Word: hip-hop
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Nobody in hip-hop cherishes the word bitch more than Eve, and that's saying something. Male rappers use it all the time as an ostensibly neutral term for all women besides their mothers (or, in the case of Eminem, all women). But on her new CD, Eve-Olution (Interscope), the Philadelphia-bred queen of Top 40 rap applies it to herself and with fervid conviction. Eve sings about being a bitch the way Bob Marley sang about being a Rastafarian: it's what her album is about...
That kind of humor, along with Eve's delivery, as loud and rhythmic as the whirr of a helicopter blade, sets Eve-Olution above 2002's mediocre crop of hip-hop CDs. The beats are merely competent, never original enough to stand on their own, but Eve-Olution's worst point, inadvertently suggested by its name, is its self-righteous social Darwinism, an outlook voiced 9 million times in hip-hop. "I got to win at any cost," Eve raps on Satisfaction, and she won't tolerate jealousy from those who haven't made it. She's witty and talented...
Although their parents may not have heard of him, members of the hip-hop generation have embraced Diesel so enthusiastically that his per-picture fee is rapidly rising into the $20 million territory. Teens are so excited about seeing him in XXX, a spy movie opening Aug. 9, you have to wonder if they think the title refers to something besides extreme sports. Like The Rock, whose Scorpion King grossed more than $90 million earlier this year, Diesel is also part of a nascent constellation of stars whose melting-pot backgrounds and features seem to be resonating deeply with young...
...past Davis has sampled music close to his own tastes--funk, hip-hop and R. and B.--but other DJs caught on and started copying his style. Now he looks for the stuff they pass over. In 2000 he struck an obscurantist's mother lode. His local record shop, Village Music in Mill Valley, Calif., bought the entire stock of a defunct 1980s dance-music store at an auction. Davis went mad flipping through 10,000 records--mostly rare new wave European singles--that had been frozen in a storage locker for the past decade. "DJ Shadow is my best...
...they have their own siren. Koyanagi not only resembles Alicia Keys in appearance, but she's got similar pipes too. Koyanagi's smooth ballads and hip-hop dance track Boyz Don't Cry are worthy additions to any R. and B. collection. Most female J-Pop music is as heartfelt as sliced toast. In Koyanagi's case, her soulful, ballsy croon sounds genuine, albeit incomprehensible at times. That Koyanagi sings in English-a language she does not understand-makes the album an even greater achievement...