Hey Guys, WZRD Update. Me and Cudi have been working on our debut album and it’s almost near completion. We are in the final stages of mastering but we really had to take time and pay attention to the sonics as this is new territory for us. With that being said, we have decided to change the release date. We are looking roughly at Feb 28th. Y’all know how Cudi is’ and I’m the same way. Everything has to be in place and now it is. I know it’s late notice, we were trying to keep the date but got wrapped up making this album perfect for y’all.

However for making you guys wait a little longer we will release ‘Brake’ & ‘Teleport 2 Me’ on iTunes on the previously said date. AS WELL AS ‘DOSE OF DOPENESS’. Hopefully that will hold you guys over until the album drops!

Kid Cudi just logged on as well to say a few things about WZRD:

My whole career Ive had 2 prove people wrong, WZRD will be no different. This album will finally make people believers, WE CAN DO ANYTHING. U can argue who’s the best mc, who’s the freshest, who sales the most, but it is no contest when I say Iam the ONLY one who can do what I do. UN FUCK WITTABLE. I just wanna save lives….

And then Cudi proceeded to ask for a cover story from Complex, which he will inevitably get since he’s their poster boy. I’m interested in seeing what he and Dot bring with this WZRD project.

For fans who enjoy the more traditional hip hop-centric Cudi, he also says work on Man on the Moon III has begun. There are no specifics at this time on that album except for the fact that Common will most likely narrate the album as he did with the first edition.

I’m just speculating (there’s no tentative date as far as I know), but I would expect his third album to be aimed at Early-Mid Summer 2012 release area…then probably pushed back to Late Summer – Early Fall.

Like his music? Hate his music? Doesn’t matter. Aubrey Graham aka Drake just made another huge statement with the release of Take Care.  He sold 659,190 copies first week and comfortably has the #1 album in the country. He won. Expect that number to change slightly up or down when the exact Billboard figure gets released tomorrow.

01. Over My Dead Body (Produced by Noah “40 Shebib)
02. Shot For Me (Produced by Noah “40 Shebib)
03. Headlines (Produced by Boi-1da)
04. Crew Love feat. The Weeknd (Produced by Illangelo & Doc McKinney)
05. Take Care feat. Rihanna (Produced by Jamie XX)
06. Marvins Room / Buried Alive (Interlude) feat. Kendrick Lamar (Produced by Noah “40 Shebib)
07. Underground Kings (Produced by T-Minus)
08. We’ll Be Fine feat. Birdman (Produced by T-Minus)
09. Make Me Proud feat. Nicki Minaj (Produced by T-Minus)
10. Lord Knows feat. Rick Ross (Produced by Just Blaze)
11. Cameras / Good Ones Go (Interlude) (Produced by Noah “40 Shebib)
12. Doing It Wrong feat. Stevie Wonder (Produced by Noah “40 Shebib)
13. The Real Her feat. Andre 3000 & Lil Wayne (Produced by Noah “40 Shebib)
14. HYFR feat. Lil Wayne (Produced by T-Minus)
15. Look What You’ve Done (Produced by Chase N. Cashe)
16. Practice (Produced by Noah “40 Shebib)
17. The Ride (Produced by Noah “40 Shebib)

BONUS TRACKS:

18. Hate Sleeping Alone (Produced by Noah “40 Shebib)
19. The Motto feat. Lil Wayne (Produced by T-Minus)

S.F.-based independent digital distributor INgrooves, which handles all of partial owner UMG’s product for that marketplace, will release Blue Slide Park, Miller’s upcoming full-length album, while using Ron Spaulding’s Fontana team to put out his physical debut. The new album hits Nov. 8, and insiders are predicting it to be in the race to become Fontana’s first-ever, six-figure #1 debut on the HITS album sales chart. Other releases that week include Now 40, Twilight: Breaking Dawn and Il Divo, while Adele is always a threat.

“I’ve never seen an artist and label do a better job with social network one-to-one fan outreach,” says INgrooves SVP Global Sales and Marketing Ben Kline. “Mac’s fans are beyond loyal.”

“This is already a success because it’s been done outside the traditional ways of setting up a record,” says Kline. “It’s being driven by everything Rostrum and Mac have done. We’re just trying not to screw it up, and to stay out of the way of the amazing story that they have built and are continuing to build.”

“The key to setting up this record has been patience,” adds Spaulding. “They haven’t rushed anything. They spent a lot of time touring him and building his social networks. He’s very active and in touch with his fans.”

Talk about a loyal fan base. We’ll see how this pans out…

‘Our Day Will Come’
‘Between The Cheats’
‘Tears Dry’
‘Wake Up Alone’
‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’
‘Valerie’
‘Like Smoke’
‘The Girl From Ipanema’
‘Halftime’
‘Best Friends’
‘Body & Soul’
‘A Song For You’

Via Huffington Post

At the beginning of today’s exclusive listening session at Manhattan’s Legacy Studios for The Roots new LP undun, manager Rich Nichols introduced the record by saying “the story is about the undoing of a kid.” Which reiterates what those of us who’ve been paying attention already knew about the concept album, but much more succinctly. He added that title was partially inspired by The Guess Who song of the same name (sometimes known as “She’s Come Undone”) and that the major underlying theme revolves around the idea of a person’s life choices being determined by their surroundings–in this case, ghetto, USA.

Without further preamble, Nichols had the engineer cue up undun for the eager handful of journalists and label types and ran through the LP its entirety—almost. After nine songs, the music stopped and Rich explained that they were in the studio to record the 10^th and final track at this very session. At that point Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and pianist D.D. Jackson launched into four or five very different takes of a tumultuous freeform piano-and-drums requiem as we looked on (or drifted out, depending on our jobs) one of which will presumably be the album’s closer. Now THAT is what you call a listening session. Find below my track-by-track impressions of the rest of the album.

“Sleep” – The album opens with a bluesy, spooky piano that could be Portishead or a dusty old jazz 78. Black Thought speaks the first words “To catch a thief…” and then launches into some bars that sketch out the death of the main character Redford Stevens, a disoriented soul looking back over his life, alternated with a soulful, raspy vocal it takes me a second to recognize as Aaron Livingston of Icebird (actually the track is credited to Young Vipers ie Aaron Livingston and Hot Sugar who provided the original music as well). The feel is very cinematic and my first thought is that the narrative structure of this album is there to let The Roots be a lot more experimental with the music, without people losing the thread—same way that Henry Mancini could record himself throwing rubber balls at a harp on a film score, because the viewer is so focused on the action onscreen, they ‘forget’ they’re listening to dissonant sounds.

“Make My” – I don’t have to describe this one because you can listen to it right here, but I will say that the instrumental groove that comes in around 2:44, with its flute and Mizell Brothers-like bass sound is a premonition of the rest of the album, the real heart of which lies not so much in the hooks and verses but in the changes, the bridges and b-sections that carry you over the interstices of the tracks like the movements of a symphony.

“One Time” – Big drums and rappity-rap. “Too much money talkin / we make ‘em economize” and “We make the funny papers like Comic-Con” and “Not a thing I fear except fear itself” (Black Thought). Then “I wonder if you die / do you hear harps and bagpipes / Even if you was born the other side of a crackpipe?” (is that Malik B.?) and then the rappity-rap gives way to sublime, panoramic string movement, reminiscent of the emotionally-charged breakdown in “Act Too (Love of my Life)” from Things Fall Apart.

“Kool On” – This song is built on a soulful loop of heavily modulated electric guitar and a snatch of soulful “whoah” that I swear has to be a sample. Nichols later confirms offhandedly that it is a D.J. Rogers sample, the first and only a rare sample from The Roots–in the past even beats like “Dynamite”–credited to Dilla–were replayed by the band. Meanwhile someone sings “Stars, I make you shine” and somebody raps “sting like a hornet / damn it feels good to see people up on it.”

“The Jump” – Comes in on an abrupt one-beat transition, followed by big, no, HUGE drums and hard-hitting rappity-rap from Thought: “If not for these hood inventions / I’d be just another kid with no intentions” and “when he’s tired of running / Through the layers of the onion, he’ll shed a tear…” The chorus has the feel of a bluesy 70s rock song that you would hear in the soundtrack of a Martin Scorcese flick when the chips are down: “We all on a journey…but on the other side that’s when we settle up the score.” After the third chorus the pitch wavers uncomfortably on the hi-hat and the drums sloooooww doooown into:

“Stomp” – Blues guitar, hard rock bass pulse and a gangsterish piano vamp–and Black Thought “speaking the pieces of a man / staring at the creases in my hand…never deviating from the plan.” Somebody else (Dice Raw?) says “Put the barrel in the mouth and blow the devil a kiss.” Track 6 of a 10-track album and undun just hit a whole other level of Oh Shit. In the spaces of the beat a preacher shouts: “Repeat after me: We gon’ fight!”

“Lighthouse” – “Get down with the captain or go down with the ship / Before we go down I’ma hit ‘em with this…” This is the extremely melodic song which you may have heard Questlove leak tiny a studio snippet from, with words that sounded like face down in the ocean. And are, it turns out, “Face down in the ocean” alternating with the rapped chorus: “Passin out lifejackets, we about to go di-down.” Even in the midst of the dreamy, if melancholy, melody the band is playing with eerie half-tones and other things you really shouldn’t be able to get way with on a rap record.

“I Remember” – Black Thought leads with: “I drew a 2 of hearts from my deck of cards.” The chorus is “I remember / Can you remember / I do…” and the theme (clearly) is memory and looking back at where you came from: “I realize how depressing of a place it is / and recognizing in the reflection who’s face it is.” Powerful stuff, and the only criticism is that it feels too personal to be Redford Stephens, pretty sure this is Black Thought talking about Black Thought and the line between author and character is blurred.

“Tip The Scale” – “Famous last words: ‘you under arrest’” now we are in the prison scene, dealing not so much with the reality of jail as its inevitability: “I got a bro under arrest, and one in / He wrote me a letter, it said: ‘when you comin?’ / Two ways out: digging tunnels or digging graves out.”

“Redford” – Track 10 of 10. I could tell you about this one, but I would have to tell it four different ways and let you choose your own adventure.