Music Notes | How You Can, Like Rihanna, Achieve Pop Superstardom Without Dancing

Rihanna is one of my favorite pop stars and style icons. But surely by now, we’ve all noticed her inability (or unwillingness?) to do any real heavy lifting when it comes to dancing, normally a pop star prerequisite. However, her saving grace is that she can move, and it took her a while to even fall into doing that. With a distinctive vocal quality, undeniable good looks and genuine star appeal, not dancing has never been a factor in her mammoth success. Not yet at least.

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Music Notes | Just In, MTV Releases Own Hot Rapper List

This time, Eminem also tops MTV‘s even wacker list of the “hottest” rappers. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more deluded than BET‘s Jay-Z omission, MTV went ahead and gave me a glimpse into a world where people wear shoes as gloves, use their toothbrushes as Q-Tips and serve Vaseline on Triscuits for brunch..

How is Drake going to rank higher than Weezy? And how can B.o.B. make the list and not T.I.? Illogical.

And I’d think Nelly be able to catch a break with his MTV homies but their list appears to not take into account anyone that hasn’t released a record within the last several months, favoring current radio stars like Nicki Minaj and Waka Flacka Flame.

BET, you better thank MTV.

(Via Urban Daily)

Music Notes | BET’s (…Yeah) Top 10 Rappers of the 21st Century

Like many hip hop fans, I skeptically tuned in to BET‘s “Top 10 Rappers of the 21st Century” special. While one of my tweeps pointed out that the century is no where near over, I excused BET for this as even I do not know how to refer to the last decade (um, the oughts?).

BET assembled an esteemed panel of hip hop heads to determine the real shakers and bakers of the last decade. Though I only recognized about half of these people, I trusted them for reasons unknown to me and as I would quickly discover, against my better judgement. BET’s own Big Tigger (you may also remember him from his verse on R. Kelly‘s “Snake”) led the discussion with his signature joviality.

Tigger noted that the group would be using a preset criteria to gauge which artists should make the list. Commercial success, cultural influence, lyrical content, flow and social media presence were among the criteria for which the artists would be measured. (Did they say sales? Well, I guess that that weeds out the Lupe Fiasco types.)

I tuned in a bit late but it wasn’t long before they started dropping bombs over the Baghdad that is me. Where do I begin going in?

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Music Notes | My Top 16 Videos of the Last Decade

I should say this last decade was the one where I was most cognizant of the music video — I mean, my teenage years began and ended in the oughts…

Even still, this was by no means an easy list to compile. Let’s just say, a lot of my favorites were made in 1999… And this list certainly is not complete — T.I.’s “What You Know” wasn’t even on YouTube! But I love the videos I chose, and they certainly fit my lone criterion for this exclusive list — and that is, I absolutely cannot turn my head away when they come on!

Check out my video picks — in no particular order — after the jump. And weigh in! I know I have a lot of saucy picks — what do you think?

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Music Notes | Does Hip Hop Have a Past?

That was one of the topics posed on the first episode of the second season of “The Melissa Cole Show” in the Music Notes segment with your humble correspondent. Do I think so? Well…yes…I think hip hop does have a past and that statement can’t be any more far from the truth, but there IS a generational gap. Let me explain…

Hip hop is about 30 years old. I grew up with it (so I’m telling my age!) and I remember “old school” acts like Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy and a host of others (just too many to name here, so don’t get mad me). The music was great. For me, back in the ’80s and early ’90s it was all about the clothes, the lingo, those great hip hop anthems, and having fun (pretty much like things now, except today it’s all about “flossin” and “swag”).

But to Star’s point in his web exclusive on VladTV.com where he declares that Soulja Boy and other new hip hop generation acts are THE TRUTH, he sums it up well by saying that hip hop “disposable.” But I think you can pretty much say that for all music. To me, only a handful of real music lovers can appreciate music from the past, whereas on today’s music scene, this generation seems to be of the attitude that if it’s not about “right now” then they couldn’t care less.

What do you think??? Talk to me people!!!

Kenneth “Kenny” Williams is the music contributor for “The Melissa Cole Show” and CEO of In Your Face Records.