MTV Newsroom › Gil Kaufman

Where Does Kanye West Rank Among Best 'SNL' Performances Ever?

Posted 10/4/10 12:48 pm EST by in Music

You can't spit on the host and then show up with your B game. Kanye West knows this, which is why his pair of performances on this weekend's "Saturday Night Live" were among the most arresting in the show's 30-plus year history. You might recall that West took a hard shot at the long-running late night staple on his single "Power," unfavorably name-checking the sketch comedy show with the line "F--- 'SNL' and the whole cast. Tell 'em Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass."

But when he showed up to perform the song on Saturday (October 2), Kanye paid the biggest compliment he could to the show: He delivered one of his typically eye-popping visual spectacles, one which will undoubtedly go down in the books. And keep in mind, everybody has played on SNL, from U2 and ABBA, to Frank Zappa, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Queen, R.E.M., Public Enemy, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, RUN-DMC, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake.

Not content to set up on the same Grand Central Terminal-themed set as everyone else, 'Ye draped the set in a billowing, stark white sheet, standing atop a set of stairs in a red suit and wearing a gold garland crown, his neck heavy with long gold chains. From there he proceeded to kill the song as a group of ballet dancers performed a live version of his "moving painting" video for the track. It was the kind of visual feast you expect from Kanye, and by the time he came back for an equally arresting "Runaway" with a group of dancers hitting poses in sync with the rhythm, again against the white background, you knew you were seeing something epic.

It got us thinking about some of the other "SNL" sets that have set our eyes and ears on fire. One of the first that pops to mind is one of the all-time classic moments on the show, and the one that got Elvis Costello banned for more than a dozen years. The then-angry young man was slotted to play "Less Than Zero" on his "SNL" debut in 1977, but after hitting the first few bars of that tune, he switched to a song he was told not to play, "Radio, Radio," an anti-commercialism rant.
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Justin Timberlake And Jimmy Fallon Write 'History Of Rap'

Posted 9/30/10 12:16 pm EST by in Music

At this point it just feels like Justin Timberlake is teasing us. Following up on the "SNL" skit last weekend, in which he refused to answer questions about when he's going to make another album, Timberlake dropped by Jimmy Fallon's "Late Night" on Wednesday night to talk up "The Social Network" and ended up providing further proof that one of the great music talents of our time is seriously holding out on us.

After Timberlake gave major props to house band the Roots and Fallon teased the bespectacled singer about his historical knowledge of hip-hop, Justin mentioned that 'NSYNC once asked legendary hip-hop crew the Sugarhill Gang to open up one of the boy band's shows back in the day. That inspired Fallon to ask the band (spontaneously, of course) to serve up a taste of Sugarhill's classic "Rapper's Delight."

What ensued was a head-spinning blue-eyed ramble through rap history, as Fallon and Timberlake hopped out of their seats and started trading lines on "Delight" like a suburban basement Run-DMC. Speaking of DMC, they moved into a few lines from that Rock and Roll Hall of fame group's "Peter Piper," easily segueing into a nasally take on the Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere," Digital Underground's "Humpty Dance," Snoop Dogg's "Nuthin' But a G Thang" and Tupac's "California Love."

Then it was back to the East Coast for Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy," the Roots' "The Seed 2.0," Eminem's "My Name Is" and Missy Elliott's "Work It." They also threw in snippets of songs by A Tribe Called Quest, T.I. and Rihanna, Kanye West and Soulja Boy, ending with Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" as they wandered out into the arm-waving audience. Exhausted, the duo brought it ball back with one more out-of-breath half verse of "Rapper's Delight," setting off yet another instant viral hit from the Fallon studios.

And making us all wonder anew, seriously Justin, when are you going to make another album?

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Aerosmith Close Out The Summer Of Love

Posted 9/3/10 4:00 pm EST by in Music

I've seen my fair share of classic rockers this summer in my attempt to check a few biggies off my bucket list. And when you've been around for more than three decades, chances are you're going to have at least two or three monsters to unload at night's end to send the crowd home in bleary eyed bliss.

But I have to say that Aerosmith might have one of the best one-two punches in all of rock. I mean, how can you beat the shot-to-the-solar-plexus from "Dream On" into "Walk This Way"? Two of the most indelible riffs in rock played back-to-back is a slam dunk, no matter how you slice it.

If fans at the nearly sold-out Riverbend Amphitheater came looking for drama between singer Steven Tyler and longtime foil/sometime rival guitarist Joe Perry, there weren't going to get in on Thursday night (September 2). Nobody fell off the stage, nobody hip-checked anyone and there weren't any hasty departures to join reality singing competitions.

Rather, there were two hours of (mostly contemporary) hits, lots of shouting into microphones together, a dozen trips down a catwalk into the audience and more sequins and glittery get-ups than a Liberace tribute show. These guys are showmen, and they ran onto the stage ready to put one on, ripping through the classics "Eat the Rich" and "Train Kept A-Rollin'" on their way to their massive hit "Love in an Elevator," during which the four giant lighting rigs pumped up and down in time with the videos of writhing '80s video queens.

I have to take a moment out to talk about what the fellas were wearing. Perry looked like something out of a steampunk remake of Tom Petty's :You Got Lucky" video, with a silver lame buccaneer duster, skintight black velvety bellbottoms with giant studs near the ankle, electric blue jazz shoes and a guitar that looked like it was wrapped in leather and brass.

Then there was Tyler, the original rock and roll peacock. Read More...

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Is Chris Martin Trying To Tell Us Something With Coldplay's Devastating 'Wedding Bells'?

Posted 9/2/10 12:30 pm EST by in Music

It's the bane of any celebrity couple's public existence: The near-constant barrage of tabloid stories proclaiming that one or both of the famous duo are cheating, about to file for divorce, have a wandering eye, are pregnant or refuse to have children.

In the case of Coldplay singer Chris Martin and actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who have two children together and have been married for seven years, allegations of marital strife have dogged them for years. And while neither have deemed it necessary to respond to the persistent drumbeat of break-up rumors, their silence and the rarity of paparazzi spotting them together has helped stoke the tabloid press speculation.

On Wednesday (September 1), Martin may have inadvertently (or perhaps not) done more than anyone to throw fuel on the fire by performing a new, unreleased Coldplay song called "Wedding Bells" at an Apple computers event announcing new iPods and a social networking site called Ping. Martin suggested he was playing the somber lament-for-love-lost tune for the first, and possibly last, time ever. One listen to the lyrics and anyone inclined to believe the rumors might take them as proof positive of an imminent split, or, perhaps as a wry comment on their absurdity. Or both. Or neither.

The urgent piano ballad opens with the ominous lines, "Those wedding bells are ringing up upon that hill/ And I don't want to swallow such a bitter pill/ You keep on moving, but I stay still/ But I always loved you and I always will," before diving into even deeper territory. "Days of no sleeping caked in mud/ All kinds of poison in my blood/ I lost the only thing I ever loved/ oh oh oh oh/ I heard them ringing procession by/ Umbrellas in their clear blue sky/ And saw you swimming in that sea of white/ Oh oh oh oh/ If everything that went before didn’t matter … I always loved you and I always will."

Martin described it as the beginning of a story "that starts sadly, but that's the way these things [inaudible]."

Is Martin telling us something? Is he goofing on the press? Or is this meant to be a lament on the current state of his marriage?

What do you thing "Wedding Bells" is about? Let us know in comments below!

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Kanye West's Tag-Team With Bon Iver Inspires A Crossover Fantasy List

Posted 8/16/10 2:30 pm EST by in Music

Thanks to Jay-Z and Beyoncé repping for Grizzly Bear and hanging out at Coachella to see some Pitchfork-approved acts, indie rock and hip-hop have been having a very public love affair lately. Sometimes it's a late night hook-up that is walk-of-shame worthy in the morning (paging Weezer and Lil Wayne) and other times it's so seamless you wonder why nobody thought of it before. Kid Cudi rolled out the carpe for Ratatat and MGMT on his studio debut, Ghostface Killah has admitted to loving Vampire Weekend and the Black Keys chopped it up with everyone from Mos Def to RZA and Raekwon on the Blakroc album.

In the most recent example, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon revealed that he spent a couple days earlier this year in Hawaii with Kanye West, laying down some of his patented hushed, pastoral vocals for 10 songs that might appear on West's upcoming CD. That got us thinking about other unlikely but potentially awesome rap/indie collabos that we'd love to see.

Thom Yorke and Erykah Badu
The Radiohead frontman has never come out one way or another on his feelings about hip-hop, but the thought of his mournful wail and morose lyrics intertwined with the boho queen's politically-charged verses and esoteric arrangements feels like a slam dunk.

(Click here for more of our fantasy hip-hop and indie crossovers, including Lil Wayne, Foxy Shazam, Nicki Minaj and Phoenix!)

Jim James and Clipse
What could be finer than the high and lonesome wail of the My Morning Jacket singer over the grinding coke raps of Pusha T and Malice? Nothing, that's what.

Waaves with Lil Wayne
Weezy keeps trying to get his rock game right, so maybe he can finally land the plane with unpredictable Beck 2.0 Nathan Williams. Since both tend to speak in riddles, it would be a perfect match.
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Kiss Continue My Summer Of Love

Posted 8/2/10 6:00 pm EST by in Music

People who complain that Kiss shows are lame have never been to a Kiss show. Because here's the thing about any concert you go to by the veteran New York-bred greasepaint rockers: You will get 100 percent. Paul Stanley's vocals (always from the rough side of town) may be a bit thin a times, and perhaps bassist Gene Simmons stomps more deliberately in his massive high-heeled dragon boots than he did 30 years ago, but in all the times I've seen the band over the past 20 years, never once have they phoned it in.

Which is why Kiss is also recession-proof. A perfect example was their hit-packed show at Cincinnati's Riverbend Amphitheater on Friday night (July 30). Yes, it was nearly identical to one I saw years ago at Dodgers Stadium, but ask anyone in the maniacal sold-out audience what they thought and you were likely to get a raucous high five from someone wearing a Kiss T-shirt who was modeling Kiss face paint and dragging along a couple of third generation mini-Kiss fans whose minds were just blown. And, chances are, they just got out of the merch line where they bought their umpteenth concert tee.

I brought along a skeptical friend who had never seen the band for a stop on their "Hottest Show On Earth" tour, and by the time the massive confetti canons were belching two forests-worth of fluff into the air during the blinding fireworks explosion that was "Rock and Roll All Nite," he too was one of those high-fivers who couldn't get the grin off his face.

The show had all the highlights you expect: Digital flames licking the stage on more than two dozen high-def screens during the Detroit boogie of "Firehouse," Gene spitting fire from atop a sword, Paul smacking his ass during "Deuce," a trip to visit "Dr. Love," replacement guitarist Tommy Thayer doing his best approximation of original ax man Ace Frehley's knock-kneed rag doll stumble while shooting pyro loads from the headstock of his guitar before sending the spent instrument up into the rafters on a wire and replacement drummer Eric Singer crooning the ballad "Beth" and blasting down a fake lighting rig with a bazooka from his drum riser, which was levitating 30 feet in the air with smoke shooting out as if it was a rocket taking off.

The music swung at times from the bubblegum roller disco of the Bay City Rollers to the dinosaur stomp of Led Zeppelin, but I forgot the kinship the band shared with bands like Black Sabbath until the opening rumbling of "100,000 Years" from their debut album. Read More...

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The WikiLeaks Papers And Lady Gaga: The Connection

Posted 7/27/10 6:00 pm EST by in Music

You can blame a lot of things on Lady Gaga. From the eruption of "little monsters" thinking they can pull off some of her signature looks, to the vapidization of modern girl pop (we think) and, now, the leak of 90,000 Afghanistan war documents on WikiLeaks.

By now you've surely heard about how the whistleblower site posted tens of thousands of documents about the war on Sunday (July 25), much to the Obama administration's chagrin. But the part of the story you might have missed was how Gaga played a crucial part in the process. No, it wasn't tied to that awesome video of enlisted men dancing to "Telephone."

As it turns out, the soldier accused of leaking the documents to WikiLeaks, disillusioned Pvt. Bradley Manning, would carry in a CD-RW labeled "Lady Gaga" and then log onto classified military networks when preparing to snatch the intel. According to ABC News, while he was downloading secret information he pretended to sing along to "Telephone" while actually erasing the music on the disc and overwriting it with intelligence information.

The combined documents amount to what is being called the greatest leak of government information in 40 years. Which go us wondering: What if this technology had been available in a previous generation? Which pop artist of the moment's music might they have used to mask their nefarious activity?

Would the scoundrels behind the leaking of the Pentagon Papers — which in 1968 blew the lid off the Johnson administrations lies to the public and Congress about the Vietnam war — have carried in a disc by Country Joe and the Fish (of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die-Rag" fame)?

What about good old Deep Throat, who was behind the leaking of the Watergate Tapes in 1973 that implicated President Nixon in illegal activities in the White House? If he hadn't had Woodward and Bernstein, would he have dubbed Nixon's insane ramblings onto a reel-to-reel tape labeled "Black Oak Arkansas, 'Jim Dandy'"?

Only history will determine if Lady Gaga's name will forever be tied to the monumental WikiLeak or if it will quickly fade and become a minor footnote on her Wiki page. Frankly, we wish Manning had picked an artists with longer range prospects, like Justin Bieber or Ke$ha.

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Tom Petty Continues Classic Rock Summer Extravaganza In Cincinnati

Posted 7/16/10 4:30 pm EST by in Music

I've been slipping a bit this week with my pledge to see as many classic rock shows as I can this summer (sorry Ringo, Chicago, Santana and Steve Winwood), distracted by more contemporary acts like the Flaming Lips and Band of Horses.

But I got back in the saddle Thursday night (July 15) with a band that has never let me down before: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Here's the thing about Petty: The dude is in no hurry. He doesn't chase trends, doesn't pack the stage with unnecessary gadgets to distract you from the music and doesn't move around all that much anymore. But you know what he and the Heartbreakers do?

They play rock and roll.

A quaint idea, I know. A few years ago, I saw them at the United Center in Chicago and I walked away thinking, "Man, that band has nothing but hits!" Petty and company could easily fill their nearly two-hour set with songs that you know every word to. In fact, they opened Thursday night's show with a handful of tunes they could have easily saved for the encore.

"You Don't Know How It Feels" was like a slow stroll through night air that was thick as a wool blanket, with the pumped-up, sweat-soaked faithful eager, as always, to follow Petty's advice to "roll another joint." A jazzy "I Won’t Back Down" rang with the signature sound of Petty and lead guitarist Mike Campbell's 12-string Rickenbacker guitars and "Free Fallin'" was a perfect example of what makes this band timeless.

His arms outstretched in a kind of victory pose, Petty led his band through the tune in no hurry, like they knew exactly where this train was headed and were fine with whenever they arrived. Read More...

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Mel Gibson's Rants Give Birth To Internet Meme Cottage Industry

Posted 7/15/10 1:00 pm EST by in Music

There's nothing remotely funny about the hate-filled Mel Gibson rants that are being slow-leaked by Radar in which the once-dominant box office star is heard breathlessly heaping racist and sexist invective on his ex-girlfriend while threatening to burn down her house and making all sorts of demands and threats.

But because the Internet cannot look away when a celebrity melts down, the shocking tapes have, of course, spawned an instant cottage industry of tributes that rival the flood of remixes created in the wake of the infamous Christian Bale on-set meltdown.

(Just as a preemptive warning: Most of the links and audio found in this post contain graphic language and horribly offensive material.)

The range from the truly bizarre site pairing the most outrageous quotes with pictures of cuddly kittens to an imagined rant-off phone fight between Bale and Gibson.

There are also home brewed videos of Gibson berating Miss Piggy, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Colin Farrell, former "What Women Want" co-star Helen Hunt and the clay-based poultry from "Chicken Run."

A creative writing type took various words from one rant and used Wordle to make a series of word clouds (compiled by the folks at Gawker), as well as the obligatory dance remixes and a new single from West Coast rapper Ras Kass that samples Gibson entitled "Why You Be Dressin' Like That."

For the creative types, there's the Mel Gibson Rant Meme Generator (where you can birth your own online creations) as well as a site gathering parodies of Gibson movie posters using quotes from the tapes.

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Band Of Horses Stand On The Verge In Cincinnati

Posted 7/14/10 5:30 pm EST by in Music

I've been lucky over the years to catch early, small club shows by the likes of the Smashing Pumpkins, Lenny Kravitz, Beck, the Verve, Radiohead, Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Garbage, the Strokes, the Vines, Kings of Leon, Pearl Jam and countless others.

The thing about those shows is that you can never know in the moment that what you're seeing is a band on the verge, because at the time it just feels like you've witnessed an awesome show. And then the next thing you know the band you thought only you and a handful of other friends were into about is playing the local amphitheater or showing up on a "Twilight" soundtrack.

I say this because I saw one of those shows Tuesday night (July 13) right here in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. It was the third time in the past two years that I've seen South Carolina's Band of Horses, and while they were great the other two times (in the historic Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky and at Lollapalooza last year), there was something about their 90-minute set at a club called the Inner Circle that felt like a breakthrough.

From the first time I heard their 2006 Sub Pop debut (the cleverly named Everything All The Time), I was hooked, and the next year’s Cease to Begin cemented it. The band mostly drew from those two albums during Wednesday night's show (while skipping their gorgeous "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" ballad "Life on Earth"), which was sold-out and had the kind of palpable buzz most bands dream of.

From the first notes of the ethereal "Is There a Ghost" (one of the band's many haunting, driving instant classics), the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd was locked in, harmonizing with tall, bearded and neck-tooed singer Ben Bridwell as he reached up high into his standard-setting falsetto range. Read More...

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