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| 3/12/04 |
Ask the Answer B!tch: All
Up Inside Celeb Ghettospeak Why do some celebrities--primarily white stars like Nick Carter
and Christina Aguilera, who make millions--insist on talking ghetto?
I grew up near "the projects," and I don't speak this
way. A.B. Replies: Nick Carter knows he's starting to sound like an emcee at the Apollo, and chances are, it's about money. Any pop historian could tell you that whitey has been cribbing off black musicians, including their speech patterns, since before Elvis. And most of the time--even when it involves the likes of Vanilla Ice--white people have profited nicely, a point obviously not lost on the Justin Timberlakes all up in this hizzy. "Hip-hop is the biggest thing out there," says Donna Wright, an Orlando-based manager who helped launch the careers of the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync and Pink. "Kids want to be hip-hop, even if they're not." Remember: White pop tarts love to collect genuinely hard-core rappers to boost their own street cred and broaden their demographic appeal. Hence the guest rapper, so often parachuted into the middle of an otherwise saccharine ditty, to add the all-important black-up. After a while, all that lucrative ghetto lingo ricocheting around the recording studio is bound to rub off on the kiddies. "It's the singer's way of saying, 'I ain't no bubblegum artist,' " notes the Hollywood Reporter's Miami bureau chief, Deborah Wilker. She has been covering music for 21 years, most of that time in Florida, ground zero for the boy-band boom. "It's just about young people looking for street cred, that's all." Well, street cred and a bigger line of credit. Speaking like you have no money can make you very rich. For every dat or sumpin' that leaves Timberlake's lips, a cascade of dollars (I mean dollas--er, chingy) comes flowing out of the hands of white teenagers. Hence Christina Aguilera, from Pittsburgh, re-emerges as X-Tina, from Da Burg, y'all. "These are people who are surrounded by so much artifice anyway," Wilker says. "Christina's hair isn't naturally jet-black Morticia Addams, either. It's all just another aspect of putting on a show." To their credit, not all young stars are necessarily so calculating about how they sound. "A lot of these people travel a lot," Wilker tells the Answer B!tch. "Listen to interviews with Elijah Wood. After living in New Zealand for a year and a half, he had a little accent. So, you can't always judge." Even washed-up--oops, I mean older--stars can end up sounding like a bad dub track if they're pretentious enough. Remember when Madonna had Anglo fever and sounded, for a while, like she had just eaten Robin Leach? Peace. I'm out. I mean Audi--er, I mean 5000. Or whatever.
'Wardrobe malfunction' added to lexicon The Janet Jackson bare breast incident during the Super Bowl halftime show is among this year's events recognized as changing the way we speak. A group that analyses the latest trends in word usage declared "wardrobe malfunction" as Hollywood's Top Word or Phrase for Impact on the English language. "There is no question that Hollywood has had a profound impact upon word choice and usage for Global English," said Paul JJ Payack, President of the Global Language Monitor. "'Wardrobe Malfunction' is but one example of a phrase that is destined to outlive the football game with which it is associated." The phrase became famous after Justin Timberlake snatched off part of Jackson's bustier on stage, revealing a breast clad only in a sun-shaped "nipple shield" in front of some 89 million viewers. Timberlake issued a statement shortly after the show apologizing and blaming the debacle on a "wardrobe malfunction." Rounding out the top five on the group's list: Bootylicious, extreme makeover, Gigli and Give it up!
April Fools Ball to benefit Children's Hopechest The April Fools Ball, a party benefiting Children’s
Hopechest, will feature live performances by OHNO, One Up, Tripp
Fontaine, Envoy, and Shoreline. Special appearance by Chris Kirkpatrick
of NSYNC. Upstairs electronic lounge
Gonna Be Me? Previously best known as a staple on the bedroom walls of junion-high girls the world over, Justin Timberlake has in the last year become an inspiration to a somewhat different demographic: maturing boy-band members. Who among the dancing-and-singing elite didn't watch the world's embrace of Timberlake's post-teen-pop watershed Justified and think, "Hey, I can do that?" His 'NSync bandmate JC Chasez, as a matter of fact. "It actually kind of happened by accident," the 27-year-old Chasez says of his new solo career. "I took a little break after ['NSync's 2001 album] Celebrity and ended up hooking up with [producer] Dallas Austin. He was working on somebody's else's project at the time, and they were kind of stuck in the writing process. He was like, 'Why don't you stop by the studio? I've always wanted to meet you." And I was like, 'Yeah, me too.'" That first powwow went well: After shooting the shit for "hours on end," Austin invited Chasez back the next day to "fool around" in the studio. The producer was finishing up work on the soundtrack to the Nick Cannon vehicle Drumline and had one slot left to fill for the album. Chasez told Austin he "wasn't really cutting records," but Austin convinced the singer just to write with him - that they'd get someone else to sing whatever they came up with. "So I'm like, 'Cool,'" Chasez laughs. "We ended up writing the song and I did the demo vocal, and he's like, 'No, dude, you have to sing this song. What reason do you have to not do it?'" Excuseless, Chasez relented, and so was born the marching-band funk of "Blowin' Me Up (With Her Love)." Drumline's signature tune and one of 2002's most unexpected pop highs. Schizophrenic, Chasez's full-length debut, follows that tune's lead: There's melodically insistent, rhythmically nimble dance-pop peppered with cool robot-brain sound effects; a giddy club jam Chasez cut with hard-drive maestros Basement Jaxx; some Lenny Kravitz-style strut; even a spaced-out slow jam called "Come to Me" in which Chasez admits, "When I'm alone I lie awake and masturbate." In its breadth and its grown-up sexuality, the disc is the convincing Prince homage to Justified's Michael Jackson tribute. "I tried anything, and I wasn't worried about breaking eggs," Chasez explains, adding that he was only interested in working with friends. "I told the record company, 'I just wanna go to the studio. Y'all don't bug me for like three months, and we'll see what happens. I don't need you to set me up with anybody.'" As for Timberlake's success, Chasez smartly views it as a home-court advantage. "J being successful keeps all of us out there because people will always identify him with the group to a certain extent. If he does well, it's good for us, and if I do well, it's good for them. Everybody wins."
Perabo Woos Timberlake in 'Edison' Plot LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Justin Timberlake has found an onscreen leading lady in Piper Perabo. The actress, who has starred in such features as "Cheaper by the Dozen," "Lost and Delirious" and "Coyote Ugly," will play the pop star's love interest in "Edison," Timberlake's feature acting debut. The $25 million indie project, written and to be directed by David Burke, starts shooting Saturday in Vancouver. Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey and LL Cool J star in the story of a young journalist (Timberlake) who uncovers an elite unit of corrupt cops. Realizing he's in over his head, he makes an uneasy alliance with a burned-out reporter (Freeman) and the district attorney's ace investigator (Spacey). Perabo next stars in "The I Inside" opposite Ryan Phillippe and "A Piece of My Heart" opposite Martin Henderson.
Where have all the boy bands gone? Two years ago, *NSYNC ruled Katie Hoffner's world. Simply attending the boy band's Pepsi Center concert wasn't enough: The Columbine High School student finagled her way into the group's pre-show warm-up, hoping to get closer to Lance Bass, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick and Justin Timberlake. "Wow!!!" Hoffner wrote of the March 25, 2002, concert on an *NSYNC fan Web site. "During the soundcheck, I got JC, Joey and Chris to wave. I waved to Chris, he waved back, and so I pointed and winked at him. He did the same, and we both started cracking up. "PURE AWESOMENESS! :)" Now a 17-year-old senior, Hoffner's seemingly a world away from the breathless fan who got so giddy over a stolen wink. She groans at thoughts of her *NSYNC obsession, and admits she's mostly abandoned teen pop, saying she "doesn't see any depth or meaning in the lyrics." "I used to have this best friend, and our only bond was *NSYNC,"
Hoffner says. "That's all we had in common. Now we're not even
close; we hardly ever talk to each other. My tastes have just changed
— although I do like Justin's album." Hoffner's not alone. While boy bands and teen queens like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera ruled the airwaves and concert stages just a few years ago, the genre, true to its disposable nature, is fading fast. Why? Is teen pop waning because stars like Spears — who performs Monday at the Pepsi Center — and *NSYNC's Timberlake are trying to attract older audiences? Or are *NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys and their boy-band brethren becoming endangered species because kids have moved on to fresher sounds, from the hip-hop of OutKast and 50 Cent to the poppy punk sounds of Good Charlotte, the Strokes and New Found Glory? That, of course, is what happened to the last wave of teen pop, when acts like New Kids on the Block, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson were drowned out in the early '90s by the rock resurrection led by Nirvana and Pearl Jam — a revival that saw its own fortunes reversed by the resurgence in manufactured boy bands at the decade's end. "I think that music is cyclical, and that trends happen and happen again," Strokes drummer Fab Moretti says in a recent interview to promote his band's upcoming Denver concert. "With time, rock 'n' roll was bound to be in the public eye again. I'm sure (teen pop) will be back, too, in some weird permutation." That time could be coming soon. Both *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys have announced plans to record new albums this year. Some teen-pop fans, like Samantha Czerkies, another Columbine senior, are ready and waiting. "I'm still way into *NSYNC — if not as much, maybe even more so," confides Czerkies, who won a contest two years ago to meet Timberlake. "My whole room's full of their stuff. I have the bobble heads, the dolls, tons of pictures that I've taken at concerts, pillows, sheets, watches, candy. You name it, I've got it. Everything." Still, Czerkies admits many of her friends have abandoned their once-mutual obsession for the strains of hip-hop, which, along with rock, has firmly booted teen pop from its once-lofty perch. The figures don't lie: Spears, for example, has seen her first-week sales — a good gauge of interest in a new album — fall with each release since her sophomore smash, Oops... I Did it Again, sold 1.3 million copies the first week it hit stores in 2000. The declining sales come amid an economic downturn that's hurt the music industry in every sector. And they also follow the star's attempts to sex up her music (kissing Madonna on MTV, writhing around with a large snake, writing songs about masturbation) and move away from the school-girl image she projected on her 1999 debut, ...Baby One More Time. Spears — who remains a multi-million-selling artist — addressed the issue last fall when she spoke to music journalists during a conference call to promote the release of In the Zone, which sold 609,000 copies in its first week. "I love kids and I think they're great," Spears said. "(But) I'm getting older. My whole vibe with the record isn't to attract them. I'm becoming older so, of course, the things I talk about aren't going to be able to relate to a 7-year-old. I think it's a cool thing, not a negative thing, to attract older fans instead of the young ones." She may say that, but Spears still is trying to straddle both worlds. For her Denver concert next week, Spears tapped two very different opening acts: Kelis, a curvaceous R&B singer known for her risqu hit "Milkshake," and Skye Sweetnam, a 15-year-old Avril Lavigne knockoff who sings about boyfriend trouble and self-empowerment. Spears' former flame, Timberlake, offers a different spin on teen-pop's fading fortunes: He simply expands the genre. "Teen pop will never be dead," Timberlake said during a similar conference call last year. "I just think it takes on a different head. Years ago, it was Nirvana, and then it turned into, you know, Britney ... (Now) some kids like Good Charlotte. Some kids like, you know, my stuff. Some kids like 50 Cent. Some kids like all of it, you know." Boy band *NSYNC still holds the record for the most albums sold
in the first week of release - 2.4 million copies of 2000's No Strings
Attached. And Timberlake's solo album — which found the singer leaning toward a more adult sound, copping a thing or two from Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson — sold 440,000 in its first week, while his bandmate Chasez sold an embarrassing 52,000 copies of his solo debut in its first week of release last month. And there's another factor to take into consideration: the economy. For three straight years, CD sales have declined, a trend caused by a combination of the struggling economy and the boom in popularity of illicit Internet downloading. "Everything's just completely slowed down," says Tim Whitler, inventory manager at Borders Books & Music on Pearl Street. "We're actually deriving most of our sales from DVDs these days because the music industry's in so much trouble." And that's true: Even the biggest releases of 2003 don't stack up to past teen-pop peaks. Last year's best-performing debut was 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin', which sold 872,000 copies its first week — and another 822,000 copies the next week. In comparison, OutKast's Speakerboxx/The Love Below sold 509,000 copies in its first week, an impressive feat for a double album. That same week in October, Dave Matthews moved more than 400,000 copies of his debut solo album Some Devil. There is some light at the end of the tunnel, however: CD sales reportedly are up 14 percent this year. Norah Jones' Feels Like Home, released last month, was the first album since *NSYNC's 2001 disc Celebrity to sell more than 1 million copies in a week. In Boulder, though, the sagging economy also has made it a little harder to find those teen-pop CDs. In the last year or two, the city's three Wherehouse Music outlets closed, as did two chain record stores in Crossroads Mall. "Now that all the chain stores are out of business, I feel like I should carry (teen-pop CDs)," says Andy Schneidkraut, owner of Albums on the Hill, which sells primarily to college students. "But I don't, because that kind of music's never mattered to me."
Seventeen Mag Schizo Review |
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