The keyword for the Billboard chart in 2011 was "ANTHEMS." Anti-bullying anthems (Selena Gomez, "Who Says"; Katy Perry, "Firework"; Lady Gaga, "Born This Way"), party rock anthems, anthems for regular weekday night non-rock pre-work partying. Tons of pop-rap pap where diet-inspirational verses were soldered awkwardly to soaring adult-contemporary choruses. Videos with cinematic spoken intros (The Script, "For The First Time"; Katy Perry, "The One That Got Away"; Rihanna, "We Found Love") and further attempts, some very successful, to make VEVO the baby big screen it wants to be. These are my personal picks for a top ten from the Billboard 2011 Top 100 chart.
Every week we ask Molly Lambert to dive deep on one of the Billboard top ten songs of the week charts. This week's victim? The R&B and Hip Hop list, which Molly kindly transformed into film adaptations before grading.
1. Jay-Z & Kanye West, "Ni**as in Paris"
Wizards In Paris (G): A CGI-saturated family adventure about Apples (Jay-Z) and Grapes (Kanye West), two koalas on the loose in the City of Lights after stowing away on a luxury cruise (where they romance gold-digging squirrels, upend a millionaires' buffet and eat so many shrimp). Arriving in Paris on a chilly snowy night, the rascally marsupials face racist cabdrivers, a steep conversion rate, and evil time-traveling steampunk stage magicians. The movie climaxes with an exciting chase through the Chanel flagship store and an epic tumble into the catacombs to face off with both the metropolis's fabled wizards and their own fragile furry mortality. Listen:Here Grade: A
T.I. has been out of prison for a week. In those seven days, he’s been the recipient of an opulent welcome-home brunch, appeared on Atlanta stages with both Young Jeezy and Taylor Swift, and interceded in a late-night club-fight between Diddy and a person not drinking Diddy-sponsored Ciroc vodka. He’s also talked up his upcoming novel, Power & Beauty: A Story of Life on the Streets, and his VH1 reality show, which will double as a showcase for the creative pursuits of his children, most notably his daughter’s band OMG Girlz. And, somewhere in between all that, he snuck in a new single.
It looks like he’s hoping sheer ubiquity will steamroll him back on top. But it's not be that simple. T.I. is coming off his second hefty prison stint in two years. Get locked up once, and people print up “Free [blank]” T-Shirts. Get locked up twice, and people start rolling their eyes. So what steps should our dude take to get back in the good graces of his masses?
A month back, Justin Bieber covered fellow Canadian Drake’s woozy drug song “Trust Issues.” Bieber cleaned it up, but it was still a nutso departure from his usual innocuous balladry, and the best thing to come out of his current semi-awkward transitory period. Until now. With his take on Lil Wayne’s “How to Love,” Justin’s hip-hop covers series rolls on.
In its first week of release, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV is projected to sell between 700,000 to 850,000 copies. That would make Carter IV the year’s second-biggest debut, after Lady Gaga’s Born This Way; it would also significantly trump the super-hyped Watch The Throne, which managed a now-measly-looking 436,000 in its first week. How the hell did that happen?
1. James Blake and Bon Iver, "Fall Creek Boys Choir"
Indie-rock power couple James Blake and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon announced their union just last week, but we already get a taste. “Fall Creek Boys Choir” — featuring Vernon’s falsetto over a skeletal Blake piano run, and also some dog bark type noises — is as predictable as it is perfect. According to the never-wrong YouTube information box, it’ll be followed, in October, with something called Enough Thunder.
On July 23, Lauryn Hill had a baby, her sixth. A week later she performed at L.A. Rising Festival. All in a week’s work, y’know. Word to Zion. Now I’ve been wrong (and hurt) before, so please correct me if this comes off sounding a little Miseducated, but I can’t help wonder if either on a symbolic level (she now has more children than Grammy’s), or just a fiscal level (so many kids to feed), this bodes well for Lauryn making a full-on return to the landscape as an artist, a performer. We all have the same wish, don’t we? The same flashback? It was an August much like this one when we first heard the 1-4-1-1-1-2-1-1 finger-snaps on “Nothing Even Matters,” announcing the undeniable truth: Lauryn Hill was president — nay, EMPRESS — of these here United States. The skies could fall! Your boss could call! But L spitting hot fire, singing lullabies could make the world seem so very small (snap-snap).
1. Jay-Z and Kanye West, “Otis”
This, the first "single" from Kanye and Jay’s Watch The Throne (single in quotes because Hov claimed there would be no official single from the album), dropped Wednesday night on Funkmaster Flex’s New York radio show (you should do yourself a favor and listen to Flex’s accompanying rant). The last time Kanye West flipped an Otis Redding sample he made the greatest song of his career (Late Registration's "Gone"). So stakes were high on this one. "Otis" doesn’t quit flip the Stax legend’s "Try A Little Tenderness" as much as it fluffs its hair and puts it front and center. But where the beat is a little underwhelming, the interplay between Jay and Kanye is stellar, as the two trade bars, and use the end of each other’s rhymes as jumping off points for their own. Jay-Z: “I got five passports, I’m never going to jail.” Kanye: “I made Jesus walk, I’m never going to hell.” Don’t sweat the technique.
