Jay returns to the studio to reflect on his past after seeing Ridley Scott’s American Gangster:

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.

Michael Eric Dyson discusses hip-hop:

Commercial pressures mean that in some ways, rap is a victim of its own success. And critics shouldn’t forget that jazz, in its early days, was considered as scurrilous as rap is now. Hip-hop culture in general, and rap in particular, comes with an intricate embedded politics — and at its best, Dyson says, “hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.”

The reading of Know What I Mean? took place at the Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

Photoshop’s new logo gets not even one positive comment. I guess folks aren’t seeing what’s possible.

I can’t get Hong Nhung’s “Tia Nang Cuoi Cung” out my head, thanks to little Eric!

NPR prolifes one of my favorite jazz pianists, Erroll Garner:

Perhaps best known as the composer of “Misty,” Erroll Garner was also one of the most original, intuitive and exciting pianists to emerge during the modern jazz era. Garner’s significance as a major jazz innovator easily rivals his status as a successful composer. His approach to melody, harmony, and especially rhythm were fresh and inventive.

Listen to the entire program here.

Quite amusing acutally:

G’day Donny,
Came across your site a couple of months ago. I sometime enjoy the useless information posted there. Thanks for sharing. What happens to the blog?

Here’s another enjoyable useless information: The sexiest tattoo ever. Again, less is more!

Tung Duong does not give a fuck what you think. You can call him gay, feminine, freaky or whatever, but you have to respect his musical sensibility. While most of the young singers can’t break away from the pop bubbles, he takes his music to another planet. Working with Do Bao, an imaginative producer, Tung Duong reinvents himself once again on Nhung O Mau Khoi Lap Phuong.

Since his jazz-breakthrough Chay Tron debuted three years ago, Tung Duong has established himself as one of the idiosyncratic performers in the Vietnamese music scene. He has no fear for turning himself into the characters in his song through visual appearance and vocal manipulation. He not just sings about a particular character; he is the character. In the bizarre “Noi Khat,” he transforms into a kid voice to express Huyen Ngoc’s weird lyrics about a woman thirsting for a child. The arrangement gets creepy; his voice gets creepier. Listening to the title track, which written and produced by Do Bao, is like taking a trip to a kaleidoscopic ecstasy where Tung Duong drowns his soul into a pool of bleak, serene chaos. Tran Tien’s “Nhuc Nhoi” paints an odd image of a lonely soldier returning from the war and a woman lusting to be touched. The upbeat production and his painful moan “oi a” served as drug music.

NOMKLP is obviously not cut out for everyone. Different folks like different strokes. Some like Pepsi, some like Coke. Comparing to Chay Tron, this album is much harder to chew on. Tung Duong is way out there and Do Bao’s productions are much more intricate (with the mixture of new age, chill-out, rock, electronic) than his infamous work on Nhat Thuc.

Nguyen Khang’s new album, Ta Muon Cung Em Say, is a cop-out: He stays in his comfort zone; he covers candy tunes; and he abandons artistic daring for formulaic boring. With such a unique of a voice, he could push his craft into a higher level, but instead he chooses to play safe, which is a damn shame.

TMCES begins with the dated “Café Mot Minh.” Why bother rerecorded a song that not only every Vietnamese singer had sung, but also in the same acoustic guitar sound and the exact written melody every Vietnamese singer had done? The basic rule of cover is to make an old, popular tune sounds new. He redelivered Dieu Huong’s “Vi Do La Em” with an equivalent blandness and monotone he did the first round. On “Diem Xua,” his flow is slicker on the refreshing arrangement, yet lacking the rawness of emotion he brought to Trinh Cong Son’s lyricism before. “Tro Ve Mai Nha Xua” would have benefited from a string ensemble rather than a club remixed, but he desires to enter the popularity contest more than he would like to raise the musical bar. Fame is blinding him.

On the album cover, he sports a black tuxedo looking like a pimp surrounded by his hotties. His long-time collaborator Diem Lien returns with Quoc Hung’s “Vi Sao Em Oi.” Their duet is once again an opposite attraction where good girl goes for bad boy, and Nguyen Khang beefs up vocals to sound like a badass. Ngo Thuy Mien’s “Niem Khuc Cuoi” turns out to be not so great, even though Ngoc Ha and Nguyen Khang are two of the best vocalists among their peers. What didn’t work is that they don’t seem like a believable couple. The only thing they might have in common is their height. Surprisingly, Nguyen Hong Nhung, his partner in crime, steals all the duets. Truc Ho’s “Gio Da Khong Con Nua” is a lustful pleasant from a sensualist-meets-bohemian romance.

TMCES is actually not a bad album, but rather a disappointing one. He chooses to commercialize more than to challenge himself.

The most creative hair designs I have ever seen: Thai Villages and Thai Temple.

Photo by Nodate