Dr. Dre has revealed details of what he claims will be his final album, describing the forthcoming project as a "hip hop musical".
The acclaimed producer says he expects to start recording the new album sometime in the next few months, and aims to have 'Detox' released by summer 2003.
"I've been blueprinting, getting ideas together for the past six months or so, just trying to figure out which direction I want to take and how I'm gonna present the project," he explained. "Just gathering sounds and what have you. I want this one to be really over the top."
He added: "It's probably going to take me like a year to get it all the way together."
Describing the theme of his new long player, Dre said: "I'm not talking about lowriders and blunts and all that anymore."
"I mean, that's played. As a matter of fact, I'm tired of hearing other people talk about it, to tell you the truth."
He told MTV: "I had to come up with something different but still keep it hardcore, so what I decided to do was make my album one story about one person and just do the record through a character's eyes."
"Everybody that appears on my album is going to be a character, so it's basically going to be a hip-hop musical."
According to Dre, 'Detox' will chronicle the life of a hitman and how he lives his daily life.
"[It's] about his family and how he makes a living," he said.
Posted by Jen on Friday, April 5, 2002 @ 09:36 p.m.
-- Sheryl Crow is set to release her new album, C'mon, C'mon, Tuesday (April 9), and she has the full support of her record label, A&M Records. Crow lately has been put in the crossfire of the dispute between the Recording Artist Coalition, which she supports, and the music business.
The singer-songwriter told LAUNCH she's upset at the perception that she's a crusader against the recording industry. "I hate that in some way I've had the mantle set on my shoulders as being against the record labels and I really love my label," she said. "I have a great relationship with them. I think we're all excited we're all excited about the future. And, for me my objective as far as the RAC is and was concerned, from the inception was not an 'us against them' kind of battle. I mean, unfortunately we've had some issues where we stood on different sides of the fence, but that is the nature of business."
Crow added that the artists and the labels need to work together to take care of the most pressing problems facing the music industry today. "I always felt like there was going to be, there were going to be a lot of issues that we face together. Obviously downloading, CD burners, these issues," she said. "The kind of unimportance of intellectual properties in people's minds, all those things have to be addressed by not only the record company but also the artists, and the artists have never had any kind of representation on Capitol Hill because it's not the nature of artists to join together and make a presence, a unified presence really anywhere. Really, those days died in the '60s."
Crow is getting airplay with her first single from C'mon, C'mon, "Soak Up The Sun." Crow also has a gig lined up at Irving Plaza in New York City Tuesday (April 9). She's in the process of planning a full tour for later this year.
-- Darren Davis, New York
Posted by Jen on Friday, April 5, 2002 @ 09:32 p.m.
The Calling guitarist Aaron Kamin suffered a severe electrical shock yesterday (April 4) during soundcheck for a concert in Bangkok. Kamin was rushed to a local hospital and was released after being treated for burns to the hands. The guitarist is expected to make a full recovery, but last night's show was canceled. The Calling hopes to return to Bangkok to play a make-up date.
The group is touring internationally in support of its RCA debut, "Camino Palmero," which is No. 91 in is 22nd week on The Billboard 200 and has been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for U.S. shipments of 500,000 units. The single "Wherever You Will Go" is in its 17th week at No. 1 on Billboard's Adult Top 40 Chart and is also No. 10 on the Hot 100.
Amid a sprinkling of upcoming dates, the Calling will join Sugar Ray and Pat Benatar for the "Bringin' It Home" Benefit for Orangewood's Kids, set for May 11 at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, Calif. Details of a more extensive summer tour are not yet finalized.
Here are The Calling's tour dates:
April 9: Melbourne (Prince of Wales)
April 11: Sydney (Metro)
April 24: Cologne, Germany (Stadtgarten)
May 11: Anaheim, Calif. (Arrowhead Pond, w/ Sugar Ray, Pat Benatar)
May 25: Norfolk, Va. (NorVa)
May 28: Cleveland (Peabody's Down Under)
-- Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Posted by Jen on Friday, April 5, 2002 @ 09:26 p.m.
Boy band member pokes fun at phenomenon through "corny" cartoon role
Chris Kirkpatrick of 'N Sync has signed on for a recurring vocal guest spot for the Nickelodeon cartoon The Fairly OddParents. "I think it's a funny show," says Kirkpatrick, an avowed cartoon fanatic. "There's so many cartoons that are out now that kind of talk down to kids, and make kids feel like, 'This is a circle. This is my head. This is the body. This is me at school being a kid.' Fairly OddParents is one of the cartoons they watch and just laugh at, because they're not afraid to make those fart jokes and they're not afraid to talk to the kids on their level and say, 'This is funny. Of course you should laugh at this.'"
Kirkpatrick's character for the series is a pop singer named Chip Skylark. In the first episode he taped (titled "Boys in the Band," set to air April 6th), Skylark gets kidnapped by a crazed fan. The show takes jabs at the boy band phenomenon throughout, something that appealed to Kirkpatrick. "The character Chip is just so corny," he says. "It poked so much fun, I couldn't pass it up. It was the perfect opportunity to say we know what the stereotype is and we know what the joke is. The joke will be on everybody else, if five to ten years from now we're still making hit records."
In another episode titled "Shiny Teeth," Skylark's teeth are stolen by an evil dentist named Dr. Bender. "All my character talks about are his teeth, his shiny white teeth," Kirkpatrick says. "I'm sure my acting abilities were amazing in this one because I'm just mumbling."
Meanwhile, 'N Sync are in the midst of their Celebrity Tour, which features Smash Mouth and Ginuwine alternating as openers. "It's been going really, really well," Kirkpatrick says. "We've had all sorts of great reviews. I haven't seen a bad review yet. Everybody who comes to the show says this is our best tour because it's very interactive. We're all about making everybody feel welcome and like they're part of the show, and you can see up there that we're just clowning each other and having a good time."
With four months off after the tour ends April 28th in Orlando -- and band mate Lance Bass determined to get shot into space -- Kirkpatrick plans to use the time to write music for some outside projects. "I've written some stuff that's not exactly poppy," he says. "It would be more something that a rock band would do, and I might maybe dabble with that a little bit. Like I said, this group comes before anything for me. I love the group, I love the music. I love having a good time with the guys. That's the priority on my list. Everything else is second. I don't know if I'd do a solo record. I think it would be more like just another rock album or something."
COLIN DEVENISH (April 4, 2002)
Posted by Jen on Friday, April 5, 2002 @ 03:17 p.m.
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