The MTV Video Music Awards 2009 is probably the weirdest to date.  Supposedly, the highlight of the show was the much-awaited tribute to the late Micheal Jackson by his sister Janet and the queen Madonna herself.  But there have been numerous scores that really eclipsed the opening number in memory of Jackson. For one, you get a very interesting medieval rendering from Lady GaGa which shocked audiences (as usual) and then another asshole stunt from (the guy who I thought was scratched off the guest list after the last fiasco), Kanye West took place. Again, acting like a complete hillbilly, he grabs the mic from Taylor Swift as the 19-year-old accepts her Best Female video award to tell audiences that Beyonce’s video was the best of that year. Of course, Beyonce looks shellshocked by this unexpected turn of events and West is booed off the stage, the works.

Kanye the douche

Way to crush a teenager’s self-esteem. West was reportedly scolded by Swift’s mother to which he later apologized on his blog.

In other  news, the US Open semifinals concluded with an ugly unsportsmanlike display from Serena Williams, a disruption that caused her a crucial point to the game.

Here’s the report that ran on Yahoo Sports news:

Defending champion Serena Williams was charged with a point penalty on match point after yelling at a line judge for a calling a foot fault on her previous serve. The ruling gave Kim Clijsters a 6-4, 7-5 victory in their semifinal match, which had been delayed 32 hours because of rain.

After the line judge called the foot fault with Serena, the youngest Williams sister intimidatingly stared her down before screaming at the official with a jabbed finger. After a few seconds, Serena turned back around to serve, thought better of it and resumed the badgering. The chair umpire then called over the line judge to ask what Serena had said, rules officials were summoned, a brief summit occurred at the net and it was determined that Serena would be assessed a point penalty for a conduct violation. The point gave Clijsters the match.  Williams was quoted saying, “I’m going to shove this ball down your fucking throat”.

It got worse from there. There were multiple profanities, more threats and a lot of pointing. Serena was soon defending herself against accusations that she had threatened to kill the lines judge. Even John McEnroe said it was a bit much.

Even if the foot fault was a wrong call from the line judge, it should not have been enough excuse for the outburst.

Oh well, cheers for my namesake for bagging the US Open grandslam!  Clijsters is indeed the queen of come back.

Kim Clijsters with her daughter enjoying the award ceremony of the US Open

The movie The Wackness starring Josh Peck and Ben Kingsley was so nostalgic.  It might be a classic Sundance bleeding heart movie, but you could easily forgive the theme when you listen to the music featured on the film.  It was the music of 1994 – such a great year for music, championing in that time are greats like A tribe called Quest and even The Smashing Pumpkins who really shook the scene with the release of Siamese Dream, which was in my opinion the best album they released.

But let’s talk about the state of Hip-hop now. The truth is, I’m a snob when it comes to mainstream Top 40 Rap, Hip-hop and RnB, if you could call it that.  It all began when these Hip-hop artists wanted to sound more like SoSoDef.   Suddenly, Hip-hop wasn’t soul music anymore, or talked about the harsh realities of racism and ghetto violence.  It wasn’t the music that we used to call in the 90’s as Urban.  The tripe you hear from Hip-hop these days are about grinding, girls on the side, car upgrades and partying.   Not that these wouldn’t count for realities, but where’s the depth?

I knew that the death of Tupac changed the face of hip-hop.  Kanye West is trying to revive part of the glory that belonged to that great era of Urban, but he doesn’t have the exquisite rhyme of old school artists nor enough humility to really overcome the insipidness of the mainstream that riddles his exposure. We can’t identify deep issues from the likes of new hip-hop artists like Eminem or Nelly or T-Pain.

The groups who managed to resist the trend of materialism that is evident in most Hip-hop music have disappeared in the background of the multimedia spectacularism, simply because they choose not to.  If you’re attentive enough, you realise that music pundits harp about them, appealing to everyone’s music sensibility.  But strangely, there’s just not enough promotion: most of the MTV generation just doesn’t buy in to that kind of music anymore.   The mainstream music entices its lot with people’s vanity and hype not their intelligence.

The Roots are one of those artists who have stood their ground.  In 2002, they released an album entitled Phrenology. Phrenology is the pseudo science of assessing the figure of someone’s head to determine their intelligence – an idea which used to justify racism.

Peace out.

The Roots – The Seed [Download] [Lyrics]