Katy Perry is no stranger to radio smashes as ‘Roar’, ‘Dark Horse‘, and ‘Birthday’ have stormed the charts and airwaves; ‘Dark Horse’ more so than the other three. Katy has yet another smash on her hands with ‘This Is How We Do’. This is the fourth single off her album, Prism, and it’s a nice way to end off the summer. It’s reminiscent of ‘Last Friday Night’ and I absolutely love the many faces of KP in this one.
The video is set within a museum frame as Katy sings her way through 10 different looks which I find all stunning. The video is so colorful and each look just works. It goes to show the versatility of KP. Katy Perry has brought her entire album thus far to life with the theatrics and super bright colors. ‘Roar’ and ‘Dark Horse’ were great examples of her creativity, but this one is for sure my favorite from her so far. Great job KP and shout out to the tweaking ice cream!
Janelle Monae has released the video for her track ‘Electric Lady’ off her latest album, The Electric Lady, which was released September of 2013. Let’s get into the review.
Introducting … Electro Phi Beta from South Atlanta.
Janelle Monae is getting ready to head out with her Soros. She takes a pic of her ladies on her fancy Samsung watch which of course links to her phone, she jumps in the car (a Cadillac) and pops in this cool ‘Electric Lady’ 8-track and the next stop is the Sorority House. There’s a party going on (duh) and near the end of the video it hints at it being a bit of a Probate introducing new members into Electro Phi Beta. The albumni of the Sorority that were skyped in on the wall (so cute) were: T-Boz, Esperanza Spalding, Estelle, Monica, and Kimbra. The party goes on as this fraternity rolls in and they get there dance on with this choreo that I keep playing back so I can learn it all. It gets later and later and Janelle breaks into rap and then the Neos. I assume they’re Neo’s as their faces are covered with cool futuristic (oversized) visors and their shirts are numbered. [For those who don’t know, Neos are the abbreviation of Neophytes which are new pledges in a sorority/fraternity.] Just when you think it’s over, here comes the cameo from the King of the South, T.I., with his baseball cap, ‘Blurred Lines’ two step, and a red solo cup. Lastly, shoot to the outside where the band comes and there’s Majorette Monae.
Janelle Monae is just so gorgeous in this video. She sticks to the black and white and adds a pop of color with her pink crop top. Her letterman jacket is super dope with the quilted sleeves, JM monogram, and Electric Lady embroidered on the back. Then as majorette she sticks to the same black and white outfit except with her purple hat & cape. Her HAIR, boy that fro.
I give this video a 5/5 for sure. I haven’t been rating videos lately, but this one sure deserves it. So much though and concept behind it. This has been on a favs list before, but here it is nearly a year later back on top of my rotation. Major props for this one.
This is a super DOPE video and too bad Solange isn’t it. She would’ve been great as the DJ at the party.
I’m still in love with the song and I didn’t even know that a video had been released and although it’s been roughly a week since it’s release (7.3.14), I thought that I’d still give my review.
I love the song and I love the video concept, the two just don’t match. Well I wouldn’t say that the concept doesn’t match because in a way it does, it’s more so the music doesn’t match the intensity of the concept.
Instantly when watching the video you can see that something is wrong as Adam Levine rushes into the hospital asking where the emergency room is. Excuse me, the fucking emergency room. He races around and finds his girlfriend bloodied and heavily bruised in a hospital bed which looks like she’s been in a car accident based off the injuries. Time to backtrack in the video. Flashback to Adam dangerously weaving through cars as he arrives to the hospital. Flip the screen to his girlfriend.She’s walking down the street with a tear stained face, when a drunk tries to touch and she pushes him off she stumbles into the street getting hit by a car. It’s clear to see she died instantly by the way her head violently hit the ground; very graphic.
Now switch back to how it all began, Adam went to a party with his girlfriend and they instantly get separated as soon as they come in. Insert members of Maroon 5. They’re both off talking to whoever when Adam heads to the kitchen, takes some shots, a girl feels all over him, and as she’s doing that of course his girlfriend would walk in and see it. As she leaves the house, Adam attempts to go after her yet he’s stopped by a friend.
The video ends with clips of all the scenes coming together, chronologically. It’s clear that a serious approach was taken with this one which I can appreciate because story lines in videos are hard to come by. I see where they were going with this, I guess I just wasn’t expecting something so drastic as such.
With Adam’s movie debut, Begin Again, in theaters (7.11.14) this video was a great marketing way to show he could be serious and act. I’m interested in seeing the movie (but of course). The video overall was a great visual just it seemed a little too upbeat for the concept.
T-Pain has cut the dreads and is back with another track which in my opinion does not match the caliber of ‘Up Down’. He’s back with more of a ballad titled, ‘Love Suicide’. The song discusses how he’s with this girl and then all of a sudden she changes and he assumes she’s cheating which is revealed int he video that she is instead it’s not with a man, it’s with a woman. He’s standing on top of a building outside of her apartment window contemplating on committing suicide as ‘people’ look on and try to catch photos/videos on their phones. The song isn’t horrible, but the video is. Everything about the video is fake. It’s not believable and T-Pain keeps dancing to the beat. Acting is CLEARLY not his forte. Then he gets this rapper to come in near the end of the song and he’s dancing outside of her window to the beat, yet again. It’s just not believable. The cuts in and out from him on top of the building is just sloppy. The concept could’ve gone somewhere, but it didn’t. The video gets a thumbs down from me, but the song is pretty cool. Not a radio hit, but it’s good.
Check out the video below:
In the latest edition of ‘Weezy Wednesdays’, Lil Wayne spotlights his daughter and her latest single ‘Mind Goin Crazy’. After reading comments on blogs and YouTube, people are going a bit too hard on the 15-year-old. I know, I know. Her father is Lil Wayne, she’s surrounded by greats, BUT at the end of the day it’s her music and her sound. Now this is not a hit like Willow Smith’s ‘Whip My Hair’ which is one I’ve seen her compared to musically with this single. I think it’s great that she’s experimenting even though her singing is infused with auto-tune. I think it’s great that she has a platform to do so and yes there are youngsters with better vocals, better rhymes that do not have a father by the name of Lil Wayne, but this girl seems to have her head on straight. To me she seems like a very bubbly person from what she shows on Instagram and at the age she is she has every right to be care free.
Now the video and song is what I can see high schoolers bumping to as in they all seem to be ‘Reginaetors’. I wouldn’t say it’s horrible, but at certain points I am trying to piece together what she is saying because not all of it makes sense. I guess she got that from her daddy. I’m not counting her out just yet as this is just her first single. Who knows what’s to come next.
Overall, it’s nice to see that her project is coming to the light and not just talk that she’s signed to Young Money. There’s actually a product now. She’s teamed with Hairfinity and her album is set to be called Being Reginae. Check out her video and Hairfinity webisode below:
Words cannot express how much I love this song. Coldplay is getting a lot of flack about this track as far as the sound being too Pop/EDM, they’ve lost their touch, it’s not real Coldplay, etc. I mean artists have the right to experiment. I say this time and time again in any review that I do simply because it’s true. As a fan of many artists i don’t necessarily love everything about their music that the artists will put out.
I absolutely love ‘Sky Full of Stars‘ because it’s simply beautiful. The lyrics are straight to the point and the beat does have that whole EDM vibe to it, but it works with the lyrics not to mention it’s radio friendly.
The video is not ‘new’, I meant to post the review last week, but better late than never. The video features the group, more so Chris Martin walking around town with a musical contraption on his back consisting of a drum and a guitar.
His bandmates meet up with him in an alley as they play music and then Chris proceeds to walk through fans who are taking videos and gets to this stage by the end of the video with the rest of his bandmates. You could hear the actual audio in certain spots, but for majority of the video it’s them singing to the studio version. It would’ve been really cool if the video was like a full out live walking performance with those contraptions on their backs. That would’ve been really dope. Check it out below:
Sevyn Streeter is back with yet another video from her EP, Call Me Crazy, But…This time around she’s enlisted the help of Mack Wilds and Power 105.1’s, Angela Yee. Aside from the video I really really love the song lyrically. She’s an awesome writer and has a great voice which is showcased in this song.
As for the video the concept is the typical argument with boyfriend before heading over to the BFFs house to talk things out. What’s interesting about all of Sevyn’s videos is that she’s really big on silouhette and always making sure that she’s the center of attention. The video that I’ve seen with the most concept, more so a full out storyline was that of ‘nEXt’. This time around the storyline is pretty much left up to the imagination making it self-explanatory. I mean in the first minute you heard that the reason she was done was because her boyfriend got his side chick pregnant so it’s pretty clear as to where the video would be going. Angela Yee seemed so awkward in this video, like the acting was just too forced. I love that in videos with Sevyn she always incorporates herself being in like a mirrored image or spinning around hence staying along the ‘crazy’ vibe of the title of the EP.
Check out the video below and CLICK HERE to purchase the EP:
I first reviewed this track back in April and I RAVED about how much I loved it. Jennifer Hudson found the perfect formula with Timbaland on this track and I was excited when I saw a video posted for this. Despite my excitement and after watching the video, it could’ve been better. I know I can be critical and cynical on videos, but a video can MAKE or BREAK a song. In most cases now there aren’t really video concepts. It’s just girls dancing around on either a yacht or in a strip club (mostly). I just like videos with some type of concept. Not every song needs to be in a club setting. Not every song is a dance song. Concepts have been diminished to the point where a video for a ballad has to center around the club; I digress.
As for this J. Hud video, I absolutely love her with the short cut. From the instant set up of the video plus photos I saw I could see there was a concept for this which means thought was actually put into the making of this video. The short hair with the leggings, crop top, high top spray painted embellished sneakers were PERFECTION. It’s clear that this was more of a modernized 90svibe and I like it. Shout out to her fiancé, David Otunga, for being in like the first minute or so (just in passing), although he was not her love interest.
The video goes on with this guy trying to get with her and she brushes him off the first time on the street before she goes into the hair salon. The second time was as she walked past interrupting a basketball game he was playing as he stopped to pursue her yet again. Lastly, it was late and he pulled up in a BEAUTIFUL drop top Benz and finally she gave in after he passed her the key to drive. Mainly for me, I wasn’t a fan of the choreo. It was too cheesy and the hair salon scene didn’t really have a scene it was just her dancing inside the hair salon. the basketball court scene included her with two other girls, but the dancing was bleh. Like J. Hud was doing her moves and I know she’s the star, but the girls in the back could’ve dance more. Overall the video didn’t suck. The concept was there. I just wish she had better choreo and better extras dancing with her. Other than that, I can still bump this.
Michael Jackson’s second posthumous album, Xscape, was recently released (May 13th) and out of the songs that I have heard so far I am really in love with the vibe of ‘Love Never Felt So Good’ featuring Justin Timberlake. The video is what I expected, a tribute to Michael. What other way was there to do it? I do wish there was more of the choreo in front of his videos. I do like how they panned in and out from Michael’s videos to dancers doing his moves. It was really what I expected the video to be. There’s not much to say about a tribute. There was lots and lots of dancing and tons of smiling faces for a song as joyful as this. Check it out below:
I am in awe and amazement of how beautiful this video is for Sia’s amazing and heartfelt track, ‘Chandelier’. I have never heard music like this from Sia before but I do know of her songwriting and this song is by far my favorite. When I envisioned a video for this I automatically thought interpretive dance with Sia singing on the sidelines. This song is just the perfect dance song and to see a video with straight dance just made me fall in love with this song even more.
Some people may not understand interpretive dance, but if you look closely at the movements in the video it’s pretty easy to catch on to and keep up with. The video starsone of the dancers from Dance Moms, Maddie Ziegler. At just 11 years old she powered through this song with ease with tons of flexibility, great facial expressions, and a blonde bob wig similar to the hair of Sia’s making the song so much more personal. She starts dancing in the bedroom moving to the kitchen then to the living room and then the scene that caught me was when she put her head between the curtains and was waving goodbye and slowly sinking down between them. The imagery and passion I felt through this dance makes this one of the best videos I have seen in a long time and by far the greatest of the year so far.
It’s rare to come across videos where artists take the time to come up with a concept and not just throw extras into video and put them on a yacht and float on some ocean. It takes a lot of courage for an artist to be vulnerable enough to want to share their lives with fans and take their artistry to another level with the visual. This song has been on rotation for me since I first heard it back in April and this video just solidified my love for it. Kudos to the production of this. Amazing video.
Pharrell has released the video for his track ‘Marilyn Monroe’ from his album G I R L. Although I did no type of review on Pharrell’s album, it really needs no review. His music is so infectious it’s hard not to like it. You can be sick of ‘Happy’ yet when it comes on you can’t help but jam out and sing along with it.
The whole premise of this track is wanting someone different. Someone that is not of the average and iconic goddess such as Marilyn Monroe, Cleopatra, and Joan of Arc which were all mentioned in the hook. He wants a woman of her own kind and in essence it empowers every woman to be comfortable within her own skin and not constantly compare herself to that of what media perceives as beautiful.
My favorite visual was the red white and blue triangle he had going on which to me represented the U.S. and it goes for any country as well. You are beautiful regardless of what color your skin is, the texture of your hair, what you wear, etc. Every woman is beautiful.
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