mixtape maestro (2.0)

No doubt inspired by the hilarious, million-plus-viewed parody of “Tik Tok” put together by goofy British trio The Midnight Beast (who are quickly approaching two-(kinda-)hit wonder status thanks to their equally LOL-worthy take on Jay Sean’s “Down”), current UK pop-rap sensation Example shifted away from his chart-scaling Calvin Harris-lite fare on a recent trip to the BBC’s Live Lounge to take his own semi-spoof-ish stab at the Ke$ha hit.

Now, compared to the Beast’s re-interpretation and Example’s previous “re-fixes” of pop tart smashes (his must-have 2006 mixtape, We Didn’t Invent The Remix, featured memorable swipes at Lily Allen’s “Smile” and Britney Spears “Toxic”), the rapper’s “Tik Tok” falls a bit short on the yuk-yuks, but his version is still miles more entertaining than the Ke$ha original, if only because it doesn’t leave you feeling dirty for liking it when it’s over.

Kicking off with a teasing instrumental lick of Cameo’s “Word Up”, Ex spends the rest of the performance narrating his own day o’ debauchery, waking up in the A.M. feeling like “Queen Lizzie” and trading in Kee$h’s beloved Jack Daniels toothpaste for the dental hygiene aid of rum (especially love the Max Martin-ized pop-”rock” crunch brought forth on the chorus).

Catch the gig below, followed by a quietly compelling live go at single “Won’t Go Quietly”:

“Tik Tok (Live Lounge)”:

“Won’t Go Quietly (Live Lounge)”:

Uncategorized cover song, example, ke$ha, live performance, lol, UK rap

Our love for both cover songs and “She-Wolf” knows no bounds, so when our inbox was blessed with this awesomely goofy re-take of the Shakira single by the boys in Chester French, we couldn’t download it fast enough.

To anyone who’s ever dared to sing along to a Shakira record, mimicking her every strange vocal tic along the way, they would know it’s no simple feat. So props to singer Andrew “D.A.” Wallach for making “She-Wolf” sound so karoake-able (and double props to bassist Omar for submitting a wolf howl that’s more convincing than the original).

Catch the clip and MP3 below, than head on over to CF’s blog to vote on next week’s cover choice (We picked Taylor Swift!!).

DL: “She-Wolf (Shakira Cover)” (alt)

Uncategorized chester french, cover song, live performance, lol, shakira

…and now a break from our regularly scheduled…er, programming to tickle your funny bone.

Yeah, we know life is too short to have sit through the uber-creepy, five-minute-plus video of Bonnie Tyler’s “TEotH” again, but you MUST watch the gem below simply so you can L-to-the-OL like you’ve never LOL’ed before.

Arthur Fonzarelli & his clones doing the Macarena?! “GET OUT OF MY WAY! I GOTTA PEE!!”? “I’LL POSE LIKE ROCKY TONIGHT!!!”?

Hilarity X Infinity!!!

Uncategorized 80's, bonnie tyler, lol

While we still find something unshakably irksome about Asher Roth (and don’t act like you don’t), we’ve got to give him props for the awesomely goofy “cover” of Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow” he and his crew birthed on a recent BBC Live Lounge appearance.

From Asher’s shameless plugging of his own material (“I got that single out now/ Check iTunes if you don’t know/…Gotta get that (ALBUM!)”) amongst other dorky re-writes (“She got the boobs that bounce”) to that one guy’s hilarious attempt at a Fergie “wail”, to the magnificent drumming and scratching work that adorns the second halve, this is hands down one of our favorite Live Lounge sessions of the year.

DL: “Boom Boom Pow (Black Eyed Peas Cover)” (alt)

Uncategorized asher roth, black eyed peas, cover song, live performance, lol

Would it be asking too much for Justin Timberlake to consider a full-time gig on “Saturday Night Love”? Whether he’s hosting the show or simply popping up randomly in a single sketch (the “Single Ladies” parody; his blink and you missed it cameo in the “Jizz In My Pants” video), Justin (alongside the show’s over-used star Kristen Wiig) guarantees endless laughter, and with it being another three-and-a-half years until the next presidential elections (always the show’s biggest attention-grabber), SNL could really use his usually excellent comedic chops in the interim.

Last night, JT took on hosting duties for the third time, and while not every single minute was a LOL home-run (we thinks the “Target Lady” has worn out her welcome, and the live performance of Ciara’s “Love Sex Magic” felt like the record itself: promising, but ultimately underwhelming), it was definitely the show’s strongest full episode in months.

Of course, the sketch that will gather the most attention will be the latest “Digital Short”, which saw Timberlake and Andy Samberg reprising their Color Me Badd-esque “Dick In The Box” duo for sequel effort, “Motherlover”, another humorous mocking of 90’s R&B, this time based around the group’s brilliant idea to take “special care” of each other’s lonely moms for Mother’s Day (“Cause every Mother’s Day needs a Mother’s Night/ If doing it is wrong, I don’t wanna be right/ I’m callin’ on you ’cause I can’t do it myself/ To me you’re like a brother, so be my mother lover”).

We would have to agree about it being the “second best idea (they’ve) ever had”, cause the Emmy-winning (!!) “Dick In A Box” was major, but damn if we’ll ever think about the Mother’s Day holiday the same way ever again.

Catch the hilarious clip below, followed by the SNL performance of “Love Sex Magic”:

Uncategorized andy samberg, ciara, justin timberlake, lol, sex jam, snl

To anyone who enjoyed VH1’s recent countdown of the “100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the ’80’s” and the many WTF pop-camp obscurities it re-introduced to the brain, here’s something you should get a kick out of.

Set to an oddly groovy collection of electro squiggles and farting bass, “Shoes”, the new Soulwax-produced single by Montreal-born DJ/ producer Tiga, is a bizarro dance cut that follows a man’s attempts at getting some icy vamp to take off her clothes and submit to his creepy fetishes. He wants to comb her messy tresses, do her nails, and hold her hand wearing his precious “brand new gloves”, but she’s (smartly) not having it all, and refuses him at every turn with soullessly delivered responses of “I don’t like my hair neat” and “Those gloves don’t touch my skin”.

Key to it’s awesomely-bad awesomeness: the bad porn-meets-late night public access happenings of it’s accompanying music video that raises all kinds of mind-melting questions (like, what’s up with the weird topless drummer off in the corner) and a perfectly zany pop-art hook: Tick-tock sound effects, the man’s aroused “What’s that sound?/ I love that sound!” excitement, and the robotic vixen’s simple reply back: “It’s the sound of my shoes”.

From Ciao!, due April 27th.

Uncategorized electro-pop, lol, montreal, soulwax, tiga

And people thought “Just Lose It” was bad.

When word got out that Eminem was making his return last fall, did anybody else wonder “Why?”. There just didn’t seem to be a need to hear more goofy, celeb-bashings over nursery rhyme beats, suffer through the latest chapter in his “I love Kim”/ “I hate Kim” personal soap opera, or listen to another one of those depressing, “nobody understands me” type of records. Hell, just the thought of his nasally voice was enough to make one wish that he would just stay in retirement, only to re-appear for Lifetime Achievement Award honors and leave us a little soggy-eyed with some on-stage performance of “My Name Is…” or “Lose Yourself”.

Then there arrived “Crack A Bottle” with it’s sick Dr. Dre instrumental and re-pairing of Em and protegee Fiddy, and suddenly, the on-coming of Relapse didn’t seem as bad anymore. But wha…? Turns out “Bottle” wasn’t even a real single, just a prematurely leaked concoction that the labels scrambled to make an official digital download so as not to lose any dough.

What do we get instead as the true jump-off joint? The dreaded return of Slim Shady (Yes he’s back….back again…groan) doing what he does best: unleashing fart noises, erection jokes (“Damn girl, I’m beginning to sprout an Alfalfa”) and making US Today front page favorites squirm.

While no one’s bagged on too harshly in “We Made You”’s lyrics (signs of a matured Slim?), there are plenty of name-drops to be offered as Em attempts to woo Britney Spears, Jessica Alba and Jennifer Aniston and longs for a de-lesbian-ed Lindsay and Portia over the expected daffy score.

Yeah, the whole thing is as ho-hum as that previous paragraph reads and re-affirms the idea that his last album Encore initially planted in our minds: Eminem just feels so old hat right now. In an everything-instant era when every moment of our lives are detailed in 140-characters-or-less blurbs and our attention gravitates elsewhere with the speed of a “Refresh” click, hearing zingers on pop culture figures from two or three months ago (that aren’t even all that funny) just isn’t cutting it.

We’d rather hear Marshall Mathers-soundalike Asher Roth rap about boobies and keg parties than this…and that’s sad. Let’s just hope that the heretofore un-heard innards of Relapse will make this whole comeback thing worth it.

Pre-order Relapse, available May 19th, here.

Uncategorized 50 cent, asher roth, dr. dre, eminem, lol

What will you come away with after listening to “Boombox”, a two-or-three giggle-inducing (Fingerless gloves! HA!!!), “cautionary tale” collaboration between SNL-affiliated funnymen The Lonely Island and Strokes’ frontman Julian Casablancas (from the trio’s new release, Incredibad)?

• An undying need for some accompanying visuals.
• Re-assertion that whether played dead-serious or for laughs, White boy raps on electro-dance records will never transcend hopeless corniness.
• The inability to get the imagined stench of “bland sauerkraut and boiled goose” from out of your nostrils.
• The re-invigorated wish for track-stealer Casablancas and Co. to deliver us a new Strokes album…like immediately.
• Fond memories of “The Bartman”, followed by the oh-so-depressing realization that yes…you are old.

DL: “Boombox” (alt)

Uncategorized julian casablancas, lol, the lonely island, the strokes

So this really is happening, huh?

From the moment “Prom Queen” made it’s initial leaking waves across the World Wide Web, you could almost feel millions of question mark keys being rapidly tapped on in response to Wayne’s latest wacky career move, typed outcries of “What the hell is he thinking?!?”, “This sucks!!” and “What happened to the The Carter IV” taking hostage of various comment sections damn near instantaneously.

Is “Prom Queen” horrid? Well…on first listen, definitely. But “Lollipop” wasn’t necessarily praised off-the-bat either, and it went on to become an un-ignorable pop phenomenon, earning kudos as one of the greatest records of the year along the way.

Like “Lollipop”’s riff on sex jam R&B, “Queen” offers a fairly generic take on modern rock theatrics that somehow manages to become less grating in multiple listens, when you can start to slowly build an appreciation for it’s quite accessible thrashing abouts and the fairly decent song sketch waxing sorrow about the high school girl Weezy didn’t get that lurks behind all the metal hurrah. In comparison to the songs that can usually be found near the top of Billboard’s Modern Rock list, “Queen” is actually not all that bad and Maestro gets the sense that really soon, it could emerge as Wayne’s next Hot 100 leader.

Now is an entire album of this really needed? No, but it’s not like it would be the worst thing he could do. He saves that for the ear-bleeding (albeit down right hilarious) R&B ballad “Around The Way Girl”, a new mixtape concoction which can best be summed up as a drunken R. Kelly impersonation that suddenly takes a detour into the land of Paisley Park with it’s guitar solo and painful falsetto-sprinkled finale.

DL: “Around The Way Girl” (alt)

Uncategorized lil' wayne, lol, rock-rap

This is the type of stuff that defines a WTF? moment. A 90’s pop icon re-enters the scene with a mock-up cover of a ridonkulous rap guilty pleasure, releases the video to the Internet and it ends up being the most interesting thing she’s done since she gave us too much of a look of her lady lumps in that horrid “Thank U” clip almost a decade ago.

We’ve seen Lilith Fair patrons like Jewel and Liz Phair polarize their fanbases with sudden transformations into homogenized teen pop clones but they never really indulged in the ironic side of it. Liz Phair was so blunt in her selling out aspirations that the fun was lost, and Jewel came close to getting her point across but the tongue-in-cheek aspect of her TRL-aimed “Intuition” vid backfired as only a select few seemed to get the joke. The fact that Alanis not only is painfully obvious in her hilarious spoof, but takes it a step further by re-configurating “My Humps” into some serioso Tori Amos-styled piano pop ballad makes her the standout winner of the singer/ songwriter-wants-to-have-fun-and-be-relevant-to-younger-generations marketing method.

Since the still-reverberating success of Jagged Little Pill, Alanis has made it a point to show audiences that she can exude more than just yodelled angst. She’s painstakingly tried to express lighter sentiment by being naked in music videos (the aforementioned “Thank U”), chopping her signature long locks into a short bob and covering Seal’s “Crazy” with an accompanying video that buzzed with lesbian overtones. But Pill’s iconism loomed so large that no one cared to get to know Morisette beyond it’s scope. Things, at least for the time being, look to have changed.

Sucking all the pizazz out of Fergie’s empty-minded nursery rhyme babble, Alanis’ mournful girl-and-a-piano interpretation turns “My Humps” into some lonesome tearjerker of a stripper, sad at the realization of what her worth has been reduced to. And as pointedly heartbreaking as such a cover could sound (turning what pop music has become on it’s ugly head), it’s rendered LOL funny because Alanis’ video performance is so SNL-at-it’s-best worthy.

Lorne Michaels should really think about hiring Morisette on, because her understanding of the art of comedy could help pull his long-standing show out of it’s bland slumber.

Does it’s efforts guarantee Morisette a fair chance at another turn at multiplatinum success? No, she’ll most likely revert back to her boring post-Jagged output on the next LP; but for this one moment in time, Alanis is definitely being burned with the “cool” brand once again.

Uncategorized alanis morisette, black eyed peas, cover song, lol