album review: jay-z & kanye west. watch the throne. 12 august 2011. def jam recordings
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i was planning on reviewing the joint jay-z kanye record at some point this week when i noticed my friend, and writer of shamfrolic, mr kris de souza was giving us a track by track run down on twitter. never one to pass up the opportunity to do less work, i sent him a quick message to ask if i could use this on sockformation. hurrah. he said yes.

so here it is. i ask you to please, in time honoured manner, start at the bottom and work your way up please.

he hasn’t given it a score, so i’ll sum up how i feel about it and score it quickly. it’s good. i’ve never got overexcited about kanye myself, but there is no doubting that he’s one of hip hop’s most creative artists (proper creative. not will.i.am ‘let’s put on a lego hat so everybody thinks i’m crazy’ creative). so when combined with the biggest rapper in the world, this was always going to be good. it will sell in it millions and no doubt garner the odd 5 stars and 10/10 here and there. it’s no deltron 3030 though.

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one of the many things that tom vek does well is wear glasses. i wear glasses as well, but he wears them better. what better list to compile then than my favourite glasses wearers in music. not only is it a catchy title, but it gives me another chance to compile a list.

i’ve decided not to include tom vek himself. today is all about him already and i don’t want it going to his head. there are also a number of other omissions. some are explained in the top five itself, but i should say sorry to elton john. he always gets in these lists, so i’m letting somebody else have a go for once. others that came close were graham coxon, the bloke from semisonic, jarvis cocker, jeremy warmsley, timmy mallet, judge jules and all three from cleopatra.

5: craig david
i decided it necessary to include a blind person. they all wear sunglasses very well and i like their style. it could have been ray charles or stevie wonder, but surely the most famous of all blind musicans is craig david.

4: elvis costello
i love elvis costello. he’s even my twitter avatar. he has similar glasses to me and is a bit of an icon for me. the space could easily have been taken by buddy holly or hank marvin, but it’s my list and i’ve chosen elvis costello.

3: kanye west
i don’t like kanye west. let me make that clear. it’s just what happens when you sample daft punk in such an atrocious way. i also don’t like those crappy slanty shade things he wore. you have to give him some props for them though because what else would knobheads wear to late to yates’s in the summer.

2: john lennon
he made those little round specs his own didn’t he.

1: lisa loeb
in number one spot it has to be lisa loeb. would ‘stay (i missed you)’ have been so successful without those leopard print beauties? would she have got a song on the soundtrack to the rugrats movie if she didn’t have that affiliation with chuckie? i’m certain she wouldn’t have managed to keep recording for so long if she wore contacts. she is the ultimate glasses wearing musician.

well done lisa. in case you can’t use google, here are pictures of each of the other four winners.

album review: nicki minaj. pink friday. 19 november 2010. young money entertainment

i wasn’t going to review this album originally. i was going to write about kanye west’s ‘my beautiful dark twisted fantasy‘ instead. a couple of things made me change my mind. firstly, a shit load has been written about kanye’s new one. whether it is pitchfork going way over the top, or the guardian explaining why pitchfork have gone way over the top. secondly, i have found myself listening the only one track on the album. and only a minute or so of that to boot. that minute or so is from 3.30 onwards on ‘monster’ and is all about nicki minaj rather than kanye. she steals the entire album with that one little soundbite. that comes after stealing that young money track about the flitstones.

her album was out sometime last week, so it all worked out nicely. at least it would have done if she’d recorded the album we all hoped she would. i like a bit of lazy journalism, and it would be easy to compare her to foxy brown and lil’ kim. she does nothing in the album to differentiate herself from those two here, so you may as well take them as a reference point anyway. i’ll give her one thing, she can swear fucking well. she’s really good at it, but it isn’t (quite) enough to make me file the album anywhere other than disappointing.

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