briefly

FROM September 23, 2005

two new lil kim tracks at dubcnn.com (scroll down)--lyrics and beats, not so much, but wow does kim's voice sound amazing and raw like the grimy end of a grate when she's not fronting so untouchable/ uncrushable.

pps. vh-1 hiphop honors, don't know if it'll translate to tv, but the live was mucho fun--watch for big daddy kane, s'n'p/en vogue recreating "whattaman" video, luda/faith slow interpretation of "juicy"!--and eyeball, the graphic dudes, commissioned the incredible ny-based artist kehinde wiley to paint portraits of all the honorees, the existence of which are worth the whole program as far as i'm concerned--Ice-T reinvisioned as Napoleon, LL as Rockefeller. in the program-program, in response to the question "when you were approached to do this in the context of hip-hop, what were your initial thoughts? were you skeptical?" kehinde sez:

"Certainly. Principally because the strength of my work has to do with the anonymity of the subject and the juxtaposition between heroicism and the anonymous. And in that sense, working within this context radically shifts what it is that I'm doing. It becomes a completely different enterprise. And what I think is fascinating about this is that we're now pairing very well-known and, in some senses, very powerful people with very powerful people from the past. And what you can gain from looking through these art history books is an understanding of hoow the vocabulary of power can evolve, and how you aestheticize male and female power. And so what we have here is all those tricks laid bare and compounded with the presence of hip-hop, which has its own sort of interest in power and the grandiose."

Awesome--love that dude's work.