Concert milk and other forms of advertising

Last night I spent some time together with the Stockholm advertising world at the Cannes Lions exhibit. There I walked around among trendy glasses (myself included) and tweed jackets (I only wore tweed pants) and looked at some of the most inspiring advertising from across the globe. Except for the somewhat stiff meet-and-greet atmosphere among the self-aware advertising scensters and Lykke Li-lookalikes, there was some very interesting stuff to see. And I’m not only taking about the young DJs who dished out tunes while wearing pink headphones.

Four things I enjoyed:

Concert Milk
My favorite. In an effort to attract people to the Dortmund concert hall and Westphalia Philharmonics the scientific proof that classical music increases milk production was used as inspiration; They created their own milk; concert milk. For someone like myself who has cow as my number on favorite animal (just before sea eagle and sea turtle) this of course it an instant classic.

Samsonite
What goes in in the luggage compartment in an airplane. Won the price for best ad.

Yardley Oatmeal
Smart pimple visualization.

Bing
An off the chart campaign by Droga5 who made a campaign for the search engine Bing together with Jay-Z. In the campaign every page in the forthcoming Jay-Z autobiography was printed on billboards, a car, hamburger wrapping paper and pretty much anything you can think off.

In my mind I hear your song, its playing while I’m dreaming

A bit over two years ago in another blog I mention driving and listening to Lykke Li. This has nothing to do with this video. Except that I am still listening to Lykke Li. She’s a bit darker this time around, and perhaps, I am too.

“I lived in a circus wagon in the countryside five kilometers from Germany, I biked through the wind and rain in Amsterdam and printed my thesis without my name on it, I rented a car and drove west listening to Whitest Boy Alive, I drove the same car east with Lykke Li in the cd player, and I held flowers in a graduation ceremony and had cool white wine and met someone who knew my name from seeing my picture on facebook, and I biked through rain again, and walked in the wind and picked someone up at a train-station and left someone at a train-station and I listen to Stars – Your-Ex Lover Is Dead while biking. I ate Turkish food so late that almost everyone else had left. There was no time and all of the time at the same time. Now its Sunday and yeah, it is Sunday and today there will be less movement.”

 

 

It takes an ocean not to break part 2: Drake and morning sex

Rap music took a bigger place in my world of music this year than during many other years. I saw Talib Kweli, who I have long admired for his amazing flow and his guest appearance on my favorite Kanye West track Get Em’ High, rap his way through a nice Way Out West set together with Hi-Tek.

The biggest new name for me in 2010 was without a doubt Drake. After releasing his 2009 mixtape So Far Gone, where he samples both Peter Bjorn & John’s Let’s Call it Off and Lykke Li’s Little Bit, he released his first proper full length debut in 2010 with Thank Me Later. I’ve struggled to pin point what it is that makes Drake so good, except for his indisputable skills both as a raspy rapper and as a soul full RNB singer. One appealing thig with Drake is his self-depreciating side, he doesn’t mind taking swings at himself, as in The Resistance where he raps about the disillusionment of fame:

‘I heard they just moved my grandmother to a nursing home.
And I be acting like I don’t know how to work a phone.
But hit redial you see that I just called, some chick I met at the mall,
that I barley know at all and..
Plus this woman that I messed with unprotected
Texting saying that she wish she would’ve kept it.
The one that I’m laying next to just looked over and read it.
Man I couldn’t tell you where the fuck my head is, I’m holding on by a thread it’s..
Like I’m high right now, the guy right now, and you can tell by looking in my eyes right now.
That nothing really comes as a surprise right now,
’cause we just having the time of our lives right now.

Even though his lyrics are no masterpieces he always delivers a sincere attitude which is refreshing, and with beats that almost always deliver the groundwork is made in songs like Miss Me, where Drake and Lil Wayne battle it out in five minute banger that manages to both be party and romantic longing in one. In Shut It Down Drake and The Dream goes on some serious RNB style ‘I love woman praising’ and I buy it all, even the overblown chorus.

In Over he goes grand with marching drums and strings as he if is the new Kanye West while Kareoke shows of his smooth voice as he worries about a girlfriend he has lost. Drake gets away with everything on Thank Me Later and his blend of pop, rnb and rap has not been done this brilliantly since Justin Timberlakes’ 2006 masterpiece FutureSex/ Lovesounds.

Other impossibly amazing rap musicians included Black Milk (Black and Brown with the early Amsterdam reference and relentless tempo an outstanding example), Jay Electronica (who I wrote about in this remembering Spain post) and J. Cole who is signed to Jay-Z’s label (where Jay Electronica is also present) and who has made the best songs about morning sex ever together with Drake.