Tag Archive for 'vocoder'

Lil Wayne - Mrs. Officer - “I Said Lady What’s Your Number, She Said 911″

Published
by
neal
on November 19, 2008
in Music Videos
. 0 Comments

I give Lil Wayne a hard time here at the AudioShocker, I really do. I’ve also said that 2008 has been the year of Weezy, T-Pain, and their joint reign of vocoder terror. That said, sometimes you hear a new song on the radio by an artist you don’t particularly care for and it gets you sprung. As I was driving home the other night, I caught wind of Mrs. Officer feat. Bobby Valentino (another hot/cold artist in my book) and I had to tell you all about it.

The Track: Tell me you don’t like Valentino’s weeohweeohweeohwee cop call chorus thing. I love it — almost as much as I love Weezy for NOT using a vocoder on this. That is huge for me. Maybe the vocoder is done for 2008? The beat is laid back and I’m actually pretty surprised this was not released as a summer jam, would have been big.

And the rhymes!! I can’t hate - Weezy keeps it hot.

She know I’m raw, she know I’m from the streets // And all she want me to do is fuck the police

And after we got done, I said lady what’s your number she said 911

Breakfast in bed turn into breakfast and head (this verse isn’t in the video)

The obligatory negatory: Wayne has taken up an affectation that I am dubbing ‘The Dorian Self-Laugh’; it was first brought to light by Dr. Cox on Scrubs. Zack Braff’s J.D. did this stupid self laugh whenever he made a joke and no one else thought it was funny. Well, Weezy has been doing the same thing recently - after every. single. line. Other examples? Check T-Pain’s Can’t Believe It and Mike Jone’s Cuddy Buddy. It’s like the new delay double and I find it similarly bothersome. Hopefully, Mr. Carter will grow out of it quickly. However, given his repertoire of vocoder hits this year, it may be a while.

The Video: Hot cops may be cliche, but they make for an entertaining video. I mean who hasn’t wanted to get it on with a Hot Cop? Ladies and Lads alike. It’s the basis for an entire genre of porn. Frisking hot perps? I want to do that. Mugshot modeling? I’ve seen it before, but I still chuckled. 3 hot cop dancers and squad cars? Yeah, I can suspend disbelief. Obviously this isn’t anything groundbreaking or new, but it’s easily digestible fluff that I can watch it more than once.

While somewhat unrelated, I disliked that the 2nd video Comfortable used the same video treatment/model. I am of the mind that videos self contained packages that can stand on their own. But Comfortable is easy to ignore, so it’s all good.

The Bottom Line: Perhaps this is some of that ‘change we can beleive in’

FNMTV - Gym Class Heroes, The Game, We The Kings, Solange

Published
by
neal
on August 18, 2008
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It’s hard in these streets. That’s the only real excuse I have for not writing this post on Saturday. You know the deal: MTV debuts new videos during FNMTV and I tell you what I think. Easy peasy

Gym Class Heroes - Cookie Jar
I hope this is supposed to be a joke. The ‘white background video’ returns with a vengeance, a vocoder, and shitty synth line. If The Cool Kids are a bunch of lame scene kids - then what the eff is this? I just can’t take any part of this seriously, not with homeboy’s bull nose ring.

The Game - My Life (ft. Lil Wayne)
Game is such a drama queen. Is his life really that hard? Wait till the end where he smears a cross on his chest - in blood. Seriously, how effing into yourself are you? You are not John Lennon, Biggie, or Jesus. And who name drops Kanye twice on a track? As if that weren’t enough, Lil Wayne rides shotgun with a vocoder. Weezy is giving T-pain a run for his money.

We The Kings - Check Yes Juliet (Live)
I’ve never even heard of these oldboys, but it sounds a lot like Panic at the Disco. In other words: they are probably popular, but not for any logical reason.

Solange - Sandcastle Disco
Solange is Beyonce’s sister in case you didn’t know. The song is pretty breezy - but hey, it’s a song about a DJ, I expected as much. Yeah, this is a “white background video”, but I like it more than others I have seen recently. Overuse of CG? Perhaps, but I dig the whole mod/60’s thing. We both know this could have been done way worse.

The Bottom Line: The Game needs to stop feeling himself so much. He is no longer relavant in my musical sphere.

FNMTV - Danity Kane, Bow Wow, Chromeo, and Toyko Police Club

Published
by
neal
on July 27, 2008
in Music Videos
. 1 Comment

Only 4 videos this week? FNMTV is really dropping the ball. Well, I don’t have a ton of time this weekend anyway, so our quickies will have to be even quicker.

Danity Kane - Bad Girl
Diddy’s girls make a mockery and tries to cash in on the comic book movie trend. Missy Elliot drops a verse too. Oh, and there are some costume changes that go by too fast to appreciate. Mannequins have more personality than these ladies.

Bow Wow - Marco Polo
Wow. I have way too much to say about this - so I’ll save it for this week’s full length music video review. Watch out for that early next week. short version: trite unrepentant tween garbage.

Chromeo - Momma’s Boy
This is a 2008 update of A-Ha’s Take on Me with a vocoder and without the falsetto) Not sure I dig the thematic content though. Seems a bit too Elektra/Odepius.

Tokyo Police Club - Graves (Live)
Hey TPC has anyone ever told you that you’re like a really shitty version of The Shins combined with The Strokes?

Chromeo wins the award for least terrible video this week.

Down With The Delay Double! I Heard You the First Time

Published
by
neal
on July 24, 2008
in Music
. 2 Comments

I’d like to discuss a trend that has become an increasing annoyance: the ‘delay double’ (yes, I just coined that term). We’ve talked about doubles on the podcast before. Basically, a double is when you record a line a second time, slightly different and layer it back over the original. Puffy explained this really well in an episode of Making the Band. Pretty much everyone does doubles. They are easy to do and give tracks a little oomph.

Proper doubles are subtle and they don’t call attention to themselves. Listen to 99 Problems by JayZ. You barely notice it, but Jay doubles during the chorus. It adds a whole new acoustic dimension. This is what Puffy was getting at.

A ‘delay double’ is when you repeat a certain line or excerpt again for emphasis - but it’s delayed a second or two. For example, you may hear something like ‘Shorty be the hottest thing I ever seen,’ followed quickly by ‘I ever seen’. Often it will be whispered or hushed and extended.

Delay doubles are used extensively in hip hop and pop music. The reasoning is simple: it’s easy and it simulates a listener repeating his favorite part of a lyric. If you hear a particularly good punchline, the kind that makes you go ‘ooooo snap!’ and hip hop heads live for, you may be tempted to repeat the last two or three words. That is what the delay double is after. Producers are trying to encode this reaction into the track up front.

A prime example of offensive delay doubling is Bustit Baby by Plies. Take a listen. He does it on every. single. line. First, there are no punchlines worth repeating. Second, even if there were - repeating the last two words of each line is just plain annoying; your listeners are not deaf! Someone please clue me in - how does this sell records? Is this what’s hot in the street? Is this what you’d call really hood? Sadly, this is not an isolated incident.

Usher and Jeezy are both guilty of misdemeanor delay doubling on Love in This Club. I think I could cosign the delay if it were used a little more sparingly, but things as they are, I want to slap every artist employing it. Other offenders include: Destiny’s Child (Soldier), Mariah Carey (Touch My Body), The Dream’s (I Luv Ur Girl) and heaps and heaps of others. Even Mos Def must be brought to task (Ghetto Rock)!

I’m sorry to say it, but delay doubles may one day unseat the vocoder as the worst thing to ever happen to music.

FNMTV - Zooey Deschanel and Doppelganger Fail to Impress

Published
by
neal
on July 13, 2008
in Music Videos
. 0 Comments

FNMTV is back like cooked crack. Unfortunately for the 2 of you that got that reference, Juelz Santana is nowhere to be found. Once again scraping the bottom of the barrel, I bring you MTV’s newest video premieres in “quickie” review style.

LL Cool J - Baby
Mr. Smith brings the ennui with a vocoder chorus, weak rhymes, terrible attempts at dancing, graphic Ts, and endorsements of drunk driving.

She and Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward spin us a macabre acid trip with a subdued soundtrack. She gets axed a few times, there are some sort of Pacman-esque ghosts, and then I’m not sure what happens. It sort of kills me to watch this since Zooey is capable of so much better.

Daughtry - What About Now: 90 Second Preview
Is this supposed to be a PSA or a reimagining of Van Halen’s Right Now? Either way, it’s so boring that even MTV could only stomach 90 seconds of it.

Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl (Live)
Zooey Deschanel doppelganger hops around in a short floral print jumper singing her crappy song. Nothing to see here folks. Seriously.

FNMTV - Rope Chains, Capri Pants, Duffy, and More

Published
by
neal
on June 26, 2008
in Music Videos
. 0 Comments

It’s time for another round of FNMTV bashing - courtesy of yours truly. In case you missed last week’s post, MTV recently added a new segment called Friday Night MTV as a venue for video premiers and live performances. This salvo of music television begs to be discussed - because it is so clearly bottom of the barrel - but not in a formal video review manner. Consider these video review ‘quickies’.

Lil Mama - I’m What It Is (Strike a Pose)

Old skool rope chains, T-Pain sans vocoder channeling the pied piper, and Missy Elliot style antics make for a pretty kid-friendly video. I wouldn’t hesitate to show this to an 8 year old.

Boys Like Girls - Thunder

The band members all have similar haircuts to other bands, they sing slow and deep at first and then jump up an octave to belt out the chorus. Flashback / performance videos like this are boring. If I want to relive getting drunk in high school and doing dumb townie shit… I’ll look out my window at the douchebag highschoolers on summer vacation.

Shawty Lo - Foolish (Remix)

DJ Khaled has never been on a decent track, so this was doomed from the beginning. Morever, what self respecting rapper wears a beater when he has a gut - and for that matter CAPRIS? I’m not even watching the rest of this video. 39 seconds in and I am over it. I won’t even mention that Baby, AKA The Birdman, drops a vocoder verse.

Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma

This actually did not suck. The whole thing reminded of a Wes Anderson movie- but one that didn’t suck. In fact, if all of Wes Anderson’s stuff was this short and pithy - Nick and I might like the guy a lot more.

Duffy - Mercy (Live)

I don’t know much about Duffy, but her voice is definitely an acquired taste. I can get into the track, but I’d like it more if it were by another vocalist. ZING! Other than that, this ain’t much to write home about. Here is the original video.

Lil Wayne - A Milli (Live)

It’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of Lil Wayne’s recent records - but apparently he gets crowds hype. And really, how can I disagree with that? If you can rock ‘em right, you must be doing something right. He did race through the song though - he was def in a hurry to get out of there.

That’s it ladies and gents. You don’t have to go home - you can stay and comment here!

Ray J - Gifts Is The Least Creative Slang Ever

Published
by
neal
on June 11, 2008
in Music Videos
. 3 Comments

Hey remember Moesha? Perhaps you have forgotten Ray J’s first grasps at fame. Granted, being the younger brother of a Grammy award winning R&B singer creates pressure to be successful - that doesn’t excuse Ray J’s discography. Wait a Minute was a mess of a track; I don’t even think Lil Kim was that into it. Ray J - I hope you are giving Kim Kardashian a percentage of the sales from Sexy Can I, because it’s her ass that has been selling your records for the last six months.

In any case, Ray J’s new video for Gifts drops this week and guess who has something to say about it.

The Track: The song itself can be summed up pretty easily, this girl has nice humps and is rather adept at working poles. Perhaps it is obvious, but Ray J would like to stick it to her. I can certainly appreciate the sentiment. But seriously, when is hiphop’s obsession with strippers/stripclubs going to end? I’m not sure this is how we should be spending our stimulus checks. Additionally, how uncreative is ‘gifts’? My humps introduced a new phrase into the lexicon - gifts does nothing for me.

Regarding the beat, I dig it. I’m not sure it’s a club beat, but maybe it’ll get remixed. If you take your beats with brutal knock you may want to sit this one out. The vocoder is a bit excessive and I could do without it, but there’s no escaping it these days.

Something that surprised me was the absence of a guest verse. I was really expecting another lame wannabe like Yung Berg to lay down a short ‘me too’ verse. Considering the ubiquity of guest spots on today’s hiphop records, I am actually pleasantly surprised. I like it when an artist pulls off an entire song by himself - so kudos for that.

Ray J is all about making accessible music for people who don’t really listen to hiphop. While I was on vacation I was reminded of how many people ignore hiphop lyrics at the club. If that is you, this could be your new summer jam.

The Video: It is official, I am sick of the “white background, widescreen” video. Jay Z, this is your fault. It may be easy to film, but come on - how about some production value, a little bit of spectacle.

The video combines the following: hot ladies, dancers, an entourage, a few high priced accessories, and an official 2 step. This may have passed for a cool minimalist video a few years ago, but not today. I need a little more than this to hold my attention. I need visual gags, punchlines, and a shot of at least one car.

There are no strippers in this video. The girls we see are definitely not strippers. Most songs with references to strippers at least have some suggestive booty dancing. This video has a 2 step - which is one step removed from swaying back and forth. In fact, the girls seem to be included only because without them it’d be a sausage fest. This video is all about showcasing Ray J and his post-Kardashian / Sexy Can I image.

Lastly, like any artist Ray is proud of his record sales. Unlike other artists, he seems to be exceptionally proud of his digital downloads and presents us with a large plaque. Apparently he has sold over 500,000 copies of Sexy Can I online, primarily to 13 year olds and sorority girls no doubt.

The Bottom Line: It’s Pop-hop. Plain and simple.

Mariah Carey - You Can Touch My Body

Published
by
neal
on March 5, 2008
in Movies
. 0 Comments

The Emancipation of Mimi was a pretty big comeback success considering Carey’s somewhat public breakdown a few years ago. It allowed us to finally bury the hatchet and get over Glitter. Anyway, Mariah’s new joint Touch My Body just landed and features Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock fame. Do the beat, video, content, and vocals hold water? Let’s find out!

The Beat: While it was produced by Tricky Stewart, (Umbrella) I doubt you’ll be hearing the studio cut in the clubs anytime soon. This beat is mellower and more subdued than his other work (Me Against the Music and B2K’s Uh Huh). Personally, I need more knock, a faster tempo, and less synth mashing.

The Video: Oh Kenneth! Is this the only role you know how to play? Mariah and Jack play dressup while romping through her house and his fantasy. Mariah is no stranger to campy videos (Heartbreaker, Honey, etc) so it all made perfect sense to me. Of note: no backup dancers.

I don’t care what anyone says, Mariah looks damn good! Did you know she’s going to be 39 this year? I also just discovered that she and I share a birthday. Mariah - interested in a joint party?

Lastly, I doubt that Mariah is familiar with 802.11n, and last time I checked it was still a draft protocol, but what do I know?

The Content: Yeah, yeah, it’s a throwaway love song. Fine, but you can’t deny the genius of the lines:

If there’s a camera up in here then I best not catch this flick on YouTube

Church! seriously people, YouTube is no place for your personal business. Save it for RedTube.

Boy you can put me on you like a brand new white T / I’ll hug your body tighter than my favorite jeans

Hands down, the best line of the entire track.

…’cause I’m all up in my business like a Wendy interview

Classic! I can’t stand Wendy Williams.

Imagine, all that - and I haven’t even gotten to sexy stuff!

The Vocals: Mariah is best known for being able to hit crazy high notes. Sadly, age has taken its toll and like so many others she too has resorted to the vocoder. At first I thought it was just a weird double - but no dice. To her credit, she doesen’t use the demon-box to hit high notes or commit Cher & T-pain grade felonies. I can appreciate that.

The Bottom Line: The Voice is looking good despite an unexciting beat, a campy video involving a unicorn, and a vocoded delivery lacking her signature high notes.

I (almost) Love (Natasha Bedingfield) Like This

Published
by
neal
on January 7, 2008
in Music Videos
. 0 Comments

Apparently, I missed a lot of 2007 music videos. Let’s take a minute to discuss Natasha Bedingfield’s Love like this, featuring Sean Kingston. We will consider four criteria: the beat, the video, the content, and the vocals. Ready? Lets go!

The Beat: I like it, plain and simple. The piano plays well off of the backbeat. It won’t win a Grammy for production - but it’s catchy and has replay value. Will you be humming this tomorrow after 4 listens? Possibly.

The Video: Light, breezy, and its got a motorcycle! What is not to like? I think they are even partying in a pool at the end. How cool is that? (I haven’t seen that since Mandy Moore’s breakout Candy)The video suits the song pretty well, so it is pretty hard for me to fault it. Bedingfield looks a lot like Kristen Bell in this video - and I sort of dig that. Our favorite reader Ro noted that the video-guy is “very very hot,” and lastly, could Kingston rock a larger chain? It looks like he has a gilded UPS box around his neck.

The Content: It’s a love song. No deep metaphors, no witty punchlines (even from Kingston), or anything similar. While I like my songs to be witty, this is pop music - not a Common record. No major complaints here.Vocoder Awareness Ribbon

The Vocals: You would think that a video that shoots 3/3 would have no problem making a slam dunk right? WRONG. Natasha, this little pop package was perfect until you had to go and wreck it with a Vocoder. Granted, Bedingfield’s offense is a minor misdemeanor compared to T-Pain’s felonious rapsheet , but it was totally unnecessary.

The Bottom Line? An otherwise very decent pop video is marred by the pervasive Vocoder Virus. If the Vocoder is not a deal breaker for you than this is pretty decent pop music; refreshing considering our last video review.

That’s all I got. Keep it gully.