Natalia discusses what’s new with Pharrell Williams and her thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld’s mean comments towards Adele’s weight. She also shows a roster of animals behaving like humans and, wait until you see the new size of coffee available at Starbucks!
Natalia dishes the latest news on the Juno Awards nominees, the upcoming Spiderman 3D film starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield and is Katy Perry hooking up with Tim Tebow? Watch today’s episode to find out.
When The Kooks are in the studio they’re focused and most importantly, sober. Watch Hugh and Luke explain their reasoning below.
The Kooks released a new album called “Junk of the Heart,” and you would think Hugh and Luke would be very excited about it. Well, they seemed rather indifferent to be honest. We spoke about that and why they don’t care about critics.
Natalia dishes the latest in entertainment news on Joan Rivers, Lana Del Rey and a brand new trailer for the movie Hunger Games.
Natalia talks about how Snooki might be pregnant, Nicolas Cage’s Cage Rage, Elisabetta Canalis is dating Steve-O and more for Feb 1, 2012.
Natalia dishes the news on Miley Cyrus breaking her tailbone, a 100 year old woman who plays the Nintendo DS to stay young and Houston, Texas contemplating a statute of Beyonce.
David Beckham debuts a new line of underwear, the worst dressed celebrity – Shy’m and Matthew Broderick is back as Ferris Bueller with a brand new commercial airing during the Super Bowl on Feb 5th 2012.
Daniel Radcliffe is back with his new movie The Woman In Black. It’s a bone chilling remake of a film from the ’80s. Ironically, Daniel actually scares very easily but he’s not afraid of ghosts. In this interview he tells us what really gives him the creeps.
Next time you’re struggling to make conversation, try asking this question: “If you could invite anyone (living or dead) to the perfect house party, who would it be?”
Graffiti6 is starting to make their North American invasion, and they are hitting up the Tonight Show. Does this sound familiar? Well the Beatles made the exact same journey over 40 years ago. Naturally, @jordans_life had to make some comparisons.
Nick plays World of Warcraft. Not only that, he’s the head of his guild, demonstrating that it IS possible to juggle being a hardcore gamer with being a top-selling recording artist.
During a LIVE interview on andPOP.com Nick Carter gave out a number and took phone calls from his fans. These were real phone calls from real fans who we gave exclusive access to one of the biggest recording artists of our generation.
There were great questions about music, fitness, the backstreet boys but the most popular question, however, was about his underwear. In this clip Nick talks about his his ‘Haynes’ and covering his fans with glow in the dark paint.
When releasing new music today, half the battle is online promotion. However, contests, signed merch and giveaways aren’t always the best solutions. When working on their latest album, Hedley came up with a brilliant idea, they decided to make trailers.
It’s hard to prepare for an interview with Hedley. So in this interview, we threw caution to the wind, got a 24 of beer and broadcast the interview live on our USTREAM (andPOP.tv). Eventually Jacob, Dave and @jordans_life ended up talking about hairy legs, their newest music video and more.
Diamandis from Marina and The Diamonds talks to us about her very serious disease. It’s called synaesthetic. And we lied, it’s not a disease. More like a cool condition. Diamandis explains further.
Would you be embarrassed if someone scrolled through your iPod? We sit down with Spee and Brendan to talk about the diverse music on their playlist.
Marina and The Diamonds are working on some new music, but Marina is being very secretive about it. Although the release has been delayed, she let’s us in on some secrets about the new album, and how alcohol changed her life.
Once upon a time, long before the sold out stadiums and screaming fans, little Howie D was a self-proclaimed “Dough Boy.” Apparently, his first love wasn’t music, it was Twinkies. In all fairness, Howie went on to much better things, however, for this interview the guys reminisce about some of their more embarrassing moments.
In life (and in the hip-hop industry especially), there’s an unwritten code: as you approach the veteran years of your career, you’re expected to lose a step in your game.
Twista did not get that memo.
In fact, with 18 years of experience in the business so far, the Chicago hip-hop legend doesn’t see a career decline anytime soon. Nope, on the contrary. He says that some of his best work is yet to come.
Think about that for a moment.
This is coming from the guy who’s had two of his past six studio albums go platinum and crack the top ten list on the U.S. Billboard top 200, collaborations with some of the music industry’s finest talent including Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Mariah Carey, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, T.I, and Akon, and not to mention, this is also the former Guinness World Record holder for the fastest rapper in the world.
But despite all of his accomplishments, the 35-year-old is still confident that there’s room to improve, and has thus named his seventh studio album Category F5, the term for the most severe and dangerous Tornado level known to mankind on the Fujita scale.
“When all is said and done,” Twista tells andPOP, “I want everyone to see Twista as a timeless artist.
“I really want people to see that ‘this n***a came into the game a while back and was blowing away people with his lyrics from the beginning all the way until the end, and still at 35, he’s still competing with some of the hottest n***as in the game now.”
With stakes so high and something planned to be so colossal, the rapper thought it was necessary to be more involved in the production of this record.
“There were a lot of things hands-on this time,” recalls Twista. “I used to have some people do some stuff for me, but this time I really dove into the mixing and listening to the first cuts.
“But this hands-on thing really challenged me, so it was like I was sitting somewhere in the basement going crazy like mad scientist, hard at work, trying to get the album the way I wanted it to sound.”
But hard work isn’t foreign to Twista. Born and bred on Chicago’s West Side, Twista- real name Carl Mitchell -is quite familiar with the feeling of grinding through the ranks, networking, and continuing to push forward. In fact, it’s safe to say that Twista is one of the best networking artists in the entire industry.
Case in show, at the time he released his third album Adrenaline Rush in 1997, Twista’s services as a rapid-tongued lyrical speed-demon were constantly desired by the majority of the biz. Kind of like the way someone requests a special hot sauce to give their food that extra spike, Twista was indeed that secret sauce, and the industry couldn’t get enough of him.
Timbaland, Ludacris, P. Diddy, Kanye West. The list goes on and on.
“Everyone knows I’m happy to help them out anytime,” explains Twista. “I put my heart and soul into everything, and the tracks that they ask me to jump on. So it feels good to know they have my back and can return the favor.”
And the original favor returned was well worth it. His 2004 album Kamikaze attracted, upon many, the likes of longtime Chi-town friend Kanye West and actor/singer Jamie Foxx, who all together created the album’s Grammy nominated star pupil Slow Jamz. The album’s popularity was so hot that it not only reached platinum status, but also earned the No. 1 spot on the U.S. Billboard top 200.
Ever since Kamikaze, however, Twista has yet to generate as much success.
The following two projects, The Day After (2005), and Adrenaline 2007 (2007) did do fairly well- the first going platinum and the second going gold – but somehow their growth was stunted.
It’s one of Twista’s main hopes that F5 will break that trend, and help reclaim his spotlight.
“When people hear this album,” says Twista, “I just want them to see me, and how I’m still a part of what’s going on.”
Helping him hopefully meet that goal are the A-listing cast that he attracted once again- no surprise there. Throwing out big names such as Kanye, Akon, Busta Rhymes, R. Kelly, and longtime friend on the production side, The Legendary Traxster, the cast can only be assessed as simply more fire power for this already machine gun rapper.
“I’m still so phased by it now,” says Twista. “It’s a great group to have in the studio, such top artists all working together to achieve excellence- nothing better than that.”
Dig deeper, and you’ll find that his allegiances with some of the guys go further than just past one-time gigs. Take him and Trax for example. Like peanut butter and jelly, they both go all the way back to when Twista first began spitting out beats on records. Or R. Kelly, who was a guest at Twista’s original release party in 1991. Or even Kanye, who Twista recalls spending tons of time with, at his house, while they were younger.
“Man, I was chilling with him when he was still getting into trouble with his mother,” Twista says laughing. “But overall, I guess I’m just lucky to have a great relationship with everybody.”
F5 also gives Twista a chance to put his career on a path towards “longevity”- a dream and word that he cannot repeat enough throughout the interview. Almost like a four syllable mantra.
“Hip-hop artists’ careers end way too quickly,” says Twista. “It’s sad, and it would be great if they can last as long as the way R&B artists do. Just like James Brown.”
Then he pauses.
“You know what, I wanna be like the Jason Voorhees of rap,” he adds, chuckling, referring to the machete-wielding hockey-masked fictional character in Friday the 13th who just never dies.
And for someone who has seen it all over the years- from the CD to the MP3 era -Twista points out the evolution of his playground, and the current “impure” state of the industry.
“Right now,” he explains, “everyone’s trying to make money off of it. It’s more impure than it has been in a long time.”
“But I think that everything has the potential to do a 360. Like there’s a lot of negatives that have come from the whole technology aspect in the music industry, but there’s also a lot of positives. You’ll hear a lot of raw talent from the internet.”
Adds the rapper, “I guess it’s that I like being a true artist, so I like when a person can really play an instrument, or is really talented to put together a release, or someone who can really rap their ass off. I would like to hear more of that. I’m not against the fans view, because that’s what they love. But I wanna even it out a little bit.”
Pingback: Twista’s Category: F5, A Vicious Vision « The Red Carpet