by Timbaland ft. every artist under the sun: When I realized that I missed the release date of Shock Value 2, I was uber excited to get the sequel of the original Shock Value. However, when I pressed play this morning I began to wonder what happened?!? I love Timbaland and his usual collaborations with Nelly Furtado, Justin TImberlake, and Keri Hilson but I don’t know what happened this time around. He has those usual suspects, but everybody else is just random and it sounds like Timbaland’s secret sauce has lost the ingredients.! The only memorable tracks are Carry Out and Say Something. The rest are wiggity wiggity whack! Timbaland + Miley Cirus? That says enough! It seems like Timbaland is chasing mainstream money instead of staying true to himself. I think Timbaland needs to call up Magoo or Missy to remind himself of what “Timbaland the artist” sounds like. Or, he can stick to producing and get off the tracks! Luckily, there is one track that I can play off the album. How ironic that it’s the second single – after the first didn’t do too good…

by DJ Z-Trip and DJ P: It’s hard for me to fathom that DJ AM passed away three months ago! It seems like yesterday I wrote a post after his passing professing my favor for his mixtapes with Travis Barker. One of my readers, aa, made a comment stating that I should listen to this mixtape because it was similar to DJ AM’s mixtapes that mix different genres. The stories behind the DJ Z-Trip and this mixtape are pretty cool. DJ Z-Trip is a founder of the mashup movement, which literally transformed the way people mixed and blended music. There were only 1000 copies of the mixtape released, but it spread like wildfire online. This was around 2001 so I can imagine it was right around the peak of Napster and Limewire. The timing also explains why I’m just now finding out about this. In 2001, I was too busy singing “Pop” by N Sync to worry about anybody else. You remember…Sick and tired of hearing all these people talk about what’s the deal with this pop life and when is it gonna fade out. You don’t remember??? Nevermind.

Back to the mixtape. I’ve listened to Uneasy Listening twice today and it’s ok. There is undeniable talent there that mixed every genre of music you can imagine and you can never tell when a song starts and when it ends. Yet, it was created in the late 90s and there are songs that included that I’ve never heard before. I think the inclusion of songs that I’m familiar with is what I liked most about AM’s mashups. I’m interested to hear more from DJ Z-Trip. On his website, he has a whole page dedicated to his work that you can download. I’ll be downloading some of this over the next few days, as well as Neil Armstrong’s Bittersweet, which was another suggestion from aa.

I figured I’d make a list of my top 5 favorite Christmas songs. All of these songs provide a special memory for me and I can remember the first time I heard each song. These are all my favorite songs and I would like to know what your favorite Christmas songs are too! If you have a favorite that I didn’t include in my list, add your song in the comment section.

1. The Temptations’ Silent Night

2. Donny Hathaway’s This Christmas

3. Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You

4. Boyz II Men Let it Snow

5. Johnny Gill’s Give Love on Christmas Day

6. Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song

7. Mannheim Steamroller’s Faeries

8. Vanessa WIlliams’ Baby It’s Cold Outside

9. Stevie Wonder What Christmas Means to Me

10.  Celine Dion O Holy Night

I only picked ten songs, but if I could pick eleven, Favorite Things by Luther Vandross would be my choice! Merry Christmas Baby by B. B. King would be twelve, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by the Jackson 5 would be thirteen, and the list goes on..

My sister gave birth to beautiful Baby Milan, as I call my niece, last Tuesday, December 15. She’s so precious and delicate. One can’t help but smile and be joyful in her presence. Naturally, I sing to her and I sing the lullabies that were sung to me. One day my sister questioned what lullabies our mother sang to us. My mind went blank for a second and eventually Rock a Bye Baby came to mind. I started singing Rock a Bye Baby to Baby Milan, and my sister wouldn’t let me finish. Every time I sang the particular lullaby my sister interrupted me to sing the “Rock” she is familiar with – I Wanna Rock also known as Doo Doo Brown by Uncle Luke. In a normal situation, I would report this to the Pause Police. But since it’s my sister, I can only laugh and dance to her version of rock!

I was a child when I Wanna Rock was released and today was my first time watching the video. I was going to post the video but after watching it, I realized I could NOT post it on my site. This video is a HOT MESS and will not be anything I promote on 6inchvinyl. If you want to watch the video, you can go to YouTube!

By the title of this post, you are probably thinking someone hacked into my blog and wrote something. NOT! In the last year+ my boyfriend has gotten me hooked on football. He has turned me from a random watcher into a fan! Every Sunday, we start at 1 and end about 11, cheering on our fave teams. When it comes to Sunday Night Football, I stand in front of the TV and jam to Faith Hill singing the NBC theme song. I love it! I sing it Monday – Saturday too. It’s so catchy, I promise you’ll be signing “I been waiting all day for Sunday night” by the time the song is over!

What am I supposed to do now?!? Those were my exact thoughts when I typed in imeem.com and was redirected to myspace.com/imeem. Apparently, this Tuesday, MySpace bought the music sharing and listening site, imeem. I used to be on imeem to listen to all my fave music in user created playlists and a lot of playlists featured full albums. At the moment, none of those playlists are available and it pretty much sucks! Not to mention I hate MySpace and it would be such a compromise to go to MySpace for music. Even the sound of it is completely bizarre!

Now, I’m back at what am I supposed to do without imeem? Very few platforms allow you to listen to *full* albums anytime, anywhere. I asked a few people on Twitter what they used to listen to music and the responses included: Last.fm, Rhapsody, Blip.fm, and Grooveshark. I don’t want another Pandora, such as Last.fm, to put in one song and it creates a radio station. I have Pandora and love it. I don’t want to be required to sign up for platform that only allows me to listen to 20-30 second clips. I just want to listen to as much music I want to – when I want it!

Out of the aforementioned services, Grooveshark appears to be the best. It has user created lists and album lists. You can also create your own listening playlist off of an existing list, add songs, switch up the order, and save for later listening. AND you can do all of that, except the saving of a playlist, without having an account! Grooveshark is where it’s at and that’s where I’ll be!

I’M SO IMPRESSED with Alicia Keys’ live YouTube performance. Her look. Her sound. Her band. All fabulous! It was such a great use of technology to bring the performance and the cause to those not physically attending. #AmexAlicia, the designated hashtag on Twitter, became a trending topic during the show and by the end of the show was at number 3. Alicia performed a melody of hits from her first debut album, Songs in A Minor, to her latest album, Element of Freedom, that will release on December 15. To be honest, I’m glad she switched it up. I’m not really feeling the first two singles from her album. I just found out today that Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart was her second single – which means I totally missed the first single! Out of the songs that she performed, which I included below, I’m most excited about Love is Blind. For 6 years to have passed, I, along with the millions of other A Keys fans, am anxiously awaiting the Element of Freedom. December 15 everybody! Don’t forget!

Songs that Alicia performed:
Love is Blind
Karma
You Don’t Know My Name
Doesn’t Mean Anything
Wreckless Love
Diary
Distance and Time
If I Ain’t Got You
Superwoman
Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart
Like You’ll Never See Me Again
Falling
No One
Empire State of Mind – and there was a surprise appearance by Jay-Z