justin adler, blog, buenos aires, bahia blanca, university of arizona, brooklyn, basketball, travel, paul mcpherson

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Don't believe the hype

dustin seplowWhere's Paul McPherson now presents "Why the Glow in the Dark Tour sucked:"

There was no Glowing, I expected a set like Kanye had at the Grammys, instead the only thing that Glowed on Kanye's set was the sole of his his secret, super-exclusive Nikes, which I'm personally convinced Kanye will never release only to keep a leg up on the general public.

The entire time Kanye was wearing some retarded outfit that was something of a cross between Tupac in the California Love video and Jonathon Taylor Thomas from Home Improvement, basically Mad Max with a red jacket tied around his waste. I kept waiting for Kanye to hit the goofy sleeve on his forearm, which basically looked like Peyton Manning's playbook if it was designed by Pastel, and trigger some kind of glowing effect. It never happened.

Rihanna's set was the only part of the show which fit the title. Rihanna along with her back-up dancers all wore flouresncent outfits which actually appeared to glow, even if it did make Rihanna look like a futuristic stripper. At one point they all spun glowing light-saber like sticks around, which was one of the visual highlights of the show. Even though I only like Rihanna's singles when I'm drunk and I actually consider Lupe, NERD and Ye to be musical geniuses of my generation, Rihanna's set was the best of them all.

Upon leaving the concert my friend and I had this conversation:

"That was just like Space Mountain."

"Really? I've never been on that ride."

"Well, Space Mountain wasn't that corny."

The entire premise of Kanye's set was that his spaceship crashed on some random planet and he had to return to earth. Basically it involved some terribly lame computer generated voice named "Jane" stroking Kanye's ego for an hour.

Yes Kanye's outer-space themed set was cool, no it did not come close to even touching Daft Punk's, which I figured the show would try to copy. Kanye had his chance to have his famous light show tour and join the ranks of Daft Punk or even Pink Floyd, but he didn't even come close. And it's probably complete blasphemy to put Kanye in the same sentence as Pink Floyd, but I've never seen their show or done LSD, so I'd imagine it's something like a Daft Punk show, which was at least 500 times greater than the Glow in the Dark Tour.

The most frustrating element was having Kanye, Pharrell and Lupe in the same building and not seeing any of them collaborate at all. While a CRS performance may have been too much to ask for, would it have killed Kanye to share the spotlight and let Lupe spit his 16 at the end of "Touch the sky?"

Aside from all the visual miscues, the audio part itself was lackluster as there was no background behind the songs, no freestyles, and nothing else to differentiate what was performed from what's in my mp3 player. Basically I could have saved myself some money and listened to the fucking cds, which don't feature a retarded robot talking between every track.

I miss the good ol' days when Kanye shared the stage with John Legend and Israeli-hip hop violinist Miri Ben Ari. Back when Kanye spit freestyles over random beats he did for other artists. Back when the crowd played name that tune as John Legend played the Fugees on his piano and Miri Ben Ari rocked Jadakiss on her violin. Back when Kanye was big-headed, but not big-headed enough to sacrifice a great musical show for a robotic-female saying "we need the biggest superstar in the entire universe to power our spaceship."

Monday, April 07, 2008

Death around the corner


I may die doing this... well at least according to this article which shines a light on the every day struggles of bloggers.

Seriously soon I will post something new, amazing and P-Mac-ish, until then imagine you just read something that was moderately entertaining about Brandon Jennings with a couple of obscure hip-hop references and some links to more amazing shit.

In the mean time, stay up on GOAZCATSBLOG and respect Benny's gangsta.

Also read DC Sports Bog's wrap-up of DeShawn's birthday party. Pure genius. Dan Steinberg is my blog hero.

Finally, "Every day you are practicing how not to die."