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  • Forget Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, etc. Rock the Bells has the most jaw-dropping lineup this summer. The annual roving hip-hop festival has an amazing lineup that looks like the Woodstock of Rap. For the second year in a row, Ms. Lauryn Hill will headline the fest with a full album performance of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, but that's only the beginning. Nine other classic hip-hop albums will also be performed at Rock the Bells, which will also boast an entire stage dedicated to the Wu-Tang Clan and more than two dozen of the best up-and-coming rappers in the game.

    Two of the three discs in our personal Holy Trinity of hip-hop albums -- Nas' Illmatic and GZA's Liquid Swords -- will both be performed in full. (Unless B.I.G. gets resurrected to do Ready to Die, this is the closest we'll come to seeing the Trinity performed at one fest.) Nas is bringing along Pete Rock, DJ Premier, and AZ, whose verse on "Life's a Bitch" quickly wrote his ticket into rap history. On

    Read More »from Rock the Bells ’11 Has the Best Hip-Hop Lineup Ever!
  • All of the summer's major music festivals have announced their lineups, and they're painfully lacking in the "youth in revolt" area. Other than the Hot Topic-leaning Warped Tour and the teen-minded Bamboozle, which situates itself in the parking lot of New Jersey's New Meadowlands Stadium in early May but doesn't venture elsewhere, there's not much on the touring landscape for the high-school-upperclassman music fan who craves emo tunes and sophomoric lyrics. Thankfully, for the older yet still immature crowds out there, My Chemical Romance and the reunited Blink-182 will headline this summer's Honda Civic Tour.

    Depending on what city you catch the 40-date trek, the opening act might be Rancid, Matt & Kim, Manchester Orchestra, or Against Me!. It's like all the fun of the Warped Tour but minus all the unnecessary neon, statement-making sunglasses, and chaperoning parents standing uncomfortably at the outer fringes of the benign mosh pit with eyes fixed on their kids. Ironically

    Read More »from Blink-182, My Chemical Romance Headline 10th Annual Young Adults Demographic Tour
  • Chris Crocker is turning in his albino python and giving up his job as Official Britney Spears Defender. The guy who got famous screeching "Leave Britney alone!" on the Internet in 2007 has changed his tune in light of the pop star's recent public performances. Which have been bad. "I'm keeping it real when I tell Britney she needs to leave the stage alone," he says in a new five-and-a-half-minute video posted on his official YouTube channel (via Queerty). At least this guy knows how to work a catchphrase. But tell us how you really feel, Chris? "I just know it's hard to watch."

    In an effort to keep it real -- which is how we like Chris Crocker to keep it -- Crocker points the finger at Spears' management, implying they're forcing her onstage to compete with a fresh crop of young starlets. "Britney could give a damn about being onstage," Crocker says. "I'm being honest when I say that from the moment Britney's onstage to the moment Britney gets off, Britney can't wait to get

    Read More »from ‘Leave Britney Alone’ Guy Thinks Spears’ Performances Are Crap
  • If Kanye West idolizes Bon Iver (a.k.a. Justin Vernon), and Justin Vernon idolizes Bruce Hornsby, then by extension can we expect to hear a heavy Range influence on 'Ye's next album? Please? Last night on the Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (via Consequence of Sound), Vernon dissected his sound, explaining, "I always had a voice that sounded a little bit more like Hootie or something. Not in a good way." And after a very effusive (bordering on fawning) Fallon said he thought track 10 on Bon Iver's very poetic June 21st disc Bon Iver, Bon Iver sounds a little "Bruce Hornsby-ish," Vernon admitted that was exactly the vibe he was chasing. "I got that exact Korg M1. I was sitting at home and I was just like, man, there isn't enough Hornsby in my scene." Then he played an incredible medley of Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me" and "Nick of Time" blended with the Donnie Hathaway version of Leon Russell's "A Song for You."

    Let's pause for a moment to really think about what a jolt of

    Read More »from Bon Iver’s Campaign to Make Bruce Hornsby Cool Begins Now
  • For $55, girls can smell so appealing, Justin Bieber will be compelled to repeatedly sniff their necks with meaningful, sensual inhales. That is the message the 17-year-old singer telegraphs in his commercial for new perfume Someday, which has a "sweet, fruity" aroma and the potential to earn the teen heartthrob $30 million, according to the Daily News.

    Fragrance commercials are almost always extraordinarily bizarre, and Bieber's is a hilariously wacky addition to the canon, which includes Chanel's Egoiste (women shout hysterically on French balconies and slam doors in an angsty fury), White Diamonds (Elizabeth Taylor breaks into a high-stakes poker game and intones, "These have always brought me luck"), and anything from the Britney Spears collection (like Fantasy, where a Kevin Federline look-alike shoots the pop star with a love arrow).

    In Bieber's trippy, profoundly weird 30-second ad, he smells a young lady's neck not once, not twice, but five times. He also flies through the

    Read More »from Justin Bieber Wants to Repeatedly Smell Your Neck (If You Are Wearing His New Fragrance)
  • Even though Beck took a rare year off from releasing any new music in 2010, he did spend his time in the studio producing new albums by a pair of alternative rock gods. One of those LPs, Thurston Moore's Demolished Thoughts, is out today, and the other is arriving this summer: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks will release their new album Mirror Traffic on August 23rd, the Matablog writes. Mirror Traffic is Malkmus' fifth album with his post-Pavement band, and his first to be produced a Yanni fan. Unfortunately, Mirror Traffic will be the last Jicks album to feature former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, as Matador announced she's leaving the band. (That likely means Wild Flag, her group with fellow S-K member Carrie Brownstein, may be getting serious.) She'll be replaced by the Joggers' Jake Morris on the Jicks' upcoming tour.

    A sample of Mirror Traffic will premiere in the coming days, but Matador Records is already cocky about the new Malkmus disc. "Without dissing prior works that

    Read More »from Enthusiastic Label Very Excited About Stephen Malkmus’ Beck Album
  • There is something Lady Gaga should probably know: Madonna did crazy on Letterman in 1994, when the Queen of Pop cursed, puffed a cigar, gifted Dave with her underpants, and generally irritated the Late Show host so severely for 20 excruciating minutes, he screamed into the camera, "Ladies and gentlemen, turn down your volume... there's something wrong with her!"

    Others have tried to do crazy -- Joaquin Phoenix deliberately made Letterman's show part of his I'm Not There hoax -- but nobody has matched Madonna's effortless insanity from 17 years ago. Lady Gaga certainly tried last night, though, striding out onto the Ed Sullivan Theater set dressed like a bat bikini model and chomping on a ripped-off piece of blue paper after she decided she didn't dig the questions. (When Letterman warned her the paper she'd grabbed, ripped, and chewed had been chemically treated, she briefly feigned death, then pretended to spit it out behind her chair.) Gaga also chatted about getting famous by

    Read More »from The Top 10 Nutty Things Lady Gaga Told David Letterman

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