CNBC’s Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood, a Duke alum, weighed in on ABC leaking President Barack Obama’s now infamous “jackass” comment about Kanye West at the VMAs over on Michael Calderone’s Blog on Politico. Harwood said he deemed the comment off the record.
“The custom in television, as I understand it, is that when you have an interview of this kind, the little chit-chat when you are getting ready to sit down to do the real interview is off the record,” Harwood said.
“It’s one of those things that’s like an understanding, as people have understandings with sources,” he continued. “And if you have a relationship of trust with someone, as I feel I do with the White House and the president, specifically, I felt like I should honor it.”
Post Script: I have to pass this along. Some people have noticed a certain Michael Jackson dancer had not quite mastered the “Smooth Criminal Lean” in time for the VMA’s. Check out the 3:34 mark on this video. You’ll know who it is. The King of Pop would not be pleased.
11:30 PM Personally, I think the Michael Jackson movie This Is It reeks of his family trying to cash in on his death. These were rehearsals after all, and for a performer who was such a perfectionist, he would probably hate for people to watch anything but the finished product. Til next year.
11:24 PM Jay-Z closes out the night with Alicia Keys and “Empire State of Mind.” Props to Young for performing the best song on The Blueprint 3 instead of his latest single like “DOA” or “Run this Town.” Jay-Z sounds a little husky, which for all I know could be another New Moon cross promotion. As Sam Schlinkert tweeted earlier today, “Empire State of Mind sounds like sex on my speakers.” This is in the discussion for greatest Jay-Z track, even with the weird Anna Wintour reference. And that’s how we’ll remember the 2009 VMA’s, a show that started with a bang, ended with a bang, and had a lot of crap in between. We also might remember it as the night that we finally buried racism.
11:14 PM Are you happy, Kanye? Beyonce, predictably and deservedly, wins Video of the Year. She brings out Taylor Swift, who kind of steals the spotlight. I think the nation just had another legendary race relations moment. And we didn’t even need Obama or beer!
11:11 PM How many times tonight do you think Kevin Lincoln has told the people sitting around him that he interviewed Wale? He should walk around with a yellow sign that reads “Warning: Names Falling.”
11:02 PM The nipple pastie lives! In a tasteful homage to Lil Kim, Pink performs with only a glittery heart covering her left breast. She is also on trapeze. Hey, Pink. Britney called. She wants her circus theme back.
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Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music label (the acronym stands for Getting Out Our Dreams) is gathering a pretty impressive stable of artists. A glance at the roster shows long-established names like Common and John Legend alongside up-and-comers like Kid Cudi and Fonzworth Bentley. And right at the top (alphabetically) of these names is Big Sean, known for having featured on two songs from Mike Posner and the Brain Trust’s mixtape A Matter of Time. Well, at least at Duke he is.
Sean’s making his way back to campus this Wednesday for an LDOC performance with Mike Posner, hot off the heels of his April 16 mixtape U Know Big Sean—Finally Famous Vol. 2. The mixtape clocks in at a bloated 30 tracks, nine of which are either skits or shoutouts that clock in at under 1:30, generally focused on establishing the legitimacy of Big Sean. They are unnecessary. While the songs themselves don’t quite leave the listener begging for more, they do point to a not inconsiderable amount of talent and potential.
Being a free mixtape, Sean can lean on the crutch that he won’t have on his upcoming full-length debut, Finally Famous, which is due sometime in ‘09: dynamite, battle-hardened beats. Granted, some of his originals are strong as well, “Getcha Some” and “Desire, Want, Need” especially. But what these mixtapes are really about is the rapper, and by the end of the hour-plus one gets a pretty good idea of what Sean’s about: clothes, self-promotion and being fresh. Kanye doesn’t stray too far when he’s picking these guys, apparently.
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Will having children make Kanye happy? Courtesy rapnews.fr
Okay, okay. I am aware that there are other musicians aside from Kanye West, and I promise that this will be the last Kanye/Kid Cudi-related “Pop Psychology” entry for a while. That said, I think the most recent single from 808s and Heartbreaks tackles a very important issue. In a polarizing (and perhaps seizure-inducing) video, Kanye explains how all of his success has come at the expense of any meaningful familial connections. More specifically, he expresses his disappointment in not having kids of his own. In the opening lines, Kanye sings, or I guess Autotunes:
My friend showed me pictures of his kids
And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs
He said his daughter got a brand new report card
And all I got was a brand new sports car.
It’s a poignant and sincere song from a performer more commonly known for his bling than his blatant honesty. Kanye acknowledges that despite the fact that he has, or could have, any material good he would ever want, he is missing out on the deeper happiness that comes with family. Yet, while Kanye’s words seem intuitively accurate, a recent article in The Psychologist points to a different conclusion—namely, that having children actually has no effect on happiness. The author, Nattavudh Powdthavee, discusses how “over the past few decades, social scientists like me have found consistent evidence that there is an almost zero association between having children and happiness.”
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I guess "Still Unsatisfied Life" is less appealing. Courtesy Kanye West.
Kanye West’s 2007 hit “Good Life” is really just a more catchy version of a lot of bad hip hop songs. In the track, which has a very entertaining video that can be found here, West simply lists off all of the possessions and sexual conquests that he believes will make him happy. He raps about a continual stream of flashy cars and flashier women before eventually concluding that “having money’s not everything, not having it is.”
It’s clear that material (and corporal) goods are all that matters to Yeezy, as he poignantly admits, “I always had a passion for flashin.” In the middle of the song, he even rhetorically asks his listeners:
Have you ever popped champagne on a plane,
While getting’ some brain?
Whipped it out, she said “I never seen snakes on a plane.”
It’s clear what makes Kanye happy, or at least it’s clear what Kanye thinks makes him happy. However, a new field of research called Positive Psychology, which focuses on just what brings people the most joy in their life, is directly challenging many of Kanye’s lyrical assumptions. In the past decade, psychologists have found some interesting and perhaps even counter-intuitive findings regarding human happiness.
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