Olivier Rousteing - New Designer at Balmain

The speculation can finally end, Olivier Rousteing is the new head designer at Balmain.

Olivier Rousteing

Since Christophe Decarnin left earlier this month over strategic disputes with chairman Alain Hivelin and amid rumours over his mental state, many a name has been banded about as his replacement. But Balmain have confirmed that  25 year old Rousteing, currently in charge of womenwear at the label, is to step into Decarnin’s formidable shoes.

Decarnin took Balmain from a creaky, aging label into a white hot brand loved by models, fashionistas and celebrities. His ripped jeans sell around the £1000 mark and his exaggerated shoulder jackets have been copied from runway to the high street. 

Olivier Rousteing has a large shadow to step out from and we wish him all the best!

Hip Hop’s High Earners

Forbes magazine released their annual list of the 20 top earners in Hip Hop last year. With combined earnings of over $220 million in the top ten alone, it’s plain to see that the global economic meltdown and the changes in the way we purchase our music (why buy an album when you can download the few tracks you actually like) did little to stifle their ability to rake in the almighty dollar.

As we reported in this post on high earning supermodels, the key to longevity is simple. Diversify! Why do one thing when you can do 5?



1. Jay Z

Shawn Carter brought home $63 million last year thanks to his album The Blueprint 3 and subsequent tour, investment in nightclub 40/40 and his stake in the New Jersey Nets basketball team. He boasted in hit Oh My God ‘What you call money, I pay more in taxes’ – he wasn’t kidding! Only our number 2 earned more than his tax bill! Still, he can’t get too big for his boots – wifey Beyonce earned more than him with $87 million.
Their joint income is just more than the GDP of Kiribati, a small island in the Pacific.

2. Diddy (or Puffy or P Diddy or whichever moniker he’s using now)

Sean John made a respectable $30 million thanks to his clothing line, Bad Boy Records and album Last Train to Paris. Movie appearances mean that figure stands to rise in 2011.

3. Akon - $21M

Senegalese-American Aliuane Thiam pulled in $21m from Konvict Clothing, his Pepsi soccer ad campaign and record label Kon Live which is home to cash cow Lady Gaga. Touring was a money spinner as will be new album Stadium Music.

4. Lil Wayne

Not even prison could stop Dwayne Carter. Before being sentenced in March he released album Rebirth, toured and made various guest appearances. Will be able to spend his $20 million soon.

5. Dr Dre

Despite not putting out any new material in 2010, Andre Young still earned $17 million from rights to classics like The Chronic, his Beats by Dr Dre headphones and executive producing Eminem’s The Recovery.







Looks like hip hop is one area that brown skinned men are successfully monopolising. And monetising!

See the full list here.

::New Music:: Katy Perry x Kanye West - E.T.

Katy Perry x Kanye West E.T. has to be the most creative video I've seen in a long time.

::Video:: Kanye West x Jay-Z Live SXSW

Jay-Z x Kanye Kill the Good Music Stage at SXSW. It wouldn't have been a show if Kanye didn't forget a song though right...

::Video:: Kanye West x VEVO PowerStation x SXSW (Promo)

Kanye West promo vidd for his performance at SXSW 3-19-11 at VEVO PowerStation! Really Dope!

Kanye West | Vevo PowerStation from ScreenWerks on Vimeo.

Katy Perry Feat. Kanye West - E.T

New music and this time it's Kanye x Katty Perry, can't say i saw this coming.

::New Music:: Kanye West - All of The Lights remix and lyrics

Might be one of the best rap remix's so far this year! Wanye x Big Sean x Drake! I've added the lyrics... who had the best verse?

Kanye West – All Of The Lights Remix Lyrics

[Lil Wayne]
Lights on, I see ya face
She eat me up, she got expensive taste
I see ya dreaming, but you still awake
Big slices, thats how you cut the cake
It’s cold as hell, I show and tell
Weezy home, our n-gga out of jail
In this give or take World I got what it takes
Put you out your misery, Kathy Bates
I’m Young Money, I’m cash money
If we could buy time, I spend my last money
Now I’m spending time, you in a blind
This little light of mine, I’ma let it shine

(All of the lights)

Bright lights, night lights, head lights
Shh, no lights but the infra-red lights
Yeah, long life, dont like to ask twice
You killin’ me baby, this the past life

[Rihanna]
Turn up the lights in here baby
extra bright, I want y’all to see this
turn up the lights in here, baby
you know what I need
want you to see everything
Want you to see all of the lights

[Big Sean]
Ready, set, now, go go, go go go til you can’t go no more
I’m ill times ill, dope plus dope
Westside bitch, quote, unquote
Woah there boy, don’t go there hoe,
If you cross that line I might overload
I swear these lights-lights-lights be talking to me but I can’t read Morse code
Why every rapper name BIG got body huh?
But every rapper named Sean got money, ooooooh
Well I guess my chances are fifty fifty
But my vision is twenty twenty so I’ll be counting a hundred hundreds
(All of the lights)
Oh, my Allah, Lordy Lordy Lordy
I took your chick now you want beef
and I’m just chuckling like a porky cause you spend all day with her spooning
I spend all night with her forking
Thats a one way ticket to hell and they want these bullets to book it for me
Man, I’m shittin’ on every statistic that said I’ll be dead or f-cking broke
This is History, your kids, kids, kids, kids gon book report me but, what
And I think they wanna murder me
I’m shining hard cause bitch I’m at Emergency
B-I, GOOD G, I dooo it, boi

[Rihanna]
Turn up the lights in here, baby
Extra bright, I want y’all to see this
Turn up the lights in here, baby
You know what I need, want you to see everything
want you to see all of the lights

[Alicia Keys]
Whoaa-oh-whoa
Whoaa-oh-whoa-oh

[Elton John]
I tried to tell you but all I could say is ohhhh

[Drake]
Bad decisions, good intentions
Man, I’m riding, Weezy with me
I just left out of the strip club
Made 5 thousand look like 50
I spend all my time in Houston smoke that Kush but I don’t do Whitney
I don’t do Britney, don’t do Lindsay
I made 2 million since last Wednesday and I hate y’all
Ya’ll got too much free time
Sayin’ I aint dropped shit
Everything’ll be fine
Worrying ’bout your old girl,
Tryna see if she’s mine
N-gga she’s with me, when she tells you she needs some “me” time
Its our time so f-ck y’all
I really bout to go Spring break now, start taking shots in this muthaf-cker
And ya didn’t really have all that ass, last month, girl you got some shots in that muthaf-cker
Yeah, we got the Roc in this muthaf-cker and you thought n-ggas was gonna pop in this muthaf-cker
Uh, Young Money, Power Respect in this bitch, you would think we got the Lox in this muthaf-cker
I made mistakes, I made some bread, I even made a way for them to get ahead
To my surprise, nobody replacing me
Take Care and Carter IV, it wont be long ’til they could see the lights
And I’m on one, I got one
You a p-ssy n-gga, I’m not one
So call it a night, call it a night
And I run this, and y’all know that
I take the purple and pour that
All in a Sprite, all in a Sprite

[Kid Cudi]
Getting mine, baby
gotta let these n-ggas know, yeah
get it right, ay
you should go and get your own

[Outro]

Drop any corrections in the comments. Let me know what you think of the All Of The Lights remix Lyrics?

::Video:: Kanye West - Blame Game (Unofficial Video)

This is a really dope visual Directed by Yonie who also did Kanye's Devil video.

BLAME GAME from yonie.ethiopian.love on Vimeo.

::Video:: Kanye West - H.A.M (Live)

US Chart Roundup: The Results Of The Britney Vs. Avril Lavigne Vs. Kanye & Jay-Z Battle

We've already gone through this twice this week, so no need to ramble on about Britney Spears debuting at #1 with "Hold It Against Me," thereby giving her a fourth chart-topping single and producer/God Max Martin his 10th, etc. So let's move ahead...

Avril Lavigne's "What The Hell" enters the Billboard Hot 100 at #13, which shows the power of radio airplay—something Britney's single was aided by, but Avril clearly was not. For a few days after being released, "What The Hell" was just beneath Britney at #2 on iTunes. But then she flip-flopped with Kanye West and Jay-Z's "H.A.M." (which enters at #23). In the end, both of those singles got barreled over at radio in lieu of Britney and slid down the digital store's song chart.

Now that the holiday craziness has settled for good, Edward Maya's "Stereo Love" is able to jump back up to its previous peak position of #16. Another climber: Pink's "Fuckin' Perfect," which moves up 27 positions to #30 and is the Hot 100's "airplay gainer" this week. If we're to include the collaborative 2001 cover of "Lady Marmalade," this now gives Pink a total of 17 Top 40 singles in the U.S.

One of my guilty pleasure jams from last year, Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson's "Don't You Wanna Stay," is at #43 this week. That's just a good old-fashioned duet, like something you'd expect Peter Cetera to have cranked out with some broad in the '80s.

On a final note, album sales really appear to be in the dumpster (more so than usual) in 2011. Cake's Showroom Of Compassion debuts at #1, but has posted the worst returns (44,000 copies) for a top album in Nielsen SoundScan history. It seems like only yesterday when the Dreamgirls soundtrack set the record low, with 60,000 copies. Alas, folks, that was exactly four years ago this month.

Meanwhile, Cake...

The U.S. Top 10:

1. "Hold It Against Me" - Britney Spears *new* *1 week*
2. "Grenade" - Bruno Mars  
3. "Firework" - Katy Perry
4. "What's My Name" - Rihanna feat. Drake
5. "Black And Yellow" - Wiz Khalifa
6. "Tonight (I'm Lovin' You)" - Enrique Iglesias ft. Ludacris & DJ Frank E 
7. "We R Who We R" - Ke$ha 
8. "Raise Your Glass" - Pink  
9. "The Time (Dirty Bit)" - The Black Eyed Peas
10. "Just The Way You Are" - Bruno Mars

Jay-Z, Rihanna & Kanye West - Run This Town

'Run This Town' is a 2009 song performed by American hip hop musician Jay-Z. The song features Barbadian R&B singer Rihanna and rap artist Kanye West, who also produced the song alongside No I.D. It is released as the second single of Jay-Z's upcoming studio album 'The Blueprint 3'. After the song was released to iTunes on August 11th 2009, it jumped to the third position on the Billboard Hot 100, making it his highest peak as a lead artist to date, it also became Rihanna's eleventh top ten hit, making her the female with the second most top ten hits this decade [2000-2009], behind Beyonce, Jay-Z's wife, who has twelve. It is also Jay-Z's first Top 5 Rap Song since 2006's 'Show Me What You Got'.

The video was directed by Anthony Mandler and was filmed on August 6th 2009 at Fort Totten Park in New York City. The director of the music video had this to say: "We wanted you to feel uneasy throughout the piece," he said. "We wanted there to be a constant layer of tension through the piece. Even in the way I shot — where the camera comes by Jay, it doesn't stop on him, it goes to Rihanna, there's kind of this chaos of revealing and covering and concealing. And things happen offscreen that you don't see.

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Kanye West - Heartless [AVI]

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Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 128Kbps

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Kanye's New Video- Welcome to Heartbreak

Paris Couture Week

Kanye West Doesn't Care About Anti-Britney People

The opinionated rapper draws a line in the sand: Either you like Britney Spears, or you're wrong.


The always loquacious rapper and Stephen Colbert arch-nemesis took time out from promoting his new album, 808s and Heartbreak, to sing the praises of another performer: newly minted 27-year-old Britney Spears.

Calling out the elitism of music fans who look down on commercially successful music as "necessarily bullsh*t," the 31-year-old opined to Australia's Sydney Morning Herald: "Look at all those indie guitar bands who look down on pop music. My question to them is: 'Do you not want a song of yours to explode and be heard by everyone?' Look at Britney Spears and how people talk about her...if you don't like Britney Spears, then you're just wrong."

Kanye West: I Love My...Shades

Kanye West reinvigorated the striped sunglasses fad in his Stronger music video.

The specs aren’t really functional. They don’t protect the eyes from strong rays of sunlight, but they look super fly.

Kanye rocks them in almost every color; some glow in the dark. They’re called "Shutter Shades" because they look like window blinds, a name popularized in the 1980s.

The shades debuted in the music video for Glittering Prize by Simple Minds, from 1982. Kanye’s cleverly designed specs were directly inspired by an Alain Mikli version. Shutter Shades are now known as Kanyes.