity to punch Dick Cheney in the face." Dear Science plays more with upbeat dance rhythms and beats than TV on the Radio have ever explored before. The group's other singer and songwriter, Tunde Adebimpe, explained that the guys took that approach because they realized "it was more fun to have a dance party every night than a séance." The album's first single, "Golden Age," is a good example of that. "It's just not wanting to write a song about complaint, basically," Malone said. "About these things that are sh--ty in the world and trying to present something optimistic ... taking some actual responsibility to make the world someplace we want it to be. "And we can do it with dance!" The band recently finished up a three-week West Coast tour and will soon begin a trek along the East Coast in October. Adebimpe can also be seen in the upcoming Jonathan Demme-directed movie "Rachel Getting Married" (which inspired the song "Family Tree" from the new album). The film opens September 26. Related Videos Related Artists |
| MySpace Music Faces Threats Of Antitrust Suits From Indie Labels Before Its Launch Posted: 19 Sep 2008 08:40 AM PDT Indies claim they're being blocked from uploading music to the site.
The very online service that has been such a boon for independent music artists is now facing criticism for allegedly freezing those same artists out of the picture with its new music venture. MySpace Music is drawing fire for its deal with major labels and threats of a possible antitrust action that could scuttle the venture before it even opens shop, according to a report in the British tech journal The Register. The trouble is over the deal cut between MySpace parent company News Corp. and three of the four major music labels that control 70 percent of the U.S. recorded music business. The site, which has not yet announced a launch date and is still reportedly without a CEO, will offer unlimited free streams, DRM-free downloads (some free and some for a fee), ringtones, concert tickets and merchandise, most of it underwritten by four title sponsors announced earlier this week: McDonald's, Sony Pictures, Toyota and State Farm. The site has already drawn a projected valuation of $2 billion based on the MySpace cred and the high-profile partners. But it is the partnership with Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Music Group that has independent labels saying they feel like they've been frozen out, according to The Register. No indie record company has inked a deal with MySpace Music. According to the report, the site does have a service that allows indie labels to upload their own music, but some unnamed labels have reported that they've been blocked from uploading their catalogs. The issue could be a simple rights-management snafu — a complication that results from major labels sometimes owning the rights to an indie's music in a particular territory in the world. But at least one label, Impala, has asked European regulators to look into any possible antitrust issues with the service, suggesting that the majors and News Corp. are attempting to block the indies' access to the MySpace audience. Though it's unclear what impact a potential antitrust case in Europe might have on the U.S. market, independent labels have successfully challenged big mergers in Europe twice in the past 10 years, scuttling the Sony/BMG union in 2006 and the Warner/EMI one several years earlier. A spokesperson for MySpace could not be reached for comment at press time. |
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