Colbert and Alicia Keys: New York Remix

I cannot think of a better person to explain pop culture remixing than Stephen Colbert. Watch the following Colbertian version of the Alicia Keys and Jay-Z uber-popular track Empire State of Mind. I don't know about you, but I definitely prefer the Colbert remix.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

And, according to the nonfactzone here are the Colbert lyrics:

Yeah, yeah, yeah
I love New York, King of all the Cities
Lived up by the Guggenheim, ’til I got some kiddies
Moved to Connecticut, ‘bye George Pataki
Volvo to the dry-cleaners, pickin’ up my khakis

Shoppin’ mall is close, my community is gated
My shorties are all private school educated
Home theater system, 60-inch plasma
Clean suburban air, much better for my asthma

Still hit the city, Times Square, keep it real
Hard Rock Cafe for the appetizer deal
M&M Store, Disney Store, I’m in heaven
I own this town from 41st to 47th

Take you to The Lion King, that show is fantastic
Leave half an hour early so I can beat the traffic
I can get home really fast, driver rocks an E-Z Pass
Land of cheaper gas and the upper middle class

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Assorted Links: Biology of Music and Black Metal University Course

1) The Biology of Music: Why do we like what we like?
"Rock is especially popular because it emphasizes the musical intervals whose frequency relationships are those we hear in the human speech."
More here.

2) This was a most interesting article to me. A Germanist at Emory teaches a course on black metal. A bit says: "Mr. Butler, an assistant professor of German studies at Emory University, talked about black-metal music — in its second-wave, largely Norwegian form — as a cryptic expression of Roman Catholicism. He started with the 16th-century Council of Trent and the early modern church. He quoted lyrics from the face-painted, early-1990s Norwegian black-metal bands Gorgoroth and Immortal; he framed black metal as respecting some of rock’s orthodoxies, as opposed to the heresies of disco and punk; and he spoke of black metal’s preoccupation with “the abiding and transcendent: stone, mountain, moon.”

And here:

"“The black metal event is a confession without need of absolution, without need of redemption,” he said. It is, he added, “a cleaning up of the mess of others.” He invoked the old English tradition of sin eating by means of burial cakes, in which a loaf of bread was put on a funeral bier or a corpse, and a paid member of the community would eat the bread, representing sin, to absolve and comfort the deceased.

“Black metal has become the sin eater,” he intoned. “It is engaged in transgressive behavior to be rid of it.” "

I highly recommend you read this in its entirety. Read more here.

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