Michael Jackson was unquestionably the biggest pop star of the '80s, and certainly one of the most popular recording artists of all time. In his prime, Jackson was an unstoppable juggernaut, possessed of all the tools to dominate the charts seemingly at will: an instantly identifiable voice, eye-popping dance moves, stunning musical versatility, and loads of sheer star power. His 1982 blockbuster Thriller became the biggest-selling album of all time (probably his best-known accomplishment), and he was the first black artist to find stardom on MTV, breaking down innumerable boundaries both for his race and for music video as an art form. Yet as Jackson's career began, very gradually, to descend from the dizzying heights of his peak years, most of the media's attention focused on his increasingly bizarre eccentricities; he was often depicted as an arrested man-child, completely sheltered from adult reality by a life spent in show business. The snickering turned to scandal in 1993, when Jackson was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy; although he categorically denied the charges, his out-of-court settlement failed to restore his tarnished image. He never quite escaped the stigma of those allegations, and while he continued to sell records at superstar-like levels, he didn't release them with enough frequency (or, many critics thought, inspiration) to once again become better known for his music than his private life. Whether as a pop icon or a tabloid caricature, Jackson always remained bigger than life.
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Embodying the rags-to-riches rap dream, Jay-Z pulled himself up by his bootstraps as a youth to eventually become the reigning rapper of New York City and, in turn, a major-label executive following his short-lived retirement from music-making. In the wake of his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z's albums sold millions upon millions with each release, and his endless parade of hits made him omnipresent on urban radio and video television. He retained a strongly devoted fan base and challenged whatever rivals attempted to oust him from atop the rap game, sparing most memorably with Nas. Jay-Z and his Roc-a-Fella associates greatly influenced the industry and established many of the trends that pervaded during the late '90s and early 2000s. He consistently worked with the hottest producers of the day (Clark Kent, DJ Premier, Teddy Riley, Trackmasters, Erick Sermon, Timbaland, Swizz Beatz), and if they weren't hot at the time, they likely would be afterward (the Neptunes, Kanye West, Just Blaze, 9th Wonder). He similarly collaborated with the hottest rappers in the industry, everyone from East Coast contemporaries like the Notorious B.I.G. ("Brooklyn's Finest") and DMX ("Cash, Money, Hoes"), to the best rappers from the South (Ludacris, Missy Elliott) and the West Coast (Snoop Dogg, Too Short). After his self-declared retirement from rapping in 2003, he assumed the presidency of the seminal rap label Def Jam and, as an industry executive, embarked on another phase in his illustrious career.
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Pixie Lott (born Victoria Lott on 12 January 1991) is an English singer–songwriter, actress, and dancer. Signed to Mercury Records in the UK and Interscope in the U.S., her debut single ''Mama Do (Uh Oh, Uh Oh)'' was released for download on 6 June 2009 and officially on 8 June, going straight to number one in the UK the week of 14 June 2009. She is scheduled to release her debut album, entitled Turn It Up, on 14 September 2009, and has also recorded her single ''Mama Do (Uh Oh, Uh Oh)'' for Electronic Arts in Simlish for The Sims 3.
Lott lives in Essex with her father, who is a stock broker, and her mother, a housewife; she has an older brother and sister.
After starting singing in her church school, Lott attended the Italia Conti Associates Saturday school in Chislehurst from five years old, her family then moved to Essex and she went onto the main school Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, where she was awarded a scholarship. During her time as a student, she appeared in the West End production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the London Palladium, and in BBC One''s Celebrate the Sound of Music as Louisa von Trapp. Aged fourteen she was part of the chorus line, recording vocals on Roger Waters''s opera Ça Ira.
L. A. Reid heard one of her demos and signed her to the Island Def Jam Music Group when she was fifteen, but after a change of managers, a bidding war ensued, resulting in her now being signed to Mercury Records in the UK and to Interscope Records in the United States.
Lott played her first festival concert in the Big Top at the Isle of Wight Festival 2009, during her first full British tour, where she supported The Saturdays on The Work Tour.
She released her debut single, ''Mama Do (Uh Oh, Uh Oh)'', on 8 June 2009. It entered both the iTunes chart and the UK Singles Chart at number one, after over 50,000 sales. Lott was quoted as being ''shocked'' at the success of the single.
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The Lonely Island is an American comedy troupe composed of Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Andy Samberg, best known for their musical parodies. The group is from Berkeley, California, and is currently based in New York City. The group began creating live comedy skits in junior high and continued to do so, expanding its repertoire to comedic shorts, music parody (both songs and videos), and one full-length television pilot, before coming to the attention of Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Once on the show, they wrote ''Lazy Sunday'', a better-produced music parody video much like the group's previous work. It became an instant Internet success, and led to the creation of similar 'digital shorts' which were also aired on Saturday Night Live. ''Dick In A Box'', ''Jizz In My Pants'', ''Like a Boss'' and ''I'm On A Boat'' have subsequently had huge success both on the show and on the Internet and prompted the recording and release of an album, INCREDIBAD, which has seen the group move in a more musical direction.
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More than any other single artist, Britney Spears was the driving force behind the return of teen pop in the late '90s. The blockbuster success of the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys certainly paved the way for her own commercial breakthrough, but Spears didn't just become a star -- she was a bona fide pop phenomenon. Not only did she sell millions of records, she was a media fixture regardless of what she was (or wasn't) doing; among female singers of the era (many of whom followed in her footsteps), her celebrity star power was rivaled only by Jennifer Lopez. From the outset, Spears' sex appeal was an important part of her image. The video for her debut single, ''...Baby One More Time,'' outfitted her in full Catholic-school regalia and sent her well on the way to becoming an international sex symbol. Yet Spears' handlers seemed to be trying to have it both ways -- there was a definite tension between the wholesome innocence Spears tried to project for her female audience, and the titillating sexuality that enticed so many male fans. Those marketing tactics made Spears a somewhat controversial figure, the subject of endless debates concerning appropriate role models for teenage girls. Early on, Spears tried to defuse the controversy by preaching abstinence until marriage, and even denied that she was consciously cultivating such a sexualized image. Of course, the more provocative and revealing her on-stage wardrobe became, the less plausible that claim seemed. But apart from her ability to tiptoe the line between virginal coquette and brazen tart, Spears had a secret weapon in Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, who had a hand in the vast majority of her hits as a writer and/or producer. With Martin crafting the sort of contemporary dance-pop and sentimental ballads that made stars of the Backstreet Boys, Spears kept on delivering the goods commercially, as her first three albums all topped the charts.
Britney Jean Spears was born December 2, 1981, in the small town of Kentwood, LA, and began performing as a singer and dancer at a young age. With a nationally televised appearance on Star Search already under her belt, Spears auditioned for the Disney Channel's The New Mickey Mouse Club at age eight. The producers turned her down as too young, but one of them took an interest and introduced her to an agent in New York. Spears spent the next three years studying at the Professional Performing Arts School, and also appeared in several television commercials and off-Broadway plays. At 11, she returned to The New Mickey Mouse Club for a second audition, and this time made the cut. Although her fellow Mouseketeers included an impressive array of future stars -- *NSYNC's Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez, Christina Aguilera, and Felicity actress Keri Russell -- the show was canceled after Spears' second season. She returned to New York at age 15 and set about auditioning for pop bands and recording demo tapes, one of which eventually landed her a deal with Jive Records.
Spears entered the studio with top writer/producers like Eric Foster White (Boyzone, Whitney Houston, Backstreet Boys) and Max Martin (Ace of Base, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC). In late 1998, Jive released her debut single, the Martin-penned ''...Baby One More Time.'' Powered by its video, in which Spears and a troupe of dancers were dressed as Catholic-school jailbait, the single shot to the top of the Billboard charts. When Spears' debut album of the same title was released in early 1999, it entered the charts at number one and stayed there for six weeks. Once the ubiquitous lead single died down, the album kept spinning off hits: the Top Ten ''(You Drive Me) Crazy,'' the near-Top 20 ballad ''Sometimes,'' and the Top 20 ''From the Bottom of My Broken Heart.'' By the end of 1999, ...Baby One More Time had sold ten million copies, and went on to sell a good three million more on top of that. Its success touched off a wave of young pop divas that included Christina Aguilera, Pink, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore. Spears was a superstar, drooled over in countless magazines, including a Rolling Stone cover that prompted immediate speculation about the still-17 year old having received breast implants.
By the time ...Baby One More Time finally started to lose steam on the singles and album charts, Spears was ready to release her follow-up. Oops!...I Did It Again appeared in the spring of 2000, and the title track was an instant smash, racing into the Top Ten. The album itself entered the charts at number one and sold over a million copies in its first week of release, setting a new record for single-week sales by a female artist. Follow-up singles included ''Lucky,'' the gold-selling ''Stronger,'' and ''Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know,'' which was co-written by country diva Shania Twain and her producer Mutt Lange. A year after its release, Oops!...I Did It Again had sold over nine million copies. Rumors that Spears was dating *N Sync heartthrob (and fellow ex-Mouseketeer) Justin Timberlake were eventually confirmed, which only added to the media attention lavished on her.
For her next album, Spears looked ahead to a not-so-distant future when both she and much of her audience would be growing up. Released in late 2001, Britney tried to present the singer as a more mature young woman, and was accompanied by mild hints that her personal life wasn't always completely puritanical. It became her third straight album to debut at number one, although this time around the singles weren't as successful; ''I'm a Slave 4 U,'' ''I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,'' and ''Overprotected'' all missed the Top Ten. In early 2002, Spears' feature-film debut, Crossroads, hit theaters, but its commercial performance was somewhat disappointing; moreover, her romance with Timberlake fizzled not long after. Spears next made a cameo appearance in Mike Myers' Austin Powers: Goldmember, and contributed a remix of ''Boys'' to the soundtrack. Meanwhile, sales of Britney stalled at four million copies, perhaps in part because a new breed of teenage female singer/songwriters, like Michelle Branch and Avril Lavigne was emerging as an alternative to the highly packaged teen queens. Spears took a break from recording and performing for several months, and began work on a new album in early 2003. The results, In the Zone, reflected a wish to be taken seriously as a mature (though still highly sexualized) adult. Predictably, it topped the charts and launched several singles into orbit, including the musically adventurous ''Toxic,'' ''Everytime,'' and ''Me Against the Music.''
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The charismatic Southern rapper Lil Wayne began his industry ascendance as one of the Hot Boys, a short-lived all-star group on Cash Money Records. After establishing himself as a successful solo artist, he grew to become a critical favorite, known for his confident boasts, entertainting underground mixtapes, and prolific output. Born Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., on September 27, 1982, in New Orleans, LA, Lil Wayne grew up in the Hollygrove neighborhood of New Orleans' 17th Ward. There, he became acquainted with the Cash Money Records collective, which he eventually joined as a teenager. Get It How U Live! (1997), a Hot Boys album also featuring Juvenile, B.G., and Turk, marked Lil Wayne's album debut; at age 18, he was the youngest group member.
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Savage Garden was an Australian pop duo that received major international success between 1997 and 2001. The band was composed of Darren Hayes (vocals) and Daniel Jones (keyboards, sequencing, and guitar). They had a string of hits in the late nineties, and are best remembered today for their ballad ''Truly Madly Deeply'', which is considered their signature song, and the songs ''To the Moon and Back'', ''I Knew I Loved You'', ''Crash and Burn'', ''I Want You'' and ''Affirmation''.
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The Trews are a Canadian alternative rock band from Antigonish, Nova Scotia, consisting of vocalist Colin MacDonald, guitarist John-Angus MacDonald, bassist Jack Syperek, and drummer Sean Dalton. The band is currently based in Toronto, Ontario.
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Avril Lavigne first appeared in summer 2002, touting an addictive debut single (the spunky pop/rock gem "Complicated") and a skatepunk image that purposely clashed with the polished glamour of mainstream pop. Lavigne, who was 17 at the time, quickly rose to teen idol status, selling several million copies of her debut album, Let Go (the best-selling album by a female artist in 2002), while inspiring a genuine fashion craze with her penchant for tank tops and neckties. As the decade progressed, so did Lavigne's marketable sound, which took a contemplative turn on the sophomore effort Under My Skin before reaching an aggressively upbeat tone for 2007's The Best Damn Thing.
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Blakroc is a rap rock collaboration album by Ohio-based blues rock band The Black Keys and several hip hop and R&B artists. The project has been overseen by Damon Dash, co-founder and formerly owner of a share in Roc-A-Fella Records. The album was recorded at Studio G by co-producer Joel Hamilton. Album guests include Raekwon, RZA and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan, Jim Jones and NOE of ByrdGang, Mos Def, singer Nicole Wray, Pharoahe Monch, Ludacris, Billy Danze of M.O.P., and Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest.
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