The background, once again: This past Tuesday (yesterday), the two biggest names in hip-hop in terms of album sales, Kanye West and 50 Cent, both released their new albums - "Graduation" and "Curtis", respectively.
This showdown has been hyped for a long time, as the music industry tries to find new reasons to get fans to buy CDs by channeling their best Don King impersonation. Never the less, it has made for interesting stories. This post by Idolator last week cracked me up... the picture of Kanye and 50 Cent on Rolling Stone does look an awful like the Hall & Oates album cover. Though not as much as the face to face reenactment at the VMAs, only you get to see Kanye tippy-toeing just so he can get eye to eye with the much taller Fiddy. One astute commenter on Idolater compared the Rolling Stone cover to this Rocky poster.
Also worth noting that noted country musician (and Peyton Manning's special friend) Kenny Chesney also has an album dropping this week, making him a possible third party candidate to sneak in and take the title, if the two big dawgs split the vote, so to speak. The subtle introduction of Peyton Manning's friend allows me to pull this off as a sports-related post.
You can catch Kanye West's new video for "Good Life" (featuring T-Pain) over here at A Hot Mess.
It's a great video, and as everyone has pointed out already, it is directed by So Me, the French director who rose to
prominence, after directing the "D.A.N.C.E." video by Justice, seen below:
The punchline: Kanye flipped out at the Euro-Video Music Awards (as he always does) when the video by Justice beat him out for "Video of the Year", rushing the stage and interrupting their speech to point out that his video "cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it, I was jumping across canyons and sh*t!" If you can't beat 'em...
But since he did have a point, here's his video, for comparison:Billboard's early projections have Kanye West edging 50 Cent... "based on early store sales reports, "Graduation" could come in at the
575,000-700,000 range, while "Curtis" is being projected in the 500,000-600,000
range".
Of course, 50 Cent has promised to retire from solo albums if he gets outsold by Kanye this week. He's done a hell of a job marketing his album, pulling out all the stops. Apparently Myspace and Facebook weren't enough, so he took out a paid advertisement to promote the album on Second Life, and did a "live" Q&A after a concert:
This is the point where we're crossing into self-parody, okay? Via Idolator comes this photo below, of the "50 Cent" mobile selling albums in Crackstoria: 
And on the day I actually go in to work, too! Sh*t, do I have some bad timing or what? Great stuff, Idolator. Anyway, the Marathon Man and I are taking bets on how many of his own albums 50 Cent is going to buy just so he can beat Kanye... I'm going to go with 200,000....
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Ignore my grammatical error there. I hit "submit" just as I noticed the problem.
I've seen Manning out in Indy when he wasn't married. He seemed hetero...I'm pulling for Kanye here, the guy needs to win something...
Hey, his name is spelled "Kenny Chesney"! Damn it, man, what the hell is wrong with you? Kenny is THE premier musician in the country, bar none. You should see him strum that guitar. His strong hands moving in all directions, producing such sweet harmony...
I could buy the "Kenny Chesney is gay" rumors, but I don't buy the "Kenny Chesney is gay with Peyton Manning" rumors. I was just putting it out there.
Okay, okay... I fixed it. My bad, sorry I mispelled his name. Of course, spelling mistakes lead to about 40% of the comments I get, so don't acted too surprised I don't edit very well.
No problem, SML. I really did think that I was missing a joke about him.
I don't know or care too much if Peyton and Kenny are gay or not. I really wish a major athlete would just come out as gay already, and I don't mean in a "John Amiechi trying to sell books" kind of way - I mean like an active athlete.
This country needs to grow up and accept that there are gay people. There have been gay sports stars before, we just probably didn't know. Hell, we've had a gay President already, and a gay mayor here in NYC, so it's silly to think we haven't had a gay star athlete yet...
Hey, that's a low blow on George W. Bush. I believe his weaknesses involve whiskey and cocaine, not men. I kid. I assume you're referring to Honest Abe.
And yes, a star athlete needs to come out. And no, a WNBA player does not count because, for one thing, aren't they all gay? And second, can they be considered star athletes?
I was refering to James Buchanan... check his wikipedia entry out. Specific the part that deals with his relationship with William Rufus de Vane King ("Queen Nancy", as he was known by some of his peers).
The mayor is Ed Koch, who you can similarly check Wikipedia (or Google) for more info on. Koch's term was very "don't ask, don't tell", in that everyone knew it but no one talked about it.
I'ma let you finish, but andy had one of the best comebacks of all time!!! Hahaha
regardless of the musical skills of kanye west, he is still a jack@ss for what he did at the MVA's. I mean Obama even said so. And as such I simply felt the need to remind you guys never to forget that lol. It was hilarious when Obama called Kanye a jack@ss. Have you guys seen the video??
Do you actually know that his name is Kenny Chesney? If so, is calling him "Chesner" is just some joke I'm missing?
According to some sources, he and Peyton were more than just friends, which is part of the reason the Renee Zellweger marriage didn't last.