Tinie Tempah plans to 'constantly be in people’s faces'

Tinie Tempah’s strategy for making his U.S. debut match the success he found back home in England?

“To constantly be in people’s faces,” the 22-year-old rapper jokes.

Born Patrick Okogwu to Nigerian immigrants, the South London-bred MC –- like the long list of recent Brit imports before him –- is looking to break here.

His blend of hip-hop, dubstep and grime made his debut, “Disc-Overy,” a platinum hit in the U.K.

The disc racked up a handful of top five songs on the U.K. singles Chart and yielded two BRIT awards. A revamped version of the disc was released in U.S. stores on Tuesday with new tracks, including a collaboration with Wiz Khalifa.

Pop & Hiss was there when he made his U.S. debut to an intimate crowd of more than 100 fans and industry heads at Hollywood’s Cinespace in February and for his Coachella introduction, where after getting a late start he swept through an abbreviated set of hits from the disc, including “Pass Out,” “Written in the Stars” and “Miami 2 Ibiza," a collab with Swedish House Mafia.

Ahead of the album's American release, Tinie phoned into Pop & Hiss for a quick chat.

“Disc-overy” did rather well in the U.K., but it’s also been out for quite some time. Did that worry you when it came to releasing it here?

The album has added tracks, so it feels like a new, fresh album. I feel like that was very important. Obviously, the power of the Internet, you’re able to access anything. People knew a lot about the album. However, it came out in October in London so they can go on YouTube and listen to it. It was very important to add some more chapters to the album. [The track with Wiz Khalifa is one of three new ones on the album]. 

Jessie J ignores labels: 'I’m just a chick that likes to sing'

British upstart Jessie J means every word of her lyric "stomp, stomp I’ve arrived." The line, taken from her debut single, "Do It Like a Dude," aptly sums up her ferocious stateside introduction.

The pop/rock/hip-hop hybrid, released late last year, hit No. 2 on the British charts. But it was her follow up, the Dr. Luke-produced "Price Tag," that left enough people in the U.S. wondering just who this crotch-grabbing firecracker with pipes was.

Buzz surrounding the singer amplified in March when she was given the coveted performance spot on "Saturday Night Live" for her first American showing. More than a month before the U.S. release of her debut, "Who You Are," the performance made her one of the first to appear on the show without an album on shelves -- a fact that still boggles her mind.

"The producers were taking a risk. There was pressure," she said over the phone while on a promo jaunt in Australia. "It was the scariest, most nerve-wracking thing in the world. No one had any idea who I was. I'd done no promos. It was purely like, go out there and sing. I've always been someone who loved a challenge, and I don't like things given to me easily."

Born Jessica Cornish, the 23-year-old built a fan base like most newcomers these days: She uploaded videos of herself singing (primarily shot in her bedroom) on YouTube. The clips of the songs -– most of which went on to make the album -- amassed millions of hits. She also penned the platinum-selling "Party in the U.S.A." for Miley Cyrus.

DJ Kutmah art show 'Two Soups and a Honeybun' Thursday night at HVW8 gallery

It’s been about a year since L.A.-based dublab DJ Justin “Kutmah” McNulty had his world turned upside down. It’s not every day that an intrinsic force in the L.A. beat scene is forced to leave the country. But that doesn't mean his artistic influence can't pop-up every once in a while,  even when he's not around. 

Suprisingly, the respected beatsmith and crate digger's latest creative venture shows local fans and friends his ability to sketch instead of scratch.

On Thursday night, McNulty's art is debuting in a hometown exhibition of “Two Soups and a Honeybun,” 37 drawings created during his nearly two-month incarceration in New Mexico just before his deportation to Great Britain. The free, all-ages showing is happening from 6 to 9 p.m. at the HVW8 art and design gallery in Hollywood with an 18+ after party scheduled at the Echo.

The homecoming allows the diligent 35-year-old to share a story of how he found solace and sanity in art during the most intense year of his life.

Songwriter Ester Dean steps out front after penning work for Britney Spears, Chris Brown, Katy Perry and others

Pop songwriter Ester Dean’s Brentwood home is vibrating with heavy synths as the singer-songwriter lays down the vocals on one of the handful of demos she is completing that day.

The first thing she does when she emerges from behind the sound booth is comment on this writer’s tardiness to a scheduled interview and listening session.

“You’re late,” she said, adding an expletive, before erupting into fits of laughter.

Dean’s unabashed demeanor is infectious -– especially as she apologizes for the amount of curse words she said she's sure will hit the cutting room floor. Her engineers and co-producer barely keep a straight face as they work as she cracks jokes and throw out vulgarities in between takes.

As clichéd as it sounds, it’s tough to imagine the amount of work the hugely in-demand, Grammy-nominated 24-year-old is able to get accomplished with her playfulness often keeping her doubled over in laughter. She's written songs for Britney Spears, Chris Brown and a host of others, and is prepping a solo record.

“Three years ago I was dead broke,” she said in a rare moment of seriousness.

A wall in her studio is covered with collages of the goals she still hopes to achieve. Pictures of castles, cars and money are pasted together and surrounded by self-affirmations. She dreams big, but is the first to tell anyone who will listen that her success came only after she altered her outlook on herself.

“My mind set changed. I started thinking I deserved more,” she said of her positive outlook, which she attributed to the popular self-help DVD “The Secret.” “Things started happening for me. And quick.”

And in those three years she went from “dead broke” to one of urban pop’s most sought-after scribes.

Newcomer Miguel ready for the spotlight with his 'eclec-tric' hybrid of R&B

R&B upstart Miguel had an unlikely introduction to music.

“I was actually part of a freak show, had an extra arm -– that’s how I learned to play the guitar. I then worked my way up to tight-rope-walking, then lion-taming,” he said.

OK, so the singer born Miguel Pimentel  has a healthy sense of humor and took the more common approach of discovering music as a youngster.

The 24-year-old singer-songwriter from San Pedro is enjoying his move to the spotlight with his first single, “All I Want Is You” featuring buzzy rapper J. Cole. The single, from his debut album, has peaked at No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart.

He is especially eager to get his music out there after previously landing a deal as a young teen that  ultimately didn't pan out. After his recordings found their way to Mark Pitts, Jive Label Group’s president of urban music and CEO of Bystorm Entertainment, Pitts signed him in 2007, but not before the newcomer found himself in a holdup with his previous label.

“[Pitts] has been such a champion for me. I went through some legal troubles with the other deal, which is why I’m coming out so late. He stood behind me 100%,” he says. “For him to vouch for me, because he is so respected, it kind of opens people up a bit more to me than they normally would.”

Having Pitts behind him isn’t the only major co-sign he's received this year. Talking backstage late last month, he was prepping for his opening slot on Mary J. Blige’s “Music Saved My Life” tour and already knew his next gig: supporting label mate Usher’s “OMG” tour. It rolls into Los Angeles on Thursday after playing a show near Miguel's hometown Sunday. It’s also a bonus because he has penned tracks for both Usher and Blige.

2AM Club not afraid to make 'dumb pop music'

The boys of 2AM Club can’t help but feel nostalgic. As the six-piece band prepped for a gig at West Hollywood’s House of Blues on the day their debut album, “What Did You Think Was Going to Happen?” hit stores, much of the backstage chatter ventured to their formative days a few blocks from the venue they were set to play.

“The best feeling [is] when you do that full circle. We started here,” the group’s lead singer Marc Griffin said backstage after the sound check. “The first songs were written right here. We wrote those in our apartment right down the street. It’s funny we were living in that dirty ... cockroach apartment and we started writing. We started writing these intense, hopefully sentimental, party records. It feels just like yesterday.”

In reality yesterday was 2007, but life is a bit different from those days of playing the West Coast college scene and bunking together (they joke that the space was so small they had to share cereal with their bug roommates) a few blocks east on Sunset Boulevard. The emerging group -- headed by Griffin and emcee Tyler Cordy -- are having their moment, thanks to their genre-bending fusion of pop, electro, soul, funk, rock and hip-hop.

Lil Twist takes his cues from 'big brother' Lil Wayne

While most 17-year-olds are enjoying the last days of summer before school begins, Lil Twist is busy cementing himself in a very adult-dominated rap world.

But the Dallas teen (ne: Christopher L. Moore) undoubtedly has the best teacher any fresh-faced rookie could wish for: Lil Wayne, who gave him his first break – not easily, of course – and has taken the young'un under his tattooed wing.

"I opened up for Wayne in Tyler [an hour away from Dallas]. ... I begged his manager [Cortez Bryant], which is my manager now," Twist recalled. "I begged him, and he put me on the stage and I ripped it."

The chance encounter led to an on-the-spot signing with Wayne’s Young Money imprint, the same camp responsible for Drake and Nicki Minaj.

During a break from promoting his first single, "Little Secret," featuring Bow Wow, off of his upcoming debut album, "Don’t Get It Twisted," we caught up with rap’s youngest star. Here are five things you need to know about Lil Twist:

5) He’s the [temporary] voice of Lil Wayne. Before Weezy headed to Rikers Island, he wanted a way to communicate with his fans so Twist taught him Ustream and set up his Twitter. Twist takes the reins of both Wayne’s WeezyThanxYou.com and the @liltunechi Twitter page and posts messages that Wayne dictates to him, including gratitude to the fans who write him while he's in prison.

"That’s my brother. He really took me in. Anything he needs me to do, it’s done. He told me one day to set him up with Twitter, and I did. He started going hard tweeting every day, Ustreaming every day," Twist said. "Then he went in and he still gives me that call from jail with shout-outs to people, and I’ll write it on his Twitter and keep him updated. I look at it like, if I don’t do it, my big brother’s gonna knock me out."

Chiddy Bang: From college freshmen to the new cool kids of hip-hop

Philadelphia hip-hop duo Chiddy Bang makes sure to warmly greet every fan who trickles down to their merchandise booth.

After a recent opening slot for up-and-comer Mike Posner -- with a packed crowd that included hipsters, preppy college kids and even “Hills” star Audrina Patridge -- the two made themselves readily available to their fans, offering up autographs and thanking them for their support. It’s not like they could go hit the bars nearby as neither are of legal age to drink.

A click of girls ignored the T-shirts and EPs emblazoned with the group’s moniker for the real thing: rapper Chidera “Chiddy” Anamege, who was waiting with a sly grin, and baby faced producer-DJ Xaphoon Jones (née Noah Beresin), who couldn’t hide his boyish charm if you asked him.

Just another night in a year that has been a blur for the 19-year-olds.

It wasn’t long ago that an introduction from a neighbor brought together Anamege and Jones, both freshmen at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Jones was studying music and Anamege, business.

Anamege says with a laugh that from that first introduction, the two just “fell into a groove.”

That “groove” being Jones’ eccentric choice of sampling -- he turns to indie rock just as much as electronic as a source of inspiration – paired with Anamege’s spitfire rhymes.

Mike Posner is on a quest to be pop's next best thing

After playing a sold-out show, it’s customary for most hip-hop artists to retreat to the VIP section of an after party or partake in a bit of debauchery on a tour bus. But not Mike Posner. After shows, he’s usually en route to another city, homework in tow. In the case of a recent sold-out opening slot for Drake in Los Angeles, he had to jet back to North Carolina the next day to pick up his degree in a sea of cap and gown-clad undergrads.

The 22-year-old Southfield, Mich., native is quick to tell you he’s not like any artist on the scene. And he makes for a pretty convincing case.

Once he inked a deal with J Records the summer after his junior year at Duke University (he majored in business and sociology), he did the exact opposite of what would be expected -- he stayed enrolled. He led the same double life as most undergrads: classes during weekdays and working during the weekends. Except as opposed to making smoothies, being a resident adviser or scanning books in the library, he spent his weekends touring the country, often playing in front of sold-out crowds, and no, there wasn’t any beer pong playing on the road.

Like many artists before him, Posner caught the attention of label execs after releasing his debut mixtape, “A Matter of Time” -- which he recorded in his dorm room -- for free on iTunes in 2009. The mixtape rose to the No. 1 slot on iTunesU. After a bidding war with a handful of major labels, the singer, songwriter and producer signed with J Records and went into senior year. With a second mixtape, “One Foot Out the Door” and buzz-worthy singles “Cooler Than Me” and "Drug Dealer Girl” under his belt, Posner is on a quest to dominate pop, and with a raspy voice that brings to mind Macy Gray or Jason Mraz. 

Country newcomer Laura Bell Bundy: From Broadway to Nashville

The world, at least the country music-loving part of it, is about to be hearing and seeing a lot more of Laura Bell Bundy, a Kentucky-bred singer and songwriter whose debut album arrives April 13. But unlike a lot of newcomers, Bundy has a wealth of spotlight time already to her credit.

I had lunch with Bundy today at her hotel in Beverly Hills while she was in town for some promotional activities leading up to the release of “Achin’ and Shakin’.”  It’s an ambitious -- especially for a debut -- effort split into the titular two portions: The first's half made up of moody ballads laced with lots of Southern soul, while the other's a mini romance-novel-in-song loosely tracing the course of a woman who gives the boot to a cheating partner (in her current single and video “Giddy on Up”), goes through the heartbreak, rebound and discovery of a new object for her affections.

She’s slated to sing “Giddy on Up” during the Academy of Country Music Awards show in Las Vegas on April 18, a featured slot she finds doubly ironic. Not only is it rare for a debut artist -- one who isn’t even a nominee -- to be tapped as a performer at any of the major awards ceremonies, but it’s also the polar opposite of her experience at the Tony Awards.

Bundy was a Tony nominee a couple of years ago for her starring role in the Broadway production of   “Legally Blonde: The Musical,” in which she spent nearly two years doing eight performances a week in New York City. (She's also been in productions of "Wicked," "Hairspray" and "Ruthless!") At that time, the Tony committee still had a rule that performances only were granted to actors from shows that were in the running for awards, and that year, “Legally Blonde” itself wasn’t, even though its star was.

“I was the only one in my category who didn’t get to perform,” the 28-year-old singer said between bites of a Caesar salad. “That was the last year they had that rule. CBS does the ACM Awards and they also do the Tony Awards -- I wonder if they’ll remember that?”