Rumble young man, rumble............



“(My career in boxing) is no different than Jay-Z’s," Bernard Hopkins (51-5-2-1, 34 KOs) boasted just before beating Jean Pascal yesterday to become the oldest boxer to win a world title.

“People said he should have retired at 40, just like people say I should have retired at 40, six years ago. I said I will retire when one of these young boys can embarrass me to the point where I need to retire. I can’t speak for Jay-Z, but none of these young rappers are embarrassing him in hip-hop and that’s no different than me in boxing.”

Shouts for the Jay-Z reference, and congrats to Hopkins for retaining his title, at age 46, as the best!

To the charts we go........

The Hot 100 saw Adele (surprise, surprise) at number 1, and familiar names rounding the top 5:

1. Adele- Rolling in the Deep
2. Katy Perry ft. Kanye West- E.T.
3. Lady Gaga- The Edge of Glory
4. Pitbull ft. Ne-Yo- Give Me Everything
5. The Black Eyed Peas- Just Can't Get Enough



The Billboard 200 saw Adele at the top as well:

1. Adele- 21
2. Various Artists- Now 38
3. The Lonely Island- Turtleneck & Chain
4. Christina Perri- lovestrong.
5. Tyler, The Creator- Goblin



Shouts to Tyler, The Creator, for dropping what is already his second album at age 20, and who is getting mad respect from artists such as Pusha T and critics alike.




Remember "Come and Get Me" from Vol. 3? Well, Jay's website Lifeandtimes.com put a little something together from the first verse to that song:



Raw.........



She's Back. Here's the video for the new single Run the World (Girls):



LOVE IT. And her.

Beyonce will be receiving the Billboard Millennium Award at the Billboard Music Awards tonight, which air live on ABC from 8-11 PM EST. Rihanna, The Black Eyed Peas, Lady Antebellum, and others will all be performing so go watch!


Mary Mary visited Billboard.com for an interview and a Mash-Up Monday song............The award-winning gospel duo covered Bruno Mars' Just The Way You Are, with their daughters in mind.



Good stuff!

And I'll leave you with that. Come back next week for a recap of the Billboard Music Awards and any other news that presents itself!

Later.......

Final ProjectFor Ernay

Untitled from gabriele J. Dow on Vimeo.

This will be the last blog post for a grade, so I will attempt to make it as perfect as possible. I will, however, still upkeep this blog for my own musical health and knowledge during the summer so stay tuned!



Pusha T is gearing up for the release of Fear Of God 2 (EP), which will be his official G.O.O.D. Music label debut after dropping his critically acclaimed Fear of God mixtape.
The newly released video for My God off the mixtape is below:



Push talked to thebvx.com about the upcoming EP, and released the info on a new track with Odd Future:

“We got some surprises. Ye is there. Odd Future’s there. That's a couple gems. The beat just sounds so demonic. But I actually have to give it an [official] title. I tweeted the news the other day, when I finished it. I think we got one. It's the three of us -- Tyler, Hodgy Beats and me."---Pusha T

Push also reported that he has a song with Kanye West on the EP, as well as some other new songs. It’s supposed to drop June 21, 2011. Can’t wait to hear it!

Heading to the charts………..

Adele continued her reign on the Billboard 200, with Katy Perry and Kanye holding number one for another week as well in the Top 100.
Top 5 of each are below:

Billboard 200:
1. 21-Adele
2. Wasting Light- Foo Fighters
3. Sigh No More- Mumford and Sons
4. Femme Fatale- Britney Spears
5. Lemonade Mouth-Soundtrack

Top 100:

1. E.T.-Katy Perry ft. Kanye West
2. Rolling In The Deep-Adele
3. Till The World Ends-Britney Spears ft. Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha
4. Just Can’t Get Enough- The Black Eyed Peas
5. The Lazy Song- Bruno Mars


In some uplifting news, the album put together by the major record labels entitled “Songs For Japan”, has raised $5 million dollars to date to help the people of Japan recover from their devastating earthquake and tsunami 2 months ago.

The album has sold over 500,000 copies already, with the album featuring artists such as Eminem, Cee-Lo, Rihanna, Sade, and many others.

Speaking of Rihanna, she tweeted this earlier this week:

@Rihanna: Just met a cute rich guy....but I can't fuck Benjamin's

Nothing substantial, but mildly funny.

Jimmy Fallon tweeted:

@jimmyfallon: The unemployment rate went up last month. On the bright side - I hear a senior management position just opened up at Al Qaeda. #FallonMono

A bit more funny.



Dre and Em leaked a preview of another song from Detox, entitled “Die Hard”. Any song with Eminem is hot, and this one will be no different. I can’t wait to hear the real thing!


To close it out, Chrysler is thanking Eminem for helping supply them with their first profitable quarter since it filed for bankruptcy two years ago.

They credit part of their recent success to the 10.5 million YouTube views received by this commercial:




Happy Mother’s Day!

Later.

Another session of music news is here……..

Mother’s Day is May 8, 2011, if you didn’t know! I didn’t until this morning. Oops.

We’ll start at home…………

St. John’s graduate J. Cole spoke with pressofatlanticcity.com about his upcoming debut album.

Having previously set a release date of sometime in March 2011, Cole said "I know my fans are frustrated with me, because I won't give a (another) date, but I only gave a date one time in my career last year, and I smacked myself in the face because it was so unrealistic. Now I say it's coming soon, and it's really true, because we're in the final stages right now."

As a St. John’s student from the south, like Mr. Cole himself, I’m a Cole fan and ready to hear that album!

For now, his most recent public work has been a song he produced for Kendrick Lamar entitled “Hiiii Power”, which can be heard below (it is FIRE, by the way!!!!):

Speaking of St. John’s………….

Wale, Roscoe Dash, Chrisette Michele and Wayne Wonder all rocked the stage inside Carnesecca Arena last night for the spring concert!

Wale was the main feature, of course, and the others were all guests (Chrisette Michele only performed a few songs before leaving to perform her own concert in North Carolina), but all of them did great!

Wale has been making a bunch of moves recently, as he is one of a slew of new signees to Rick Ross’ “Maybach Music Group” label, and is set to release a new album with the other members of that label entitled Self Made, Vol. 1 on May 24^th.

Check out what they've been up to below:

To the charts……………

Nothing changed too much, although the Billboard 200 did see glee releasing yet another album, this time introducing the Warblers, who came in at number two. Here are your top 5:

1. 21-Adele
2. Glee: The Music Presents the Warblers
3. Wasting Light-Foo Fighters
4. Lemonade Mouth-Soundtrack
5. Femme Fatale-Britney Spears

The Hot 100 found Katy Perry and Kanye West at the top:

1. E.T.-Katy Perry ft. Kanye West
2. Rolling in the Deep-Adele
3. Just Can’t Get Enough-The Black Eyed Peas
4. S&M-Rihanna
5. Down On Me-Jeremih ft. 50 Cent

Shouts to Beyonce for entering the chart with her new single “Run the World (Girls)” landing at number 33 in its first week!

Allison Weiss tweeted yesterday:

Let me tell you what I don't give a fuck about. #TheRoyalWedding.

I concur.

So the following image given courtesy of Katy Perry’s nails:

Did NOT amuse me. That money could have gone to the tornadoes in the south or Japan or SOMEWHERE ELSE other than her nails.

Slim Thug tweeted:

@slimthugga: Me and my potnas coulda beat the Hornets tonight.

As a Houston, Texas native and a Lakers fan, I loved this tweet.

This is Akon on the set of Usher’s OMG tour in Florida……….Hot or not?

Ok well that is all of the news and ridiculous pictures I have for today………..I’ll see you one more time next week……….later!

A Response To Caroline Trezza

Caroline Trezza’s of Long Island’s Roslyn Heights recently did a research project entitled “The Relationships between Academic Procrastination and Beliefs about Effort and capability in High School Students”, in which she surveyed 79 sophomores and 89 juniors to measure the degree to which they procrastinated on school assignments, their fear of failure and their drive for perfection.

For the most part, I agree with her findings, looking at my own personal experience and what I have observed during my 15 years of school (has it been that long?!?).

Although I would not go as far as Caroline did by saying that a student’s mental health can be affected by the psychological stress of putting tasks off, I do agree that there are correlations between students’ motivation and self-confidence and their ability to complete assignments on time.

I know that if something is easy for a student to do, then he or she will more than likely have no problem doing it and probably will do it and turn it in on time. One problem is that a lot of work that should be rather easy to students isn’t because of a whole host of other problems that have led to the underdevelopment (in terms of education) of those students.

This addresses the basic issue of confidence and belief in the ability to do assignments which affects the timeliness of a student completing an assignment.

Another of the factor for me personally is self-expectation. I am somewhat of a perfectionist, and that pushes me a lot of time to do a lot of work thoroughly and the correct way, which most students would not do. Although I might wait until the last minute to do an assignment, I do give myself enough time to complete the assignment on time and do it the right way.

The fact that this assignment (and even a few blog posts) is late hopefully can be overlooked, but even if not, it’s the contradictions in life that make us all equal. Procrastination is perceived as a bad habit, but it can also become the accepted norm, and be done without stress and with normal effort. So to those that procrastinate…………if it works for you, don’t change it!

Product Commercial: Nike Zoom Kobe VI

Here is the video of the commercial that I did advertising Kobe's new shoes, Nike Zoom Kobe VI:

Here's the audio version for radio:

Donald Trump Secures Obama's Birth Certificate

Donald Trump has done what no one else could do. This morning Trump held a press conference to congratulate himself on getting President Obama to release a copy of his birth certificate. Obama released a photo of his “certificate of live birth” on the whitehouse.gov website this morning.

Trump has been criticized in the media for continuously bringing up this issue every time he speaks publicly on politics. Many feel like the issue is not important and has no substance. Reporters continuously question the relevance of Obama’s birth certificate to anything that has to do with politics.

Excuse the delay…..But I'm now back at it. A lot of new things in music to talk about so………..lets get to it!

Heading straight to the charts………….

The Foo Fighters debuted at number one last week with their critically acclaimed “Wasting Light”, while Adele stayed at number 2 with her “21” album.

“Paper Airplane” (Alison Krauss and Union Station), “So Beautiful or What” (Paul Simon) and “Drama y Luz” (Mana) all debuted at numbers 3, 4 and 5 respectively on the charts. Never heard of any of those albums (or people), but go check them out!

S&M finally reached number one on the Top 100 chart, and so the top 5 went as follows:

1. S&M-Rihanna ft. Britney Spears

2. E.T. – Katy Perry ft. Kanye West

3. Just Can’t Get Enough- The Black Eyed Peas

4. Down On Me- Jeremiah ft. 50 Cent

5. Fuck You – Cee Lo Green

Seems like Collabos are the way to go. Stay tuned Sunday for this week’s charts (they still haven’t been released for some reason)…….

Yea. What does this have to do with music? Well, rap star Drake will be doing some voice work for the fourth Ice Age film coming soon, alongside Wanda Sykes, Jennifer Lopez, and Aziz Ansari. Not going to make me watch the film though……….And I seriously hope that Drake does NOT make a song for this film.

Beyonce, who released her first single from her yet-to-be-titled fourth album Run The World (Girls) yesterday, is being sued for over $100 million by software developer Gate Five for breaching a contract which held her responsible for helping create a motion-sensing dancing game to be titled Staypower: Beyonce.

Apparently the superstar, on a whim, “drove 70 people into unemployment” by deciding, the week before Christmas, that she was not going to do the game at all.

Her team has not responded with any comments on what happened, so for now we only have the story of the game company. I’m sure there’s more to the story…………..but, even if she’s guilty………………it’s BEYONCE. Who cares? In a week or two I’m sure that her new single will be number one. Listen below!

Rounding out the news for today, dynamic duo Jennifer Lope and Marc Anthony are teaming up with American Idol creator Simon Fuller to create a new "Q'Viva! The Chosen." The show’s purpose is to through 21 Spanish countries to find “the best performers in Latin music, dance and other arts with the goal of creating a live extravaganza.”

"We are going to places where all of this talent lives and wouldn't have otherwise been discovered”, said Lopez.

Marc also commented on the show, saying that it will "provide an outlet to a whole new generation that have been waiting to have their voices heard."

Congratulations to the couple who are representing for their culture!

And with that I will see you all on Sunday for another edition of music news! Later.