I’ve said for months now that Trey’s social media strategy is on point! Whoever provides his back end strategy and comes up with his non-traditional/traditional marketing tactics gets two thumbs up from me. Take yesterday for example:

First, Ludacris premiers his new single Sex Room featuring Trey Songz. The brilliance behind the release was the only place you could listen to the track was on Global Grind. I tried to YouTube the track and I found it. I tell you – by the time I listened to the track and copy/pasted the link to send it to my friend, UMG had pulled it down. When my friend told me she couldn’t listen to it, I thought she was joking. UMG must have had numerous detectives or insiders at YouTube monitoring to make sure people were not leaking the record too soon!

Instead, the track went viral instantly after Jo Jo (@YoungSimmons), the editor of Global Grind, sent a tweet that the track was available on Global Grind. Trey’s thousands of groupie girls went bananas and sent RTs informing their followers of the new single. I, personally, sent a tweet because I LOVE the track. It’s triple X-rated, but it’s the bomb diggity! I’ve had it on repeat for the last 24 hours.

Sex Room was a solo hit until…Trey premiered his video for Neighbors Know My Name, which is like his sixth edition of soft porn. The release of this video was brilliant too – although very weird. I’m not sure why, but the video premiered on Power 105.1 fm . I’ve never heard of that radio station before a day in my life and the website of the radio station had exclusive access to Trey’s video for a full day. Then, he uploaded the video on YouTube today. If you didn’t know the video premiered, there was no way you could miss it! On the homepage of YouTube.com, Neighbors Know My Name is the first video listed on the Videos Being Watched.

Trey is getting far more publicity than other artists I know, and the good thing is it’s all safe pub. You haven’t seen him robbing anybody, jumping anybody in the club, or engaging in illegal behavior. If you don’t like Trey, I feel sorry for you because 1. you aren’t the norm and 2. it doesn’t look like Trey is going anywhere!

by Tony Toni Tone: Slow Wine with an e; not Slow Wind with a d. This song came in my head yesterday and my boyfriend, who had never heard this song, argued me up and down that it was wind and not wine. But, oh no! I knew the word ended in e, although I couldn’t figure out who sang the song. My initial thought was a group, such as Guy, but I was wrong. I searched on YouTube and the results only showed videos for R. Kelly. Negative! Knowing a couple lines of the lyrics, I was thankful for Google. With a few power searches, I was informed that Slow Wine; Slow Wine; If I Could Wine You In My Arms; From Left to Right; Slow Wine was the 90s hit by Tony Toni Tone. My boyfriend had the nerve to say Raphael Saadiq isn’t the lead on the song and that’s the reason he had not heard the song. Only thing I have to say is…I won that bet!

Week of 1.25.10: Every now and then I force myself to listen to the radio. I started sometime last week and I can’t believe I’ve made it this long. Every – not one – but EVERY time I turn the radio on, I hear the same song.  If I didn’t like the song I’d probably be mad, but since I like the track I guess it’s ok. I only noticed they had the song in heavy rotation because I was constantly jamming to the track, and as days passed I was able to rap the lyrics. I began to question myself like “Woah! How you do know the words to this?”

If what they say is true about the amount of radio play an artist gets directly correlates to the number of singles/albums an artist sales, I know this artist is headed straight to the bank on a weekly basis! Just as I imagined, I just heard on the radio that the single alone has gone gold – that means 500,000 sold! Most people can’t even get their full album to go gold. That is super impressive being that the album isn’t set to release for at least two more months.

So….I’ve played the game long enough. Press play below to see who I’ve titled as the Radio King for this week. I will post the official video when there is one. I’m interested to see what a censored version could look like!

by The Emotions: I had this song in my head for *days* and it was driving me insane. Not because the song was stuck in my head, but because I didn’t know what the song was at the time. The only part I could remember was “hmmmmmmmm hmmm hmmm hmmmm to the world”. I also knew that wasn’t the melody of the whole song. I requested help from my friends, my mom, and my step dad. Try explaining your musical thoughts to people when you know you can’t hum! I received the same response from all of them: laughter! I knew I would figure it out one way or the other. I used all kinds of technology to help me find the song – one I will blog about next – none of which helped.

I knew I was either going to listen to oldies until I heard the song again or I was going to magically figure it out.  And I did just that…I researched every old school female artist I could think of. Eventually, something told me to analyze the harmonies and the sound of the song and think about what other songs sounded like this one. I somehow got to The Emotions and watched other Related Videos on YouTube until I found a match. I became an expert at scanning songs and starting them a minute into the track. When I first heard this one, I thought “Could THIS be the song? This may be the song!” You have no idea how happy I was when I took it back to the beginning and heard that “hmmmmmmmm hmmm hmmm hmmmm to the world”. I have listened to this track at least 30 times since then – enough to where I know all the lyrics and I will never again have to question what the song is.

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..

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!

by Raheem Devaughn ft. Ludacris: I said we living like we bulletproof. We bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. We load it, cock it, aim and shootin. This track reminds me of some old school Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield. It is deep and a true reflection of hip-hop. Music is supposed to be an indication of our time and bring people together. A majority of the music played today is quite degrading and promotes negativity, but there are artists such as Raheem that break the cycle and progress change.

I want to give a shout out to Kenny Burns who snuck in the video and didn’t think he would be noticed ☺

by Robin Thicke: Sometimes I hear songs and feel like I have to share them with the world. Lately, I’ve been sharing via Twitter since the distribution channel is so easy to use. However, I feel inspired to write since I’m going to Blog World on Thursday and this is one of the best songs I’ve heard in a few weeks. I was questioning the other day where Robin Thicke has been when I dug up The Evolution of Robin Thicke out of my cd collection. When I received this track this am, there is no question as to where Robin has been. He has been in the studio laying it down! My first response when I heard this track was “Whew! This new track by Robin Thicke – “Sex Therapy” – bout to get some folks in trouble! Song is the truth.“ I don’t know what he is saying in some of the lyrics, and I don’t even need to know! I understand the parts that I need to know! I love this song and I love when his voice goes into the higher octave. The song is all around sexy and guaranteed to be a hit. I’m saying it here first! Maxwell, Ne-Yo and all the others better watch out!

by Kutiman: I have not blogged in such a long time but it was one of my personal goals two weeks ago. So, I guess now is better late than never! Although I haven’t written, I have kept a running tally of all the artists/tracks/experiences I want to write about and Kutiman is first on the list. I want to start by saying he is majorly talented! I don’t know if I would call him an artist, an editor, or just an all around lover of music. Kutiman finds different artists, vocal or those that play instruments, whose sounds he likes and adds all of their videos to create one track. When you watch the following video, you will see what seems like complete chaos, but is really a cohesive track that sounds amazing!!! While viewing, you can click on “more info” on the video description to view all of the videos that were used to create this one track – just in case you don’t believe that it’s possible. The listing only reinforces this man is the truth!

by Zero 7: I was going to put off posting this like I do everyday. Hence, why there has not been a post in a week or so. When I decided to search for Zero 7’s album to download it, I realized I must simultaneously blog about this song. I hear this song quite often and every time I love it more than the previous time. At first, I kept forgetting the song and tagged it on Shazam everytime I heard it. Eventually, I realized this was the same song I heard the previous 4 times. The song is so calming and peaceful. It is guaranteed to make you relax, smile, and think about a loved one. It might even make you sing along:

When I’m weak, I draw strength from you and

When you’re lost, I know how to change your mood and

When I’m down, you breathe life over me

Even though we’re miles apart, we are eachother’s destiny

Simple Things, the album in which Destiny is tracklisted, just completed it’s download. I plan on listening to the album as I pick up my workout regimen tomorrow. I will keep you informed of my top favorite tracks off Simple Things and others as I venture into the 3 additional albums by Zero 7.