Photo: Lionel Deluy

Last year, 50 Cent went up against Kanye West, and lost. Both rappers released albums on September 11th, 2007, and while West’s sold 950,000 copies its first week, 50’s moved about 250,000 units less. Looking back, 50 says, “If I could change anything, I’d change the timing that I released it. But together we created the largest-selling week for hip-hop music.”

The two won’t be going head-to-head again: West’s 808s & Heartbreak is slated for November 25th, and 50’s Before I Self Destruct will be out early next year. Compared to 2007’s R&B-heavy Curtis — which featured Justin Timberlake, Mary J. Blige and Robin Thicke — 50’s fourth LP is more stripped-down, with fewer guest spots. “It’s darker,” he says. “It has the essence of [his debut] Get Rich or Die Tryin’. It’s authentic with harsh realities.” (more…)

Rock Daily recently visited the Manhattan recording studio where Taking Back Sunday are finishing up their fourth LP — the Long Island group’s first with new guitarist Matt Fazzi. Though they’re known for their emo-leaning lyrics and sound (see their last huge single, “MakeDamnSure” from 2006’s Louder Now), Fazzi and lead singer Adam Lazzara say TBS are consciously pushing out of its comfort zone for this record by doing things like incorporating bassist Matt Rubano’s vocals for the first time.

“I think a lot of people who hear the record will recognize the songwriting has grown a lot, but we haven’t lost any of that fire that a Taking Back Sunday fan loves about the band,” Lazzara explains. He credits Fazzi’s addition (the band’s fourth lineup change) with creating an excitement the band hasn’t felt since their first record, inspiring the upcoming album to be called New Again.

Click above to watch Fazzi and Lazzara talk about recording the album (which is slated for release early next year) as well as their attempts to secure a Paul McCartney cameo and their possible future career on crazy kids’ show Yo Gabba Gabba.

[Video: Pete Maiden]

Photo: Josh Rothstein

Earlier this year, Franz Ferdinand offered an online preview of a new song called “Lucid Dreams” — its danceable beat and crunchy guitars suggested that the Scottish foursome’s third album wouldn’t wander far from their established sound. But that was a fake-out: Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is an aggressive left turn for the band, full of synths, drum machines and psychedelic production. And the eight-minute-long final version of “Lucid Dreams” is radically different from that preview, with buzzy analog keyboards, spooky background vocals and an electro-tribal groove that’s half electronic, half live drums. “We took a little bit of time to evolve,” says frontman Alex Kapranos, fresh from mixing the disc. The band recorded it at a leisurely pace over 18 months, mostly in a studio constructed in a rundown Glasgow building. “We’d record one song five different ways, which is where the luxury of time comes in.”

Kapranos had previously declared Tonight, recorded with Lily Allen producer Dan Carey, to be a “dance album,” but he’d like to retract that. (more…)

Wilco have already recorded demos for a new album and are heading into their Chicago studio, the Loft, this month to start rerecording and fleshing them out. “Sonically it’s going to be a much wilder, much more unexpected record,” says guitarist Nels Cline. “There’s going to be too much to choose from. Right now it’s an embarrassment of riches, for sure.”

Later this month, Band of Horses will begin work on their third album at Alabama’s famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. (more…)

Photo: Brian David

While American Idol winner David Cook admits he enjoyed playing with people’s expectations and consciously threw curveballs on the show, his upcoming album is all business. “I just want the songs to kick you in the teeth or make you want to cry — or do something drastic, like jump off a building,” says Cook. “I want somebody to be exhausted when they’re done listening.” Click below for more on Cook’s upcoming album, including what he learned from producer Rob Cavallo and why he had such a small window to finish the record.

• In the Studio: David Cook Crafts the Heaviest American Idol Album Yet

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• David Cook Picks Chris Cornell Song as First Single

• David Cook Gets American Idiot Producer on Board

• Video: Behind the Scenes With David Cook

Confirming what Garbage’s Shirley Manson let slip last week, Green Day posted a video proving they are in the studio working with producer Butch Vig. In the above clip, which was posted on Green Day’s official YouTube page, Billie Joe Armstrong strums some chords on his guitar before the camera slowly pans over to Vig, who greets the camera with his middle finger. (more…)

Photo: Sacha Lecha

Album Sir Lucious Leftfoot: Son of Chico Dusty
Due Out November

Outkast’s Big Boi has been working on his solo debut since 2007, recording mostly in Atlanta and pulling in guests like Raekwon and George Clinton. The result is a freewheeling record with funky electro beats by Big Boi and Organized Noize. On some of the densest rhymes of his career, Big Boi addresses everything from passionate sex (”Backup Plan”) to fears he felt during the primaries (”Daddy Fat Sacks”). The political theme continues on the first single, “Something’s Gotta Give,” where he and Mary J. Blige plug for Obama. The song has piqued the interest of Obama’s camp. “There have been calls from them,” Big Boi says. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but they want me to be a part of what they’re doing.”

[From Issue 1063 — October 16, 2008]

Related Stories:

• Outkast’s Andre Benjamin Says New Solo Album Coming Soon

• Big Boi’s Ballet Debuts

• Outkast: Funk Soul Brothers

Photo: Arik Garcia

After a tumultuous five-year stint in Velvet Revolver, Scott Weiland finally gets to let loose on his new solo album. “There’s no rules,” he says. “I don’t have to worry about radio playing it.” He also doesn’t have to worry about the approval of Slash, Duff and Matt Sorum — which has given him the room to craft a two-disc album about his volatile relationship with his wife, Mary. In 2001, he was arrested for domestic violence, and in 2007, she was arrested for torching $10,000 worth of his clothing — just hours after the two were kicked out of a hotel for brawling in a room. “I liken it to [Marvin Gaye’s] ‘I Met a Little Girl,’ ” Weiland says. “It chronicles our life.”

Weiland has been working on the project in spurts over the past decade with his longtime creative partner, Doug Grean, who co-wrote and produced the album. (more…)

Photo: Jimmy Hubbard

Mastodon can trace the origins of their fourth album to the pavement in front of the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas. That’s where the Atlanta metal band’s guitarist-vocalist, Brent Hinds, was attacked and cracked his head open during a drunken altercation following the MTV VMAs in September 2007. Hinds suffered brain hemorrhaging, and then, as he recovered, he was plagued by vertigo.

“I was dizzy for eight months,” he says, hanging out at a studio in the band’s hometown, along with guitarist Bill Kelliher, bassist-vocalist Troy Sanders and drummer Brann Dailor. “During those months, I just sat with my acoustic and a little marijuana, and wrote all the music. I wanted a more melodic, easy-listening situation, and that definitely came from having head trauma.”

Mastodon’s last set, 2006’s Blood Mountain, was their major-label debut, and it brought them up from the metal underground to a wider audience, earning them a Grammy nomination and MTV spins for “Colony of Birchmen.” The new album continues the trend. “We wanted to make something a little broader,” says Dailor. “A classic-rock-sounding record.”

Those impulses led Mastodon to producer Brendan O’Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam). (more…)

Photo: Getty

Next month, freak-folk icon Devendra Banhart will release the debut record from his new side-project with drummer Greg Rogove, which the two have dubbed Megapuss. But Banhart revealed to Rolling Stone that he’s also hard at work at a follow-up to his breakthrough album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. So how’s the recording process going? “It’s fucking painful and torturous,” Banhart jokes. “I had a panic attack [the other] night and was shaking.” While Banhart’s still in the early stages of writing and recording — “How can you talk about the island when you’re lost at sea?” he cracks — Banhart does reveal that some songs have a “weird vibe of cowboy songs” while another has an ’80s-style electro-pop beat reminiscent of Hall And Oates‘ “I Can’t Go For That.” (more…)

Photo: Pamela Littky

“This is the first time the paparazzi made it to the gate!” Pete Wentz exclaims, rushing into the L.A. studio where Fall Out Boy are working on the follow-up to 2007’s platinum Infinity on High. “We recorded in secret. The tabloids think I just go to Starbucks and hang out at clubs — they don’t know what I do for a job.”

Working with Neal Avron — the primary producer of FOB’s last two records — the quartet made a decision to dial back the heavily multitracked sound of their last album. “With the Babyface collaborations, the R&B influence and vocal acrobatics, Infinity really opened up the lane,” Wentz says. “This time, we focused on making an ambitious record without giving the impression of making an ambitious record.” That proved challenging. “Making this record has been painful,” says singer Patrick Stump. “Pete and I fought more than we have in a long time. I threw something across the room over a major-to-minor progression.”

The first single, “I Don’t Care,” rides a Gary Glitter-style stomp with a wry chorus: (more…)

“Whatever record I’m doing reflects my life,” says Lucinda Williams with a smile, sitting in Los Angeles’ Village Recorder studios. And guessing from the sound of the singer-songwriter’s ninth album, Little Honey, an upbeat disc of bluesy rockers and contented love songs, Williams is feeling pretty good these days.

The sunny vibe clearly comes through in the rowdy arrangements on the 13-track set — co-produced by Eric Liljestrand and Williams’ manager-fiance, Tom Overby — which bring the lively playing of guitar ace Doug Pettibone and her road band, the Buick 6, to the forefront.

Though Little Honey sounds strikingly different from 2007’s downcast West, the majority of the songs were originally written for that album. (more…)

After four years of nonstop touring and recording, the Killers finally took some time off before beginning work on their third album — but frontman Brandon Flowers wasn’t ready to relax. He wound up using the three months of downtime to write nearly 30 songs. “Everything is at stake on this album,” Flowers says. “Everything. I live through these songs. People make such a big deal about the second album: ‘Do or die.’ But I feel like the pressure to produce something great will always be there. It’s our job, after all.”

The Killers’ second release, 2006’s concept album Sam’s Town, was an overseas smash and sold 1.3 million copies in the U.S. — about half of their debut, 2004’s Hot Fuss. But some critics pegged the album’s stadium-rock sound as overblown. Flowers shrugs off those gripes — “Sam’s Town was a giant success. That’s a misunderstood truth” — but the Killers took a new approach on this album, which was produced by Madonna collaborator Stuart Price. “This record is stripped down in a lot of ways,” says bassist Mark Stoermer. “Each instrument has its place, and things aren’t clouding anything up. We’re not trying to be bombastic. It’s our most poppy record but also our most experimental.” (more…)

Fifteen months ago, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello officially debuted a new persona, the Nightwatchman, an acoustic-guitar-and-harmonica-wielding protest singer with a deep baritone. This fall, the Nightwatchman returns with The Fabled City, 11 songs of politically charged folk recorded in eight days with producer Brendan O’Brien.

Unlike on 2007’s stripped-down One Man Revolution, Morello and O’Brien created bigger, more eclectic arrangements for the new album — which also features vocal spots from Serj Tankian and country rocker Shooter Jennings. “It definitely rocks harder than the first one,” Morello says.

Writing the songs for The Fabled City was a cathartic experience for Morello, who channeled his grief about the recent deaths of his aunt and uncle into the lyrics. (more…)

RollingStone.com caught up with the Academy Is… at their New York City recording studio while they were putting the finishing touches on their forthcoming third album Fast Times at Barrington High. Click above for a behind-the-scenes look at the band working on the record and to find out the story behind the new single “About a Girl.”