Rapper Kid Cudi finds himself on the cover of Complex Magazine for the third time in so manyyears. In this latest cover story interview with Complex editor-in-chief Noah Callahan-Bever, Cudi opens up about his murky past consisting of drinking and smoking, how things have changed for the better managing a sober lifestyle, and the inspiration behind playing guitar and forming the Wizard album. You can read the interview in full right here; below I’ve copied a couple of standout moments.
When asked about why he spend so much time with fellow rapper Kanye West: “I was at another place, another dark place. Me and my girl had broken up. I wasn’t fully healed yet. And being around Kanye and music was my escape. He’s a sober guy, he has a drink every once in a while, but seeing how he throws himself into the studio when he’s stressing about something, I totally admire that. Being around that was therapy for me.”
When asked to look two years into the future: “I’m always going to be working on something because I have too many ideas. Every day I come up with some wild fucking idea, some type of scheme. I feel like I have a purpose and if I don’t create then I’m letting myself down. I’ve been given this opportunity for people to listen to me worldwide. I’m just gonna fucking keep rocking and keep rocking and keep rocking until I’m in a wheelchair somewhere.”
Browse pictures from the photoshoot below, and watch some behind-the-scenes action after the break.
To call the GQ photoshoot featuring Glee cast members Lea Michele, Dianna Agron, and Cory Monteith provocative is sort of an understatement. The racy shoot has stirred some controversy this week. Members of the Parents Television Council calls it a “near-pornographic display”. PTC President Tim Winter says, “It is disturbing that GQ, which is explicitly written for adult men, is sexualizing the actresses who play high school-aged characters on Glee in this way. It borders on pedophilia.” Shortly after the PTC rage surfaced GQ issued a statement defending the spread. “The Parents Television Council must not be watching much TV these days and should learn to divide reality from fantasy. As often happens in Hollywood, these ‘kids’ are in their twenties. Cory Montieth’s almost 30! I think they’re old enough to do what they want.” That is so true. Montieth is 28, the especially sexy Michele is 24, as is Agron. These adults can certainly do whatever they so choose. And that’s the way Sue C’s it. Now open the gallery below and flick through some sexy Glee goodness. And if you like words, too, click here to read the zine article.
In the October issue of Complex Magazine Kid Cudi opens up to his fans by journeying back to his not-so-distant dark past. Beyond opening up about his heavy drug use, his night in jail, and the big reveal that he has a daughter, Cudder talks about his competition (or lack thereof), the meaning behind the tracks “REVOFEV”, “Wylin’ ‘Cause I’m Young”, “Erase Me”, and “Mr. Rager”, and the encompassing theme behind his upcoming second studio album Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager (11/9).
On why he opted to create another dark album, instead of making a fun collab: “When I started making records like “Erase Me.” I wanted this album to be fun, but the dark sh– was my life at that time. I was fighting not to write that sh–. It got frustrating writing a collab album—I just lost interest, and it became more of a task, rather than something I wanted to do. That’s not how it’s supposed to feel. The day it becomes work, you need to retire.”
On MOTM2: “I want my sh– to be like you’re reading a novel, not a Dr. Seuss book. I felt like the last album was too short. This one is a little bit longer, it’s 18 tracks and counting. It’s just ten times better on all levels. The story’s deeper, darker, with no holding back. It’s beautiful, man. It’s an emotional album.”
Head over to Complex to read the explicit three page interview. Look in the gallery below for some stills from the photoshoot and after the break to find a behind-the-scenes video.
Kanye West is featured in the October issue of XXL magazine. In addition to gracing the cover wearing his signature heavy chain, Kanye penned his very first article for the magazine and was the creative director of a 40 page section of the special collector’s issue. In his article “The Exclusive Story by the Man Himself” Kanye sheds light on the publicisized and highly critisized Taylor Swift incident from last year’s MTV VMAs. Popeater managed to pluck out some choice quotes from the article.
“I stress that the incident wasn’t about Taylor personally. And it definitely wasn’t about race. Where I messed up is, at the end of the day, it’s your show, Taylor. It’s your show, MTV.”
“The relationship with the public and with your fans is like the relationship with your girlfriend. How could I not, at a certain point, be like, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been at the awards show. I’m sorry.’ Not that I don’t deserve to get beat up or change who I am inside, to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”
“I knew I wasn’t in a great spot publicly after the incident, but I would just block it out and work as hard as possible and let my work be my saving grace. In a way, I had thrown a Molotov cocktail at my own career, and it gave me an opportunity, for the first time, to go away and find out who I was. Because I felt very alone.”
Ohh, dark stuff huh? You can pick up the October issue of XXL on September 28. The zine also includes stoires on Kid Cudi, Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music label, and the top 10 producers-turned-rappers of all time.
True Blood stars Alexander Skarsgard, Anna Paquin, and Stephen Moyer posed nude covered in fake blood for the next issue of Rolling Stone, set to hit newsstands August 20. I have yet to start watching the HBO hit, but from what I’m told it quickly turned into crazy sexy vampire porn. If that’s the case I’d say this cover is fitting, wouldn’t you?
Dominican actress Dania Ramirez has had roles in The Sopranos and X-Men: The Last Stand, but you probably know her better as Maya from NBC’s Heroes and most recently Turtle’s squeeze Alex on Entourage. Though she’s been featured in Maxim before, this is her first time gracing the cover with her stunning exotic beauty. Enough words..I’m going to let you jump right to the spread. Look below for two photo galleries. The first includes pictures from this month’s cover shoot, the second contains images from her 2008 feature. Bonus! Check out the video below to go behind-the-scenes with Dania on her photoshoot. Aaand, you’re welcome.
After spending some time out of the limelight, Kanye West has returned to entertain us with his slick, emotionally-driven raps and different side of his thumping ego. On Wednesday Kanye visited Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, California to preview four tracks from his upcoming album. He donned a fresh suit and rapped a capella atop a table inside a fluorescently lit conference room in front of Facebook employees. He starts with a “fun rap”, that’s the one embedded above. It rocks. “Kill the hypocrisy/This is an aristocracy..I’m Socrates/But my skin more chocolatey.” The next rap is rather short; it may just be a freestyle, but it’s got a sick line in it: “Lost in this plastic life/Let’s break out of this fake-ass party, turn this into a classic night.” The next song likely titled “Chain Heavy” is dipped in politics and contains this humorous line: “They try to tell me that aliens built the pyramids/I swear life’s on bitch on a period”; it concludes with my favorite line I’ve heard this far: “This is the making of a masterpiece/So we broke out the chains and told our master, ‘Peace’.” The fourth song is called “Mama’s Boyfriend” and it’s an extremely emotional track about Kanye’s late mother Donde West. In it he journeys back to the days when his divorced mother started dating other men. “I’m my mama’s boyfriend/I’m her little husband…Keep your hands off my mama” he screams. Apprently this track took him 33 years to write and it clearly means a lot to him. ‘Ye drops so many uses of the n-word in this track, but he says, “I’m allowed to use it.”
Later that day he posted this message targeted to the Facebook employees: “Many times in life I’ve had to deal with moments of doubt. And as it’s been a minute since I’ve performed any fresh material in front of an audience, this could’ve been one of those moments… but it wasn’t. Your energy was a gift so electric, so genuine, that it really helped me give my best. The energy was so inspiring I had to keep going! I just hope you got as much from me as I got from you…which was everything!” Be sure to look after the break to listen to all the tracks.
From one popular social network to another, Kanye finally caved in and joined the Twitterverse. And you know what? He actually comes across a non-egotistical funnyman. Peep his first tweet: “Up early in the morning taking meetings in Silicone Valley.” This was followed almost immediately by: “Lol I spelled Silicon wrong ( I guess I was still thinking about the other type of silicone ITS A PROCESS!! : )” Then came some important news regarding his upcoming album: “The album is no longer called “Good Ass Job” I’m bouncing a couple of titles around now.” Just confirming our suspicions, Kanye. After giving a handful of shoutouts to various blogs for reporting his Facebook HQ visit, he started to notice how quickly he was garnering a following. In less than two days he managed to gain a following of nearly 300,000 (he’s currently at 293,687 followers). With tweets like these: “My thoughts on Twitter so far… at the end of the day, God damnit I’m killing this shit!!!” and “I think Twitter was designed specifically with me in mind just my humble opinion hahhhahaaaahaaa humble hahahahhahaahaaaa” you might think ‘Ye is stroking his ego again, but I think he’s actually starting to satirize himself. He’s finally realized that he “has the power to let power go” and he’s learning from his past mistakes. Hilarious comic (and one of Kanye’s friends) Aziz Ansari started trending the hashtag #PredictingKanyeTweets, and Kanye simply retweeted jokes that were on him. “Damn I wish Hermes made edible snacks, Cheezits just ain’t dope enough for my mouth”, tweeted Ansari. The fact that he’s not retaliating but instead having fun with his new lease on life through Twitter makes me believe that he’s turning a corner for the better. But don’t take my word for it. Follow @kanyewest and form your own opinions.
At the end of the day, it appears as if Kanye wants to begin a new chapter in his career. After coming out of hiding he decided to tease some tracks and open up his fanbase using the power of social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. It’s an interesting and unconventional route to take but it’s one I can commend. Welcome back Mr. West. September 14 come now please.
Update: Later in the week Kanye visited a bunch of magazine headquarters including XXL and Rolling Stone. A video surfaced on YouTube from his meeting with the latter outlet. Look for it after the break.
Imagine this: In the future magazine stands will be interactive on the consumer-end and communicative with your portable tablet computer. Cynergy’s magazine kiosk concept bring that future to life today. Using a Microsoft Surface table and proprietary software, Cynergy created a highly intuitive and seemless way to preview and purchase magazines on the go. As you can see in the video above, it’s as simple as this: You go up to one of these “public” tables and browse a full library of magazines and sort them by category, popularity, etc. Once you find something you’re interested in, you tap the cover to view its table of contents and preview it. When you’re ready to buy a digital version of it, you place down your tablet device (that’s running Cynergy’s “custom designed and built” software) onto the table and it’s instantly recognized. Your name and credit amount pops up on screen. To take the magazine with you, simply drag and drop the zine’s cover from the Surface to your tablet. (The visuals during this part are very neat; the zine actually appears to move from the table to the tablet without hiccup). And now you own the magazine; it’s sitting in your digital (print) media collection on your tablet. I can totally see something like this being implemented for tablets like the iPad and (future) color screen e-readers. Look after the break for a second demo.
So this is what Wired is going to look like on the iPad. Pretty cool, huh? Wired teamed up with Adobe to create Wired Reader, a digital version of the real-life magazine. The UI looks stunning and the back-and-forth between pages, images, and video is very fluid. It runs on top of Adobe’s AIR app, allowing developers to easily convert the Reader to run on other mobile devices and even the PC or Mac. Will the iPad revolutionize the print media industry? Hard evidence like this points towards a resounding “yes.”
Rapper Kid Cudi is one of 30 “Most Stylish New Yorkers” featured in the latest issue of Time Out New York. If you’re interested in his inspirations, where he shops, and his favorite designers click here to read the interview. Check out the gallery below for a crop of images from the photoshoot, and look after the break for a behind-the-scenes video from the shoot.
The publishers at Popular Magazine have joined the digital revolution in print media with their rendition of a concept tablet device displaying their magazine in a digitized form. PopSci publisher Bonnier teamed up with design agency BERG to create this mock tablet called Mag+ that does its best to recreate the magazine in a digital environment. Bonnier joins Time Inc.’s Sports Illustrated and Conde Nast’s Wired in the movement towards a digital future for magazines. If this is indeed the future for magazines and even newspapers, I say bring it on. Technology and interactivity could be long sought solution for keeping print media alive in a digital age ruled by the Internet.
Yeah so remember when I posted about Esquire’s attempt to re-energize the zine industry with the inclusion of augmented reality tricks hidden within its latest issue? Well look what we have here. In order to augment your reality (ie. see Downey Jr. jump around on the page) you need to point a special-coded marker to your computer’s webcam. It looks like customers are receiving the issue with the address label covering the marker on the cover page! WTF, indeed.
Esquire has commented on the matter. And that can be read after the break if you so choose to do so.
