Sales Rank:111 List Price: $13.98 Lowest New Price: $9.47 Lowest Used Price: $7.00 Artist(s):
Ne-Yo
Tracks:
Closer
Nobody
Single
Mad
Miss Independent
Why Does She Stay
Fade Into The Background
So You Can Cry
Part Of The List
Back To What You Know
Lie To Me
Stop This World
"Closer," written by Ne-Yo and produced by Stargate, is the first single from Ne-Yo's upcoming third album, YEAR OF THE GENTLEMAN, set to arrive in stores June 24th. It is the follow-up to Because Of You (released May 2007), which received this year's Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Album, and In My Own Words (February 2006) - both of which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts.
In addition to his Contemporary R&B Album award, Ne-Yo earned four other Grammy nominations this year, including two for his collaboration with Rihanna, "Hate That I Love You" (which he co-wrote), namely Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance Duo/Group; as well as Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for his #2 hit "Because Of You"; and Record of the Year for Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable" (which he co-produced). Ne-Yo's Grammy recognition followed up the UK's 13th annual MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) Awards in September 2007 - the only televised European Awards Show solely dedicated to urban music and culture - at which he won for Best Song ("Because Of You") and Best R&B Act.
Ne-Yo's RIAA platinum debut album In My Own Words was nominated for a Grammy as Best Contemporary R&B Album. It spun off three chart-topping hits, starting late-2005 with his debut Def Jam single, the #1 Grammy-nominated "So Sick," followed by "When You're Mad" and "Sexy Love." Ne-Yo capped 2006 as Male R&B/Hip-Hop Artist of the Year at the Billboard Music Awards. At the The 21st Annual Soul Train Music Awards in February 2007, Ne-Yo won the Coca-Cola Award for Best R&B/Soul or Rap new Artist for "Sexy Love."
Sales Rank:83 List Price: $13.98 Lowest New Price: $9.49 Lowest Used Price: $6.97 Artist(s):
Rihanna
Tracks:
Umbrella feat. JAY-Z
Push Up On Me
Don't Stop The Music
Breakin' Dishes
Shut Up and Drive
Hate That I Love You feat. Ne-Yo
Say It
Sell Me Candy
Lemme Get That
Rehab
Question Existing
Good Girl Gone Bad
Disturbia
Take A Bow
If I Never See Your Face Again - Maroon 5 featuring Rihanna
In one of the biggest jumps ever recorded in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Rihanna's newest single "Take A Bow" rockets from #53 to #1 this week. "Take A Bow" also debuts at #1-bullet on the Billboard Hot Digital Songs Chart with a phenomenal first week of 266,696 scans. The song was written by fellow Def Jam artist Ne-Yo and produced by Stargate, the same team responsible for Rihanna's "Unfaithful" (of 2006), and "Hate That I Love You," her Top 10 duet with Ne-Yo released late last year. "Take A Bow" raises the curtain on the upcoming new CD U.S.release of Rihanna's GOOD GIRL GONE BAD: RELOADED. The new configuration arrives in stores on June 17th - the week after the album officially marks its historic 52nd week on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
The original 12-song CD version of GOOD GIRL GONE BAD - source of the non-stop string of hit singles that began with the MTV VMA and Grammy Award-winning global #1 hit "Umbrella" (featuring Jay-Z), then "Shut Up and Drive," "Hate That I Love You" (featuring Ne-Yo), and the current "Don't Stop the Music" - will now be augmented with three bonus tracks: 1) "Take A Bow"; 2) a cover version of Maroon 5's "If I Never See Your Face Again" (featuring Maroon 5); and 3) "Disturbia."
GOOD GIRL GONE BAD (released June 5, 2007) was the third album release in less than two years by multi-platinum MTV VMA, Grammy, and American Music Award winning artist - and CoverGirl spokesperson - Rihanna. It followed-up 2006's RIAA platinum A Girl Like Me, containing the back-to-back hits, "S.O.S." and "Unfaithful"; and her RIAA gold debut from 2005, Music Of the Sun, featuring the worldwide smash, "Pon De Replay."
Sales Rank:59 List Price: $15.98 Lowest New Price: $8.15 Lowest Used Price: $8.20 Artist(s):
Beyoncé
Tracks:
Standard two CD pressing. One of 2008's most hotly anticipated album releases, I Am..Sasha Fierce marks the artist's first new studio collection since the Grammy-winning multi-platinum-selling B'Day debuted at #1 on charts around the world shortly after its international release on September 4, 2006. With all songs co-written and co-produced by Beyonc‚, the artist's third studio album is her most personal, reflective and revelatory collection to-date. 11 tracks.
Sales Rank:217 List Price: $15.98 Lowest New Price: $9.63 Lowest Used Price: $9.62 Artist(s):
Mary Mary
Tracks:
Intro featuring Deborah Joy Imani Winans
The Sound
Get Up
Superfriend featuring David Banner
God In Me featuring Kierra 'Kiki' Sheard
Boom
I'm Running
Forgiven Me
Dirt
Seattle
I Worship You
It Will All Be Worth It
The Sound album released in 2008 shows Mary Mary are not ones to shy away from in-your-face declarations of faith, the girls are now more intentional than ever about whom they adore, without for a moment compromising their call to innovation and growth. The introspective 'Seattle' is a prime example, a pensive prayer that asks the Lord to descend upon the soul the same way rain falls on the Emerald City. In the vein of Mary Mary standards 'Can't Give Up Now' and 'Yesterday,' a couple of ballads on The Sound stand out for their passionate delivery: 'I Trust You' (feat. Marvin Winans) and 'I Worship You' are easily the sonic and spiritual plateaus of the album.
Sales Rank:242 List Price: $13.98 Lowest New Price: $9.28 Lowest Used Price: $7.49 Artist(s):
B.B. King
Tracks:
See That My Grave Is Kept Clean - B.B. King, Jefferson, Lemon
I Get So Weary - B.B. King, Williams, Jean
Get These Blues off Me - B.B. King, Walker, Lee Vida
How Many More Years - B.B. King, Burnett, Chester
Waiting for Your Call - B.B. King, Walker, T-Bone
My Love Is Down - B.B. King, Johnson, Lonnie
The World Gone Wrong - B.B. King, Mississippi Sheiks
Blues Before Sunrise - B.B. King, Hooker, John L.
Midnight Blues - B.B. King, Henry, John Willie
Backwater Blues - B.B. King, Johnson, Lonnie
Sitting on Top of the World - B.B. King, Mississippi Sheiks
Tomorrow Night - B.B. King, Johnson, Lonnie
B.B. King returns to his blues roots with the help of producer T Bone Burnett on "One Kind Favor,". The legendary artist is backed on the effort by pianist Dr. John, drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Nathan East. The track list includes such blues chestnuts as Big Bill Broonzy's "Backwater Blues," Lonnie Johnson's "Tomorrow Night," Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" and T-Bone Walker's "I Get So Weary."
Sales Rank:268 List Price: $13.97 Lowest New Price: $9.21 Lowest Used Price: $7.87 Artist(s):
Raphael Saadiq
Tracks:
Sure Hope You Mean It
100 Yard Dash
Keep Marchin'
Big Easy featuring The Infamous Young Spodie and the Rebirth Brass Band
Just One Kiss featuring Joss Stone
Love That Girl
Calling
Staying In Love
Oh Girl
Let's Take A Walk
Never Give You Up featuring Stevie Wonder and CJ
Sometimes
Oh Girl (Remix featuring Jay-Z)
Raphael Saadiq's The Way I See It album is satisfying for both old school heads and today's hip music buyers: his background as a musician, singer and songwriter is steeped in a love for R&B married with a commitment to making his own brand of expressive soul music. The Way I See It has the kind of smooth musical flow associated with great records made by pioneering producers at famous R&B companies like Motown, Invictus and Brunswick. From the foot-tapping opening track, "Sure Hope You Mean It" to the head-shaking reflective closer "Sometimes," Raphael delivers a present day potent ode to a bygone era. Loyal Tony! Toni! Toné! fans will particularly appreciate "100 Yard Dash," which Raphael describes as "a juke joint, Booker T.-type groove. I reflected back to my first T!T!T! albums when I was singing in a high tenor voice." Raphael grins when talking about the hypnotic "Love That Girl": "Man, that's all about the swing...the way girls swing their hips! It's the type of song that will make people move and that shuffle beat reminds me of those ladies I used to see playing drums in church!" With its Motown-flavored tambourine-featured beat, "Never Give You Up" is what Raphael calls "my three generations song. It includes C.J., this youngster from Baltimore that I'm working with and Stevie Wonder. Now comes The Way I See It, a masterful collection of new material that speaks to Raphael Saadiq's deep love for rhythm and blues.
Sales Rank:179 List Price: $13.98 Lowest New Price: $9.48 Lowest Used Price: $7.75 Artist(s):
Amy Winehouse
Tracks:
Rehab
You Know I'm No Good
Me & Mr. Jones
Just Friends
Back to Black
Love Is a Losing Game
Tears Dry on Their Own
Wake Up Alone
Some Unholy War
He Can Only Hold Her
You Know I'm No Good
Hailed by Newsweek Magazine as a cross between Billie Holiday and Lauryn Hill, British soul singer Amy Winehouse's U.S. debut, Back To Black hits the US amid a flurry of accolades, radio and TV buzz unprecedented in recent years for a young siren.
Her brassy mix of emotive vocals tinged with 60's girl-group stylings, sly funk, and anguished jazz, sparked the New York Daily News to crown Back To Black a "marvelous debut that would do Etta James proud" while New Yorker Magazine called her "a fierce English performer whose voice combines the smoky depths of a jazz chanteuse with the heated passion of a soul singer," and Spin Magazine affirming "there's never been A British star quite like her."
Back To Black smolders with a bristling fusion of old school doo-wop/soul inflected uprisings, (the charismatic singer/songwriter wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on the album) brewing instant classics such as the Shirley Ellis influenced "Rehab," the Supremes tinged title song "Back To Black," the aching "Wake Up Alone," and the album's closer, "Addicted."
Sales Rank:200 List Price: $13.98 Lowest New Price: $5.99 Lowest Used Price: $4.99 Artist(s):
Lady Gaga
Tracks:
Just Dance
Lovegame
Paparazzi
Poker Face
Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)
Beautiful, Dirty, Rich
The Fame
Money Honey
Starstruck
Boys Boys Boys
Paper Gangsta
Brown Eyes
I Like It Rough
Summerboy
When Lady GaGa was a little girl, she would sing along on her mini plastic tape recorder to Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper hits and get twirled in the air in daddy's arms to the sounds of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The precocious child would dance around the table at fancy Upper West Side restaurants using the breadsticks as a baton. And, she would innocently greet a new babysitter in nothing but her birthday suit.
It's no wonder that little girl from a good Italian New York family, turned into the exhibitionist, multi-talented singer-songwriter with a flair for theatrics that she is today: Lady GaGa.
"I was always an entertainer. I was a ham as a little girl and I'm a ham today," says Lady GaGa, 22, who made a name for herself on the Lower East Side club scene with the infectious dance-pop party song "Beautiful Dirty Rich," and wild, theatrical, and often tongue-in-cheek "shock art" performances where GaGa - who designs and makes many of her stage outfits -- would strip down to her hand-crafted hot pants and bikini top, light cans of hairspray on fire, and strike a pose as a disco ball lowered from the ceiling to the orchestral sounds of A Clockwork Orange.
"I always loved rock and pop and theater. When I discovered Queen and David Bowie is when it really came together for me and I realized I could do all three," says GaGa, who nicked her name from Queen's song "Radio Gaga" and who cites rock star girlfriends, Peggy Bundy, and Donatella Versace as her fashion icons. "I look at those artists as icons in art. It's not just about the music. It's about the performance, the attitude, the look; it's everything. And, that is where I live as an artist and that is what I want to accomplish."
That goal might seem lofty, but consider the artist: GaGa is the girl who at age 4 learned piano by ear. By age 13, she had written her first piano ballad. At 14, she played open mike nights at clubs such as New York's the Bitter End by night and was teased for her quirky, eccentric style by her Convent of the Sacred Heart School (the Manhattan private school Nicky and Paris Hilton attended) classmates by day. At age 17, she became was one of 20 kids in the world to get early admission to Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Signed by her 20th birthday and writing songs for other artists (such as the Pussycat Dolls, and has been asked to write for a series of Interscope artists) before her debut album was even released, Lady GaGa has earned the right to reach for the sky.