Return of The Roots

"My sound hittin' your head from every direction,
Ya head and your shoulder area, ya mid-section" - Don't Say Nuthin'

So I just got the new Roots album, and I don't know what the bad press is about. This album is great!



No doubt though, it's not as good as Things Fall Apart, but what is? =P The beats just ooze The Roots and the lyrics are as fresh as ever, but I think people just felt that they were going to take it to the next level rather than staying where they were at. Things Fall Apart was something special and I hope they're able to do it again in the near future, but this is a good substitute until then. I highly reccomend it to any fans; I've listened to it a few times and it's already grown on me. Especially "Don't Say Nuthin" and "Boom". Another interesting thing is that they write in the CD jacket what their inspiration for the songs were.

Did anyone hear about Apple's new iPod Shuffle? This is the size of it:



It costs $99 for 512MB of space and $150 for a whole GB, which is an awesome price. So for just a little more than the price of a USB pin drive you can get an mp3 player of the same size that also fits in USB drives that will play music AND hold files. If I didn't already have 3 USB drives I'd jump out my window and get this. Apparantly it has some smart shuffle features to make your workouts and walks and such more exciting. Kudos to Apple; this is why they have so much market share in mp3 players. That and their great marketing.

The multiplayer trailer for Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory came out yesterday and I couldn't resist putting up this picture:



I know I know, Tom Clancy is selling out too damn much. Well this time it's worth it because this game is gonna kick ass. Not only can you flip people off balconies (as depicted above), but you can follow alternate paths, bash in doors, shift your body weight, hack, and knife people! That trailer is a must-see for all gamers (except Gamecube freaks).

Another note in games is this great article about girls in video games and the female demographic in players. It takes note of objectification in video games, which I think in some cases goes too far. However, I think that old school Tomb Raider was fine. It's not like she was a whore or something, she kicked ass! I'm also glad they brought up Beyond Good and Evil, because it's an amazing game featuring a not-so scantily clad female lead, but the sales tanked! WTF?! I hope that's not the reason, and it shouldn't be since Prince of Persia is another adventure game without a hot female lead with great production values but with great sales to match. Why is it that so few girls like video games? It's the same thing with CS: why are guys more prone to major in CS? If girls are smarter than guys, shouldn't they like nerdy stuff like programming also? I think that as gender roles blur more and more in the modern era, companies will start marketing normal games to females within the next 10 years rather than just girly games.

And finally, the Midweek Music Meme:

Q: If you could make, or remake, a music video of any song, what song would it be and what would the video be like?
A: This is kinda hard because I don't have a lot of good music video ideas, but in keeping with today's theme I'd like to see a video for "Seed 2.0" by The Roots. I picture them in a rock club full of rockers and hip hoppers jammin it up. And maybe they'd intersplice scenes of a romantic dinner between Black Thought and his girl leading to ;) ;) and then his joy when his child is born. It's a very musically great song so I'd like to see a lot of the band in the video also and their sweat and emotion as they play it.

Got a song you'd like to direct the video for? Post a comment with your idea!