Nicki Minaj, Glen Campbell, Wilco among L.A.'s top summer concerts

Southern California’s summer pop music calendar includes Hard Summer, Make Music Pasadena and Rock the Bells festivals.

Nicki Minaj. Skrillex. Glen Campbell’s goodbye tour. Wilco. Some big names in pop are coming to Southern California this summer, promising a decent warm-weather season and the extension of a concert year that already has promoters singing.

Last month, promotion giant Live Nation, which also operates Ticketmaster, reported a 6% increase in ticket sales for the first quarter of 2012 compared with the same period last year -- no doubt due to a spring that has seen Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, the Beach Boys and Roger Waters touring; the Beverly Hills-based company also just promoted three sold-out Coldplay shows at the Hollywood Bowl. With artists such as Justin Bieber and Madonna not making it out West until the fall, the year’s blockbuster tours would seem to conveniently miss L.A.’s summer months.

But music fans still have a lot to celebrate this summer.

The annual downtown dance event known as Hard Summer has expanded from one day to two, and the yet-to-be-announced rock-centric festival known as FYF, also downtown and produced by the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival promoter Goldenvoice, has also stretched from one to two days over Labor Day. A festival spokeswoman says to expect the lineup to be revealed by the end of this month. What’s more, the Dave Matthews Band, one of the concert industry’s biggest stars, will swing through Southern California in September.

Gary Bongiovani, editor of concert-tracking publication Pollstar, also notes that tours are maximizing value: “We’re seeing good solid three-act shows these days. One way to stand out of the fog is to combine and offer fans real value. We see Enrique Iglesias, Jennifer Lopez, Wisin Y Yandel. That’s a great tri-bill. In previous years, we may not have seen that combination of talent.”

Here’s a look at just a few of the big-name acts and can’t-miss shows coming to the L.A. this summer.

Nicki Minaj pulls out of gig after host insults her single [Updated]

At best, it's counterintuitive to insult your headliner right before he or she takes the stage, and probably just not a good idea. Especially if it's Nicki Minaj.

The pink-haired rapper was set to headline Hot 97′s Summer Jam festival in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sunday but pulled out shortly before her set. Minaj nixed her performance at the festival, one of only a few annual hip-hop events of its size, following disparaging remarks from Hot 97 personality Peter Rosenberg, who also hosts MTV's "Hip-Hop Squares."

Rosenberg, obviously not a fan of Minaj's club-friendly, RedOne-produced jingle, "Starships," told the crowd that the radio station was “all about that real hip-hop.”

2 Chainz arrested; was it brass knuckles or just a large ring?

If you thought 2 Chainz's interest in alloy-based accessories only extended to his pseudonymous neckwear, think again.  

The rapper born Tauheed Epps was arrested in the Delta terminal at New York's La Guardia Airport on May 22 on suspicion of carrying brass knuckles in his luggage. Specifically, the charge was misdemeanor possession of a weapon in the fourth degree, and Epps was held at the airport before being taken to Queens County central booking for formal charges.

There is a debate as to whether or not the item was a weapon or just elaborate jewelry. Hip-hop peers, including Big Sean and DJ Drama, have rallied to his defense, claiming that the alleged "brass knuckles" were simply a four-finger ring that Chainz had sported in recent videos. Drama Instagrammed a photo of the item in question, and it does seem likely that it was meant as a fashion accessory.

Chainz is on a hot streak right now, performing on Drake's Club Paradise tour with his single "No Lie" and he had a well-regarded cameo on Nicki Minaj's "Beez in the Trap." 

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-- August Brown

Photo: 2 Chainz, Rosci and Terrence J at on April 9, 2012, in New York City. Credit: Craig Barritt/Getty Images. 

Live: Pitbull, Nicki Minaj, Maroon 5, others at KIIS-FM's Wango Tango

If there was a single message to take home from Saturday’s all-day KIIS-FM concert at the Home Depot Center in Carson, it was: Wango Tango.

The two-word name of the daylong pop music event, now in its 15th year, was repeated so many times during the eight hours of performances, both onstage by artists and during commercial breaks between each 20-minute set, that it felt as if the powerful radio station were still trying to persuade us to attend.

It was as if a roster that included, among others, heavy hitters Pitbull, Nicki Minaj, Wiz Khalifa, B.o.B. and Maroon 5 teamed with a crop of young risers such as J. Cole, Big Sean, the Wanted, Wallpaper and K’Naan — to say nothing of quickie “guest-host” appearances by Justin Bieber and Ryan Seacrest — weren’t enough. The music certainly was bountiful, even if, as is the case with most radio concerts, the presentation felt like an extended commercial for its own relevance.

PHOTOS: Wango Tango

Aside from originally being the name of a Ted Nugent song about a sexy dance, Wango Tango is KIIS-FM’s annual fan-day party, and each installment since the first in 1998 has featured dozens of America’s hottest and/or most buzzing pop music artists getting their 15 minutes onstage (in many cases, quite literally) for thousands of screaming teens and their parents, twentysomethings and ageless pop music and pop culture fanatics looking for musical bliss.

Album review: Nicki Minaj's 'Pink Friday ... Roman Reloaded'

At her best, Nicki Minaj is, line for line, one of the wittiest, most creative rappers working today, either male or female. Her many personas and voices fly through her songs with joyful abandon, and she seems to be having so much fun astonishing us. On the first half of her second album, “Pink Friday ... Roman Reloaded,” the Trinidadian American rapper from New York City offers repeated evidence of her talents, and she delivers funny, biting, bawdy lines and rhyming couplets with apparent glee.

A supremely confident Minaj trades verses with otherwise cocky male rappers such as Lil Wayne, Drake, Nas and 2 Chainz and not only proves herself their equal but also pushes them to step up with their own ace verses. On the effervescent, minimally invasive bounce track “Beez in the Trap,” Minaj plays the queen of a hive, with Atlanta rapper 2 Chainz buzzing around her. Musically, the track bounces from ear to ear as though moving straight through your skull, and 2 Chainz's wild and slobbery verse is pretty great. Fellow New Yorker Nas continues his return to form on “Champion,” even if Minaj’s verses aren’t her best on the album. 

But then, after the ridiculousness that is “Sex in the Lounge” (which sounds like a Lonely Island parody of an R. Kelly song, and, unsuprisingly, features Lil Wayne), the album drives off a cliff. In a spectacularly unfortunate crash-and-burn, Minaj abruptly hits the accelerator and stops rapping, leaving behind the minimal, bouncy hip-hop tracks that highlight her charm and achievement in favor of 128-beat-per-minute dance pop songs as simple as they are generic. It’s hard to witness, actually, an artist whose craft should be cresting, with enough power in the business to call her own aesthetic shots, chasing the money at the expense of the art. 

That second half is a drag, filled with dance bangers of the blandest and most cookie-cutter variety. The music behind “Automatic” could be mistaken for a 15-year-old’s first stab at making a dance track on Ableton software, a cynically simple run with clumsy synth chord progressions that were already tired when invented at cheesy 1998 raves. These are accompanied by a few late-night ballads with singing so synthetically enhanced that it sounds like a Jetson robot.

The result is a disjointed, artistically confused release that’s not only way too long but also doesn’t really ring true as an “album” at all, at least if your definition is a collection of new songs with a central premise or statement that one listens to from start to finish. 

This is only an album in the commercial sense -- a grab-bag of potential singles that may or may not hit, but that will be strategically worked over the next 18 months. Katy Perry’s organization perfected this business model on “Teenage Dream,” and Adele’s people are following it on “21” --  a gradual, patient release of singles over the course of a year or two, maximizing on the investment in what has become an iffy financial proposition.

It would be best if Minaj's "Roman Reloaded" fails as a commercial endeavor in the same way that its worst instincts fail artistically. Maybe then she'll stop trying to greedily be all things to all people and focus on what got her here in the first place: that ridiculous flow, wit, and imagination. 

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Coldplay, Silversun Pickups, Incubus tapped for Weenie Roast

-- Randall Roberts
@liledit

Nicki Minaj
"Pink Friday ... Roman Reloaded"
(Young Money/Universal)
Two stars out of four

Grammys 2012: Nicki Minaj to debut new single on Grammy stage

Nicki Minaj plans to get the most out of her first appearance on the Grammy stage.

The Young Money raptress announced that she will use her set to debut material from her upcoming sophomore album, “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded.”

Appearing as her alter-ego, Roman Zolanski, she, OK he, will unveil the album track “Roman Holiday” onstage.

Nicki Minaj's 'Stupid ...' video too hot for TV

Add Nicki Minaj to the list of artists with a video deemed “too hot for TV.” The Grammy-nominated rapper is gaining plenty of headlines, and publicity such as this post, for her latest video, “Stupid Hoe,” because of its absence on networks such as BET.

The video for the first track lifted off her highly anticipated -- and recently pushed back -- sophomore disc, “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded,” apparently got the ax or rejection from the Viacom-owned network.

Though BET hasn’t announced any specific reasons why it’s banned (a rep for the network didn’t return our request for comment) we can take a few guesses as to why the track could be deemed unsuitable for air:

M.I.A. dishes on Super Bowl appearance with Madonna

 

Electro-pop "Bad Girl" M.I.A. revealed, as expected, that she’ll be performing during the Super Bowl halftime show Sunday alongside  Madonna and Nicki Minaj. M.I.A. confirmed the news in a recent interview with BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe.

“I’m going to the Super Bowl rehearsals. I’m going to be performing with Madonna and Nicki Minaj,” she told the station. “If you’re going to go to the Super Bowl, you might as well go there with America’s biggest female icon.”

After she recently worked on Madonna’s new single “Give Me All Your Luvin” with Minaj, M.I.A.'s announcement was no real surprise. When the pop star power trio performs during at the championship game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, they will join the ranks of influential Super Bowl halftime acts such as Prince, The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and U2.

Super Bowl: Nicki Minaj to perform with Madonna in halftime show

 

 

Slowly but surely, the plans for Madonna's big Super Bowl halftime show are coming into focus, and the latest bit to fall into place is Nicki Minaj. In response to a fan's Twitter question, "What does your agenda contain today, Nic?" the singer replied, "Super Bowl rehearsals w/the Queen ;)."

Because it's highly unlikely that Queen Elizabeth will be bringing herself to Indianapolis on Sunday, Minaj can only mean Madonna, the so-called Queen of Pop.

Madonna's 12-minute set, which is also to include a guest performance by party-boy rockers LMFAO, may have already been semi-revealed by NFL Magazine, which wrote, "Though Madonna's set list was not officially announced at press time, fans might expect her to give all her luvvin', provide a ray of light and be in vogue with her music." (What are the chances fans will be hearing her new single "Give Me All Your Luvvin," "Ray of Light" and "Vogue" during the show?)

"Give Me All Your Luvvin" is a collaboration between Madonna and Minaj.

I Heart Radio: Gaga, Sting, J. Lo, more do Vegas for Seacrest

Ryan Seacrest and Clear Channel Communications have some impressively deep Rolodexes: Over a star-studded five hours Saturday evening at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, the hosts of Night 2 of the I Heart Radio music festival delivered a bill that included, in order of appearance (roughly): Steven Tyler, Jeff Beck, Sting, Randy Jackson, a few members of Sly Stone's Family Stone, Nicki Minaj, Karmin, Rascal Flatts, Jennifer Lopez, David Guetta, Usher, Kenny Chesney, Lady Gaga and Sting (again). 

That's a lot of records sold, and dozens of massive radio hits and platinum discs. This creative musical energy was harnessed in Vegas for a specific purpose: to market I Heart Radio, the new mobile phone app launched by Clear Channel and Seacrest that promises listeners the freedom to choose the music they consume and to access Clear Channel's vast network of terrestrial stations via the Internet. 

Like Friday's show, Saturday's sold-out performance at the 17,000-capacity Garden Arena was broadcast via the Web and to Clear Channel radio stations across the country, no doubt one selling point that drew such a massive lineup to Vegas. As a result, the event moved like clockwork: Each musician came out, played his or her hits, shilled for I Heart Radio, sweated, danced, sang, thanked his or her fans, and then left. Between quick set changes, videos on the massive screen showed clips of the performers talking about music, and creativity, radio and I Heart Radio. The display also showed commercials.  

If you sense a certain cynicism, it was negated on a few memorable musical occasions. Tyler's opening salvo was "Sweet Emotion," which he sang with Beck on guitar and Sting on bass, a brain-teaser of a combination that, though rock solid, hopefully won't result in supergroup somewhere down the line.

Minaj, as always, was a joy to watch, a pitch-perfect, wildly charismatic rapper-singer-dancer-actor-marionette who tore through a handful of her best verses and tracks and said as much with her plasticized facial expressions and darting eyes as she did with her rhymes. "Super Bass," especially, was thrilling, a bounce-heavy banger that she and her rubbery backup dancers offered with joyful abandon.

Throughout the night, performers exclaimed how excited they were to be among such a varied lineup, and on the surface it was true: Minaj doesn't share much with Aerosmith, nor does she have much common ground with the middling, cookie-cutter country act Rascal Flatts or twangin' party boy Chesney. The latter superstar, who tossed out solid but harmless nuggets of country rock, certainly doesn't share too much common artistic ground with Lady Gaga, let alone a Frenchman like Guetta, who debuted a new song with R&B singer Usher.

What they do share are major label contracts, the power to deliver huge messages to big fanbases, access to the largest and most well-financed communication conduits available, and a willingness to explain on camera and onstage how awesome the I Heart Radio app and music festival will be.