It has been rather quiet on the hip-hop feud front since Jay-Z and Nas ended their long-running spat, very publicly, back in October. Step forward Cam'ron. The rapper has announced his own distaste for Jay-Z, MTV reports, in the form of a seven-and-a-half-minute song called "You Got to Love It." But is Cam punching above his weight by taking on Jigga? Pitchfork thinks not (Cam'ron is "a non-sequitur gumball machine on bad days, firebreathing Ben & Jerry's on good ones," apparently), but the Village Voice finds the whole thing rather tiresome ("bad product, phoned-in, cobbled together, poorly edited, with mistakes and stumbles"). Decide for yourself: Fader has the track here. And in case the running time is a bit much, Cam helpfully lays out his principal arguments in a point-by-point introduction, essay style. The first three of these concern injustices dealt upon Damon Dash, and the fourth is the obligatory shooting reference; but it's the fifth complaint that gets to the crux of the issue: Jay-Z, it seems, has been wearing sandals with jeans. Ouch.
In other hip-hop developments, the Beastie Boys have demonstrated a rather unusual approach to the concert film archetype, according to the New York Times: "They decided to lend hand-held video cameras to 50 fans, told them to shoot at will, and then presented the end result in movie theaters in all its primitive, kaleidoscopic glory." Since the Times can't quite bring itself to print the title of the film, and "the most dangerous site on the internet," All Hip-Hop, resorts to coy asterisks, I feel obliged to inform you that the project is named "Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That."
Meanwhile, the White Stripes are to star in a forthcoming episode of "The Simpsons." Spin says that the "plot follows a fracas between the Simpson family when Marge and Homer buy Bart a drum set," before "Jack and Meg come in to mediate," and, inevitably, "wackiness ensues." Kudos to NME for unearthing this related 2003 quote from Meg White: "A guest appearance [on 'The Simpsons'] would be amazing. I wouldn't want to be in a Lisa episode. They're kind of boring. Maybe a Homer one would be better."
CBS's advertising campaign for its new music industry comedy-drama, "Love Monkey," has involved plastering the title of the show on the front end of New York City buses. (It's an added reason to avoid getting run down by a bus -- "Love Monkey? What the " would be a sad and surreal final thought.) The show, based on a novel by Kyle Smith -- who has a column in the New York Post -- concerns a thirty-something A&R man, played by Tom Cavanaugh, who is fired from his job at an evil major record label and sets up his own low-budget indie label to discover "real music" at venues like CBGB. Apparently without irony (as Clap Clap Blog notes), "Love Monkey" is thus actually a scary cross-marketing extravaganza between CBS and evil major record label Sony BMG. Variety explains the whole dastardly plot to feature regular performances by Sony BMG artists on the show, beginning with a rather creepy little John Mayer clone called Teddy Geiger, who starred in the first episode (and whose album is coming out in February). Gawker has pictures from the show's launch party here.
In further monkey news: England's the Arctic Monkeys have brought their amazing disappearing-concert-ticket act back to the States, selling out New York's 1,500 capacity Webster Hall in a few hours on Wednesday (via Yeti Don't Dance). For those who can't quite wait another week for the import copies of "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" -- their debut album -- to arrive, Domino Records has streamed the first minute of every song on the record here. NME, meanwhile, "reveals" the source of the album's somewhat confrontational title: It's a quote from cult British 1960s class-struggle film "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning."
-- Matt Glazebrook
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