Video: SNL "Blizzard Man"

Ludacris & T-Pain come face to face with the Master.

Ludacris In 'Talks' To Tour With T.I. And Young Jeezy, Says Theater Of The Mind Is A 'Classic'

(swiped from MTVNews)

'It's a movement, man,' Atlanta-based MC says of new record.

"I feel like this album is a collectors' item," Ludacris said about his November 24 release. "Not only do I feel it's classic — it's a collectors' item. It's a movement, man. Moral to the story is, this album, I'll provide you with the audio — the rest is up to the theater of your mind."

Luda is also planning a tour, and he wants to bring some guys from his Southern hometown along for the ride.

"I haven't confirmed anything yet," he explained. "It's little talks here and there. But I'll put it out there: I would love to do a tour where it's me, T.I. and [Young] Jeezy. Me, Tip and Jeezy would be outrageous. But nothing is confirmed yet."

'Cris is thinking big like some of his peers. On Monday night, it was announced that Lil Wayne, T-Pain, Keyshia Cole and Gym Class Heroes are going on the road together, so why wouldn't the Kings of Atlanta team up?

"That's great," 'Cris said of different hip-hop dignitaries teaming up for a big concert series. "I think that sh-- is phenomenal."

Luda's Theater of the Mind has no shortage of what he calls "co-stars" — co-stars, because he promises that every song is cinematic.

"It's co-star heavy for me. I've always liked working with other artists, whether it's been me on their song or me inviting people on other songs," he said. "I worked with artists on this album because I loved the competition level — it puts people on their A-game. I wanted to compete against them. It's competition at its finest. It's kinda like when you play basketball and you're friends with people on the other team — you shake hands with people afterward, but it's war."

Luda's sparring partners include both Jay-Z and Nas on "I Do It for Hip Hop" and T.I. on "Wish You Would." Common and legendary Hollywood filmmaker Spike Lee partner up on "Do the Right Thang," while others such as Rick Ross, the Game, Plies and Lil Wayne make cameos on other tracks.

Kanye, Killers, Ludacris Releases Pushed Up a Day

(swiped from Pitchfork Media)

Haven't you heard? Monday's the new Tuesday, and Tuesday's the new Saturday, or something. According to Billboard.com, Island Def Jam has pushed up both the physical and digital release dates of three sure-to-be-successful LPs-- Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak, The Killers' Day & Age, and Ludacris' Theater of the Mind-- to Monday, November 24, one day before their previously planned Tuesday, November 25 street dates.

The reason for the break with tradition? Why, it's all "an attempt to capitalize on the Thanksgiving shopping weekend," which apparently will last all week. Triple kegger at the record store, ya'll. (Or, if you're heading to Best Buy on Sunday, November 23, to pick up Chinese Democracy, it's a quadruple kegger.)

• Video: Kanye West: Love Lockdown [live on the Ellen DeGeneres Show]
• Video: The Killers: Human [from the forthcoming Day & Age LP]
• Video: Ludacris (ft. T-Pain): One More Drink [from the forthcoming Theater of the Mind LP]

Game Slams Jesse Jackson -- Twice -- On New Tracks With Lil Wayne, Nas

(swiped from MTV News)

MC also challenges Jay-Z, G-Unit (again) on tracks from forthcoming LP.

"It's a hundred different messages you can take from the song," Game said on Monday afternoon, cruising through Houston on his way to a radio station. "It's called 'My Life,' so tune in." The video for the song, from his forthcoming LP L.A.X.,premieres on "FNMTV" Friday (starting at 8 p.m. ET).

"And I ain't no preacher, but here's my Erick Sermon," he raps on the record. "So eat this black music, and tell me how it tastes now/ And f--- Jesse Jackson 'cause it ain't about race now."

Later he adds "Walk through the gates of hell, see my Impala parked in front with the high beams on/ Me and the devil sharin' chronic blunts/ Listening to The Chronic album/ Playin' backwards, shootin' at pictures of Don Imus for target practice."

It's very provocative — and he goes after Jackson even harder on a different track from the album, "Letter to the King," that leaked on Thursday (August 14).

The song — a duet with Nas — has bars that are lyrically astonishing, and will probably be the pair's most talked-about collaboration yet. Of course, the "King" the duo refers to is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At times, the two talk directly to the late civil-rights leader as if he were still alive; at others, they ponder aloud about what could have been.

"If Dr. King marched today, would Bill Gates march?" Game raps on the third verse. "I know Obama would, but would Hillary take part?/ I feel the pain of Nelson Mandela/ 'Cause when it rains it pours, I need Rihanna's umbrella/ For Coretta Scott [King's] teardrops/ When she got the phone call that the future just took a f---ing headshot."

If you don't remember anything else about the song, Game's controversial last line will stay with you.

"I wonder why Jesse Jackson ain't catch him before his body dropped," he asks. "Would he give me the answer?/ Probably not."

At press time, Game had not responded to MTV News' requests for comment on why he's going after Jackson — a longtime King associate, who was present at his assassination in 1968 — so hard, but he did speak with us at length about L.A.X. in Houston earlier this week.

Several other noteworthy tracks from the album hit the Net on Thursday (August 14), including "Angel," which features classic name-dropping from an outspoken Game while Common guest-drops metaphors. There's also a song called "Ya Heard" that features the Compton track-slayer engaging in some rap repartee with Ludacris.

Game described the album as "just me taking flight, man. This album is gonna be real special — from beginning to end, it's gonna knock."

Recently on KISS-FM in Phoenix, Game admitted that he's a fan of Jay's music, but predicted that a battle between the two of them would be one-sided — against Jigga.

"I'm young, stupid, disrespectful," Game said. "I haven't lost a beef. I killed a whole group limb by limb — see what happened to G-Unit."

Speaking of the Unit, estranged group member Young Buck appears in the video for "My Life," which also co-stars Lil Wayne.

"Buck is in the video for a split second, robbing the liquor store!" Game smiled. "Lil Wayne came out to California — he re-routed his tour bus, made a U-turn for me, [so we could] shoot the video. I think the video is gonna do some great things."

L.A.X. is due on August 26.

For Jay-Z, Inspiration Arrives in a Movie (More News On American Gangster)

(Swiped from The New York Times)

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19 — Jay-Z, the rap superstar and president of Def Jam Records, has quietly returned to the studio to record an album of new songs inspired by the forthcoming movie “American Gangster,” his first “concept” album and second CD in less than a year.

The album, which his label plans to release in early November, came together over the past few weeks after Jay-Z was shown the film, directed by Ridley Scott, in which Denzel Washington portrays Frank Lucas, a early 1970s Harlem heroin kingpin.

Following the underwhelming critical and commercial reception for his “Kingdom Come” CD late last year — and as Jay-Z grapples with whether to stay on in his post at Def Jam — the tie-in to a major motion picture gives him a chance to rebound strong and extend his reach to a wider audience.

At the same time, it could help Universal Pictures excite younger moviegoers, whom it will need to make money on a costly film with a troubled history. Though it’s not uncommon for films to be released alongside “inspired by” albums, it is rare for them to be recorded by a single artist, let alone by a major star who had no role in the movie.

In an hourlong telephone interview, Jay-Z, 37, who has spoken of spending his early years in Brooklyn both rapping and drug dealing, said that the movie had tremendous resonance for him and had sparked a burst of creative activity that even he found surprising. He has already recorded nine tracks, almost every one prompted by a specific scene.

“It was like I was watching the film, and putting it on pause, and giving a back story to the story,” he said.

The movie, set for a Nov. 2 release, depicts the Lucas character as an underworld Horatio Alger and an innovator who, despite keeping a low public profile, rose to such power that he was able to defy the Mafia bosses who had traditionally dominated the New York drug trade before being brought down by a special narcotics task force. (Its leader is played by Russell Crowe.) Jay-Z said he thought his fans would be struck by the image of a black man reaching such heights of success, even on the wrong side of the law, much like such ruthlessly efficient Al Pacino antiheroes as Tony Montana and Michael Corleone.

“It immediately clicked with me,” said Jay-Z, who has made passing references to gangster movies in previous recordings but has never delved so deeply into the genre. “Like ‘Scarface,’ or any one of those films, you take the good out of it, and you can see it as an inspiring film.”

A $100 million gritty period piece that largely takes place before the birth of hip-hop or many of its fans, “American Gangster” marks a sizable gamble for Universal, which fired one director, Antoine Fuqua, and scrapped the project at a cost of $30 million before restarting it with Mr. Scott in charge and with Mr. Crowe in place of Benicio del Toro. (Though they share a name, Universal Pictures and Universal Music Group, the parent of Def Jam, are no longer corporate brethren.)

Mr. Scott said he cast the rappers T. I., RZA and Common in supporting roles, hoping to appeal to a younger audience. But Brian Grazer, the film’s producer, said that Mr. Washington also pressed him more than a year ago to consider asking Jay-Z to do the film’s soundtrack.

“I just didn’t think there’d be enough for Jay-Z to do,” Mr. Grazer said, explaining that he resisted because he and Mr. Scott felt the movie required an authentic 1970s feel.

Instead Jay-Z offered to make his own album and release it in conjunction with the movie; Def Jam is also releasing the film’s official soundtrack, which features songs by Bobby Womack, the Staple Singers and Sam & Dave. Jay-Z plans to attend the film’s premiere but any cross-promotion deals have not been completed, executives said. The movie’s trailer already includes an older Jay-Z song, “Heart of the City.”

Mr. Grazer, who visited Jay-Z in the studio last week and heard seven of the new songs, said he was impressed by how the movie had “ignited all these memories of his childhood and how he grew up and the experiences he had, and the moral crossroads he had constantly in his life that were so parallel to Frank Lucas’s.”

Though Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, said he’d never heard of Mr. Lucas while growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he still glimpsed much of himself in Mr. Washington’s portrayal: “The way he carried himself. The way he went about things. The way he wasn’t loud, but he was very strong.”

Echoing the “stop snitchin’ ” campaign among some hip-hop fans and artists, however, Jay-Z hastened to dissociate himself from Mr. Lucas’s decision to cooperate with the authorities to get a more lenient sentence.

“Me, I believe you choose your path and you walk your path, and whatever happens you got to accept it,” Jay-Z said.

In “No Hook,” a song on the new album, he says:

Please don’t compare me to other rappers, Compare me to trappers
I’m more Frank Lucas than Ludacris, And Lude is my dude, I ain’t trying to dis
Just like Frank Lucas is cool, but I ain’t tryin’ to snitch
I’m-a follow the rules, no matter how much time I’m-a get
I’m-a live and die with the decisions that I’m-a pick

Jay-Z’s new album is certain to punctuate what had been a year of relatively slow sales for Def Jam until the huge chart debut this week of Kanye West’s CD “Graduation.” Jay-Z is said to be mulling whether to extend his three-year employment contract, return to recording and touring full time or explore other options. In the interview he deflected questions about his future. “I would love to work it out” and stay at Def Jam, he said, but he added that he was wavering and would do some “soul-searching” after finishing the album.

His decision to record “American Gangster” is a surprise, given that his last album was released less than a year ago. “Kingdom Come” sold about 1.5 million copies, his lowest figure for a full studio album since 1997. And its elaborate marketing campaign, including alliances with Budweiser and ESPN, prompted some suggestions that Jay-Z’s branching-out into other business endeavors, and taste for the jet-setting life, had begun to undermine his street credibility.

He made no apologies for his transformation into a global brand. “Jay doesn’t live in Brooklyn any more,” he said. Rather, he ventured that “Kingdom Come” was a little too “sophisticated” for some listeners. “American Gangster,” he said, would be a return to a tougher, more unflinching view of street life.

“Watching that film, it brought back all these memories,” he said. “It took me back to those emotions.”

Illustrating his point, he launched again into “No Hook”: “ ‘Poor me, Dad was gone, finally got my Dad back, liver bad, he wouldn’t live long, it snatched my Dad back.’ ”

He added that the song “takes you through this journey — his journey, my journey — so many people’s journey that come from the areas that we come from.”

Throughout the interview Jay-Z sounded almost jubilant talking about his creative process, and he repeatedly interrupted himself to try out his latest rhymes:

“ ‘Mindstate of a gangster from the 40’s, meet business mind of Motown’s Berry Gordy,’ ” he rapped from “Pray,” another new song.

“How crazy is that?” he said giddily.

And, in another rap:

This is the genesis of a nemesis
Mother America’s not witnessed since
the Harlem Renaissance
birthed black businesses

“I’m not even joking with you,” he said, laughing. “It’s out-of-body experiences at this point.”