Jay‑Z: The Evolution of My Style

Shawn Carter – the MC, entre­pre­neur, and recent best-sell­ing author who is known to every­one but his moth­er as Jay‑Z  – proved with the 2010 pub­li­ca­tion of his mem­oir Decod­ed that he is not only one of hip-hop’s top artists, but also one of its top inter­preters.

In Decod­ed, Jay‑Z offers lit­tle in the way of new per­son­al details. He’s been telling that sto­ry in his raps for twen­ty years now – from his father­less child­hood in the projects, to his years deal­ing crack cocaine, to his star­dom, and final­ly to his cur­rent suc­cess as a busi­ness­man and cul­tur­al icon. And what­ev­er the 41-year-old has­n’t divulged yet, he may well have been advised by a lawyer to keep to him­self. Instead of auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Decod­ed pro­vides some­thing much more valu­able, a thought­ful analy­sis of his own lyrics and the his­to­ry of his cho­sen art form. Jay‑Z  helps us under­stand that he and hip-hop are rough­ly the same age, and that their sto­ries are almost inter­change­able: When young Shawn Carter first fell in love with the sound of rhymes over beats in Brook­lyn in 1978, he was dis­cov­er­ing the new music just as the new music was dis­cov­er­ing itself.

Ran­dom House has just released an iPad appli­ca­tion of Decod­ed, adding about thir­ty min­utes of mul­ti-media con­tent, includ­ing the video above. You might also want to check out Jay-Z’s appear­ance on Char­lie Rose (on Youtube in 5 parts) and his recent inter­view on Fresh Air.

Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel Promotes World’s Largest Online Guitar Lesson

Nigel Tufnel, lead gui­tarist for Spinal Tap (wink, wink) sets the stage for you. This after­noon (March 3), Berklee Music will hold what it hopes will be the largest online gui­tar les­son ever. It all starts at 1:30 EST. Get details and join in here.

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The New Yorker: Finger Drumming Keith Moon

Some­how this flew below my radar. Back in Novem­ber, James Wood, the Har­vard lit pro­fes­sor and New York­er staff writer, revis­it­ed his child­hood idol — Kei­th Moon, the long­time (though now depart­ed) drum­mer for The Who. In “The New York­er Out Loud” pod­cast, Wood demon­strates – using his fin­gers – what makes Moon’s style so dis­tinc­tive. (Lis­ten here.) And, as an added bonus, we give you Wood fin­ger drum­ming on his kitchen table at home. At least one of these clips will make your day…

A Free Archive of 85,000 Classical Music Scores

Worth a quick men­tion: The New York Times ran a sto­ry yes­ter­day pro­fil­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Music Score Library Project, a crowd­sourced web site that index­es clas­si­cal music scores (though not with­out rais­ing some copy­right con­cerns along the way). IMSL hosts 85,000 scores with sev­er­al thou­sand new ones com­ing online every month. You can find Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­tos, Mozart’s Eine kleine Nacht­musik, Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 5 – in short, the major ones along with the minor ones. And, in some cas­es, the archive includes audio record­ings. Tchaikovsky’s Nut­crack­er offers an exam­ple. You can find a full list of free audio record­ings (arranged by com­pos­er) here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big Bach Down­load — All Bach Organ Works for Free

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

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Evolution Made Us All

File under Every­thing is a Remix. Ben Hill­man offers a cre­ative lit­tle riff on “All Things Bright and Beau­ti­ful” (lis­ten here), an Angli­can hymn inspired by William Paley’s 1802 trea­tise, Nat­ur­al The­ol­o­gy, which posi­tions God as the design­er of the nat­ur­al world … in an Enlight­en­ment kind of way. You can catch more Hill­man videos on Vimeo here.

via RichardDawkins.net

Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” Played by Musicians Around the World

Back in 2009, Play­ing for Change, a media project launched by music pro­duc­er Mark John­son, rolled out a video fea­tur­ing a glob­al cast of musi­cians per­form­ing Ben King’s Stand by Me (and, more recent­ly, anoth­er great one fea­tur­ing The Grate­ful Dead­’s “Rip­ple”). To date, the video has clocked more than 79,000,000 views on YouTube, and the song lat­er appeared on this CD/DVD. Now, Play­ing for Change has returned with a new video pay­ing trib­ute to Bob Mar­ley and his clas­sic track, “Redemp­tion Song.” Mar­ley would have turned 66 this week (note: this post was first pub­lished back in 2011), and coin­ci­den­tal­ly the song (watch Mar­ley’s acoustic ver­sion here) ranks 66th on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Great­est Songs of All Time. The eclec­tic ver­sion (above) is fea­tured on Songs Around The World, Part 2.

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Wunderkind Fun

Only 2 years old, ‘lil Rose from Seat­tle aces her Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments game. Next up, a play date with 3 year old Jonathan who con­ducts the 4th move­ment of Beethoven’s 5th for laughs, and anoth­er pal, Samuel, who recites the poet­ry of Bil­ly Collins and Lord Alfred Ten­nyson. I’m feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter about our future…

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Jake Shimabukuro Plays “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the Uke

If you’ve nev­er seen Jake Shimabukuro han­dle the ukulele before, you’re in for a lit­tle treat. Known for his com­plex fin­ger­work, the ukulele vir­tu­oso now tours with Jim­my Buf­fet and has record­ed with Yo-Yo Ma. Mean­while his fab record­ing of “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” has clocked 7,000,000 views on YouTube, all of which sets the stage for this: Shimabukuro bring­ing his act to the TED 2010 stage. For more ukulele fun, don’t miss The Com­plete Bea­t­les on Ukulele.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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