MTV News |
- Nicki Minaj Is A Top-Five Candidate For 'Hottest Breakthrough MCs Of 2010'!
- 'Inception' Star Joseph Gordon-Levitt Explains 'Dreamy' Hallway Fight
- Gucci Mane Guarantees <i>Mr. Zone 6</i> Is 'Mixtape Of The Year'
- 'Inception' Paris Café Scene: Cinematographer Reveals All
- Ciara, CC Sebathia And Debi Nova Reflect On 'When I Was 17'
| Nicki Minaj Is A Top-Five Candidate For 'Hottest Breakthrough MCs Of 2010'! Posted: 19 Jul 2010 03:50 AM PDT Winner will be revealed on MTV2's "Sucker Free Summit" Sunday at noon.
It is here: As promised, the top-five vote-getters in our poll for "Hottest Breakthrough MC of 2010" will be revealed this week. These are the artists you guys voted for over the past month, and we can't express enough how overwhelmed we were by your participation in this project. More than 200,000 votes came in, and they were tallied as of midnight Friday. Keep in mind, the unveiling of the names this week are the top five, but in no particular order. The winner of the "Hottest Breakthrough MC of 2010," as voted on by the MTV News audience, will be revealed Sunday (July 25) at noon on the "Sucker Free Summit." Chosen One: Nicki Minaj
Rising in the Ranks: Nicki Minaj went from working at Red Lobster to being the red-hot current face of female hip-hop in less time than it takes to complete college. She's as much an iconic figure for her standout fashion and beauty as she is for tearing up the mic alongside your favorite MCs. Her rabid following has bought into Minaj's entire package. The hype is backed by true talent, and she's unique and feisty. And while every photo you see in the press personifies her glamorous life as a Young Money superstar, Minaj is no different from every other MC who has ascended the heights of their genre. The native of New York's Jamaica, Queens, neighborhood started at the bottom and had to grind her way to the top. First discovered by Lil Wayne on the street-DVD series On the Come Up, Nicki couldn't get any love from DJs in her hometown, so she moved to Atlanta. It was there she recorded some verses for Weezy's Gangsta Grillz: Dedication 3 mixtape — singing and rapping on songs such as "Still I Rise" with the rest of Wayne's then-mostly unknown crop of new talent, including Drake. Nicki also aligned herself with Gucci Mane, adding heavily to her street credibility and profile. While her sexy image was our first impression of Nicki (who can forget that bathing-suit photo in which she paid homage to Lil' Kim?), Minaj really found her own lane during the spring of last year with the Beam Me Up Scotty mixtape, which she put together with Atlanta's DJ Holiday. Nick showed us she has boundless personality on the mic, bringing forth her Barbie persona and all the charismatic outfits, rhyme flows and vocal inflections that go along with it. Records from the tape — "Kill the DJ," "I Get Crazy" with Lil Wayne and "Itty Bitty Piggy" — bubbled on the streets for months, allowing Nicki to hit the club circuit with her own shows. In the summer of last year, Nick was spotlighted on the Young Money Presents: The America's Most Wanted Music Festival, and by the fall, seemingly all the guys in music wanted to get with her. Minaj's career went to the next level when she started turning in show-stealing cameos, which have carried well into this year. Diddy, Robin Thicke, Ludacris, Sean Garrett, Usher, Jadakiss, Trey Songz, Gucci Mane, Sean Kingston and, of course, her Young Money family all know that she's developed into one of the most versatile performers in hip-hop — and she still hasn't released her debut album, which is due late this year. Early Insight: "With [my debut] album, I think it's more important that people get accustomed to seeing a female rapper again," Nicki said. "People don't even know what a female rapper does. We're so not used to seeing it. We don't get nominated. I need to work [the people] up to accepting a female rapper again and accepting my style and all of that — then the album will come." Blistering Ballistics: " Now all these bitches wanna try and be my bestie/ But I take a left and leave 'em hangin' like a teste/ Trash talk to 'em, then I put 'em in a Hefty/ Runnin' down the court/ I'm dunkin' on 'em, Lisa Leslie/ It's goin' down, basement/ 'Friday the 13th,' guess who's playin' Jason?/ Tuck yourself in, you better hold on to ya teddy/ It's 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' and guess who's playin' Freddy?" — from Ludacris' "My Chick Bad" Forecast: Nicki, who is also a member of the Diddy-led all-star Dream Team, didn't get an overwhelming response for her debut official single, "Massive Attack," but the misstep did nothing to hurt her popularity. Her follow-up, "Your Love," is already a #1 hit (with no video yet!). It was a leaked track that the fans loved so much, program directors on radio were forced to add it. Minaj is working on her yet-untitled first album with Young Money and Swizz Beatz. If she continues to attack her own tracks with the fervor she does on her guest appearances, the LP should be a hands-down winner. MTV News will be rolling out the top-five candidates for "Hottest Breakthrough MCs of 2010" all week — with the winner being revealed on MTV2's "Sucker Free Summit" on Sunday at noon! Related Videos |
| 'Inception' Star Joseph Gordon-Levitt Explains 'Dreamy' Hallway Fight Posted: 19 Jul 2010 03:50 AM PDT 'All of those moments where it looks like I'm off-balance? That's because I was off-balance,' he tells MTV News.
Of all the wackadoodle imagery in "Inception" — city streets folding in on themselves, architecture that calls to mind M.C. Escher, flameless explosions that go pop-pop-pop around the actors — one scene above all else will have audiences leaving the theater going: "How the heck did they do that?" The scene in question is a hallway fight between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and a nameless bad guy. The twist is that the brawl takes place in a dream within a dream, where Gordon-Levitt and his team have traveled with an assist from a machine that lets them infiltrate another person's subconscious. For reasons that are far too complex and spoiler-filled to explain here, the two men end up grappling in zero gravity as the hallway rotates and they flop this way and that. "Gravity goes all dreamy," Gordon-Levitt told MTV News. It's an amazing spectacle to take in on the big screen — "The Matrix" on steroids — and not an easy one to have filmed in the real world. "One of the coolest things about it is that we kind of did it for real," Gordon-Levitt said. "We weren't in one of those zero-gravity machines, but we weren't in front of a green screen either. The mode, the fashion in Hollywood nowadays, is to do it all with computers later. But [director] Christopher Nolan likes things to feel real. If he had put me in front of a green screen and said, 'Pretend you're floating. Pretend you're off-balance,' I would have been like, 'Ah, I'm floating, I'm off-balance.' "But instead, he put me in the middle of this set that spun around 360 degrees or he hung me on wires or put me on this seesaw contraption," he added. "All of those moments where it looks like I'm off-balance? That's because I was off-balance. I was doing my best to keep my balance and fight this guy when the floor was becoming the wall and the ceiling was becoming the floor." Check out everything we've got on "Inception." For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com. Related Videos Related Photos |
| Gucci Mane Guarantees <i>Mr. Zone 6</i> Is 'Mixtape Of The Year' Posted: 19 Jul 2010 03:50 AM PDT 'Biggest mixtape of the summer, by far,' he tells Mixtape Daily of the DJ Drama-hosted tape.
This Week's Main Pick Artist: Gucci Mane and DJ Drama Holding It Down For: Zone 6 Mixtape: Mr. Zone 6 Real Spit: Gucci Mane is loving life right now and feels like he's making the best tracks of his career. "Biggest mixtape of the summer, by far," Gucci said about his latest tape, Mr. Zone 6, an ode to the neighborhood in Atlanta where he grew up. "When y'all get it, guarantee I win Mixtape of the Year."
"The thing about me and Gucci, we don't even know when we're gonna go in," added DJ Drama, who hosts the tape. "We'll talk for, like, six months: 'You wanna do the tape? Yeah?' Then [I'll] get the call like, 'Yeah, we ready.' If you watch how we drop, we always drop around something special." Mr. Zone 6 came out the same day as Gucci's headlining appearance at Hot 107.9's Birthday Bash concert last month. "We come up with the craziest concepts, craziest ideas," Dram continued. "Gucci don't give me a lot of time [to put the tapes together]. But somehow, someway, when I hear [the songs], I be talking that sh--. I don't be knowing what comes over me. We like five tapes in, in two years." "We're like five tapes in," Gucci reiterated. "This one right here, it's got a different feel to it. It feels good! We got some bangers on there." " 'Stove Music,' shout to Waka. 'It's Goin Up,' shout to Yo Gotti and Bun B," Drama said. " 'Georgia's Most Wanted,' 'Koolin' is serious. It's not fair, man. It's a cold summer, baby." Joints to Check For » 1. "Normal." "I made that song the day I got outta jail," Gucci explained. "I like to do things different. I feel like the way I do things, I like to do things differently. It's not like I try; I just do things in a different way. I talk different, dress different, act different. I put it on wax. Everything I do is abnormal. Most guys try to do things in a conventional way; I think outside the box. That song is for everybody who thinks outside the box." » 2. "Mr. Zone 6." " 'Mr. Zone 6,' it's just official now," Gucci said about the mixtape's title track. "I been Mr. Zone 6 before, let me tell it. Now the world know. If you coming to Atlanta, you wanna see the real side. Just come through Moreland [Avenue], slide down Custer [Avenue], go by Boulder Crest, stop by Flatshoals, then slide down Glenwood and ask for Gucci." » 3. "Dats My Life." "This is my most personal mixtape ever," Gucc said. "It's 'hood. It's deep. I'm addressing things that's happening in my life and all my friends around me. A lot of my boys gotta live through me, because they either dead or in jail. A lot of pain, a lot of struggle in this mixtape right here. Every day is a blessing. So every day, I wake up and try to do what I do." For other artists featured in Mixtape Daily, check out Mixtape Daily Headlines or follow the Mixtape Daily team on Twitter: @shaheemreid and @mongosladenyc. |
| 'Inception' Paris Café Scene: Cinematographer Reveals All Posted: 19 Jul 2010 04:51 AM PDT Christopher Nolan collaborator Wally Pfister tells MTV News how they pulled off the mind-bending sequence.
What's your favorite mind-bending "Inception" moment? Joseph Gordon-Levitt's zero-gravity fight scene, which has him twisting and punching while the world spins about him in every direction? The white van that falls achingly slow as Leonardo DiCaprio and his fellow dream bandits hang in near-suspended animation? The Paris café scene where Leo and Ellen Page stroll the streets as the city folds in on them? Can we just choose them all? Yes, yes we can. But what makes the Paris sequence different from the other two is that it was created by employing a serious combination of visual and practical effects, whereas the hallway and van scenes are largely free of heady CG work. So how did director Christopher Nolan and his team craft the Paris scene? Cinematographer Wally Pfister, a longtime Nolan collaborator on films like "Memento" and "The Dark Knight," walked MTV News through the process. "That particular material is where we really dive into the surreal and things go a little wacko," Pfister explained. "In this case, Chris really wanted to ramp up the visual effects and do something that would have people sit back and go, 'Wow, what the f--- is going on?' " Mission accomplished. DiCaprio and Page sit at a café, which is actually a figment of Page's dream. As they talk, huge, fireless explosions pop all around them in slow motion. Then, as the pair begins to walk, Page starts to experiment with the elastic physical world of her dream. She raises up entire streets — buildings, people, cars and all — until everything folds up into a fantastical cube of Parisian life. It is nothing short of staggering. To generate those explosions, the film's special-effects supervisor, Chris Corbould, rigged up a series of air cannons that launched debris into the air. To achieve the right slow-motion effect, Pfister made use of a specialized camera. "We shot it with super-high-speed Photo-Sonics cameras to get that material floating in the air," Pfister said of equipment that can capture 1,500 frames a second, in contrast to regular film's 24 frames a second. The extra frames allowed the filmmakers to slow the frame rate to a virtual crawl. Then in came Paul Franklin, the film's visual-effects supervisor, who employed computer graphics to extend the debris and create more of a floating effect. Franklin and his team also hit the city streets with still cameras to record what would become the basis for the folding effects' photo-realistic feel. The folding streets were built entirely through CGI, a process so complex that the effort was begun a full eight months before the movie's release. "The whole thing had a very naturalistic style to the photography, to the lighting, to the camera movement, so that it would feel very real and very grounded," Pfister said. "And on top of all that, we pulled off a very intricate bit of effects trickery." What's your favorite scene in "Inception"? Talk about it in the comments. Check out everything we've got on "Inception." For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com. Related Videos Related Photos |
| Ciara, CC Sebathia And Debi Nova Reflect On 'When I Was 17' Posted: 18 Jul 2010 06:00 AM PDT 'To this day, even when I perform, there's still a cheerleader in me,' CiCi says of her pom-pom days.
Did you know that hip-hop siren Ciara was once a pom-pom-shakin' high-kickin' cheerleader? Or that Costa Rican transplant Debi Nova's first major decision in America involved toilet paper? Or that major-league hurler CC Sebathia was a high school art-class mess-maker?
It's all true. And we didn't get these details via Twitter feeds or Facebook pages; we heard their stories via the stars themselves, when they appeared on MTV's "When I Was 17." Ciara said she was "very determined" as a teenager attending Riverdale High School in Atlanta. It was in her 17th year when she faced one of her first major life decisions. "I loved cheerleading. Dancing, the game, the excitement, everything was fun about it to me," Ciara said. But just after being named captain, her music career began to take off, and she was forced to decide between her two loves. "My dad said, 'You're going to have to choose,' and I had to quit," she admitted. However, apparently you can't take the pom-poms out of a girl. "To this day, even when I perform, there's still a cheerleader in me," Ciara said proudly. Native Costa Rican Debi Nova, who claimed she was "a big nerd" in high school, remembers a very specific moment when she was 17. "There was a very specific story that marked my coming-to-America moment," the "Drummer Boy" singer explains. "Very first week I get here, I go into the supermarket because I need some toilet paper. I go in the toilet-paper aisle, and I'm like, 'OK, unscented, aloe vera, recycled, non-recycled, double-ply, triple-ply, four rolls, eight rolls, 12 rolls, 32 rolls. What do you want?' ... That really was a metaphor for what this country represented to me: options. A world of options. So, the toilet-paper aisle. That's my metaphor for coming to America." For CC Sebathia, his 17th year marks a major moment in Major League Baseball history: Sebathia was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in 2001, becoming the youngest player in the sport of baseball when he made his major-league debut. So it's no surprise that before beginning his professional pitching career, Sebathia was into his high school sports teams in a big way. "I was the jock at the school," Sebathia said. "I played three sports." He was also a bit of a troublemaker. "I liked to have fun," he admitted. "I was a jokester. ... I remember one time in my junior year, in my art class, our teacher had us doing, like, finger paints, and I went and put a stripe on a girl's shirt, and it turned into a big paint fight," he laughed. "Paint all over the walls, all over everybody. It was pretty fun. ... I did a lot of bad stuff I guess." Don't miss "When I Was 17," airing Saturdays at 11 a.m. on MTV! Related Videos Related Photos Related Artists |
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