It's not a true trophy show (no awards are handed out) nor is it a pure prime-time concert special (the music stops every few minutes as envelopes are unsealed), so viewers aren't to blame if they can't quite get a bead on the breathlessly named "Grammy Nominations Concert Live: Countdown to Music's Biggest Night" which airs Wednesday on CBS.
This is the fourth edition of the spinoff show and executive producer Ken Ehrlich concedes that the show is still searching a bit for its identity, although the network is plenty happy to have an all-star music event to break up the post-Thanksgiving leftover diet of weeknight repeats.
"It's still establishing itself, it's a little different of an animal," Ehrlich said. "Essentially, with the Grammys show that airs every February, people know they want to watch to see what people do. We're trying to head this show in that direction and I don't think we really did it in the first three years. I think we were trying to find ourselves. I really believe with this year's show we're headed on that road."
Last year's program drew just 5 million total viewers, down 20% compared with the previous year's telecast, according to Nielsen. The show clung to barely half the viewership from its lead-in, a repeat of the drama "Criminal Minds." The Grammy noms telecast has dropped significantly in each of its three airings since it started in 2008.
This year's show will again be hosted by LL Cool J and it features performances by Lady Gaga, Usher, Ludacris, Rihanna and Sugarland. The vibe will be quite different in the room — the show will be staged at the 7,100-seat Nokia Theatre and open up to the public (tickets are $35 to $75) after two years at adjacent Club Nokia, which had only 2,200 seats that left limited room for anyone outside the music industry.
The show's great challenge is the obvious anti-climactic nature of reading out nominees and then reminding the audience that they can find out who wins by tuning in … next year. The "real" Grammys are Feb. 12, and while that is a long way off, the show this Wednesday will offer a glimpse into the story lines to expect.
One of the big names on Wednesday night will be a star who won't be in the room — expect to hear the name Adele over and over after the cross-genre and cross-generational success of the 23-year-old British singer-songwriter. Many observers believe she could be poised for an avalanche of awards not unlike the historic romps by Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Norah Jones, each of whom left the Grammy stage with bouquets of gramophone trophies for their breakthrough solo albums.
Adele underwent throat surgery on Nov. 7 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston to stop bleeding on a benign polyp on her vocal cords, and Grammy producers hope that the Feb. 12 broadcast will be her big return to the public spotlight — but they are also privately anxious that some medical setback might give them a star who can't sing on her spotlight night. Ehrlich (who is celebrating his 30th anniversary with the Grammys) and his team are already in contact with Adele's managers and keeping tabs on her recovery.
For the nomination show this Wednesday, the big draw is Gaga, whom Ehrlich compares to a Madonna or David Bowie as far as being a shape-changing creature of fashion and music trend.
The nomination concert is now an established part of the award-show circuit and falls less than two weeks after the American Music Awards. While the AMAs are veering further toward the MTV model of anything-goes in the name of product and project promotion (during her AMAs performance this year Jennifer Lopez brought a Fiat on stage with her), the producers of the Grammy nomination concert are aiming for more gravitas.
In an effort to expand the nomination show's mission — and perhaps signaling that it will become a mini-Grammys at some point — the Wednesday night broadcast will feature a tribute to songwriters who died this year. With two facing pianos, Usher will perform with Valerie Simpson of the duo Ashford and Simpson, and Mike Stoller of the songwriting team Leiber and Stoller, as a tribute to their recently lost partners. The number will feature "You're All I Need to Get By" and "Stand by Me."
Also, in another nod to the past, LL Cool J, Common, Lupe Fiasco and Rick Ross will perform the rap classic "The Message" with Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel and Scorpio, a hip-hop moment that ties into the 1982 track being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Lupe Fiasco is sitting in the suite of London hotel room flicking through a Buyer’s Guider for Ferrari's. “Got a little collection of Ferrari’s,” he says casually, turning onto a new page.
It seems like an odd admission from the rapper. While he’s created some of the biggest hip-hop anthem of recent years - 2007’s ‘Superstar’ perhaps being the biggest - Fiasco isn’t someone you would associate with the more glamorous side of the profession. His songs, for example, are often fiercely political and always lyrically intelligent, rather than brash and boastful, and, he’s an active philanthropist.
As his record label Atlantic has also discovered in recent years, he also does things on his own terms. ‘Lasers’, his new album, arrives in stores this week four years after its predecessor ‘The Cool’ and at the end of a long-running saga, which culminated in his fans staging a protest outside the label’s offices in New York.
To mark its release, Fiasco sat down with Gigwise to discuss the record, his political interests and the future.
‘Lasers’ has been four years in the pipeline. It must be a huge sigh of relief to be finally putting the album out there?
“Yeah - simply. But that’s dishonest to say as well because this was an album that up until the protests and the petition we had all but moved away from. It was all about let us go to another record company; it got to that point. We’re already looking at the next one and moving on.”
You announced the comeback with ‘The Show Goes On’, which is a very uplifting and motivational track. Is it fair to view that as a statement of intent for the album as a whole?
“Yeah, it has that. It’s also very, on a non-musical level, it’s also very telling of the process because it was a record that was given to me by the record label. So it’s this little bit of label, some Lupe, some fans - everybody that was involved in the whole thing all coming to a head in ‘The Show Goes On’. So it’s funny that for the show to go on, we had to do ‘The Show Goes On’. On that level it’s pretty funky. But the song itself it was meant to be an uplifting, inspirational record that spoke on a lot of different subjects and gave you the premise of what the rest of the record was going to sound like. Big songs, big hooks and big verses - touching on big topics and naming names so to speak.”
Before we talk about the delays, can you just go back to when you actually started putting these songs together?
“I don’t know, man. It was over the course of a few years, and it was something that was start and stop. And literally stop and go start work on a completely different project and come back to it, and trash can a whole phase of it. I say there are four phases of it that I remember. There were songs that I made for ‘Lasers’ that didn’t make ‘Lasers’, then there were songs that I didn’t do for ‘Lasers’ that snuck their way on, so it was a pretty interesting process creatively…not even creatively, just from a production standpoint.”
Did you find that easy or difficult to have to cope with?
“It was easy because it was a break from…there was a creative misunderstanding between myself and the label, so it was great because you don’t just be recording for the sake of recording. At a certain level, you want to have a point to what you’re doing, and when you get this uncertainty from the label you feel like you’re wasting your time because you’ll make like nine songs and the label just want like any of them. And I’m saying nine songs given to me by the label. It’s like if somebody kept sending your food back the kitchen. You’re the chef and you’re like, ‘Well bring your own food to the restaurant and I’ll cook what you want me to cook’.”
As an artist who released ‘Food and Liquor’ in 2006 and ‘The Cool’ in 2007, was it frustrating to face such uncertainty?
“Yeah, very frustrating on a personal, emotional and spiritual level - it was very frustrating. The traditional relationship between a record company and an artist is not good, so with this one it’s even multiplied. The role reversal and paradigm shifts that took place were very taxing. The mental thing that I went through...I was very depressed at a certain point because I was told I was unsuccessful, I was told I was wack. You get all this stuff coming from your record company and you’re like, ‘Come on man.’ It was something where it felt like they’re tearing me down, so I had to completely disconnect myself from it. I’m not even doing music for that now, I’m doing music because I really like it and I love it, and if I love it I’m not going to do it.”
The delay culminated in a petition that your fans put together. That must have been quite humbling.
“It was very empowering; I was silently empowered. You’ve got 250 chanting and screaming kids, and beyond the number it’s a group of people - 17 and 19 year olds - who put that together and got permits and noise ordinates and car pools and plane tickets. To see people mobilised like that…it wasn’t something that I got behind or instigated - it was something that they did on their own. So it was very silently empowering, a vindication in some instances, but at the same time to, humbling. It was something that made me feel like it’s bigger than me.”
Had you at the point resigned yourself to the idea that the album just wasn’t going to come out?
“Yeah, I was done. For me it wasn’t even lets comprise and get the record out, it was let me go to another record company, let me go independently and we can just be done with this. I can move onto another phase and you can move onto another phase, and that will be that. But I’m still at the point now where the wounds between me and the record label - it’s not that it’s healed or unhealed, I’m just done with it. I’m very numb to the situation, but happy with the album in the same breath.”
You’ve always written lyrics that make people stop and think. ‘Words I Never Said’ is perhaps your most politically driven song on the new album. Do you find it easy to write songs like that?
“Yeah, very easy - I didn’t even write that down, because that’s my core. That’s the stuff that I can just sit back and speak on for hours, and for me it’s a collage of all these different ideas and events and themes that have a political undertone, a social undertone, a conspiracy theory undertone to it, and just putting it out there. It’s very similar to the song ‘American Terrorist’ that I did on my first record I guess it’s just the way that it’s put. Where this could be played on the radio, ‘American Terrorist’ would never get on the radio.”
I think one of the reasons why it might be seen as controversial is because of the lyrics about President Obama. It’s not something people would expect from a rapper.
“Traitorous even, or treasonous. I was never on the bandwagon of Obama like that, because I’m not on the bandwagon for the American Government, the Federal Government. It’s not all 100 per cent evil, but it does a whole lot to not make you think that. The economical policies that are instigated really makes you think that the American government is a bunch of evil bastards. So just because you’re black you’re still representing that government, and when Obama came into office he enacted the same policies that we would critique other presidents for. The people who are on your economic team and determine the economic polices for the rest of us are the same people who ran those financial institutions, the same people who were corrupt and could possibly face criminal charges, but he’s the head of your economic thing. Honestly, what the fu*ck is that? That’s what you call a WTF. So I think the critiques are poignant.
“I love Obama, and I love the fact that it’s a black president of the United States of America, but he’s not the first black president. Robert Mugabe is a black president too so lets not get to talking about precedents being set. The fact that he’s black and American, that’s different. But that it’s anything special beyond that, that just because of that everything’s going to be a utopia, then that’s not true.”
Where did your interest in politics come from?
“From my mother and my father, specifically my mother directly, my father kind of indirectly just watching him and the things that he was involved in, and the things that he would participate in doing. My mother was more direct, my mother was more specific events, specific places, specific people [and] names in the world. I’d be 11, 12, 13 talking to my mother about the seven day war or talking to her about different instances [and] engagements or American foreign policy in different parts of the world - in Africa or the Caribbean. When you get that education young that’s what you know about, and over time you learn more but that’s the foundation you build on.”
What do you think of the current condition of hip-hop that ‘Lasers’ will find itself in. How do you view the genre at the moment?
“It’s weird to say objectively, but put it the way it is: it’s negative. You still have your lights of positivity in there, you still have you Mos Defs and your Commons and your Talib Kweli - you still have that presence there - but the majority of it is negative. The actual messages are very negative.
“I have a certain level of celebrity, on par or even greater than some of my contemporaries, you know some of the quote-on-qoute, ‘conscious rappers’, but I have the ability to be on 106 & Park, where as maybe Dead Prez doesn’t. So it’s not taking anything away from Dead Prez, it’s just being the agent of change over here. Where as Talib Kweli is the agent of change in the underground arena, Lupe Fiasco is the agent of change who is that young rapper that everybody respects who walks the line between celebrity and underground, and this is where he fits. So looking at the terrain that I have and the weapons that I have, and fighting that war where I’m at. I’m almost like Trojan Horse so to speak. I can get on KISS FM, which is like the pinnacle of the hip-hop world in the US. They’re playing my record, and I’m talking about uplifting and all those positive imageries. But also at the same time those controversial thought provoking things, not just positive for the sake of utopia. I think it’s going to fit nicely. I don’t think it’s going to rock the boat, but I’m not about rocking the boat - I’m about balancing the boat.”
You touched on the fact that you’ve been doing side-projects while waiting for your feud with the label to end. One of the most exciting of those is Child Rebel Solider with Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. Can we expect an album?
“Honestly I don’t know, it’s all scheduling. We’re all three independent artists, all working. It’s not like we’re dormant, we’re all working, so it’s about finding that moment where we can all get together and sit down, and come up with the songs and the ideas. We just haven’t had the opportunity to do that as of late, enough to put an album, a serious album together, and even if we get to that point, the business of the album coming out is ridiculous because it’s three separate labels, three separate interests and that’s going to be a paperwork nightmare. So there’s elements to it - big hurdles that need to be jumped before we can proceed with it properly and give people what they want, which is an album.”
You mentioned that you were waiting for this album to come out you’ve been thinking about what will come next. Can you tell us anything more about that?
“Well there’s my punk band Japanese Cartoon - we’re trying to do another album this summer - but then there’s another Lupe record that I want to do before the end of the year. Because it’s been so long, it’s been four years, I think we have the opportunity to write almost, because it’s been so long. So I’m actively perusing getting the label to agree with that, and that will be it. More music and more music and more music, and touring, touring, touring. That’s the formula for me now so we’ll see if that pans out.”
