In Defense of Electronic Dance Music (EDM)

Guitarists pluck strings and pianists stroke keys to make a medley of sounds called music, but a different breed of musicians click and tap away on a computer.  Just as it takes musical abilities for a guitarist or pianist to create the right combination of sounds that resonate with listeners so to goes the same for electronic dance music (EDM) DJs who can select and arrange the right sounds together in order to connect with their fans.  Recently, Tom Petty belittled EDM music and Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) founder Pasquale Rotella politely responded, but he did not go far enough to defend the art of EDM.  As one can see from the video below, thousands of people gathered at the recent 2014 Las Vegas EDC and they enjoyed the music created by their favorite DJs just as Tom Petty's music can be enjoyed by his fans.

      
http://www.stereogum.com/1695545/youll-never-believe-this-but-tom-petty-thinks-edm-shows-are-stupid/franchises/wheres-the-beef/





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAmMDG7mFog

Pharrell Williams Has Happy Tears From His Music

Suffice it to say that there are a lot of people who enter the arts as singers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, and other creative types seeking fame as the end game.  This is tantamount to putting the cart before the horse.  The arts are not tools for narcissists seeking fame and it shows by the countless wannabes running around Hollywood broken and soulless.  It's very easy to see why these "artistic" narcissists can be duped into thinking otherwise when they see the media companies packaging girl and boy bands, parading so-called reality stars, and making movies not based on the validity of the content, but by who they can get to appear in it so they can slap a recognizable face on the keyart.  True art comes from the heart and soul and is much bigger than the individual artist.  The artist is just a medium of the arts.  Take a look at this interview with Pharrell Williams by Oprah Winfrey to understand what true art is.
     



http://youtu.be/TEAlndpzuYU

Rick Ross Wins Lawsuit For Stealing Drug Dealer's Identity, But Loses in the Court of Public Opinion

In 1989, Robert Matthew Van Winkle, a White rapper known as Vanilla Ice lost his singing career when it came to light that his biography was fabricated.  Around the same time, R&B pop duo, Milli Vanilli, had a similar fate when it was discovered that they were lip syncing all of their hit songs including, "Blame It On The Rain" and "Girl You Know It's True."  They even had to give back their Grammys.  In 1993, comedian Chris Rock made the funny movie, CB4, which was about a straight-laced African American kid who created a fictitious gangster rapper persona to be later found to be a fraud.  Now in 2014, you have life imitating art, or is it art imitating life with rapper Rick Ross whose real name is William Leonard Roberts II, a former corrections officer and college football scholarship recipient who usurped the identity of drug dealer Freeway Rick Ross.  Although the real Freeway Rick Ross recently lost a court battle against William Roberts because the judge considered Roberts' work "transformative" in nature and thus allowing Roberts to continue usurping the real Rick Ross' name, this nonetheless does not sit well in the court of public opinion and it is a wonder that Officer Ricky as he is pejoratively known even has a singing career.  Watch the video below and get to know the real Freeway Rick Ross.
     


http://youtu.be/1dq4JrwqOBQ