I don’t know if you all watch Braxton Family Values, but remember when Tamar told the songwriter TC “there’s no running on my record, take off your tennis shoes”? Well Christina Aguilera was born in a pair of Nike trainers because ‘ol girl hasn’t met a note or a phrase that she couldn’t stretch or melismize (I made that word up, you’ll deal) in a performance.Without a doubt, Christina Aguilera has a beautiful voice and if only she knew the power of restraint she’d be in a much better position in her career today. With her 6th album behind her, Aguilera has still yet to develop a true signature sound. She is an artist dictated by her voice and only that, which is a shame because she has potential to be so much more.

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This past week, Young Money Rapper Nicki Minaj debuted the video for her single “Stupid Hoe” to record amounts of views on the VEVO music video streaming service. The candy colored clip catches the animated rapper various states of undress while delivering a weak attempt at a diss track that fails to ignite and force co-signs in the manner that previous tracks/verses such as “Monster” or “Roman’s Revenge” did. Beyond that, I won’t attempt to do an intense breakdown of the video and give it merit beyond its superficial purpose.

While I was listening to “Stupid Hoe”, I couldn’t help but recall TLC’s “Silly Ho” and marvel at how much has changed between the release of these two tracks. “Silly Ho” acted more as a cautionary tale while “Stupid Ho” is a direct (yet indirect) shot at one particular person. Its interesting how one is almost a song of empowerment while the other is a crass overwrought attempt at extending a beef that’s long past its shelf-life. Moreover, with Nicki’s extremely young fan base, its only a matter of time before 5th graders around the nation are calling their frenemies “Stupid Hoes”. Besides, “Stupid Hoe”, replete with its Lil Kim inspired imagery is a little….reductive, wouldn’t you say?

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The Wanted made their first U.S. television performance on The Ellen Degeneres Show today performing their hit single, “Glad You Came.” I had the privilege of seeing the boys live in the fall when they performed at Splash nightclub in NYC and they certainly put on an even better performance on Ellen by going into the crowd and serenading a few lucky ladies. I’m glad The Wanted is getting the success they deserve and will hopefully see them blow up here in the U.S. as well. Currently, they are getting ready for their U.S. tour, which starts next week in Orlando, Florida. Check out the performance below and let us know if you would want to see them live!

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We here at Base Magazine would like to congratulate Beyonce and Jay-Z on their first baby girl, Blue Ivy Carter. Blue (or Ivy as I like to refer to her as) was born Saturday at a “healthy 7 lbs,” according to both Beyonce and Jay and the two parents couldn’t be happier. According to some reports, the name Ivy came from the Roman Numeral for four (IV), which has significance to both parents. Jay decided to show his happiness in the song below called “Glory,” which talks about the experience of now becoming a parent. The song even sheds light on how B had a miscarriage at one point and features Ivy towards the end crying (the child was just born and is already featured on a song smh). With family and friends such as Gaga, Gwenyth Paltrow, Rihanna, and her Destiny’s Child bandmates, Kelly and Michelle, Ivy will certainly be growing up with plenty of love…and money and will probably be spoiled rotten. Give the song a listen below and let us know what you think!

Glory – Jay-Z feat. Blue Ivy Carter by Warhol2011

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Chris Brown teams up with frequent visual collaborator Colin Tilley for his latest single “Strip”. Brown fans may be familar with the track from his Boy in Detention mixtape, but its getting the single treatment for his upcoming album Fortune, which is the followup to 2011′s Fame.

Thoughts?

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R&B singer Ashanti becomes the latest artist to hit the indie route with her upcoming release. The Grammy-winning singer will release her fifth album, the follow-up to 2008’s The Declaration, through her own label As Written Entertainment under a worldwide distribution and label services deal with eOne Music. She was previously signed to The Inc./Universal Motown.

It will be quite interesting to see how Ashanti will fare without major label backing. Being free of the major label system comes with its many perks, but its also a tad bit more difficult to get on the radar and receive decent exposure. Moreover, she’s moving from 6 figure plus budgets to more modest figures. It requires an artist to get more creative in how they present their music and music videos against their competitors.

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As expected, Adele took home a healthy amount of nominations for her smash album 21 and its respective singles, joined by Bruno Mars for a total of 6 nominations including the major categories of album, record and song of the year.

It was Kanye West however, who stumped them all, leading the pack with 7 nominations namely for the song “All of the Lights,” but his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was snubbed from  best album contention and “Lights” was left off the coveted Record of the Year list, despite that’s its a better record than it is a song.
*** Record of The Year is award given to the producers, performers and engineers of the track, Song of the Year is awarded to the songwriters of the song only***

Foo Fighters also racked up six nominations, most notably for Album of the Year for “Wasting Light.” alongside Adele’s “21″ and Mars’ “Doo-Wops & Hooligans”, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and Rihanna’s “Loud.”, which some considered quite a surprise.
Indie-folk darling Bon Iver, fronted by singer Justin Vernon, is up for Best New Artist (despite the fact they’ve been knocking around for a couple years: thanks to the new Gaga rule), as well as Song of The Year for “Holocene”

The 54th Grammys will be held Feb. 12 in Los Angeles on CBS. The academy has trimmed down the amount of categories from 109 to 78 this year, which brings us to this years snubs. Without a doubt Grammy darling Beyoncé was largely shut out of this years awards for her critically acclaimed album 4. Something tells me scenes like this , might’ve rubbed some folks the wrong way. Nonetheless, 4‘s shut out is quite unfortunate as the album is much more deserving of the honor than some of the material that she was actually awarded for is.

READ THE FULL LIST OF NOMINEES HERE

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If you doubted Mariah Carey’s new found status as a MILF, look no further than her new video with teen sensation Justin Bieber. Bieber, who recently released a holiday album, teamed up with Carey for a re-worked version of her 1994 Christmas classic “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. Check out the video below!

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This could be a major event for the girls and who knows, depending on how good it turns out it could even be up-streamed to a theatrical release. Moreover, as financial trouble are abound for Ms. Watkins, this could be some nice change in the bank. The question now is who will play the girls?

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