I've been going back and revisiting some of my favorite old albums. Whenever I do that I ALWAYS am reminded of how great the Pharcyde was. Those first 2 albums hold up really well (the first one particularly). Pharcyde brought humor, mc skills, and jazzy instrumentation together in a manner that no other group has done since. There's a sense of emotion and depth to their music that allows it to stand the test of time. It's just a shame that they didn't get the major props they deserved with their debut album.

The second album has some solid production from the legendary Jay Dee/J Dilla during an early time of his career. Production-wise it's a solid album... but you can feel a bitterness and frustration in the Pharcyde's rhymes that wasn't present in the first album. For me, that makes it an inferior album to te first. Despite that, the 2 singles on the 2nd album are as good (if not better) than the best bits from the first.

Below are the 3 best Pharcyde videos: 'Passin' Me By', 'Drop', and 'Runnin'. 'Drop' was filmed by the super famous Spike Jonze (back when he was just doing music videos and skateboarding tapes).

PASSIN' ME BY

DROP

RUNNIN'

Michael Jackson. You have and will continue to mean so much to generations of people. You defined what it meant to be a music icon. You taught us the full potential of a music video. You showed us that dancing can be cool. You made one of the finest examples of a Popular World Music.

Yeah, there was a time when the crotch grabbing during dances got out of hand (although it gave us an excuse to intersperse spazzy dance routines with our own crotch grabs amongst parents and elders!). We were bummed that you couldn't see that you were a naturally handsome dude the way that we all did. The fascination with Peter Pan and animals was a little weird, but we didn't care... because you were Michael FREAKIN' Jackson.

More than anything we all wished you could understand that we loved you for your music, performance, and humanity.

Thanks for the music. Thanks for the entertainment. Thanks for that awesome glove and swagger. You will be remembered as more than a talented human being. You will be remembered as a superhero. :-)

Here are a few of my favorite Michael Jackson bits:

SMOOTH CRIMINAL

REMEMBER THE TIME

THRILLER

MJ, PRINCE & JAMES BROWN

I'm really loving this new Eminem video, "We Made You". The song is mediocre when compared to Eminem's best stuff. But the video showcases Pop Culture mockery at its best.

Spoofs include bits on Jessica Simpson's weight, Kim Kardashian's butt, Lindsay Lohan's lesbianism, Sarah Palin's milf-ery, and Bret Michael's 'Rock of Love'. It's like they took 20 of the best skits from SNL/Mad TV and whittled them down into a 4 minute video.

Musical production is standard Dr. Dre/Eminem fare. Eminem's flow has become so refined that's its a sonic chainsaw (vrrmm, vrrm, vrrrrrrmmm!). The ideas are all there lyrically, but I wish Eminem would get back to what made his earlier stuff worked. With the speed and preciseness Eminem is now rapping at, you lose the time and space to let any genuine emotion breath. This is the stylistic approach he's been refining since his 3rd album... but it takes away from the deep resonance of anger that you can feel on his first two albums.

Maybe, Eminem has nothing to be angry about? He's embraced by the Mainstream. But there's gotta be SOMETHING that'll work him up. Em's best when he's got something to prove. I was hoping that he'd start going off on the political culture that existed during 2000-2008. But I guess he's not a political dude.

Can somebody please get Eminem angry? Asher Roth maybe? I feel there's still more greatness in Eminem. But to get to it, he needs something to hate. He needs to be so pissed off that he HAS to unleash it in his music. You can FEEL that. I just haven't really felt much of that since the MARSHALL MATHERS LP.

At the end of the day, mediocre Eminem is better than most Hip-Hop. It's just tough to embrace when you know there's more in the guy. Imagine 2pac without his passion, intelligence, and insecurity. Imagine Biggie without his swagger. That's what we've been getting from Eminem... and it's bums me out a bit.

My current favorite song: "Swagger Like Us" by T.I. featuring Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Lil' Wayne. Production is by Kanye West using a brilliant sample from M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes". Everybody is bringing they're A-game. Ironically, although T.I. is solid, his style is distinctly different from Jay, Ye, and Wayne's sing-song delivery. T.I.'s more 2pac or Nas with a tighter rhythmic delivery and solid introspective lyrics. The rest just bring it with tons of melodic attitude and word play. Hearing this makes me feel like the trio of Jay-Z, Kanye, and Lil' Wayne would be the penultimate hip-hip group. They complement each other perfectly.

Ignore the fake video... it's all about the music.

Kanye West closed out the MTV VMA's with a solid performance of his first single from his new album called "Love Lockdown". MTV VMA's sucked. It showed how generic Pop mainstream music is going. Britney Spears 3 awards made it look like MTV is kissing her butt for the
embarrassing debacle of 2007.

I guess MTV realizes that Spears and K.West are going to have hype and interest no matter what MTV does. So they might as well start to become their media bitches. Mad respect for Kanye. Britney Spears is the "nastier" precursor to the Disney-Pop that has become the dominant look and sound of MTV. But, to her credit, Spears is looking mighty hot once again. Kanye is just... Kanye. He's doing what he wants when he wants... and MTV's decided they'd be stupid to not go along for the ride.

"Love Lockdown" is dope. Kanye singing?! Damn... that should suck... but I'm really feeling it. Also the Nihon-jin in me (that's Japanese dude... for you non-Japanese speakers/readers) was really feeling the Taiko drums on back up. When I'd see Taiko performances at my Japanese American community center I was baffled that no one integrated them into a hip-hop peformance. They look dope and they sound POWERFUL. Yet again, Kanye wisely borrows this element from Japanese culture and fashionably brings it to the Pop Mainstream.

More Pics can be found on K.Wests BLOG.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW A VIDEO OF THE PERFORMANCE ON MTV.COM.

I had the fortune to go to the second LA show of Kanye West's Glow In The Dark Tour with my longtime friends Mista Hippo and Bruce Banner of Get Down. Overall, it was an ambitious show whose ambition overshadowed the intimate interaction with fans that makes a good show fantastic.

With the exception of Rihanna, the line up was rock solid. Lupe Fiasco, N.E.R.D. and Kanye West represent the modern face of hip hop/pop artistry. All three of them are commited to pushing the current perceptions of Hip Hop music by infusing it with their own personalities and interests without the machismo or political motives that scare the Mainstream. In many ways, they're the Native Tongue (De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest's musical clique) of the 21st century (even if Lupe Fiasco doesn't know who Tribe is!). As artists, they've had varying degrees of success.

Lupe is the new kid. He's a strong lyricist with a decent flow whose success has been marginal with his first 2 albums. N.E.R.D. are the granddaddies. As music Producers, the Neptunes, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo had a heavy hand in shaping hip-hop and pop music since 2000. N.E.R.D. has been their eclectic place to explore their musical roots. Kanye is the phenom. He's managed to reinterpret elements of underground hip-hop into smashing mainstream successes.

Where does Rihanna fit into this picture? She doesn't. The only connection she has is her extreme mainstream success (Rihanna's "Umbrella" rivaled West's "Stronger" as the big pop song of 2007). She's a Pop singer with a great voice and strong presence whose presence probably assured that this concert was a Sell Out... but also looked severly out of place.

The crowd was a bit weird. There were a TON of 13-15 year old teenaged girls running around. While waiting in line there was no way to decipher who was performing.

Once inside, Lupe was already performing. He carried a decent show but you could sense that the scale of the concert didn't lend itself well to the density of Lupe's rhymes and music. It was impossible to understand what he was rhyming but the energy of the performance was cool. Lupe and his people were dressed predominantly in black. I think this was all agreed to from the get go since the stages became more colorful with each act.

N.E.R.D. was amazing. Their energy and vibe was fun and charming. They managed to stay relax and cool while they performed a mix of classic tracks and a couple of things from their upcoming album. To bring up the dosage of color, they had a snazzy monitor backdrop that displayed psychadelic colors and textures that complemented the various songs performed. They finished off their performance with a little White Stripes riff that seguewayed into "She Wants To Move". While performing they final track, cameras on stage behind Pharrell were filming ladies in the crowd dancing and showcasing them in realtime on the display monitor and screens next to the stage. Tons of fun.

Rihanna tried to go Tron with her performance. Everyone on stage wore flourescent colors that glowed under the blacklight. They looked pretty cool between songs with the black lights on, but as soon as the song started, the spotlights would go on and the effect was completely destroyed. It didn't help that the costumes looked awful under real lighting. It was like a bad mix of 80's day-glo sports bras and cheap X-men movie pleather Halloween costumes. I understand that people come to see their favorite performers, but it'd have been nice if they performed at least a part of the song under blacklight to appreciate the glow effect of the costumes and set. The singing was nice, but the dancing choreography was forgettable. There was no chemistry between the dancers and Rihanna. Most of all it felt completely out of place next to the other performers.

Kanye's set was pretty crazy. It was some lunar terrain with a huge display backdrop and two smaller screens: 1 behind Kanye and 1 below him that became his spaceship when needed. The entire performance was just Kanye and the set. Nobody else. Lupe appeared briefly for "Touch The Sky". Beyond that it was Kanye peforming alongside screens, smokes, and lights for 90 minutes.

It was ambitious. Kanye left himself "naked" as a performer (he still had his clothes on!) with nobody to distract you from what he was doing. It's hard enough to be perfect rhyming 1 song... and here Kanye has himself memorizing and rhyming 15-20. Crazy. And he held his own. He was energetic the whole way through. He even did a little acting. But the whole time I was thinking, "What the HELL is Kanye thinking?!". This is performance torture. A performance, like a good song, needs to breathe. But as a rap performer, on stage by himself performing song, after song, after song... Kanye is putting way too much on his shoulders. It was kind of stressful watching the whole thing because I couldn't help but think of how exhausting the whole thing was. I sure hope Kanye is giving himself his much deserved rest: eating right, meditating, sleeping. Because any form of exertion is going to result in a physical and emotional breakdown. No one is crazy enough to do this to themselves. Even Michael Jackson, regarded by most as one of the greatest performers of all time, gave himself support in his performances. He didn't just do it all himself. And the times when Jackson had bits that were solo, it was usually a dance number.

Watching Kanye was like watching Michael Jordan run back and forth between baskets doing dunk after crazy dunk. Yeah, it's impressive... some of it was really cool... but after a while you get tired watching it and start wondering why are you even there. The peformance was solid, but the set was so tight that there was no interaction with the audience without the occasional, "What's up LA!". It was just song, song, 1 minute of story, song, song and more song. It'd have been nice if West would have stepped away from the narrative created for the concert and engaged the audience. As an audience we're not there to just watch, we want to connect with the performer. It needs to be as much about us as it is about them. But with Glow In The Dark, I walked away feeling like Kanye wants to prove to me that he's superhuman. But he's not. He's human. He's an amazingly ambitious and talented human being. But I'm worried that if he keeps taking this route he's going to destroy himself... just burst. They say in space the stars that shine brightest have significantly shorter lives.

Either way, it was a show worth seeing. I'm sure there'll be nothing like it.