VMA Nominations & Voting

Nominated for 'Best New Artist' and 'Video of the Year', I finally have an excuse to post Tyler the Creator's self-directed "Yonkers". In other categories, I am also opinionated:

• Best Pop Video: Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)"
• Best Rock Video: The Black Keys' "Howlin' For You"
• Best Hip-hop Video: Chris Brown/Busta Rhymes/Lil' Wayne's "Look At Me Now"
• Best Female Video: Nicki Minaj - "Super Bass"
• Best Male Video: Cee-Lo Green - "F*** You"
• Best Collaboration: Kanye/Rihanna - "All of the Lights" (sort of a runner-up hip-hop)
• Best Art Direction: Death Cab For Cutie - "You Are A Tourist"
• Best Choreography: LMFAO/GoonRock/Lauren Bennett - "Party Rock Anthem"
• Best Cinematography: Eminem/Rihanna - "Love the Way You Lie"
• Best Direction: Beastie Boys - "Make Some Noise"
• Best Editing: Adele - "Rolling in the Deep"
• Best Special Effects: Kanye/Katy Perry - "E.T." (winning this was the point of this song)

You can vote for these (or your favorites) [here].

The LA Beat [Accessible Remix]: Skrillex and Glitch Mob

Now that I'm temporarily based on the West Coast, perhaps it's appropriate for me to post on the "next big thing" in dance music. Snoop Dogg and Britney Spears have done dubstep [here] and [here], so there has to be something new, and there is, thanks to the clubbing-obsessed beautiful people of Southern California. Blending electro, dubstep, and glitch in an often hip-hop-oriented style, this stuff is, as The Hound and I like to call it, squelchy.

Props to Kolstrom, my old dancing buddy Matt Pfeiffer, the baristas at Viento y Agua, and Messiah's favorite hipster-in-residence Josh Rayner for putting me up on the leading artists in this movement. I should have heard them before, since one was once the frontman of From First to Last and the other is a member of Nasty Ways, the remixers whose take on Lil' Wayne's "Lollipop" provided a substantial basis for my own.

The former is now a solo artist called Skrillex, whose first EP attracted the attention of Deadmau5, who promptly signed him to his label and released a second. Word on the street is that a full-length is in the works. Personally, I'm more of a fan of his remix work, as in his takes on Lady Gaga and the Black Eyed Peas:

The latter is actually a collective, composed of edIT, Ooah, and Boreta (of Nasty Ways), who foreground the hip-hop aspects of the LA sound. Mixtapes dropping ADD-inducing rap samples over their own electronic beats force one to wonder what would happen if these dudes started doing beats for Jeezy, or at least a more dance-music oriented dude like Kid Cudi. Now that I've heard Busta Rhymes officially appear on a record produced by Diplo and Tiesto, anything can happen. Check out the mixtape version of standout track "Drive It Like You Stole It" for a sampling of what these cats do:

Both of these artists have a more accessible, dance-oriented take on the underground stuff going on with Flying Lotus and Gaslamp Killer over at Low End Theory, and are poised to do big things in 2011 for exactly that reason. Get familiar.