On September 20th, Pip will release a full-length solo record called Distraction Pieces, and we were very excited to learn that it was produced by Danny Lohner of Nine Inch Nails / A Perfect Circle fame. The above clip teases what’s in store, with drums by Travis Barker and background vocals by Milla Jovovich.

Also appearing on the album is Sage Francis (whose Strange Famous label will be releasing the album), B. Dolan, and our friend P.O.S. of Doomtree. The album also features a number of guest producers including Richard Russell and Zane Lowe. This one’s worth a heads-up.

Distraction Pieces Tracklist:

1. Introdiction
2. Let ‘Em Come (w/ Sage Francis & P.O.S)
3. Domestic Silence
4. Try Dying
5. Death Of The Journalist
6. Soldier Boy Kill ‘Em (w/ B. Dolan)
7. The Struggle
8. Broken Promise
9. Feel It (w/ Natasha Fox)

More information / pre-order here.

The event featured sets from Moby, Deadmau5, Benny Benassi, Groove Armada, Will.i.am (a.total.asshole), Armin Van Buuren, Dieselboy, Kaskade and Infected Mushroom, among 70 others. If you don’t know what they look like, well, tough shit, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to fill this page with pics of dudes in headphones looking at turntables & computers.

Instead, we’ve got a gallery spectacle of what everyone was seeing when they weren’t trying to make out a head onstage atop the turntable riser or having some asshole wave his glowstick fingers in their face. To feel the spirit, take the red pill and push play as you scroll through the half-naked girls and ludicrous costumes.

The artist sets themselves varied between “Oh shit nice sample dude just threw in the nn-tiss mix” and “Seriously this is horrible get me the fuck out of here nn-tiss“. Highlights were Moby, Deadmau5 and nudity, while the chief lowlight goes to Will.i.am, who quite simply sucked – and we’re talking about a festival celebrating music which key feature is repetitive beats on a seemingly endless loop. He was worse than that, but brought the eye candy in full force.

Travis Barker, who’s just about goddamn everywhere these days, played an impressive live set with A-Trak, while Lil’ Jon stayed long on his Laidback Luke appearance to introduce Benny Benassi – who was received with wild enthusiasm by the crowd. Nearly as wild as that for DeadMau5, who crushed the capacity crowd on the main stage with a set that varied wildly between nn-tiss and nn-nn-tiss.

The tone of the festival was a grimy kind of celebration, costumed freaks and candyflipping twentysomethings making casual comforts of whatever they could find in their tripping delirium. While some have called it “Coachella in the city,” the title is genuinely unappealing when one considers that the key selling point of Coachella is the vast expanses of lush, green polo field and plenty of space for roaming. By contrast, EDC was crammed into an intensely urban area, located squarely in one of the most crime-ridden and poorly maintained parts of Los Angeles.

While Day One was a very peaceful affair for the most part, the cops had turned vicious by the onset of Day Two, arresting nearly a hundred attendees and marching – batons drawn – against the crowd to drive them down the street. Once attendees hit the center point of the festival grounds, however, most was forgotten in a hallucinogenic haze.

Until the revelers got out of the venue and back to their cars, that is. Smashed windows, jacked possessions and auto theft was rampant throughout the night – a no-brainer result of hosting a raver Super Bowl in the middle of one of the most dangerous areas in the entire country. But to most among the jaw-grinding masses, the benefits outweighed the risk – at least until the comedown.

Goldstein miraculously survived a plane crash in South Carolina with Travis Barker (in which everyone else on board died), and then narrowly cheated death again about five months later when he “had a bad feeling” about a Continental flight to Buffalo he was booked on. He stayed on the ground while that plane crashed too, killing everyone on board.

We’re afraid this isn’t a promotional stunt for the new Final Destination movie (out today, no shit). The grim reaper really had it in for this poor guy. Our hearts go out to his family and fans.

Minor update: Reader Seth has informed us that the story about the Continental crash that we originally read on TMZ, has since been proven false by MTV News. Which I suppose makes this all just a little less creepy.

It was originally to be titled Before Hell Freezes Over, until Jimmy Iovine told Busta that The Eagles had an album with the same name. (First, it was just a live album called Hell Freezes Over. Second, who cares?) Then the name was changed to Blessed, as Busta found himself walking away from legal issues relatively unscathed in comparison to T.I., Remy Ma, Prodigy and others at the time.

Our own Britney Bernstein penned a “review” (it was a joke by the way) when the tracklist (and some tracks) from the Blessed incarnation “leaked.” That was almost a year ago.

After jumping from Aftermath / Interscope to Universal Motown (which is not much of a jump, really), Busta finally settled on Back On My B.S., not to be confused with the Back On My Shit mixtape that popped up last week.

The first single I heard (ostensibly from this album), Don’t Touch Me, was the best track Busta has done (in my opinion), in years. It’s not on the final version, and neither is the “rock remix” with Travis Barker, that got more plays on YouTube than the “official” cut. The second single, We Made It (w/ Linkin Park) isn’t on there either. Most early “singles” have since been tagged “leaked” cuts, or “street singles,” with exception of the Linkin Park jam, which appears on some versions of Back On MY B.S. as a bonus.

These premature emissions haven’t hurt the album’s offensive line for the radio game though; no less than four singles from the retail version have already dropped; Arab Money (of which there are three different versions), Hustler’s Anthem ‘09, Respect My Conglomerate, and World Go ‘Round.

The strongest of these singles is Hustler’s Anthem, though I can’t handle the T-Pain auto-tune. The beat is solid, and Busta’s verses are tight. The singing part holds the track together even, I just wish a real vocalist was handling it.

That’s not to say that World Go ‘Round, with Estelle, is any better; it helps to confirm the sneaking suspicion I’ve had since that American Boy track hit the radio; Estelle can only barely sing, and doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Without Kanye, she’d be off the grid.

In fact, most of the songs that look like killers on paper disappoint. Respect My Conglomerate has Lil’ Wayne, but there’s no punch, and the beat wears thin quick- Not that that’s new territory for Weezy, but not every one of those stupid simple beats can be as tenacious as Milli. Kill Dem has Pharrell, but the reggae track feels more like a novelty than an achievement.

My only complaint with Don’t Believe ‘Em, with Akon & T.I., however, is just that it feels more like an Akon track than a Busta Rhymes track. On that same tip, Decision, with Jamie Foxx, Mary J. Blige, John Legend & Common is a great song- as good as you’d expect with a lineup of that caliber- but it sounds like Busta is the guest rather than the host. Do I knock these tracks just because they’re not what I personally expect from Busta? No… But I do have to note that Busta isn’t doing what he does best.

And on the upside, some of the best bits of Back On My B.S. are found in unexpected nooks. After a bit of a skit, opening track Wheel Of Fortune surprises, with some of that awesome, furious Busta vocal work that helped make Don’t Touch Me so great.

Unassisted track Shoot For The Moon has got a few bricks from the old school with a straight-up beat, and a steady understated verse that builds up to a bang at the chorus.

King Karnov’s beat on We Want In is vaguely Dre-ish, without his signature thump. I fall off when the auto-tuned vocals come in, but if you don’t have that hang-up that I do, there’s a lot to appreciate.

Despite some great tracks, Back On My B.S. is not quite Busta’s best album to date. When he’s on, he tears the house down. And I’m still rocking Don’t Touch Me, a full year after it dropped. But all in all, I’m a little disappointed. I just hope that Busta’s on firm ground now at Universal Motown, and can keep doing his thing. Busta’s still got what it takes, but we’ll have to wait a little longer for his next classic.

Back On My B.S.
Flipmode / Universal Motown
May 19th, 2009

01. Wheel Of Fortune
02. Give ‘Em What They Askin’ For
03. Respect My Conglomerate (w/ Lil’ Wayne & Jadakiss)
04. Shoot For The Moon
05. Hustler’s Anthem ‘09 (w/ T-Pain)
06. Kill Dem (w/ Pharrell & Tosh)
07. Arab Money (w/ Ron Browz)
08. I’m A Go And Get My… (w/ Mike Epps)
09. We Want In (w/ Ron Browz, Flipmode Movement, Spliff Star & Show Money)
10. We Miss You (w/ Demarco & Jelly Roll)
11. Sugar (w/ Jelly Roll)
12. Don’t Believe ‘Em (w/ Akon & T.I.)
13. Decision (w/ Jamie Foxx, Mary J. Blige, John Legend & Common)
14. World Go ‘Round (w/ Estelle)

In the past few hours, the two have been letting their emotions out over Twitter in a seriously passive-aggressive quote battle that all seems to have started about 17 hours ago…

Shanna: @trvsbrkr are you really doing this right now?

Travis: I would prefer even to FAIL with honor than win by cheating

Shanna: Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation his defense

Travis: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time

Travis: @ShannaMoakler No slander, just the truth

Shanna: A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

But in the days leading up to today, they’ve been as lovey-dovey as ever with little gems like:

Travis: @ShannaMoakler http://tinyurl.com/ch5e5p For u Ma.

Shanna: Right back at you papa….xoxo, http://tinyurl.com/ceqcpl

Now I’m a big fan of ridiculousness (and, unfortunately, of the saga of Travis Barker and Shanna Moakler), but is this really how we communicate these days? I’ve been hesitant to really “join” Twitter, but knowing that I can watch drama like this unfold, I’m totally in. I can’t wait for the make up tweets.

Britney Spears was opening. But not performing. But maybe she was? There was a video floating around on the ‘net, of Britney practicing her dance moves. For a tour? No dates scheduled… Ooh, for the VMAS!? Yeah, of course! Top secret surprise performance from Britney! Perfect! Let’s not tell anyone!

Right. Super top secret. Until a video appeared online. No, it didn’t just appear- it was LEAKED!! Damn those leakers, spoiling all the big surprises!! Which one of you dirty dirty internet pirates leaked this one?

Fucking MSN. One of the VMA sponsors.

Hi there folks, it’s Viacom. Just wanted to clear something up, because I know this shit can get confusing: Only we and our corporate sponsors can glorify the leakage of top secret music and videos that you aren’t ‘allowed’ to hear or see just yet. I know we do it all the time to build hype. But If you do it, we’re going to fucking press charges.

Part of the reason I tuned in, I shit you not, was the idea that we’d get to see Britney’s comeback. Everyone was alluding to it. It was all set up. And I kinda wanted to see it.

But she didn’t perform. She stumbled through three or four sentences announcing the show was beginning, and then accepted three awards. Granted, Piece Of Me is one of the better pop songs / videos to come out in the past year, and she wasn’t up against anyone too threatening, but the whole Britney thing stunk to high heaven of a gigantic, patronizing, cardboard apology for exploiting her so shamelessly last year.

The next morning, everyone was talking about how great Britney looked, how she wasn’t attacking anyone with umbrellas, how triumphant her comeback was. They gut punch her in front of a crowd for ratings in 2007, but when they’re even more hard-up in 2008, they make her the star, for standing up straight. It made me uneasy.

A particularly curmudgeonly Bob Lefsetz fired off one of his famous letters before I was even halfway through. It hit a couple nails right on their heads:

“This show couldn’t be more whored out. Is Verizon V-Cast a band? God, I didn’t know you could suck a cell phone company’s dick, but MTV is doing its best. To think we used to revere bands, not brands.

What, do they think it’s 1950? That kids revere the rock, the one in the Paramount logo?  Viacom owns both, MTV and the movie studio… Even little kids know this. But I think the real reason they didn’t have this in a real venue is they’re afraid they wouldn’t be able to sell it out, or in the alternative, the audience would be uncontrollable, wouldn’t exclaim on cue.

…Voting for Video of the Year is not playing, it’s ripping the audience off for the texting fee.”

Meanwhile, our own Johnny Firecloud provided a very… Firecloudian commentary, for CraveOnline:

“Did they really call this unforgettable? Who’s going to remember a SINGLE song performed or even featured on the awards show, except maybe Kid Rock’s All Summer Long? The channel that was supposed to bring music to television instead turned it into a flashy commodity for visual titillation- not for the ears, not for the heart, and certainly not for the soul. It’s eye candy now. All of it. Their product is barren of spirit, void of substance and a sickening mockery of the ocean of unrecognized quality these folks so gleefully ignored to celebrate their quick-shot bursts of marketability.”

He’s right. Rihanna sucked, and so did Pink. I only remember them because their tits almost came out. Even master show-stopper Kanye West’s closing performance was underwhelming, and Kid Rock, who blew the fucking roof off the 1999 VMAs with Run DMC and Aerosmith, was indeed only maybe memorable. And that’s largely thanks to Lil’ Wayne. He’s great, but mainly because he’s compared to the other mainstream acts.

Do you remember the 1999 VMAs? I sure as shit do. I can’t believe it was nine years ago already. But I remember it like it was last week because it was truly unforgettable. Last night? Nigga Please. You can’t manufacture it. Nothing last night was anywhere close to this good, despite Joe-C and Bawitdaba:

But with all that out of my system, I think what’s driving me to write this more than anything else, is how the tiny bit of sparkling magic that was to be found at the 2008 VMAs was squandered or ignored. The most interesting act there, DJ AM & Travis Barker, was shown only in glimpses before and after the breaks. You get a fifteen second tease of them performing in front of plastic extras that don’t really give a shit, and then it’s right to your regularly scheduled commercials.

We’ll have to forgive them for backing Katy Perry, who first butchered Like A Virgin for the night’s worst performance, and then did I Kissed A Girl for the second worst. That aside, the night’s best performance, in my opinion, was when Lupe Fiasco got on the mic in front of them with Matthew Santos and they sang Superstar. It was flawless! And then right there, in the middle of the song, they began the lead-out to commercials. The camera panned away from the band, over to a screen displaying corporate logos for Verizon, Microsoft, and Rhapsody. The music continued in the background- and it sounded great- but it was buried under a voiceover that seemed to go on forever, hawking inferior products from Viacom’s pals. It was the most blasphemous offense I’ve witnessed since Avril Lavigne covered Metallica on their VH1 tribute.

The music industry is not being murdered by internet pirates. Cancers brought on by a lifetime of bad habits are catching up as the hourglass runs out of sand. It no longer has the energy or will to live. It’s being starved by the very same hands that used to feed it, because all they care about now is whatever inheritance there is left. MTV was once the revolution. Now it’s just part of the corporation, making money through monopolizing and branding products they don’t care about anymore, completely out of touch with us out here in the audience. We have no sympathy. Viacom chooses to insult our intelligence, and call bullshit like the VMAs “unforgettable” like we’re fucking dumb. They have to know by now that we can get by just fine without them. I wonder how long it will be before they realize they’re fucked without us?

Don’t get me wrong- LAX has its moments in the sun. How could it not? I can’t remember a more star-studded hip-hop album. Kanye turns a production page in his portfolio with Angel, stepping outside the glow-in-the-dark theatrics and laying the groundwork for one of the best tracks on the album, while Raekwon puts things back in motion with one of his best verses in years on Bulletproof Diaries. The Game actually holds his own on this one, too. Best album track? Well, it aint an embarrassment- that’s a start, right?

But let’s step back to track one, when it’s clear that we’re in trouble right out of the gate. The first voice we hear on LAX isn’t Jayceon Taylor’s, but rather the man who redefined self-destruction, the year’s most felonious celebrity, Earl Simmons aka DMX. In between carjackings and police impersonations, X found the time to rebuke Satan in the name of Jesus in an increasingly maniacal voice that ends up a scream. That’s one hell of a way to open a record.

LAX Files is a play-by-play of Taylor’s past leading up to now, as he paints a picture of his tough upbringing: Come to my ‘hood-‘hood / look at my block-block / that’s that project building, yeah that’s where I got shot-shot / cause I was more ‘hood than Suge / and had more rocks than Jay / more scars on my face than the original Scarface / or the homeboy Scarface. Cue shuddering and awe. And load of bullshit. What you’ve got on your face is a stupid butterfly, covered with an LA sign, covered with a big gay star like you’re trying out for Jem and the fucking Holograms.

Ice Cube drops the chorus on the snappy State Of Emergency, but let’s not get too crazy about calling this a passing of the West-Coast torch; in terms of popularity and geographical face tattoos, The Game is in his prime, sure, but where’s the substance? Where’s the tracks we’re going to remember in five years? Cause I don’t see any.

Nevertheless, the Ludacris cameo on the impressive Ya Heard is great, and re-sparked my interest in the MC. Despite rhyming about his gun having abortions, Luda shines brighter than anything Jayceon spits on the entire record. Side by side, he just puts the Game to shame.

Money’s a standard vapid club track, a Betty Wright voice sample endlessly repeating the title while Taylor once again talks all kinds of shit and bites the hands that feed. He takes aim at his former boss with I was through flippin’ quarters when I made my first meal / I’m about a dollar, 50 Cent ain’t real. Real enough to give you a career and get your to cover up that stupid butterfly tattoo on your face, big guy. But hey, it’s your party. I just wouldn’t call it a coincidence that Dre didn’t show up.

Former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker provides live percussion for Dope Boys, a whoopdefuckindoo detail if live drums didn’t sound so damn good on a hip-hop jam. Then again, the chorus is fucking retarded, so we’re back to square one.

Am I the only one on earth who wants to scream every time I hear synthesized vocals? My Life had some potential without Lil’ Wayne’s talents being completely wasted on the robotic hook.

Game sure as hell knows how to pick a beat. The overall tone of the album is his usual shade of menacing self-absorption. His tactic has always been to rely on ferocity rather than actually move his lyrical ability beyond the most laughably stupid, so it’s clear from the start that the beats need to put in some overtime. A certain Mr. Curtis Jackson can undoubtedly relate.

Ultimately, despite the knob-twisting superstar lineup, LAX isn’t as well-produced as The Documentary and doesn’t pack nearly the punch that The Doctor’s Advocate does. It’s not a bad album- it simply proves that Game is an extremely inconsistent artist who needs to get the fuck over whatever daddy issues he’s got and drop the scowl. It’s an old pigeonhole schtick that most of us have outgrown. He should take a few cues from the hip-hop rolodex on his album and focus on the art instead of the thuggery. More than a decade after the east coast / west coast battles hit their climax, people are still cashing in on useless conflict. Ridiculous.

Jesus, DMX preaching again in the outro. Can you hire this guy to work funerals? If I die anytime soon, somebody pay this guy to give my eulogy.

LAX
August 23, 2008
Black Wall Street / Geffen / Interscope

1. Intro
2. LAX Files
3. State Of Emergency
4. Bulletproof Diaries
5. My Life
6. Money
7. Cali Sunshine
8. Ya Heard
9. Hard Liquor (Interlude)
10. House Of Pain
11. Gentleman’s Affair
12. Let Us Live
13. Touchdown
14. Angel
15. Never Can Say Goodbye
16. Dope Boys
17. Game’s Pain
18. Letter To The King
19. Outro