PICS: The GRAMMY Nominations Concert Live! and After party
Troubled musician Kanye West leads the Grammy Award nominations with 7, but the bad boy producer was a no-show at last night’s live concert warmup to the 2012 Grammy’s in February.
While Kanye’s hit all-star single, “All of the Lights,” was nominated for Song of the Year, his critically acclaimed album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which featured ‘Lights’, was snubbed in the Best Album category.
But Bon Iver, who was a complete stranger to many of us before collaborating with Kanye on MBDTF, was nominated for 4 Grammy’s, including Song of the Year — which Kanye is also nominated for — and Record of the Year, which we assume is different from Song of the Year.
Fading rapper-turned-actor LL Cool J, 43, (pictured above) attended the concert after party with his long-suffering buxom wife, Simone Smith. I bet she has a lot of stories to tell, such as why LL Cool J is bleaching his skin when he’s already a light alabaster color. Or why he still calls himself “Ladies Love” Cool J, when they don’t.
Newspaper Disses the Grammy Awards 2012 Nominations
A British newspaper published a scathing article on the 2012 Grammy Awards, calling the show the worst representation of the best music of the year.
The writer was particularly brutal in her opinion of last night’s duet performance by rapper Ludacris and country musician Jason Aldean.
Other than sadism, there can be no other explanation for the sonic boom of hell that was a live duet featuring that master of subtlety, Ludacris – a singer perhaps best known for a song that features the Shakespearean chorus of “Get back, motherfucker, you don’t know me like that” – and Jason Aldean, an extraordinary young man whose life ambition appears to be to marry the two genres of rap and country music. Source
But she also reserved some venom for cartoon rapper Nicki Minaj, whom she referred to as “a zombie reading an autocue that was written by robots …” She added Nicki “… served as a double confirmation that just because a woman might dress crazy, she isn’t necessarily all that interesting.” Ouch!
Kanye West, who received the most nominations for 7 Grammy’s, didn’t even show up at last night’s Grammy warm up event. The writer pointed out that Kanye might have snubbed the event because his album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, “was not nominated for Best Album, despite most music critics lavishing so much praise on it one might have thought it was the cure for cancer.”
But it’s probably more likely that Kanye knows he is being set up for failure.
See the full list of nominations after the break — courtesy of loyal reader Mizzdallas!
Photos: Getty Images
Tamar Braxton performs Gladys Knight Tribute on Soul Train 2011
I remember the first time I met the Braxton Sisters, the singing siblings of superstar Toni Braxton. The chance meeting occurred in a hotel suite in Charlotte, NC in 1996. I was there to shoot a music conference for VIBE magazine, and I bumped into LA Reid’s brother, Bryant Reid, in the hotel lobby.
At the time Bryant was managing the Braxton Sisters, so he paid me to shoot a party he was having for the girls in his suite that night.
The picture on the right is one that I took in 1996. At the time, the group consisted of Towanda, left, and teenagers Tamar, 19, center, and Trina, 17. They had just released an album, titled So Many Ways, on Atlantic Records.
Last night, BET aired Soul Train Awards 2011 which was pre-taped in Atlanta on Nov. 17. Tamar was the highlight of the night as she sang a rousing tribute to Soul legend Gladys Knight, with Dave Hollister, Kenny Lattimore and Freddie Jackson backing Tamar up as the honorary Pips for the night.
Tamar’s performance surprised and electrified social networking sites like Twitter.com, where users compared her sultry vocals to her sister Toni Braxton, and even Beyonce!
Below are just a few of the thousands of positive tweets about Tamar’s performance from Twitter.com! By the way, Tamar’s sisters, Towanda and Trina Braxton will chat live with Sandrarose.com readers via Ustream right here on Wednesday! So check back for that.
Watch Tamar’s performance after the break!
Love Was in the Air at the American Music Awards 2011
Love was in the air last night 2011 American Music Awards held at the Nokia Theater in LA. Lovebird couples such as singer John Legend and girlfriend Christine Teigen, (above), and Mary J Blige and her hubby/manager Kendu Isaacs (below) couldn’t keep their hands or lips off each other.
After performing “Mr. Wrong”, Mary paid tribute to rapper Heavy D, who passed away on November 8, of unknown causes.
“Rest in peace to my dear friend, my loved one, my brother, the loveable and great Heavy D,” Mary said. “I miss you so much, brother. God bless.”
Nicki Minaj Pulls Stunning Upset Over Jay Z and Kanye at AMAs
Cartoon rapper Nicki Minaj walked away with two trophies during last night’s 2011 American Music Awards held at the Nokia Theater in LA. Nicki pulled a stunning upset over Jay Z and Kanye West by winning Best Rap/Hip-Hop Album for Pink Friday, easily defeating the much-hyped album, Watch The Throne.
The 29-year-old rapper, wearing a shiny speaker suit, performed her hits “Turn Me On” and “Super Bass” backed up by DJ David Guetta.
The night’s other big winners included Taylor Swift (Artist of the Year); Beyoncé (Soul/R&B Female Artist), Bruno Mars (Pop/Rock Male Artist), Rihanna (Soul/R&B Album) and Jennifer Lopez (Latin Music Artist). Unfortunately, Rihanna’s abusive ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown, didn’t win a thing as he had hoped.
Brown, who has over 5 million followers on the social networking site Twitter.com, deleted his entire timeline after a follower questioned him about Rihanna last Thursday.
The troubled singer tweeted “Don’t say s*** to anybody and everyone feels its cool to attack me. GROWN ADULTS!!!! That s*** happened three years ago.” He followed that up with other angry tweets, including a reference to last night’s American Music Awards, where the delusional singer had hoped to finally earn some respect.
“I wake up thinking of living my life….. YOU wake up thinking of me! NOW I REALLY CAN’T WAIT FOR THE AMA’s! U dont have to respect me now… but u will.”
Photos: Wireimage.com
American Music Awards 2011 – Inside, Performance & Portraits
Nicki Minaj performing
Troubled singer Chris Brown performed last night, but he lost the Soul/R&B Album trophy to his ex-girlfriend Rihanna. Brown had hoped that the AMAs would redeem his fractured image and gain him the respect that he thinks he deserves. But that will never happen. Sales of Brown’s album F.A.M.E. has stalled at around 700,000 copies sold, and it doesn’t appear to be even close to going platinum. All of this leaves Brown very frustrated and in need of mood altering medications. The 22-year-old went on another one of his patented rampage on Twitter.com last Thursday that ended when he deleted his entire timeline and appears to have left Twitter for good.
American Music Awards 2011 – Arrivals
R&B legend Mary J Blige looked like a vision of beauty of beauty on the red carpet at the 2011 American Music Awards held at Nokia Theatre L.A. last night in Los Angeles.
Cartoon rapper Nicki Minaj stole the AMA Album of the Year award from Jay Z and Kanye West who are currently on the Watch the Throne tour. That bites!
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