Fabolous featuring The-Dream - Throw It In The Bag

Random Lyric:

Paper or plastic

It's safer to ask it

So dead that I'll pay for the casket

Red flag alert: this jam has The-Dream on it, which usually means one of two things - we're going to hate it and it'll be a hit; or we're going to love it and it won't fly at all. Nothing against Fab, but that's just the way it has been working lately. Whenever Terius does a song, we go in groaning and not looking forward to his second grade music skills mixed with professional production skills. Simplistic music makes us feel simple. Added to that, he couches his voice in effects because he can sing about 4 notes well. Everything else is scatter shot.

Now that our prejudices are known, let's deal with the jam at hand. Fabolous continues his wake up. When he was coming up, his flow sounded like he was falling asleep like Diddy or Erick Sermon. It worked for a while but when was the last time you had a hit from Diddy or EPMD? You don't grow as an artist, you stop making hits. Fab adjusted and here we are again with a banger, despite all the above bias against The-Dream. The irony is that everything in the above paragraph still came true. He's got a drum line, a synth stitch and his limited vocals. Luckily, Fabolous is a strong enough artist to fight through Simple Simon's "music."

While we liked "My Time" better, Fabolous appears to be back on a roll again.

Banger or booty: banger

Previously by Fabolous:

My Time (with Jeremih)

Good Lovin' (with Slim and Ryan Leslie)

You Got Me (with One Block Radius and Baby Bash)

Previously by The-Dream

Walking On The Moon (with Kanye West)

My Love (with Mariah Carey)
Rockin' That Thang

A World Without Michael Jackson

(Note: this entry appears on all the Tim Girton blogs)

It's taken me this long to blog about the death of Michael Jackson because I wanted to gather my thoughts before I went off half-cocked and unbalanced.

From the top, I was a fan of his music. I grew up with it. While a lot of kids wanted to be Michael, I worried less about the singing and performing and more about the hair. There was an imaginary race in which the little kid with the big voice was trying to grow his afro larger than mine. Who won? That didn't really matter, but it was the beginning of the Jackson Effect on my youth.

At the time when he wanted to break away from his family and establish his own identity, the natural rebellion was building in me. Neither of us were as dramatic as some, but we wanted to be individuals. There were stumbling blocks. After the love song to the rat ("Ben") there wasn't much success for Mike. My own bits of individuality caved to peer and family pressure and I conformed to the idea that the black kid couldn't be the smart kid.

In my late teens and Michael's twenties, "Off the Wall" and "Thriller" caught the public's attention in a huge way. That's where we diverged. I was still the shy kid still afraid to express myself because it wasn't cool. I remained a fan of the music, but I started to gravitate toward Prince as the icon that would be the individual that I couldn't bring myself to be.

Michael was still there, though. I respected the fact that he broke MTV's barrier against black music, with Prince closely following. As I started exploring me, Michael was going into hyperbole, purchasing Neverland Ranch and buying a zoo to fill it. The plastic surgeries got to the point of self parody which showed me there was a limit to self indulgence.

I started on the journey that I continue on now. Back in the day, I had friends that argued that Michael was better than Prince or that Prince dominated Michael, but I wonder what would have happened if Michael's idea of a Prince duet had actually come to fruition. That was the genesis of the song "Bad" but Prince balked.

Having said all that, I am not blind to the dark side. The stories continue to come out about Michael's foibles, financial issues and the even darker charges of pedophilia. There seemed to be no one there to check him or even check on him. His will has surfaced in which father Joe Jackson gets absolutely nothing because of the child abuse he subjected Michael to.

My spirit misses the art and wonders if someone could have stopped some of the bad parts of his life, particularly if the father wouldn't. I have been blessed to have embarked on a earthly and spiritual journey that will keep me from moving on any dark thoughts and actions like that.

I wish Michael well on his next journey. Perhaps that life will be better than this.

Fare well and I'll see you when I get there.

Drake featuring Trey Songz - Successful

Random Lyric:

I get it, I live it

To me there's nothing realer

Just enough to solve your problems

Too much'll kill ya

Are there high hopes for a song like this considering our stance on generic singers? We're still trying to figure out who Drake is and what he does, but we already know Trey sounds like any number of other young R&B singers. They all sing out of their natural register to fit the record corporations definition of where the hit octave is. The results are usually pretty bland.

After listening to it a few times, you wonder why they bothered to put Trey on the track. Drake's the real star here and Trey, while he's a different voice and he handles the more avaristic properties of the song, didn't need to be there. With his singing and his rhyming, Drake seems like he had it already.

The best is a simple drum machine with some low synth lines attached. It sounds pretty much like what a 10 year old would put together if this was his first time using an 808. Luckily, Drake's lyrics and slow flow rescue the song. Rather than rapping about how much money he has, he sings the praises of being successful. It succeeds.

Banger or booty: banger

Previously by Drake

The One (with Mary J Blige)

Best I Ever Had

Every Girl (with Lil Wayne, Jae Mills & Mack Maine)

Previously by Trey Songz

I Need A Girl

Plies - Becky

Random Lyric:

Just got Becky, I can't move

I love Becky, yes I do

The beat is bananas and Plies' mush mouth flow is on point, riding the drums exactly he should.

My problem is that Plies can rhyme the dumbest things sometimes. This is one of those times. This is also one of those times when you can't figure out what's going on in his head. He's one of the smartest brothers in the game, but he purposly comes off as the stereotype of the stupid rapper. When you put out lyrics that say "I'm your good, you my goonette" or "you my property, I'm yo' owner" both of which come from "Want It, Need It," you get confused.

And then here comes "Becky," off the forthcoming album "Good Affiliated" and you think, here we go again. The song itself is simple enough. It's all about the artist begging for a certain type of sexual pleasure. However, since "Becky" is slang for a white female, the implication is that he can only find what he's looking for with a white female. That's not going to make the sistas mad at all, is it?

All in all, hot beats, good (is mush mouthed) flow and dumb lyrics. Sounds like a recipe for big success or big failure but we can't so-sign this.

Banger or booty: booty

Previously by Plies

Nasty Girl (with Ludacris)

Want It, Need It (with Ashanti)

Put It On Ya

Pants Hang Low

Come On In (with Sean Garrett and Akon)

Out Here Grindin' (with DJ Khaled, Akon, Rick Ross, Lil Boosie, Trick Daddy Ace Hood and Lil Wayne)

Amerie - Why R U

Random Lyric:

Wasted all my time

And here I am still crying over you

Over you

This one is confusing. Amerie is singing sweet lyrics to a man who is the only guy she's caring about. It's a love song in the tradition of the lyrics she wrote when she was being nominated for Grammys.

So why did her producers handicap her with an old beat from the Ultramagnetic MCs? That's the confusing part. Here's an artist who has a recognizable voice and some accolades and some producer puts a big 808 sound on it? Remember how disappointed you were when you heard Alicia Keys sing "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore" and about half way through a potential torch song classic, somebody decided you needed some big beats? You get the same effect here. A song full of pining love for a man that Amerie considers the only one is destroyed because someone had cleared a sample and couldn't wait to use it rather than trying to find the right music for the song.

So here is a potential winner that sounds like it's a patchwork of disparate elements masqurading as the come back song for Amerie. The original song was called "Ego Trippin'." That's exactly what the producers were doing here. It sounds like they tried to recreate the Mary J. Blige sound from the early 90s, but forgot that Puff Daddy is nothing more than a talent thief, not a real producer.

Banger or booty: booty (with apologies to the talented Amerie - it's not her fault)

Mariah Carey - Obsessed

Random Lyric:

All up in the blogs

Say we met at the bar

When I don't even know who you are

So here you have the diva, the icon, Mariah Carey. She's beautiful. She's perceived the be just crazy enough to keep the gossip bloggers interested. She's a cougar in the sexiest sense of the word. She's singing a song that seems to be aimed squarely at Eminem, whom she may or may not have had a date with a bunch of years ago.

She's an alto with a 5 octave vocal range and is one of the few (possibly the only one) who can sing in the "whisper register." Various sources have named her among the greatest voices in music.

And now it's time for a new album so what is the one thing a producer can do to try to give her a hit sound? There are those that would put some music together and let the butterfly sing. Looking for the next banger, and we're always looking for the next banger, we checked out the first single from Mariah's coming album "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel."

Red flag number one: it's produced by The-Dream. Red flag number two: he puts the Auto-Tune on the voice of a generation. Yes, we know that's the hot copycat sound for an artist or, in this case, producer who is so lame as to have run out of ideas. But this is Mariah. Terius, what the hell were you thinking? Mimi doesn't need all that.

But despite The-Dream's best efforts to ruin the song and perhaps kill Mariah's career, she takes over the song and shines through. She's been in the game too long to have a simplistic producer destroy her fantastic body of work. Through all of the above challenges, she's still Mariah Carey.

Banger or booty: banger

Previously by Mariah Carey:

My Love (with The-Dream)
I Stay In Love
Just Stand Up (with Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, Fergie, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Ethridge, Natasha Bedingfield, Miley Cyrus, Leona Lewis, Carrie Underwood, Keyshia Cole, Leann Rimes, Ashanti, Ciara)

Mary J Blige featuring Drake - The One

Random Lyric:

Way I walk, way I talk

My swagger

Boy you know every boss

Wanna have her

This must have been intimidating. You're a new artist and you find out that you're going to be on song by the legendary Mary J. Blige and produced by Rodney Jerkins, who indentifies himself in every song he puts together (which is annoying) as Dark Child. Imagine Drake walking into that recording session.

Well, if we still recorded songs like that. These days you can be on songs where you never meet the other artist, but it's a romantic image anyway.

Speaking of annoying, why on earth did Dark Child put the Auto-tune on Mary J's pristine voice? Are you kidding? Did he not think that the Queen of Hip Hop Soul had a strong enough presense on her own? Did he miss the millions and millions of CDs and singles that she's sold on the strength of her raw vocal power? Think about it. Sean "Puff Daddy P Diddy" Combs kills most careers shortly after he works with an artist, but Mary has perservered.

At this point, you have to wonder if Rodney is just being a jerk. You have one of the realist voices in the history of music. Don't be playing like that. And yet, Mary J overcomes Jerk's computerized interference and makes the song her own anyway. Another Mary J Blige banger.

Banger or booty: banger

Previously by Mary J. Blige:

Remember Me (with T.I.)

Just Stand Up (with Mariah Carey, Beyonce, Rihanna, Fergie, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Ethridge, Natasha Beddingfield, Miley Cyrus, Leona Lewis, Carrie Underwood, Keyshia Cole, Leann Rimes, Ashanti and Ciara)