The Cold Cut

Madonna- 4 Minutes (ft. Justin Timberlake)

Madonna. 'Material Girl' and the 'Queen Of Pop'. 200 million album sales. And many more to come, if her latest single- '4 Minutes'- is any indication.

Her 11th studio album, 'Hard Candy', will signal the end of an era. It is her last (studio) album with Warner Bros. Records, after which she will move to her new 10 year contract with Live Nation. There are a few main reasons as to why Madonna has lasted this long. Effectively, she is a musical chameleon, transforming her looks, music and general brand image whenever she begins to lose popularity. Her latest album is no different.

'4 Minutes' is a lesson for the pretenders. This is how you stage a reinvention. Her last album, 'Confessions On A Dance Floor', was built from an endless mix of dance samples. Whilst not totally dissimilar, this single tends more towards heavier beats and giant brass than pure dance backing. Roping in Justin Timberlake and Timbaland (do these guys travel as a unit now?) is a genius move, but Timb/aland/erlake have a tendency to take over the tracks they feature in. The track is a little busy, but the hip-hop feel works well. Basically, this is shit hot, and will no doubt take over the radio/charts, just as 'Hung Up' did.

'Hard Candy' is out on 28th April... Pre-order it here

Discuss: Like the new direction? Is this Madonna's track? Sounds like JT and Timba to me... Oh, and isn't the cover terrible?

A few of the best 'ft.' tracks on rotation in my iTunes:
Richard Ashcroft ft. Coldplay- Bittersweet Symphony
Kanye West ft. Dwele- Flashing Lights
Talib Kweli ft. Kanye West, Mos Def & Jay-Z- Get By (Remix)
Sway ft. Pyrelli- Up Your Speed
Nas ft. will.i.am- Hip Hop Is Dead

In the age of Timbalands, Chris Browns and Kanye Wests, songs are no longer a demonstration of an artist's respective talent, rather a closely fought game of who can get the best names to 'feature' on their track. I challenge you: take a look at your iTunes library and count how many 'ft.'s are present. I wouldn't be surprised if a good 10 to 15 percent of your library was made up of songs with the 'ft.' suffix attached to them.

As weird as this trend is, it hasn't always been this way... whereas in past days guest artists might appear on 1 of the 10+ tracks on a album, now they dominate, with almost half of every hip-hop/RnB album devoted to guest artists and producers. Take a look at Kanye West's 'Graduation' for example, where 5 of the tracks feature guest artists. And, further to this, Kanye has the audacity to leave some contributors unmentioned, such as Daft Punk on the hit-single 'Stronger'. It seems stupid for West to claim that he wrote the 'Harder Better Faster Stronger' sample, don't you think? So in actuality a large proportion of 'Graduation' includes some significant contribution from an outside party.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of this? On the positive side, you could argue that more variety is never a bad thing, and this is evident in a few of the current crop of 'ft.' songs, such as 'Umbrella' and 'Stronger'. However, for the most part, the implications of this new tendency are negative. Just to name a few of the major disadvantages to this developing bias: as the saying goes, 'having too much of something stops it being special'. Well, unsurprisingly, the same thing applies to music: where once guest artists were special, they are now becoming the norm. The success of songs and albums now depends on name-dropping/connections, and some artists are noticeably on autopilot (Chris Brown, for example), relying on the strength of their guest artist/producer to ferry them through each track. And don't even mention Timbaland... 'Shock Value', his latest offering -whilst mostly good- is 17 tracks long, and Timba is only alone for the opening song.


I wasn't too aware of this until albums like 'Shock Value' started cropping up all over the place. It saddens me to say that nowadays when you buy a hip-hop album you rarely get to hear the artist by themselves. Hopefully the genre can obtain a more reasonable balance before albums like 'Shock Value' become commonplace.

I am, however, only one person in a world of billions. So what do you think? Are you aware of this, or do you just take the music for what it is?

Duran Duran ft. Justin Timberlake- Night Runner (produced by Timbaland)

Duran Duran, how low you have fallen. Resorting to a Timbaland beat to revitalise your career? Shameless...

As much as I know I should despise this song, it has 'guilty pleasure' written all over it in big bold letters. The calling card for it is that for every horrible element there is something to bring it back from the brink. Take Simon Le Bon's lyrics, for example. These are truly horrible:

I'm not exactly sure of the reason behind it, but lately loads of rappers and hip hop artists have been reigning in singer-songwriters to guest on their record: the latest to join their ranks is Kanye West, who has roped in Chris Martin of Coldplay to sing on Homecoming, one of the leaked tracks off Graduation, out 10th September. As much as I love Kanye and Coldplay, this song is a dud from start to finish- there's nothing distinguishing about it- and I found myself slightly bored about a minute in, something which rarely happens without reason. It's a bit of an anti-climax to release/leak this after the brilliance of Stronger (my favourite hip-hop track this year, hands down)...

Another worrying thing I've noticed about Kanye is he can't seem to sustain a record by himself anymore- at least 5 or 6 tracks on each of his albums have the dreaded featuring stamp. Keep this up Kanye, and you could find yourself becoming the new Timbaland: On his new album Shock Value, Timba is only on his own for one of the 19 tracks... I appreciate that having a variety of different artists looks great from a business perspective, but sometimes, we (the paying customers) just want to hear the artist by themselves rather than with a plethora of random "hip-hop legends/singers".

Well, that's the rant over- Homecoming is included at the bottom of this post, and now I'm going to go and give it a few more listens before I decide is total rubbish. Just to put my conscience at rest, what do you guys/girls think? Am I right/wrong? Please let me know... This hasn't deflated my expectations for Graduation- I still think it's going to be a great album, only worse than it could have been... Follow the link below to download the track:

Kanye West ft. Chris Martin- Homecoming

Graduation can be pre-ordered here