San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival recently announced single-day tickets are now available. This is great news if you’re tight on cash and can’t afford the $225 plus fees for the 3-day pass. General admission 1-day tickets cost $85 and a percentage of this will go towards SF Parks and local chartiable organizations. Now the hardest part - picking a day. Radiohead will headline Friday August 22nd, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers on Saturday and Jack Johnson on Sunday. Other artists recently added include: The Coup, Lupe Fiasco, Steel Pulse and ALO. For the full line-up & any new artists added to it check: http://www.sfoutsidelands.com/artists/.

The Lollapalooza lineup was dropped on the Internets today - might I be probably one of many to say “holy shit, that is one hell of a lineup”. Perry Farrell has done it again and with Rage Against the Machine playing that will only fuel more rumors about an actual Rage Against the Machine new album (hey, one can hope right?). Get your hotel reservations for Chicago early… Lineup is after the jump…

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This just in (presses index finger to ear): Kanye West announced on his blog today that the U.S. / Canada leg of his tour will include Lupe Fiasco, N.E.R.D and Rihanna. I bet you want dates and locations. Too bad. Stay tuned!! In the meantime, maybe you could check out the sweet (but vague) tour poster:

Or maybe you could brush up on your Connect Four game (that links to an online version). It helped ‘Ye get through hard times with the loss of his mom while he was on tour in Europe.

If I may express my opinion here (and allow you, dear reader, to hate on it) I can’t really get with the Connect Four revival. You want strategy? Try playing some Sequence, beezies! That’s the real ish.

There must be something in the water in Chicago because those cats are outspoken. It’s like someone decided that the mouthiest rappers should all come from one place. What the hell is going on over there?

Exhibit A: The “Fiascogate”: Lupe gets asked to cover a couple Tribe Called Quest songs for the VH1 Hip Hop Honors Show where he proceeds to mess up a couple of the lyrics. He then posts a couple blogs about how he never grew up listening to ATCQ, but did it because Q-tip is his friend and he asked him to do it. He goes on to say that it kinda pisses him off because he has to “pretend” he listened to their albums, when he never really did. He claims Westcoast gangsta rap was what he grew up on. Weird, because pretty much everyone agrees that Lupe Fiasco’s music runs in the same vein as backpack rap, with a style so similar to ATCQ that Q-Tip and VH1 thought it appropriate to ask Lupe if he’d cover their songs during the show.

This triggers a mess of response from the rap community. One from Q-Tip himself:

“All that stuff he said about never listening to a Tribe album before and having no interest in doing so, it doesn’t make sense to me. As I said on the show itself, it was listening to N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton that inspired us to make [1991's] The Low End Theory, and years later I spoke to Dr. Dre and he told me that hearing The Low End Theory inspired him to make The Chronic. That’s what music does. That’s what artists do, they seek out information of all kinds.”

Served.

Exhibit B: Kanye West is also known for being on the mouthy side. Like when he got all mad about not winning the Video of the Year for “Touch The Sky” at the 2006 MTV Europe Awards:

In a tirade riddled with expletives, West said he should have won the prize for his video “Touch The Sky,” because it “cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons.” -MSNBC

Don’t get me wrong, Kanye puts out some bumpin’ albums. I listened to The College Dropout on repeat for probably about a month, but damn, that guy talks a lot of shit. Here’s his backstage meltdown. It’s also interesting that he took on the cartoonish gangsta 50 Cent, and challenged him to album-sales duel. More fuel to the fire.

Exhibit C: Shala of Qualo (another Chicago rap group) sits somewhere in the grey area between gangsta and backpack. But even in the middle, there’s room to run your mouth. This guy has enough balls to come-with-it in a CNN interview like blaaaow:

SHALA: What I’m saying is I refer to hos as hos, bitches as bitches, women as women, queens and queens, racist as racist, black men as black men, niggas as niggas. People are — you refer to people as they represent themselves and that is America and that is the world and that’s what people do.
MARTIN: So, if somebody said…
SHALA: So, you’re kind of putting words in my mouth.

In truth, they’re all just trying to keep it gully, mayne. Chicago is blowing up in terms of real talk. Those rappers are loud, but honest. And even if the dialogue isn’t exactly well thought-out, it brings attention to the new things happening in the rap scene. And besides, it’s a free country. You will be heard, Chicago.

1. Outdated Memes

2. Shameless Linkz

3. YouTube

4. Late Breaking News

4Hero’s “Morning Child” was NPR’s Song Of The Day yesterday. Enjoy “Morning Child”, already described by DJ Gilles Peterson as a classic tune. 4Hero’s PLAY WITH THE CHANGES comes out on February 27th and is yet another well-crafted love letter to Ms. Ripperton.

“A grand release…sexy, groovy, full of flavor…officially on repeat…” –Lupe Fiasco

Check out 4HERO who made NPR’s “Song Of The Day” yesterday with “Morning Child” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7220079