Music Mondays: The Return of Mimi, Pamyu Pamyu, Jenna Andrews Sex Tape, and More!

Friday:

Friday brought some new music from artists that we’ve missed. Bibi Zhou, supergirl alumnus and one of mainland China’s most incredible artists, released the second single from her upcoming album, Unlock. Amy broke the video, entitled Close Friend, for us recently [MV], and man… I cannot WAIT for this woman’s album. Her voice… it just does something to me!

So… I don’t know if anyone remembers the group B5…? It took me a second, but I think I kind of sort of remember them from… High School Musical? Anyway, they’ve come back with their latest single Say Yes. It’s nothing that we’re not hearing in R&B-pop nowadays, but I’ve got say… the dance moves are SHARP as hell. Their synchronicity is FIRE. But what would you expect from a group groomed by Motown? Nothing but perfection, really. Not the best video, but the dancing… THE DANCING!!!

A lot of new releases and concert news: The 5-Disc set of the complete collection of Motown singles just went up for pre-order. Any fans of music history will want to get their hands on this one [1]. Flying Lotus and friend Thundercat will be at the House Of Blues in on June 1 [more info here] and the UCLA Jazz and Reggae festival announces its lineup for this year’s concert, which includes Common, Santigold, and Ziggy Marley [1].

Daft Punk sat down with Billboard to discuss the direction of their latest release, Random Access Memories:

“Like every song on this record, it was something really organic,” Thomas Bangalter said. “They really represent bridging the generations together and what Nile Rodgers represents for dance music and R&B in America in the Seventies and the Eighties and what Pharrell represents from somehow the same genre of music in the Nineties and 2000s, it felt really interesting to connect all these eras together to create the music of the present and possibly the music of the future as well.”

Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/daft-punk-get-lucky-sums-up-celebratory-spirit-of-new-album-20130510#ixzz2TBcot2vx
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Then an interesting little article about the disposability of hip-hop came to my attention [1]. In it, the discussion rises about how easy it is for marketers, advertisers, and the like to be all for using rappers as their spokespeople… until they go the route that all art has and push the envelope a wee bit too far for their tastes:

Advertisers, theoretically, love hip-hop. They love it until it gets loud and messy, challenges taste and morals, causes offense. And then advertisers pull away.

What exactly do these advertisers expect? That the boys (and girls) of hip-hop will just play nice and kiss ass? Granted, a great percentage of them do, or at least kowtow to creating adverts that are just “bad” enough to get attention, then walk away cash in hand. However, other’s, like Tyler The Creator, who’s gotten a great deal of flack for his commercials for Diet Mountain Dew, choose to push their artistic (and ridiculous, let’s be honest) scope as far as humanly possible — to the point people were crying racism…? Really? It’s stupid, if I can be perfectly honest. You want someone that’ll give you a “hip” and “young” image, but as soon as they do something that may alienate a generation a bit more conservative than the core audience you’re trying to reach, you walk away? The double standard of PR and advertising fascinates and baffles me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept how easy money makes those with a high standard of representing themselves turn into dancing monkeys. Oh well… rant over.