Subject: T-Pain

• CD Review: Kanye West -- Graduation

  September 18, 2007

• Gorilla Zoe – Welcome To The Zoo - Grade: D-

  September 27, 2007

• Last Night: KMEL Block Party at Oracle Arena

  August 8, 2008

• SF Weekly Interview: E-40

  By Tamara Palmer It's now been more than 20 years since Earl Stevens (aka E-40) put his first independent record out on the streets of the Bay Area and set out on a mission to put his hometown of Vallejo on the international rap map and his colorful phraseology into the mouths of society at large, you smell me? On the eve of his 11th studio album Ball Street Journal, which will be released on Tuesday (and features guest stars like Snoop Dogg, Bun B, Game, Akon and T-Pain), we spoke with the

  November 21, 2008

• MP3 of the Day: E-40

  (Photo from E-40's MySpace page)E-40 is no stranger to clever puns, and the title of the Vallejo heavy's latest release, The Ball Street Journal, shows the rapper isn't slowing down the slang any time soon. The album,  featuring 40's signature rubber tongue alongside guests like Snoop Dogg, Bun B, Game, Akon and T-Pain, drops two years after the Ambassador of the Yay put this area on the map in a big way with My Ghetto Report Card. Check out the original (and remix) version of Ball Street'

  December 1, 2008

• Tuesday Night: Keys to the City at the Independent

  Keys to the City The Independent Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2009 Notes by Jackie Lopez The Independent was chilly on the inside Tuesday night. The venue had left the doors wide open and it just wasn't packed enough for the crowd to steal some body heat from others in attendance. Still, a good number showed up for Imeem.com's Keys to the City live show, featuring hip-hop artists previously showcased on the site in documentary form. Keys to the City has followed underground act U-N-I around in Inglewood, R

  December 11, 2008

• Busted Rhymes: The Top 10 Most Preposterous Rap Songs of 2008

  By Ben Westhoff Hip-hop A-listers including Rick Ross, Akon and Plies were caught grossly exaggerating their gangster credentials this year. (Turns out they were painfully law-abiding. The horror!) But even if your favorite rapper wasn't caught in a lie, you can bet he or she put out a hilariously absurd record or two in 2008. Here are the most preposterous rap songs of 2008. RICK ROSS, FEATURING T-PAIN "The Boss" (Def Jam) Though Rick Ross claimed on his debut album, Port of Miami, to know

  December 16, 2008

• The Year in Music: 2008's Top Ten Pop Songs

  By Annie ZaleskiPop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious. The following ten singles saturated the Top 40 -- or what passes for hit-oriented radio in this topsy-turvy musical climate -- while proving that accessibility doesn't necessarily preclude creativity. CHRIS

  December 17, 2008

• Top Ten Dance Collections of 2008, Both Mixed and Unmixed

  By Randall RobertsAny knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry and synthetic to wet and gushy), rhythm tracks can be tempo-tweaked with an upward toggle to change a Timbaland beat into a Chromeo one. Add some T-Pain-esque pitch-correction vocal

  December 22, 2008

• Top Ten Hip-Hop Albums Of 2008

  By Dan Leroy A couple of weeks ago, an expert on the Harry Potter series told an audience of high school kids how lucky they were to have this Big Shared Experience--these seven books and 41,000 words in common. What does Harry Potter have to do with hip-hop in 2008? In an age when many year-end lists should be subtitled "Ten More Albums You've Never Heard of and Will Never, Ever Hear," plenty. Technology has made the world smaller, and in response, we've found smaller and smaller worlds to

  December 29, 2008

• Hitsville: The Year in Music, by the Numbers

  By Randall Roberts You don't need a half-wit music critic to tell you it's been a remarkable year for America, one historians will be discussing and researching for centuries to come. War, financial collapse, politics, technology: All have been dinner-table topics for many Americans. Racial barriers in 2008 were demolished by a Midwestern black man, and gender barriers were hurdled by an Arkansan and an Alaskan.Democracy has a few awesome new dance moves rolling into the Obama presidency, and i

  December 31, 2008

• Town Bizness Cancels SF Show

  EKAphotographyTown Bizness Too $hort's highly-anticipated supergroup Town Bizness  has canceled their scheduled March 27 show at the Grand Ballroom. No official reason was given for the cancellation, and the show has yet to be rescheduled. A representative for $hort's label Up All Nite, reached over the phone from Atlanta, said he didn't know anything about any Bay Area shows, adding that he was waiting to talk to the legendary rapper about the Town Biz project. Another source with close

  March 18, 2009

• Al Green goes back to the basics

  September 17, 2008

• A brief history of vocal fakery from Zapp to "Lollipop"

  June 25, 2008

• Donna Summer

  Crayons (Burgundy S)

  June 11, 2008

• Foxy Brown

  May 21, 2008

• The infamy rollercoaster that is R. Kelly's life

  December 12, 2007

• Is Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah as Dumb as He Sometimes Acts?

  October 31, 2007

• Kanye West

  Graduation (Island Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella)

  September 12, 2007

• My Name Is Earl

  E-40 blows up, and takes the rest of the Bay Area with him

  March 15, 2006

• Mixtape Shmixtape

  Wherein we review Yay Area mixtapes of the day

  December 7, 2005

• We Want Candy

  August 29, 2007

• Goapele's Extreme Makeover

  Before...​ When last we saw Oakland singer Goapele--back in 2005--she was a socially-conscious neo-soul hippie, surrounded by fairytale-esque flowers and rainbows on the cover of her second album Change It All. Her music ranged from Lynda Perry-penned romantic ballads ("Dark Side of the Moon") to hyphy love songs ("Different," with Clyde Carson) to retro-80s rave-ups ("Love Me Right") to syrupy duets with Dwele ("You") to subtle rabble-rousing ditties ("Change It All," "Find A Way"). It was an

  August 12, 2009

• Just Tweet It

  September 23, 2009

• T-Pain DataSF = Tinny Voiced Do-Gooder Web Apps?

  There's an app for that...​Calling all computer-whiz nerds: not one, but two Bay Area-based Web application contests were announced this week. First, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has been helping to promote the DataSF App contest, which challenges entrants to create civic-minded applications based on the newly available government data featured on the new clearinghouse of city data (he even wrote about it here, and tweeted about writing about it here. Naturally, we're writing about him twe

  October 2, 2009

• Kraftwerk's Anthologie makes up for lost time

  October 7, 2009