Kanye West And Jay-Z Want To Know: Will You Make Passes At Rappers Wearing Glasses?
By Steven Roberts
Traditional glasses aren’t viewed as something “cool.” If years of consuming pop-culture have taught us anything, it’s that glasses are worn by the socially awkward, the inept: dweebs, dorks and nerds!
While spectacles are worn by people with less-than-perfect vision who are willing to deal with ridicule in order to see well, the cool and beautiful are willing to sacrifice bumping into a small child or two for the sake of vanity. A startling trend has emerged, however: Rappers are wearing glasses.
Rappers are known for being boisterous, braggadocios and badass — they can’t walk around looking like Lewis and Gilbert from “Revenge of the Nerds,” can they? Sure, artists like DMC and E-40 have worn glasses throughout the years, but they had their own individual style. DMC had Cazal frames, a gold dookie-rope chain and a leather jacket, and E-40 makes up words that sound silly at first, but ultimately catch on and everyone says them.
Recently we’ve seen photos of Jay-Z, Common, Pharrell Williams, Jermaine Dupri and, most notably, Kanye West wearing glasses. West promoted 808s & Heartbreak dressed in a grey, Pee-wee Herman-esque suit and eyeglasses. The Jeremy Scott sunglasses with blinds caught on like wildfire, but could the same be said for eyeglasses?
In addition to ‘Ye, Jay-Z has recently been spotted at Knicks and Nets games rocking a new ‘do and his own pair of black-rimmed glasses — will this trend catch on? Or is it simply a sign of the times where intelligence, creativity and a DIY work ethic set the standard for cultural progression? Hey, what better way to show that you’re smart than a pair of glasses?
Check out our gallery of rappers in all their nerdy glory here.
‘Twilight’ Star Kristen Stewart’s Casting As Joan Jett Raises The Question: Who Were The Runaways?
Forget Avril Lavigne and Paramore’s Hayley Williams.
Forget Hole, Kittie, Evanescence, Garbage, the Go-Go’s, Be Your Own Pet, Sleater-Kinney, Blondie, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Le Tigre, Breeders, Bikini Kill, Babes in Toyland, the Gossip and the Donnas.
Without the Runaways, many of these bands might never have existed. So now that “Twilight” star Kristen Stewart has been tapped to play Joan Jett in a Runaways biopic, it’s worth asking: Just who were the Runaways?
The first successful all-girl rock band (there were plenty of Motown-like girl groups in the 1960s and bands with female singers like Jefferson Airplane, but none who were all female and who rocked) formed when the five original members were still teenagers in 1975.
Though often pegged as a creation of Svengali Kim Fowley — who insisted that the band have a perv-magnet jailbait image and who initially took credit for putting them together and creating their sound — the group came together on its own in late 1975 with a lineup that included guitarist Jett, late drummer Sandy West, singer Cherie Currie, bassist Jackie Fox and guitarist Lita Ford. With their combination of leather and lace outfits and a sound that mixed loud, fast, proto-punk riffs with dollops of Aerosmith-like metal and a sneery attitude, the group was mostly written off during its time as a publicity gimmick by the loathsome manager/promoter Fowley.
But the emergence of Jett as one of rock’s great frontwomen (not to mention Ford’s once-solid career as a lite-metal singer), as well as the enduring popularity of the band’s classic 1976 debut single, “Cherry Bomb,” created a template for female rockers of every stripe to strap on guitars, step up to the microphone and wail.
At a time when many female acts were crooning folk ballads, the teenage Runaways’ unabashedly raunchy songs about sex, drinking and hanging out with the wrong type of dude (”You Drive Me Wild,” “Is It Day or Night,” “Thunder”) didn’t sit well with middle America but clearly made an impression on several later generations of singers.
Though the group fell apart within a few years thanks to a combination of poor sales, Fowley’s overbearing meddling, musical disagreements and internal squabbling (the group ended as a Jett-fronted quartet in 1979), its pioneering spirit and us-against-the-world story is ripe for a big-screen biopic — especially one helmed and written by lauded video director Floria Sigismondi, who has worked on clips for everyone from Marilyn Manson to Christina Aguilera, Sheryl Crow, Fiona Apple and the White Stripes.
And might we suggest some casting? Perhaps John Waters or, even better, Pee-wee Herman, as Fowley?
Jared Leto Sent Us Cupcakes
Earlier this week, MTV News published an “in the studio” piece with 30 Seconds to Mars, in which they played us some new songs, gave us a tour of the facilities and talked in great detail about the ongoing $30 million breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by their former label, Virgin/EMI. This was the first time they’d done this, and needless to say, 30STM frontman/dreamboat Jared Leto was pleased with the results.
How do we know this? Well, because he said so, in the handwritten note he sent along with a dozen cupcakes from NYC’s Sugar Sweet Sunshine bakery (there were even a few red-velvet ones in there, which only proves that he’s got good taste). I’ve included a photo of said note — made out to myself and MTV News metal scribe Chris Harris — with this blog post, not just so you can scope Leto’s penmanship (which is pretty great) and marvel at the fact that he spelled “grateful” correctly, but also to make you very jealous.
It was a very gracious gift, indeed, and we’re very thankful to Jared and his 30STM pals. Not only did it make everyone in the MTV Newsroom feel just like Angela Chase on that one episode of “My So-Called Life” when Jordan Catalano gives her the “I’m Sorry” note (only this one was actually written by Jordan and not Brian Krakow), but the cupcakes made for a great “post-lunch, pre-3 p.m. coffee” pick-me-up. Oh, and before they were summarily devoured by hungry staffers, I managed to snap a photo of the cupcakes, which you can see after the jump.
Thanks again, Jared!
Civil-Rights Folk Legend Odetta Dies At 77
Odetta.
The name might not ring a bell for you, but along with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, the one-named singer — who passed away Tuesday of heart disease at the age of 77 — was one of the giants of the folk world. Her deep, haunting tones made her one of the voices of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s.
Born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Alabama, on December 31, 1930, at the height of the Depression, the singer’s musical style was formed by the prison and work songs of the era recorded in the fields of the Deep South, according to a New York Times obituary. “They were liberation songs,” she told the paper in 2007. “You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road, and you can either lie down and die or insist upon your life.”
After moving to Los Angeles with her mother in 1937 following her father’s death, the young singer discovered her voice by listening to blues, jazz and folk music, eventually earning a classical-music degree from Los Angeles City College.
Performing everywhere from small coffeehouses to Carnegie Hall, Odetta’s landmark albums of blues and ballads influenced everyone from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to blues-rock belter Janis Joplin. But it was her rendition of the slavery-age song “O Freedom” performed at Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in August 1963 that cemented her status as one of the musical touchstones of the civil-rights movement. The Times said that Rosa Parks, who started the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, by famously refusing to give up her seat, was asked once which songs meant the most to her and she answered, “All of the songs Odetta sings.”
She was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Medal of the Arts and Humanities in 1999 by President Bill Clinton, was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2004 and was reportedly hoping to sing at President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20.
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