Jambox

Hipsters demonstrate the new wireless portable bluetooth speaker by Jawbone.

DEE-1 - Jay, 50, and Weezy

This is the first time I have seen someone really stand up to the corrupted giants in such a sharp way.

Jay Z - Blueprint 3 - G-Clef review

When I first started listening to the new Jay-Z album, Blueprint 3, I was impressed. The first portion of the album is pretty fresh,beat and rhyme-wise, and obviously contains his first two singles.

"What We Talkin Bout" is synth-heavy, but Jay sounds good, but when he claims he is a small part of why the president is black, that kinda sets the tone for the majority of lyrical content that Jay brings forward: in a word, bragging. His constant boasting about material wealth may be well-founded, but at the same time, its juvenile for someone his age I think. His flow is on point, so is his voice for the most part, but its his content that kinda sucks here. Back to the song..the hook is kinda raggedy for something on a Jay-Z album, but I guess it's still catchy.

"Thank You" is a pretty decent beat and Jay bodies it, with flow and swagger. Again, his content is not very interesting. On the production end, I see he is experimenting with live horn sections, and a ton of live instruments mixed over the sample tracks. This could be interesting, and definitely adds flavor but is not properly EQ's to blend right with Hip-Hop in my opinion. This track should have been "lighter" and not as heavy-sounding, but these are very specific criticisms that won't bother most people.

"DOA" and "Run this Town" - well, we all know these by now - well-produced, catchy, etc. Kanye kind of rips Jay a new one on "Run", not so much in terms of flow, but how he crafts his ideas together lyrically. Neither of them have much in terms of content. Again on "Run" we hear quite a bit of live instrumentation (guitars mainly) added to the mix, which keeps it moving and interesting.


Surely, "Empire State of Mind" ft Alicia Keys will be the third single. If not, it would be a huge mistake in my opinion. Here, Jay finally has something to rhyme about and it works. He is rapping about New York! Alicia does justice to the hook, which is very catchy and will make this song a huge hit.

"Real as it Gets" features Jeezy, and he does his usual thing on here. It's well-produced, again a synth drive track, but seems somewhat distorted on the recording end, especially on Jeezy's vocals, which may or may not have been recorded at the same studio Jay was working out of. My bet is not. Nice chords on the synths, but there are two major annoyances on this song for me: 1) Jay using this "wassup" as a hook.....really? Cmon Jay, that just aint it! 2) Jeezy's pronunciation (on the hook) "hands in the air" ... and then.. here we are again with ANOTHER joint featuring the same old hook that Naughty by Nature made famous long ago with "Hip-Hop Hooray" -"HEY! HO!" cmon now...enough of that!

"One to the next One" is interesting because its a masterful musical creation by Swizzy, which is a very blatant nod to the new hipster movement. The beat sounds like a combination between a normal Swizz Anthem type track and something we might hear by "Cool Kids" or "Kidz in the Hall". Jay also in my opinion bites Sha Stimuli on "Follow the Leader" where even though he proclaims Autotune to be dead, he still has the effect on one brief phrase. This is exactly what Sha did! Note: Jay also says the phrase "Follow the Leader" on "Run This Town". Jay's flow on this song shows the influence of the Hipster movement, but more specifically he sounds a little like Drake on this! I love the hook by Swizz Beats, it's just funky as hell.

"Off That" - Jay sets it up by saying "welcome to the future... find me a place to land".
And ironically, here comes Drake with the hook, saying "you can't bring the future back". Jay is DEFINITELY listening to the hipsters now, its official, as his flow on here is a straight nod to Wale. Why Jay keeps using these strange utterances as "swag hooks" now is beyond me, they just ain't hot. (he keeps saying AHH like he does in D.O.A.) I guess flow-wise Jay is just showing skills as an emcee, battling the younger cats in their own style or something. It's a fun track overall. Drake doesn't get to rhyme, just does the hook.

"A Star is Born" - I have seen people say this song is a tribute to various "ex-enemies" like Nas, Wu, etc, but honestly, in some cases its still a diss because he is saying stuff like, " they had their run" meaning they are now from the past. This whole song is like a history of rappers that "made it in the game", but who are no longer of "today". He gives Rae, O.D.B., and Ghost props, but ironically 2 of these artists were formerly on Rocafella/DefJam, so he is almost taking credit for them maybe? J.Cole gets to rap but Kid Kudi and Drake didn't? Hmmmmmm.... This beat is annoying and wack, and its an attempt at a poppy, catchy hook, but is generally an uninspired song.

"Venus vs. Mars" is the story of a guy and a girl obviously. This is a mood track all the way with a "sexy, moaning" girl chant on the hook which make me yawn. Nice synths added to this track, and the sonics are nice and clear. Well-produced indeed by Timbaland. It just seems uninspired though.

"Already Home" - Jay borrows the old hook "Love me or leave me alone" subliminally but then yields to Kudi's nice singing hook, but makes me personally wish I could hear more from Kudi on here. Live horns once again added but again mixed with a strange and muffled EQ that makes the horns seem to "real" and "live" and it just doesn't blend, which annoys me. The beat is just ok, nothing exciting. Jay is just bragging again with limited content. He stays reminding us why we are all so damn inferior and inept, as well as poor. Left a bad taste in my mouth during these hard times.

"Hate" sounds like a Kanye track, and yep there is Kanye rhyming again too. It's listenable but not extremely fresh or anything amazing to me. I guess this is supposed to be some of the "experimental" sound Jay has been mentioning? Try again. There is too much ill music out there these days. These boys been in the limelight too long!

"Reminder" is a really annoying bragging song where Jay basically stakes his claim above all artists of all time except the Beatles in terms of sales and success. Wow! So why am I unimpressed? And oh... here comes that new "fresh" (not) hook sound again "Ahhhh!" Listenable track due to Timbaland just knowing what he's doing, but it goes absolutely nowhere due to Jay's silly boasting.

"So Ambitious" is easily the weakest song on this album. I like Pharell ALOT but he is definitely one of the biggest hit-and-miss producers out there. This one is a straight miss. Lots of big synth hits - again, which makes the album start to feel very monotonous sonically. Pharell's singing hook is wack and uninspired, bordering on annoying. Jay is virtually non-existent on this song. The only thing I noticed by listening carefully however is that he is re-using his rhyme scheme from older songs like "Hard Knock Life" and "Dead Presidents".

"Young Forever" is an attempt at a quasi-1980's synth-pop hit. Mr. Hudson does his thing as the token white, british singer, which is dumb because he is way more than that in all reality. But here it's obviously the job of guest artists on this album, NOT to do THEIR thing but just augment Jay-Z and hold his nuts downs. Jay is boring as hell on this song. This song as the ending is ironic because not only is Jay bragging more, but additionally claiming to be YOUNG still, and claiming to have created timeless art. Truth be told, he really hasn't and it's getting old fast.

Overall, I like Blueprint 3, and give it 3.5 stars.



G-Clef

Travels

I am never gonna serve as a free ticket to anywhere, ever again.... I need people down for the long haul only to travel with me!

The Life of Auto-Tune

According to wikipedia, Auto-tune is: a proprietary audio processor created by Antares Audio Technologies that uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed many artists to produce more precisely tuned recordings. In addition to being used to subtly change pitch, with some settings it can be used as an effect to deliberately distort the human voice.

Ironically, it also mentions the recent declaration of the "death" of Auto-tune by rapper Jay-Z, along with a quote from Kanye West: "We actually removed all the songs with Auto-Tune off of his album, to make the point that this is an anti-Auto-Tune album, even though I released an album that has all Auto-Tune!"

40 year old Jay-Z has announced, among other things, that only T-Pain, Lil' Wayne, & Kanye West " do it right" and are allowed amnesty to continue using the plug-in.

As a producer I look at Auto-tune in two ways: 1) like the definition says, it can be used as a pitch correction module to improve performance, or 2) it can be purposely used to distort the voice, or as I would actually say, create a new instrument which a fellow musician I know called quite logically: electric voice.

The term "electric voice" is applicable in order to fully understand my feelings about Auto-Tune (an effect that I currently utilize as what is called the "V-Vocal" plug in, on Cakewalk's Sonar 8). The perfect example is the history of the guitar in American music. Just imagine if Les Paul and Rickenbacker received protests by an elder musician such as Fletcher Henderson, proclaiming that "electrified guitar is dead! My next album will only feature acoustic guitars!" We would laugh at him today for being so out of sync with his times!

I have a very different appreciation for Auto-Tune. As a tool when used subtly, it can of course be a great help with any annoyances, pitch wise, and for that I think it's a helpful production tool. On the other hand, if a singer just cannot really sing in tune most of the time, and AT is being used as a crutch, then like the haters, I don't enjoy it too tough.

What I do like, is when AT is used as a new instrument, as with the "electric voice" example. Leave it to Hip-Hop to once again, as it did back in the 1980's with the SP-12, ingeniously pervert a new piece of musical technology for its own purposes. After all, who would ever have thought of testing the effects of AT on a rap verse (Lil' Wayne), retuning the various pitches of the speech patterns of rap? Hip-Hip of course! and when Kanye West wanted to experiment with melodies to hear his musical ideas (he never claimed to be a singer), AT was not only an effective tool, but innovated a brand new genre that other artists like Drake are now mimicking. Like it or not, music is moving forward. AT is a tool, an instrument, nothing more. Blame the player not the game, so to speak...and I personally like it.

Why? As someone raised up in the "purist jazz" tradition I have every reason to despise AT. Lots of my fellow performing musicians believe AT to be a tool of Satan. I have a different perspective. After countless years of pop and other musics being sung off-pitch, I for one, welcome the luxury to hear proper intonation in a melody. Exceptions? Sure.... noone wants to hear David Ruffin or Sam Cooke with auto-tune, but real singers are a rare breed these days in my humble opinion. I haven't heard many great singrs in pop culture in years and years. At some point it has to be less about ego and more about the listener and being kind to their ears, and AT makes those pitches sing out and reverberate in a new way. AT is the truth, literally. I also believe that the more the masses are exposed to the proper pitches of tones, the more they will attempt to sing or produce them. In short, Auto-tune is reteaching the masses how to HEAR! It's about time - they have become deaf for years. The long term effects I predict will be staggeringly positive.



I <3>

Yalloppin' Hounds coming with a new album!

The Yalloppin' Hounds, my swing group, are coming forth with a brand new album called "Great Recesssion". In stores June 16th and definitely not to be slept on people!

Peep two singles from the album:


Great Recession ft. Peter Hartmann & G-Clef


Can You Make it Swing for Me? ft. Leigh Vaiano & Lord Sledge


enjoy and spread them around!

Attention artists: relationships are key!

I will never forget the time Jay-Z was on Hot97 and he was asked about running Def Jam Recordings.... He was asked how it is working on both sides of the game, and he pointed out that artists fail to realize there is a relationship and the end of every turn, and even mentioned a certain artist who had been publicly bashing the label and complaining that they didn't work his project properly. Jay-Z took this artist aside and asked him a few simple questions.. like...
" Do you know the name of the person who handles your radio promotion? Do you know the name of the person who handles merchandising?" Of course the answer was no, that the artists had failed to even make an effort to build a real relationship with any of these people who had been toiling so hard to make HIS record happen.

Which leads me to this short essay....


As someone who has survived and existed on both sides of the tracks within this business of music, I can safely say, that relationships: our ability to get along with others is KEY to success! Thinking negatively, acting paranoid, creating a contentious, adversarial environment is totally counterproductive to a successful run between artist and businessman. Yet and still, how many artists are, as I always call it, open for business? Very very few, and in today's music game, it is exactly those who make it. Artists must be open for business.

Labels or agencies, are run by people, who have other people working for them. If an artist chooses to abuse or neglect the relationship between himself and these people, take a guess what can happen! Everything involving relationships has a psychology to it.. for example; we all know about successful artists buying the whole staff of a record label lunch, flowers, champagne, etc.. and for what is this done? Simply put: the result is the people tend to want to work harder for this individual! Artists, imagine this scenario: all day long, and all week long, the staff of a record label have one name on their minds and out of their mouths: YOURS! This is because all day long they are basically selling and promoting you.. making clientele a believer in YOU! This is often a very thankless vocation for those working on projects, because as we know.. how many are artists themselves just looking for an angle or a break in the biz! So here you have... an artist who then calls up with a harassing, menacing tone, or makes threats, or acts generally selfish and belligerent.. to what end? All these good, hard working people who are trying to get behind YOU as a product now feel like shit about it! That is definitely not a good look! Even a caveman can guess what happens to your project next....

Just my two cents... something to keep in mind, artists!!!