Random Ish
Five Slow Songs I Can't Stop Playing:
1. Usher - Anything really. I'm just feelin' the kid this week for some reason. "Burn" especially but "U Got It Bad" is equally as timeless.
2. Amerie - I Just Died (All I Have) - I don't know if it's a subconscious thing with me because I happen to know that Amerie is a local girl or what, but her voice does something to me that not many current R&B singers do. Every time I rave about a new song of hers (or in most cases, even an old one), a friend of mine just explains it away thusly, "I don't know, nigga...you and Amerie just got some kinda connection I guess I don't understand."
I imagine if I grew up in D.C. with A, she'd have been the skinny, shy girl that sure, everyone thought was cute, but wasn't really trying too hard to get with because she didn't really have a bangin'-ass body. Then a few years after you two graduate high school, you happen see her at the local carnival one summer and immediately regret your decision, kicking yourself for being so young, so foolish, so shallow so many years ago. But it's too late. There she is, late-blooming Amerie Rogers is all grow'd up now and the ensuing scene looks like something straight out of a Kodak or Cialis ad. You watch from afar, literally boiling over with the greenest kind of envy as she smiles her picture perfect Crest-white smile at some tall, dark Tyson Beckford-lookin'-ass nigga, looking genuinely happy as she holds his hand in hers and some fluffy pink cotton candy in the other. Meanwhile, Blackanova carries all the various stuffed animals he's won for her, knocking over old-fashioned milk bottles with his overly muscular arms. Or maybe listening to this song makes me imagine Amerie as "the one who got away" way too much.
3. New Edition - With You All The Way (All For Love) - This song moves along at just the right tempo, culiminating in a powerful crescendo by the time Ralph, going for dolo here, reaches the chorus. And best believe, Tresvant fuckin' pours on that innocent schoolboy falsetto that had so many underaged and confused girls' panties wet long before that thing was even supposed to happen to them. You'ze a singin'-ass mafucka if you can jumpstart PUBERTY in the opposite sex. Thanks to Mr. Sensitivity, I probably shaved a good couple of years off the time I would have normally had to wait to lose my virginity. VH1's Behind the Music might've taught us that NE never really got paid but they got CJ laid and in the end, that's all that really matters.
4. Omarion - The Truth (21) - I find myself lost in the moment whenever O's ballad to how awesome his girl's "love" is comes on. Example: I was driving home one Friday afternoon and got stuck in traffic (a similar situation once resulted in me conceiving Kanye's "Can't Tell Me Nothing" remix with Young Jeezy before it actually happened. Point being: good things happen when CJ is stuck in traffic singing), when I noticed the people in the minivan next to me staring inside my car. I thought it might have been the dried loogie on the back passenger's side that didn't quite clear the car when I spit it directly into the wind a few minutes earlier but they didn't seem to notice that dried and crusty green stuff splattered across the dirty glass. That's when I realized I had been singing what I considered the "best part" of this song ("Oh girl, you are the one, that is no doubt -- you're what my momma was talkin' 'bout!") at the top of my lungs, fantasizing that I was peforming this song to perfection, trademark Omarion dance steps and all, on American Idol, winning not only the entire competition but this whole country's undying adoration.
What? I can't dream in my own car?
5. Ne-Yo - Get Down Like That (Remix) (feat. Ghostface) (In My Own Words) - Watching Late Night with Conan O'Brien the other night, guest Tina Fey told an interesting story about her show "30 Rock." She said that Ghostface Killah had been on the show twice (Tracy Morgan, another of Fey's co-stars, is good friends with Ghost) but he's basically been appearing for free because he doesn't bother to fill out the paperwork that would allow him to be paid for his guest spots. She claimed it wouldn't be a tremendous amount anyway (likely around $500 she estimated) and while I can understand that netting an extra five hundred bones wouldn't necessarily be a priority for the Wally Champ, who'd likely just go out and blow it that same afternoon on a baby blue bathrobe with "Tony Starks" in rhinestones and sequins across the back, oversized aluminum gauntlets painted gold and an order of ravioli to-go from Carraba's, I couldn't help but wonder how many larger opportunities have passed where Ghost's "g was just 'too futuristic'" to handle his business. The way Ne-Yo ripped the chorus of "Back Like That" for Ghost (especially on the Kanye-assisted remix), I can only hope that the Ironman did this verse for free, too.
1. Usher - Anything really. I'm just feelin' the kid this week for some reason. "Burn" especially but "U Got It Bad" is equally as timeless.
2. Amerie - I Just Died (All I Have) - I don't know if it's a subconscious thing with me because I happen to know that Amerie is a local girl or what, but her voice does something to me that not many current R&B singers do. Every time I rave about a new song of hers (or in most cases, even an old one), a friend of mine just explains it away thusly, "I don't know, nigga...you and Amerie just got some kinda connection I guess I don't understand."
I imagine if I grew up in D.C. with A, she'd have been the skinny, shy girl that sure, everyone thought was cute, but wasn't really trying too hard to get with because she didn't really have a bangin'-ass body. Then a few years after you two graduate high school, you happen see her at the local carnival one summer and immediately regret your decision, kicking yourself for being so young, so foolish, so shallow so many years ago. But it's too late. There she is, late-blooming Amerie Rogers is all grow'd up now and the ensuing scene looks like something straight out of a Kodak or Cialis ad. You watch from afar, literally boiling over with the greenest kind of envy as she smiles her picture perfect Crest-white smile at some tall, dark Tyson Beckford-lookin'-ass nigga, looking genuinely happy as she holds his hand in hers and some fluffy pink cotton candy in the other. Meanwhile, Blackanova carries all the various stuffed animals he's won for her, knocking over old-fashioned milk bottles with his overly muscular arms. Or maybe listening to this song makes me imagine Amerie as "the one who got away" way too much.
3. New Edition - With You All The Way (All For Love) - This song moves along at just the right tempo, culiminating in a powerful crescendo by the time Ralph, going for dolo here, reaches the chorus. And best believe, Tresvant fuckin' pours on that innocent schoolboy falsetto that had so many underaged and confused girls' panties wet long before that thing was even supposed to happen to them. You'ze a singin'-ass mafucka if you can jumpstart PUBERTY in the opposite sex. Thanks to Mr. Sensitivity, I probably shaved a good couple of years off the time I would have normally had to wait to lose my virginity. VH1's Behind the Music might've taught us that NE never really got paid but they got CJ laid and in the end, that's all that really matters.
4. Omarion - The Truth (21) - I find myself lost in the moment whenever O's ballad to how awesome his girl's "love" is comes on. Example: I was driving home one Friday afternoon and got stuck in traffic (a similar situation once resulted in me conceiving Kanye's "Can't Tell Me Nothing" remix with Young Jeezy before it actually happened. Point being: good things happen when CJ is stuck in traffic singing), when I noticed the people in the minivan next to me staring inside my car. I thought it might have been the dried loogie on the back passenger's side that didn't quite clear the car when I spit it directly into the wind a few minutes earlier but they didn't seem to notice that dried and crusty green stuff splattered across the dirty glass. That's when I realized I had been singing what I considered the "best part" of this song ("Oh girl, you are the one, that is no doubt -- you're what my momma was talkin' 'bout!") at the top of my lungs, fantasizing that I was peforming this song to perfection, trademark Omarion dance steps and all, on American Idol, winning not only the entire competition but this whole country's undying adoration.
What? I can't dream in my own car?
5. Ne-Yo - Get Down Like That (Remix) (feat. Ghostface) (In My Own Words) - Watching Late Night with Conan O'Brien the other night, guest Tina Fey told an interesting story about her show "30 Rock." She said that Ghostface Killah had been on the show twice (Tracy Morgan, another of Fey's co-stars, is good friends with Ghost) but he's basically been appearing for free because he doesn't bother to fill out the paperwork that would allow him to be paid for his guest spots. She claimed it wouldn't be a tremendous amount anyway (likely around $500 she estimated) and while I can understand that netting an extra five hundred bones wouldn't necessarily be a priority for the Wally Champ, who'd likely just go out and blow it that same afternoon on a baby blue bathrobe with "Tony Starks" in rhinestones and sequins across the back, oversized aluminum gauntlets painted gold and an order of ravioli to-go from Carraba's, I couldn't help but wonder how many larger opportunities have passed where Ghost's "g was just 'too futuristic'" to handle his business. The way Ne-Yo ripped the chorus of "Back Like That" for Ghost (especially on the Kanye-assisted remix), I can only hope that the Ironman did this verse for free, too.
