On Sept. 14, Rihanna will make her first television performance since the domestic violence incident with Chris Brown when she performs with Jay-Z and Kanye West on the premiere episode of “The Jay Leno Show.” The trio will perform “Run this Town,” a single from Jay-Z’s new album, “The Blueprint 3,” which will be released Sept. 11.
Fans can thank Kanye West for the creation of Jay-Z’s new single, “D.O.A. (Death Of Auto-tune),” off of his new album, “The Blueprint 3,” being released in September.
“He actually sparked the idea,” Jay-Z told Billboard. “When he heard the beat he said, ‘Man, this is just so hard! This has to be against everything — no auto-tune, none of that type of stuff!’ He didn’t know what I was going to do or where I was going to take it, but it was actually his fault.
“In hip-hop, our job is once a trend becomes a gimmick, to get rid of it. We’ve done that since the beginning of time,” Jay-Z explains. “Now people are using Auto-tune even in Wendy’s commercials, and it’s like, ‘Oh no! That’s has to go!’ It’s become part of main culture. It’s the same thing like when the old lady in Oregon starts saying, ‘bling, bling.’ It’s like, ‘I’m never saying that again.'”
Even though the country is in a recession, hip hop moguls continue to thrive. Forbes announced Thursday the top 20 most successful hip hop artists within the last year. Jay-Z toppled last year’s top earner 50 cent to claim the no.1 spot this year. It is estimated that he earned $35 million from touring. P.Diddy came in second with an estimated $30 million from his Sean John clothing line, Ciroc vodka partnership and MTV reality shows. Kanye is no.3 with $25 million due to sales from his last album, touring and sneaker deals with Nike and Louis Vuitton.
As Suite 411 reported earlier, Kanye West performed for Chicago public school children at the ”Stay in School” Benefit Concert last night. This event helped to benefit his charity, The Kanye West Foundation, founded in 2007 by his late mother, Donda, to help fight the dropout rate in America.
Fans who want to gain some of the wisdom of rapper Kanye West can now purchase his book, “Thank You and You’re Welcome,” which will be in bookstores July 7. Co-written with marketer/philosopher J. Sakiya Sandifer, West shares his philosophies on life.
“To use someone is necessary,” West said. “What’s negative is to misuse, overuse or abuse somebody. To use is necessary. If you can’t get used, then you’re useless.”
Check out his MTV video:
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Chicago native Kanye West will perform in the second annual “Stay in School” Benefit Concert on June 11th at the Chicago Theatre. This event will help to benefit his charity, The Kanye West Foundation, founded in 2007 by his late mother, Donda. It was formed to “help combat the severe dropout problem plaguing America’s communities,” according to a press release.
This will be the first major event for the foundation since the rapper’s mother passed in 2007. This will also be his first concert in Chicago in over a year. FUSE, a cable music network, will tape the show and air it later this summer.
“I have always had the desire to help people and make the world a better place,” said West in a press release, which also stated the rapper will waive his fees for the event. “I believe that youth are the music for creating a world filled with harmony. To create such a world, however, we must all do our part.”
Here is Kanye West’s new video, “Amazing.” It was filmed in Hawaii by director Hype Williams. Very beautiful scenery that makes you want to go on vacation right now.
Kanye’s latest single, “Amazing,” is now being used in the 2009 NBA playoffs promotional campaign. Check out the video, which features players such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant in previous playoff games. The 2009 NBA Playoff began April 18 with games airing nationally on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT and NBA TV.
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Kanye West will guest star in the new animated FOX series, “The Cleveland Show,” a spin-off of “The Family Guy,” which will premiere this fall, reports People. West will play the “not-so-mega-star rapper Kenny West.”
Last week, West, 31, read his lines with series regular Sanaa Lathan, who plays Cleveland Brown’s wife Donna, and guest star Taraji P. Henson.
“It was surprising to us that [he] was so into it that he came to the table [read], and wonderfully surprising how cool he was, how funny he was and how unassuming he was,” says executive producer Mike Henry, who voices Cleveland Brown and other characters on the show. “He’s just a great presence.”
Check out a teaser for the new show.
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Kanye West leaked the video for his song, “Welcome to Heartbreak,” on his blog.
“This is not the next single, ‘Amazing’ is the next single,” West wrote. “This is the video we’ve been working on for the last month. We know there is another video out there using the same technique, so we were forced to drop it now.”
Director Nabil Elderkin said the “data moshing” technique was used to convey the haunting element of the song.
“I wanted to use it more of strategic way, using calculated moshes, colors and textures to compliment the effect,” the director told MTV News. “Different parts of the songs represented different feelings, and I wanted to come with a visual representation of the flow and textures that are I feel are very important in this song. I shot different things in super-slow-motion with the Phantom just for transitional movement and textures.”
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