I have nothing against the music of British rapper TINIE TEMPAH — I don't think I've even heard it, to be honest — but boy am I ever sick as heck of reading that name in print. Every time I'm forced to read it aloud in my head it's like catching a whiff of cat pee.A while back, rapper the GAME caught some flak from non-bigots for saying some really dumb stuff about gay people. In his own defense, he clarified that he didn't have a problem with all gay people, just those who pretended not to be gay, because they would somehow give him AIDS when they slept with women (or when Game accidentally had sex with them).
Game further insinuated that he knew of several major rappers operating on the downlow. Nothing new there; rappers say that all the time. The real news is that he broke the usual etiquette of the matter by actually outing someone: mumbly muscle hunk 50 CENT. Are we to believe it? Sure, they have a longstanding feud that once came to gunfire, but that doesn't mean Game would sink to lying about 50 on so lofty a venue as Twitter! Several news sources uncritically reported the outing, probably for the same reason I'm bothering to mention it here: because everyone really wants it to be true.
(P.S. — Methinks, considering the butterfly tattoo on Game's face and everything, he doth protest too much. I mean, the dude even named himself "The Game," a pretty transparent ploy to trick other rappers into saying they're married to him.)
Mental enigma GUCCI MANE is going back to prison for six months, this time for pushing a woman from a moving Hummer after she rebuffed his romantic intentions. If you think about it, she experienced double trauma: getting into a Hummer with Gucci must be at least as horrifying as getting thrown out of it.
JULIAN LENNON is releasing his first new album in 13 years, and several sources had the charity to print the tracklist. Something struck me as funny about the titles: "Everything Changes," "Hold On," "Just for You," "Never Let You Go" . . . there's only one song title on the whole damn album — "Guess It Was Me" — that hasn't already been used half a dozen times by other artists. Get your title game right, Jude, or pirating your songs will be marginally more difficult for those with limited Google skills. "Valotte," now there was a title nobody could mistake (and a song nobody remembers).
There's a new COLDPLAY single, called "Paradise." In case you're wondering if it's any good: are you kidding me? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Elsewhere in UK dads, NOEL GALLAGHER has a new track called "AKA . . . What A Life," which continues his recent trajectory of unexpected not fully awfulness. But for what it's worth, the new Julian Lennon single is way better.
First the bassist from COHEED AND CAMBRIA gets kicked out of the band for trying to yoink oxys via a late-night Walgreen's bomb threat, then last week the touring drummer of MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE gets thrown out for robbing the band! Get your shit together, 2003 through 2006. I don't want to wake up tomorrow and read that JADE PUGET's been ejected from AFI for running a threecard monte grift.
Oh, but in the MCR drummer's defense, he was only stealing from the band to frame a hated roadie. Go ahead and assume I'm making that up, because I wouldn't believe me either. But yeah: he hated a roadie, so he tried to frame him, then got caught red-handed in his brilliant scheme.
DAVID THORPE | dthorpe[a]phx.com
