Jay-Z « Frequency blog: Music news and reviews from Bend and Central Oregon, by Ben Salmon

Posts Tagged ‘Jay-Z’

GO BIG BLUE!

Monday, March 28th, 2011

If you don’t already know, now you know: I am a lifelong, diehard fan of the University of Kentucky basketball team (Lexington native, class of ’99, etc.), and last night, my beloved Wildcats defeated North Carolina to advance to their first Final Four since 1998. And since this is their first Final Four since I’ve had a blog (I dunno, I might’ve celebrated the ’98 championship on a usenet newsgroup in UK’s computer lab or something) and since this is my blog, I’m going to use up some bandwidth telling you what an awesome weekend this was — UK beat the top-rated team in the country and the hottest team in the country in two pressure-cooker games over three days — and how excited I am for next weekend, when they’ll play for the National Championship. Well, first they will play Connecticut in the national semifinals, but hopefully they’ll win that one and play for the big trophy. Anyway …

TWO MORE GAMES. GO BIG BLUE.

Oh … music content? OK, here’s Jay-Z hangin’ with the team in the locker room after yesterday’s game. Boom!

Tags: Jay-Z, UK basketball
Posted in off topic | 3 Comments »

Obligatory Jay-Z post

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Right about now, Jay-Z is everywhere. Which, of course, is just how he likes it — especially in the days leading up to a new album.

His highly anticipated “The Blueprint 3″ comes out on Sept. 11, and it leaked the other day. You can go find it if you want, or you can listen to a sanctioned stream here. (I think it sounds pretty solid, with a couple weak spots. The Swizz Beats collabo, “On to the Next One,” is my early fave.)

He’s throwin’ a big ol’ show at Madison Square Garden on release day, with proceeds to benefit the families of 9/11 firefighters and police officers.

On Sunday, to unwind, he and his girl — no stranger to good news in recent weeks herself — showed up at a high-profile gig by one of the year’s most acclaimed indie-rock bands, Grizzly Bear, setting Twitter, and then the blogs, ablaze.

But my favorite bit of Jay-Z ephemera from the past few days is this commercial for Rhapsody, in which he re-enacts the covers from each of his albums. It’s pretty slick.

So what say you, Frequency readers? Have you heard “The Blueprint 3″ yet? If so, thoughts? If not, are you stoked for its release? Or nonplussed?

Tags: Jay-Z
Posted in buzz, supernovas | 2 Comments »

Tuesday Video Tour

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

A few relatively new videos to help you pass the time on this Tuesday morning. Be sure to click through the jump to check out new stuff from Dirty Projectors, Justin Townes Earle and, my favorite, Crocodiles.

First up, the new single from Jay-Z, in which Hov declares the death of the software everyone loves to hate, Auto-Tune. (“I know we facin’ a recession,” he says, “but the music y’all makin’ gonna make it The Great Depression.”) The song and the clip — which features appearances by Harvey Keitel and LeBron James — are splitting opinions on the rap blogs, but I think they’re both pretty hot.

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Tags: Crocodiles, Dirty Projectors, Jay-Z, Justin Townes Earle
Posted in video | No Comments »