My White Friends

A friend sent this to me and I just had to pass it on. Like Cindy says, it’s “so freakin’ awesome!”

Aries Spears

Aries Spears is most famous for his work on Madtv. One of my favorite sketches with him is “DMX & Mama X” (you kind of need to know about DMX to truly appreciate this):

And from his stand-up show, on hip hop. Fast forward to 1:28 to see him perform as LL Cool J, Snoop, DMX, and Jay-Z:

Flight of the Conchords: The Humans are Dead

All of this is great, but fast forward to 1:26 to hear the binary solo:

Hot female artists

If I could pick a celebrity body to have, it would have to be Rihanna’s after watching her performances from the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. (I also really like her as an artist.) I stopped watching this annoying awards show and MTV in general a long time ago (what ever happened to the music part of Music Television?), but my TiVo picked the rerun up because Russell Brand hosted. He’s hilarious and here’s Rihanna’s performance of “Disturbia” for the show’s opening:

Second, Christina Aguilera’s performance was also hot, especially the remixed “Genie in a Bottle:”

And finally, more Rihanna, this time with T.I., performing “Live your Life” (follow T.I.’s performance “Whatever You Like,” starts at 2:16: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtESW0q2YMY. (Apparently, this performance’s embedding was disabled by request and MTV took down all copies of it on their site. Weird. Don’t know why.)

Scherzo (+ free “classical” music)

One of my favorite pieces from my old repertoire. Trying to get back into the practice rooms to get back into shape. A short clip, performed by Olga Steeb:

Scherzo in E Minor – Mendelssohn

Found this version/performance on the album “Retrospective: The USC Thornton School of Music” on iTunes. The whole album is free!

Also good for free “classical” music: the Internet Archive’s Free Downloads of Open Source Audio. Like this performance of Clair de Lune (Debussy).

Crooked Lettaz

David Banner before he was David Banner together with Kamikaze. Some of the best rap to come out of the Deep South. This track from their Grey Skies album is my favorite:

Pimp Shit (featuring Budz)

Check it out on Amazon.

The Way I Are

I’m back in the Bay after a stressful trip home for the holidays, about which I may or may not write more here, but one thing’s for sure: after listening to it while driving around with my brother of all people, I have become obsessed with this song:

The entire Timbaland album is pretty good; I really like that he’s working in a bunch of different styles, with a bunch of different artists, from Justin Timberlake to Fall Out Boy to Elton John to OneRepublic.

And if you’re curious about the girl singing the hooks in “The Way I Are,” it’s Keri Hilson who has, until now, mainly been a songwriter as part of The Clutch, a strong group of songwriters responsible for a series of hit songs, including Mary J. Blige’s “Take Me As I Am,” but in 2006, signed onto Timbaland’s new label and will be releasing her debut album soon.