Billboard reports today on a few "top rap acts" with expiring contracts and a taste for more direct streams of cash. Although Jay-Z has proven that hip-hop can venture outside the traditional record-label world, what does that mean for acts like Outkast, LL Cool J, and the always delightful 50 Cent?
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Big Boi of Outkast has long professed his interest in dance, so it's not terribly surprising that he's collaborating with the Atlanta Ballet; the performance is, of course, titled Big. It'll feature a whole bunch of Big Boi's ATL cronies (Sleepy Brown, Big Rube, Scar, Joi Killiam, Khujo Goodie, Janelle Monae), run April 10-13, and, according to the Billboard story, "interweave new and unreleased music from Big Boi with Giuseppe Verdi's 'La Traviata.'" It will, of course, be impossible to distinguish between Big Boi's and Verdi's contributions to the score. [Billboard]
Since he couldn't possibly fill all of that OutKast downtime with guest verses and Hollywood turns, the man born Andre Benjamin, who then branded himself Andre 3000 and who's now once again Andre Benjamin, has also spent the last few months exploring the world of fancy frocks, hoping to allow the common man (with a little dough) to borrow some of his infamous mix-and-match sartorial style. The rapper-turned-clothier currently plans for an autumn debut for his upscale fashion imprint—think more high-end department store than the place you pick up your remaindered G-Unit apparel—Benjamin Bixby. The line is so named not for the man who was once the Incredible Hulk, but because...well, probably because it sounded like a jolly Dickens urchin. And if your closet is full of throwbacks and manpris, but light on cravats and waistcoats, then it just might be for you.
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No. 5: We Choose UGK And Outkast
And for a few minutes, let's all bask in four thirtysomethings showing those soulja boys and girls how it's done.
- Guns N' Roses owes a New Jersey production company about $100,000 for transportation and touring services. Axl promises to pay the bill "as soon as he gets royalties from Chinese Democracy." [TMZ]
Compiling a year-end Top 10 list means making plenty of painful nips, tucks, and tweaks. So, through the end of 2006, we present "Stuck At Eleven," a daily look at the songs that came thisclose to making our year-end lists' final cut.
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A fascinating article in yesterday's New York Times examines how Rosa Parks' posthumous image has been abused by tacky profiteers and warring family factions (a dilemma that should sound familiar to music fans). It also has a few unexpectedly music-related items, noting that Parks likely had no clue that she'd even filed a $5 billion defamation suit against Outkast's "Rosa Parks" single, and that even if she had, she never would have asked for such a huge sum; it also notes that Chevrolet paid six figures to use her image in that terrible, terrible John Mellencamp commercial.
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Okay, so it's an absolute mess: Twenty-five tracks that seem to have been sequenced at random, a '30s nightclub-music influence that's woefully inorganic, and lackluster movie-dialogue interludes that won't send anybody out to the theater. And yet, there are some great moments to be found on Outkast's Idlewild soundtrack, which is sliding down the Billboard Top 200 every week.
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Idolator
