Pharrell and Busta Rhymes cooked up a strip club/club banger for the summer with “Twerk It,” the lead single from Busta’s upcoming 10th album. There’s not many successful rappers who can mesh rap-reggae into something that goes hard, but Busta delivered. Read more…
The Forbes list of the highest paid musicians is out and if you’re not familiar with the finances of your favorite artists, there might be some surprises in there. Firstly, everyone’s favorite non-practicing self-proclaimed Dr. Dre is at the top of the list. Why? His album is forever delayed! Ah but you forget: Actual music doesn’t pay that much anymore.
Dre’s bundle of cash ($110 million to be more specific) is mostly due to the overwhelmingly popular Beats By Dre line of audio electronics–Forbes reports: “He collected $100 million pretax when handset maker HTC paid $300 million for a 51% stake in the company last year, at the beginning of our scoring period; he and his partners later bought back half of what they sold.” So if Dre’s long-awaited, many-times-pushed-back album never actually comes to fruition, you know who to blame. Blame HTC and the millions of people rocking those Beats headphones across the globe. Those bragging rights that come from hip-hop songs about cars and clothes and girls? Dre doesn’t need them anymore.
Now that the Forbes highest earners in hip-hop list is out we have one wish: that we’d invented Beats By Dre. Topping the list as this year’s Hip-Hop Cash King, Dr. Dre raked in $110 million largely due to his popular $100 and up headphones. Dre made $100 million pre-tax money after HTC paid $300 million for a 51% stake in the company last year. Being the businessman that he is, Dre and his partners bought back the 51% stake HTC purchased. With the kind of revenue Beats By Dre is bringing in we get why Detox seems like the album that will never be. Read more…
No artist is exempt from the sometimes beastly Internet where leaked albums are downloaded frequently. Yesterday Rick Ross‘ highly anticipated God Forgives I Don’t leaked six days early, but Ross was very chill about the leak. Hey, why be mad when you’re a boss? After realizing fans were already jamming to his fifth album he tweeted, “#GFID out there so vibe to it..enjoy it..buy it Tuesday!!!” Ross may be busy cultivating his Maybach Music Group squad, but for his own project he enlisted a few heavy hitting MMG outsiders like Jay-Z, Andre 300 and Dr. Dre. But it’s “Diced Pineapples” featuring Wale and Drake that caught our attention. Read more…
It’s raining G.O.O.D. Music news today. Earlier today the official release date (September 4th) for Cruel Summer was announced. Not only can we start marking off calendar days for the label’s first compilation album, 2 Chainz‘s “Birthday Song” featuring Kanye West is being streamed by Fader magazine right now. Tonight at midnight the song from 2 Chainz’s forthcoming Based On A T.R.U. Story will be available on iTunes. In the meantime listen to the potential breakout artist of the year rap, “all I want for my birthday is a big booty gul” (that’s his southern pronunciation of girl). This southern gal knows. Read more…
Easily one of the most anticipated tracks off Rick Ross‘s upcoming God Forgives, I Don’t (we’ll have to reuse this line when “Crushed Pineapple” finally leaks), “3 Kings” finds the big Bawse drawing a hand from two of the rap game’s most regal, Jay-Z and Dr. Dre. Rozay has long been teasing this team-up as the “biggest collaboration in hip-hop,” and it’s easy to see why. On the track, each of the three take a turn recounting their rise to glory. For Dre, there were days mopping floors before he made it “front row at the awards.” Ross’ “twenty-stack seats at the Heat game” are a long way from the weed game he used to run. And Jay? He’ll have you know that before he and Oprah were BFFs, he was shopping at T.J. Maxx. The three certainly deserve a beat as soulful and triumphant as the one Jake-One made them, as well as the acclaim their meeting is sure to earn. It does seem fair to ask, though, because they put it out there: are they three really kings?
(And if the embed goes, try Flex.) Read more…
Thanks to Dr. Dre’s resurrection of Tupac at Coachella, the popularity of holograms of deceased artists is only going to continue to grow. CNN’s Marquee Blog reports the Elvis Presley hologram is on its way. It’s the return of Elvis, y’all. And his resurgence isn’t exclusive to performances only. According to CORE Media Group, which has partnered with Digital Domain Media Group (the same company that created the Tupac hologram), Elvis’ image will be used for “a range of entertainment projects – from shows and appearances to film, TV and multi-platform productions throughout the world,” according to a released statement. Can we say cha-ching? Read more…
Uprising: Hip-Hop & The L.A. Riots premieres on VH1 tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT, and is the latest entry in VH1′s award-winning Rock Docs series. The documentary film, narrated by Snoop Dogg, takes a look back at the riots that occurred in the wake of the Rodney King verdict exactly twenty years ago this week, and the role that hip-hop played in both predicting and ultimately chronicling the tension between the residents of South Central and the police.
The film premiered in Los Angeles last week, and our colleagues over at VH1 News got some 1:1 time with Arsenio Hall before the film began. He detailed for us a story of how Ice Cube passed along a cassette tape to him with an early version of “F*** The Police” on it, which led Arsenio to (ultimately unsuccessfully) lobby his corporate bosses to book N.W.A. on his eponymous talk show. It’s a fascinating anecdote, and one that reflects a time that’s increasingly hard to remember, a time when hip-hop hadn’t yet fully made its way into mainstream American culture.
We also put together a Spotify playlist for you below, Music from Uprising: Hip-Hop & The L.A. Riots, which contains most of the music that you’ll hear in the documentary film tonight, songs like N.W.A.’s aforementioned “F*** Tha Police,” Ice Cube’s “We Had To Tear This Mothaf***a Up” and Dr. Dre’s “The Day The N***** Took Over,” among others.
Not everyone thought Tupac’s hologram performance at Coachella was brilliant. And it was inevitable that one holds no barred person was going to publicly state something to the effect of letting the dead rest in peace, blah blah blah. But who would’ve guessed Waka Flocka would be the one to dismiss Dr. Dre’s revered idea of digitally bringing Tupac on stage to VIBE.com? Whoa Flocka. Pump those breaks, buddy.
The ATL bred rapper known for club anthems like “No Hands” and “Round of Applause” didn’t hesitate to answer when the reporter asked him what he thought of the hologram. “I hated it,” he responded almost before the question was finished. “That s— whack.” His criticism didn’t stop there though. “I don’t think they should be doing that. ‘Cause they getting paid off a dead man’s body.” The interviewer pries a bit more telling him Tupac’s mom got over it, but Flocka was not moved. “You don’t know what a dead man be wanting to do…You gotta let that man rest in peace. He’s a great.”
Well, there you have it. Although we thought the hologram was amazing, we can appreciate when artists say what they feel. Being politically correct is so overrated. Read more…
Tupac’s hologram resurgence at Coachella last weekend has spun into an otherworldly pool of ideas of what other deceased celebrities should be resurrected. Super producer Dr. Dre was the visionary behind the concept and has finally broken his silence. Judging by his interview with TMZ, we can surely expect more artists to pop-up from the dead in the near future.
TMZ caught up with the Doctor as he was leaving dinner. There’s been mixed reactions about whether or not the hologram was a brilliant idea or if it was totally creepy. Well, Dre is happy with the results and said, “I think everybody’s in love with it right now, so we’re having fun.”
Not only is he having fun, he hopes other artists will create their own spin-off of his idea and bring back their favorite artists. “Hopefully, different artists are able to bring out their favorite artists,” he said. “Hopefully, we can see Jimi Hendrix and Marvin Gaye. Let’s see what happens.”
Dr. Dre I’d LOVE to See a Jimi Hendrix Hologram [TMZ]
Read more…
VH1 Presents Mixtape Festival: Train, NKOTB, TLC, The Script + more! Tickets on sale now at MixtapeFestival.com!
