Posts Tagged ‘Lil Wayne’
Even for Courtney Love, this is a new low
Remember when David Hasselhoff got absolutely blitzed a few years back and his daughter videotaped him as he lay on the floor of the bathroom completely out of his gourd, shirtless, trying to eat a sloppy hamburger all while proclaiming “This is a mess” and telling his daughter “fuck you.”
Yeah, that was pretty low.
But if anyone could top (drop?) that, it’s Courtney Love.
I’m just going to step aside and let Rolling Stone explain what went down during a recent Hole concert in Washington D.C.:
What started as a relapse led to a recovery – and possibly the rebirth of a recently directionless career.
It takes a lot of guts as an artist to scrap an entire body of work that is almost completed in favor of starting anew with a clean slate because the old material simply didn’t reflect who you are at the present. Deftones recently were in such a predicament due to the serious injuries suffered by one of their members. But that’s a much different situation than the one facing Eminem.
Em himself writes off his most recent work in “Talkin’ 2 Myself,” saying, “them last two albums didn’t count/Encore I was on drugs, Relapse I was flushin’ ‘em out/I’ve come to make it up to you now no more fuckin’ around.”
And anyone who’s seen a minute of Celebrity Rehab knows that when you’re on drugs and in the spotlight, some stupid shit can happen and proper decision-making processes probably aren’t happening. That’s why it’s so commendable that Eminem was actually able to step back and take an objective look at his own situation, decide that he wasn’t on top of his game, and change courses.
Free Weezy.
At Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday, Lil’ Wayne was finally sentenced to his year in prison.
With the courtroom packed and a crowd growing and growing outside, Lil’ Wayne was offered the chance to make a statement. Instead, he declined while shaking his head.
While leaving the courtroom, fans showed signs of support for the multiplatinum rapper. Fans wore shirts, “Free Weezy!” and voiced their concerns for the artist. “Keep your head up, Weezy,” stated one of the fans.
With some good behavior, Weezy could be out of prison in eight months.
Whenever bands take a long time between records and then come back with a drastically different sound, they take a serious risk in alienating their audience and jeopardizing their career.
That’s exactly what happened with Taproot, who, after a really good debut album (Gift) and a mediocre follow-up two years later (Welcome), took three years before making their next album, Blue-Sky Research, which scrapped nearly all of the band’s chugging riffs and unique screams and instead saw the band trying to reinvent itself as some kind of radio-friendly alternative outfit. The move was a complete disaster. The music was so watered down that it just came across like a puddly mess, and more importantly it angered a lot of the group’s core audience, myself included.
Look, I’m definitely not saying that bands should never change their sound. I don’t think that’s true at all. But bands should at least be able to gauge their own strengths and weaknesses and not seek to make music that they cannot pull off – like Lil’ Wayne’s “rock” album. I mean, “Prom Queen” is one of the most hideous musical abominations I’ve heard in recent years, but I digress.
Recently released on December 21st, “The Refill”, Eminem’s addition to his previous release, “Relapse,” contains an additional seven songs that never made the album. “The Refill” is being package with the “Relapse” so you now get both albums. Track listings for “Relapse: The Refill” shown below include appearances by Drake, Lil Wayne, and Kanye; just to name a few.
Track listing after the break. continue reading