Blog Posts by Daniel Kreps

Late last night, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival -- the huge party in the Indio, California desert that annually marks the beginning of music festival season -- revealed its lineup after weeks of speculation. So what's the good, the bad and the meh about this year's event?

Highlights:
• It'll be hard for Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo to top Coachella's headliners: Kings of Leon on Friday, Arcade Fire on Saturday, and the one-two punch of Kanye West and the Strokes on Sunday night. Coachella always seems to add one more headliner-level talent to the lineup in the weeks preceding the festival, but if not, that foursome is still a great one.

• Never mind the headliners, the second-line talent on the lineup is nearly as impressive as the bold names: Duran Duran, Animal Collective (after taking 2010 off for the most part), the Black Keys, Robyn, PJ Harvey, and the Chemical Brothers. Coachella may be lacking on the big names and big surprises -- recent years have seen sets by Paul

2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell, one of the most controversial rappers ever thanks to his overtly sexual lyrics and daily activities as Luther Campbell, is reportedly eyeing a career change that no one anticipated: the Mayor of Miami. The man behind such potty-mouthed rap classics like "Me So Horny," "Dirty Nursery Rhymes," and "The F--- Shop," who put out one of the first albums to feature the "Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics" sticker (1989's "As Nasty as They Wanna Be," an album so obscene Florida law briefly prohibited its sale at record stores), is now pursuing a political career, The Ticket reports. If anyone from that era of hip-hop was going to run for mayor, we would've guessed Chuck D. But instead it's the outspoken Campbell -- whose resume includes a stint at an adult film company -- vying for the vacant role if current mayor Carlos Alvarez is thrown out of office.

Despite his checkered past, Campbell doesn't fear the airing of dirty laundry that occurs during a political

While Dr. Dre drags his feet when it comes to releasing new music, the members of the Wu-Tang Clan continue to unleash solo albums at a furious pace. Just three months after Ghostface Killah delivered his excellent "Apollo Kids," his Wu partner-in-crime will release "Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang," the follow-up to 2009's acclaimed "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II," on March 8th. It'll be Raekwon's third full-length album in two years -- and that's not including mixtapes and his many guest spots (Kanye's "Gorgeous" and Yelawolf's "I Wish" for starters) -- so we can't blame the prolific Chef for going a little feature-heavy on his latest album.

"Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang" will feature three fellow Wu members -- Ghostface, Method Man and Inspectah Deck, oddly enough the only representatives of both Shaolin (Staten Island) and Wu-Tang on the album, so it's as if they're versus themselves (or it's just a reference to this movie) -- plus guest verses from Nas, Rick Ross, Estelle, the Roots' Black Thought, Jim

Much has been written about the almost-immortal longevity of rockers like Ozzy Osbourne and Keith Richards, but perhaps an even more impressive feat has been accomplished by another icon of the 1960s. With her appropriately named new single "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" at the top of the Dance/Club Play Songs chart, Cher has now recorded a Number One single in six consecutive decades stretching back to her hit with Sonny Bono, "I've Got You Babe," in 1965. Billboard breaks down Cher's 45-year run of chart dominance, and even features a clever quote from the ageless diva: "How can it be six decades when I'm only four decades?"

Cher has also topped the Hot 100 with "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves," "Half-Breed," "Dark Lady" (all 1970s) and "Believe" (the Hot 100's Number One song of 1999). The '80s saw Cher topping the Adult Contemporary charts with the Diane Warren-penned "If I Could Turn Back Time" and "After All," and in the 2000s Cher reached Number One on the Dance/Club Play Songs

One of the most anticipated and A-list films set to premiere at this week's Sundance Festival happens to a music video: "Fight for Your Right Revisited," directed by the Beastie Boys' Adam "MCA" Yauch, will debut this week during a presentation of short films at the annual Utah showcase. As The Amp previously reported, six big names actors -- Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, Elijah Wood, Jack Black, Danny McBride and John C. Reilly -- had been cast to portray the Beasties in the video, which pays homage to the classic video for "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" However, IMDB reveals (via Consequence of Sound) the entire cast for "Fight For Your Right Revisited," and it's even more impressive. Every role, even the extras, is filled by a name you'd recognize.

The cast rivals the collective star power of any awards show audience: Susan Sarandon and Stanley Tucci playing Mother and Father, "The Office" vets Rainn Wilson and Rashida Jones in minor roles, Orlando Bloom portraying

After spending more than a decade working on "Detox," Dr. Dre has finally revealed the first firm release date for his long-awaited album: April 20th. That's right, sticking with the pot-friendly theme mapped out 18 years ago by his masterpiece "The Chronic," Dre will release his LP on the college campus holiday of "4/20," the unofficial annual celebration of marijuana. Dre made the announcement in, of all things, a shaky 16-second-long cellphone video recorded by producer Just Blaze, and not the detailed press release we've been hoping would arrive in our in-boxes for years. "Four-twenty baby, it's coming," Dre promises, to which a surprised Blaze responds, "You might just see a unicorn this year too."

Given the amount of delays and postponements linked to "Detox," a.k.a. hip-hop's "Chinese Democracy," you'd have been more likely to see a unicorn than hear "Detox" in the past five years. The April 20th release date comes a year and two weeks after Dre appeared at Boston Red Sox's

Two months after Apple finally brought the Beatles' catalog to iTunes, we have some firm sales figures, and they're impressive: iTunes reps confirmed to EW's The Music Mix that since November 16th, the Beatles have sold 5 million tracks and over 1 million albums. While a good percentage of those sales came in the Beatles' first week on iTunes -- 2 million songs and 450,000 albums -- the group has sustained surprisingly successful digital sales that keep pace with contemporary artists and new releases. Especially considering most people already own the Beatles catalog in some format, and are content to rip MP3s from their CDs.

Continuing a trend that began when the Beatles first hit iTunes, George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" remains the best-selling track, while "Abbey Road" has cemented itself as the Fab Four's best-selling (and just plain best) album. Considering that the Beatles' iTunes deal benefits the band from a dollars standpoint more than the usual digital licensing deal,

News of a planned fifth (and possibly sixth!) installment in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series likely gave pause to Rolling Stones fans eagerly awaiting Johnny Depp's documentary on Keith Richards. However, yet again assuming the role of Jack Sparrow -- a character inspired by Richards, who cameos as Sparrow's father -- hasn't distracted Depp from work on the film, and the actor told EW's Music Mix that he's actively assembling the film now.

"It's coming along great," Depp said. "We've done one, let's say, installment that was fairly intense. We shot for a few days, and we got 35 hours of footage. That's me and Keith sitting and talking in a room that's very, you know, apropos of Keith. We're sitting on couches, having a drink, and talking." Depp said he hopes to film two more interviews with Richards before hitting the editing room.

As amazing as two hours of deep Depp-Richards chat sounds, the actor has also scored interviews with Patti Smith and Norah Jones, and the