Throwback Thursday: 1999 (2 Weeks at #1)

If there's a song that spent, for instance, 1 week at #1 in one calendar year and then a second week in the subsequent calendar year, I'll post it in the first year it peaked.

Mariah Carey featuring Jay-Z - Heartbreaker (10/9-10/16)

What a weird combination of elements. Jay-Z, Good/Evil Mariah Carey, Jerry O'Connell, Bathroom Kung Fu Fights, Olivia Newton-John Mariah Carey. I mean, this video has everything, doesn't it?

Enrique Iglesias - Bailamos (9/4-9/11)

This was from when he was still mostly known as "Julio's son", if I recall correctly. I think "Hero" in 2001 was what changed that. Let the rhythm take you over...

Britney Spears - ...Baby One More Time (1/30-2/6)

How on EARTH can this late 90's staple have only spent 2 weeks at #1?? That is insane. It feels like this one should have been up at the top for months!

Brandy - Have You Ever? (1/16-1/23)

If "...Baby One More Time" became a staple of 1999 MTV, then I feel like this Brandy song was all over VH1 at around the same time. This is a song you don't hear very often anymore.

Top Ten Tuesday: Beyonce featuring Jay Z "Drunk in Love"

My two options for the week are both VERY sexual, which is nothing new to the Top Ten. So I decided to go with the video that I feel SLIGHTLY less awkward about posting. If it wasn't for 2 Chainz's verse, I might have gone the other way (and unless it falls off the Top Ten, or something else enters, you'll get that treat next week!) but I think there's something sweet and cool about Beyonce and Jay Z recording this song. It's like the opposite of a Fleetwood Mac song.

The video is pretty straightforward and actually has kind of a classic feel to it. You could imagine Janet Jackson making a similar video in like 1993.

Throwback Thursday: 2003

This is the year that my wife and I started dating!

10. Black Eyed Peas - Where is the Love?
9. Ludacris featuring Shawnna - Stand Up
8. Fabolous featuring Tamia - Into You (techinically this is featuring Tamia or Ashanti, because the former did vocals on the single and the latter did vocals on the album version. I decided to refer to the single)
7. 50 Cent - P.I.M.P.
6. YoungBloodZ featuring Lil Jon - Damn!
5. Pharrell featuring Jay-Z - Frontin'

This is the kind of song that I would hear on the radio or on the TV at one of the food establishments on campus and it almost seemed like, "That can't be a REAL song" because it was so different from everything else that was going on with music at the time. Retro and at the same time forward thinking. Love it.

4. Chingy - Right Thurr
3. Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz featuring Ying Yang Twins - Get Low
2. Nelly, P. Diddy, and Murphy Lee - Shake Ya Tailfeather
1. Beyonce featuring Sean Paul - Baby Boy

One Year, 100 Albums: #82 Jay-Z - The Blueprint

Jay-Z The Blueprint, 2001

I'm not really sure how I came to explore this album. I'm sure part of it was due to Kanye constantly talking about how this was the album that really allowed him to break into the business, specifically because of producing the song "Izzo".

And I also think that that same guy who played the Carbon Leaf album from earlier in this list played this when we were working that second shift job in the lab at the Perdue factory.

Oh, also Fall Out Boy named a song after the opening lyrics in one of his songs on this album ("The Take Over, The Break's Over" from Infinity on High), which intrigued me.

Regardless of how I came to know this album, it is an amazing conglomeration of braggadocio, wit, fun, and wisdom. This is an album I play when I want to motivate myself to keep my head up.

The thing that I've always liked about Jay-Z is that he makes you feel like you're just his buddy that he's talking to, trying to figure out the cleverest way to put some things, and just telling other things as simply as possible.

On "Takeover"he breaks down why he's better than Nas on a number of different levels, but my favorite level is the mathematical one. He literally talks sales figures vs number of years rapping and does it as cleanly and easily as he does everything. And it never fails to make me smile.

Here's the video for "Izzo". Couple of things about it.

1) When I first heard this song, I was really confused about what he was spelling. H-O-V-A didn't make any sense to me until a couple of years ago when my friend Calvin explained that it was like Jay Hova (read as: Jehovah) and was Jay-Z's way of comparing himself to God. Calvin was less than jazzed about this tidbit, but I, having struggled with what the hell a Hova was for year, was delighted.

2) Watch the cameos of big-name Rap and R&B acts from 2001 singing along to the song. You might see a certain lady who would become very important to Hov a couple of years later!

3) It's weird to see him still dressing in jerseys, this video being before his "And I don't wear jerseys, I'm 30-plus" manifesto from The Black Album two years later.

It's very hard to pick tracks from this album that will give you a good idea of the range exhibited. So what I'll do is this. I'll give you my favorite song on the album, "U Don't Know" and the second hidden track "Girls, Girls, Girls (Part 2)" which was produced by Kanye West and somehow outshines Part 1, which shouldn't have been possible.

Jay-Z - U Don't Know

Jay-Z - Girls, Girls, Girls (Part 2)

You can buy The Blueprint at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes.

Top Ten Tuesday: Jay Z featuring Justin Timberlake "Holy Grail"

The second most popular post on this blog is the TTT I did for JT's "Suit and Tie" [EDIT: Since I wrote this post, it has become THE most popular post] which featured Jay Z and now the video for "Holy Grail", the lead-off track from Jay's Magna Carta Holy Grail album, and one of my favorite songs of the year. I love the juxtaposition of their voices and the dynamic, epic feel of the song.

The video is visually striking. Lots of flash and shine interspersed with scenes of Jay sitting in a room with bullet-riddled walls and dusty furniture. Very nice contrast. It's a great video to watch.

They've done some remixing of the song, which I'm not sure I care for. One of the things I love about the song is that JT gets at least 90 seconds of singing in before Jay utters a word and I think that's a pretty ballsy way to start a record. But apparently, they thought it was too ballsy a move for the video.

And then they slow the hook way way down. And just, I don't know. It changes it.

This won't be posting for 12 days from when I'm writing it and I'm sure that lots of people will have comments and discussions about it in the interim. But, from the perspective of 35 minutes after it was posted to Facebook, I'd say that I like the look of the video and I know that they needed to adjust the song to suit that look. I just don't think I'll come back to this video when I want to listen to the song. Which is maybe ok, you know? The song and the video can be two separate entities.

Jay Z "Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film"

I'm so impressed with Jay Z's new album. And then I saw this. And the appreciation I have for him went through the roof.

Top Ten Tuesday: Justin Timberlake w/ Jay-Z "Suit and Tie"

Well I thought it was only fitting that this week's TTT. The first Justin Timberlake album in 6+ years comes out today and that's pretty exciting. I like what I've heard from it and I'm ALMOST to the point where I'm comfortable purchasing it and not saying it's for my wife. ALMOST.

JT is a great performer and I'm very pleased to see the directions he's taken his career and also that he seems to be a very nice, genuine guy. 

I like this song, even if Kanye doesn't. :)

And, just because it's always fun to remember where he came from and who he came with (I think there are 4 kids from these credits besides Justin that are (or have been) super famous):

Thrones

So this post is just going to be 3 videos. The first is my favorite song from the collaboration album of Jay-Z and Kanye West: Watch the Throne. It's called "Niggas in Paris"

And I still love that song. I feel like it's different than the rest of the album. And I like that. The next song, however, is I guess a parody of it by Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) that I saw on The Needle Drop today. It's called "Niggas in Poorest"

And I think that is just fabulous, also. I think it's smart and funny and poignant. And it is so very Mos Def.

That part about "Don't Get Caught Up in No Throne" reminded me of No Kings so, once again, here's Doomtree's version of "This Land is Your Land", "Bolt Cutter"

And that's mostly what I've been thinking about today. Rap music.

Off The Charts #3: #1 Albums

At first I was worried that this would be immediately shut down by the Man. And maybe it still will be, but I hope not. The thing is, you probably already own all of these songs. So why would you steal them?

I had a blast putting this one together and I hope you have a blast listening to it!

Off The Charts #3: #1 Albums


(A running theme of these episodes has been that I've been talking and talking and talking, so it's another Google Docs link. Let me know if it's not working, but I haven't heard from anyone about the others, so maybe I've learned how to do this right)


(Also, it seems that Blogger has forgotten how to move a word to the next line if it doesn't fit on the line it's on. So, that's annoying and hopefully you won't know what I'm talking about when you're reading this. If you DO know what I'm talking about, I apologize for the weirdness.)


***Featuring***
The Beatles
Blood, Sweat, and Tears
Carole King
Fleetwood Mac
Guns N' Roses
Jay-Z
Jaydiohead
Lauryn Hill
Michael Jackson
Nirvana
Radiohead