Chrisette Michele's "Joy" is beautiful.

http://uploaded.to/?id=2b1gt8

(via okp)

Who is Chrisette Michele?

Hip Hop fans would know her as the only vocalist to be on both Nas and Jay-Z's most recent albums ("Still Dreaming", "Can't Forget About You" and "Hope" on Nas' "Hip Hop Is Dead" and "Lost Ones" on Jay's "Kingdom Come").

She is putting out an album June 5th (the day after my birthday!) and she recently posted 4 songs on http://www.myspace.com/chrisettemichele. Out of the 4, I have fallen in love with this one.

Please check it out, and when you are done, leave a comment!

As an added bonus, I think hip hop heads will really like this one, also by Chrisette:

Good Girl: http://uploaded.to/?id=9gxqr9...

Oprah + Hip Hop + Don Imus = Interesting Times...

Rapper Common, record executive Kevin Liles, CEO of the Hip-Hop Summit Network (HHSN), Dr. Benjamin Chavis, and co-founder of both the HHSN and Def Jam Records, Russell Simmons.

Today on Oprah was part 2 of the town hall forum regarding Hip Hop and Don Imus. Yesterday peopel such as Stanley Crouch and India Arie spoke on this subject and today on the stage was Common, Kevin Liles, Benjamin Chavis and Russell Simmons. In the audience was lawyer Londell McMillan, who has been a lawyer for countless rappers.

Londell said that at the Hip Hop table, you have: corpoate america, artists & producers, consumers, radio. I agree with him when he says you can't blame the individuals on the stage (those pictured above) solely, but at the same time, you can't allow them to walk away from the situation and say "oh, it's society".

Lawyer Londell McMillan

Today's Oprah show was interesting because the women of Spelman really didn't let the men on the stage get away with some serious questions. Even when Oprah wasn't pressing particular questions and answers, the Spelman girls chimed in and made thier voice heard even though they were via satellite.

Once thing that Keven Liles said that I thought was ricidulous was that if you got to know him and Russell Simmons and Jay-Z, if you really got to know them then we would see that they aren't what they are so often depicted as.

Stanley said something interesting, which was that when white trailer trash is convicted of blowing up little girls, no one makes excuses, but when rappers call people bitches and niggers and hoes, people bring up slavery an Africa and are just marionettes. And then Kevil looked like he wanted to kick his ass right then and there.

About that new Rihanna single...

(That would be Rihanna above, in case you didn't notice, brilliantly hiding her forehead)

Thoughts:

So, in previous years, songs like Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” and Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” have reigned supreme over all radio stations during the summer and basically become that particular summer’s theme song.This year, even thought it is only April, I predict it will be Rihanna’s “Umbrella”.

Jay-Z may have messed up The Roots’s “Game Theory” promotion, and he may have neglected to make a video for the one song in history that was in need of a video (which would be he and Nas’ masterpiece “Black Republicans), but dammit, he was able to hit the first single for “Good Girl Gone Bad” out of the ballpark.

“Umbrella”, not unlike “S.O.S” before it, is a pop smash waiting to happen. The real hook here is, ironically, the hook to the song, which goes “You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, ella, hey, hey, hey”.

As strange as it reads on paper (more like ‘on the computer screen’, I guess), the hook is very catchy and instantly memorable and is what I think is the key to the success of this song. Rihanna’s doesn’t have a very powerful voice (though to be fair this hasn’t stopped countless of other singers in her genre from success) but the melody and subject matter of this song more than makes up for that.

Don’t believe me? Check it out yourself, and tell me what you think in the comments section:

(to access, replace the ‘??’ with ‘tt’ and copy and paste the url into your browser)

h??p://download.yousendit.com/966300D21560FDE1