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2009 Grammy Awards: More collabos than a mofo

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Seems like there was more action behind-the-scenes than onstage, despite the 20-plus performances at this year’s Grammy Awards.

Chris Brown reportedly got gangsta with his girlfriend Rihanna, causing them both to cancel their performances. The alleged reason behind the smackdown should bring a whole new meaning to their upcoming collabo, “Bad Girl,” produced by Atlantan Polow da Don for the Confessions of a Shopaholic soundtrack. Meanwhile the real “gangstas,” Lil Wayne and T.I., delivered upstanding, redemptive performances — neither of which required NARAS President Neil Portnow to excuse their inclusion in the program, the way he had to when Eminem performed to the chagrin of gay rights activists in 2001.

Of course, the Recording Academy continued this year with the ultra-lame generational mashup theme that made for some of the oddest pairings ever.

Surely, Stevie Wonder would’ve been insulted if only he could’ve seen how silly he looked on stage with the Jonas Brothers. The Al Green/Justin Timberlake pairing was quite a yawner, but perhaps we should be thankful that Timberlake didn’t attempt to rip Green’s shirt off for a grand finale. And did we really need to see B.B. King and John Mayer trade ugly guitar faces for the second year in a row?

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Wiki didn’t watch the Grammys

Monday, February 9th, 2009

It’s official: Wikipedia is on crack. How else do you explain that the online reference authority by, for and of the people has the wrong Grammy winner listed for last night’s Album of the Year Award. Here’s what Wiki’s got:

Well, of course, that’s just wrong. The actual winner, as everyone knows — whether they pay any attention to the painfully irrelevant awards show or not — was Raising Sand by Plant and Krause.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised. It’s not that I consider Wikipedia a completely reliable source of information, but I’ve always been amazed with the speed that Wiki-geeks continually update each and every tidbit of news on the site, from celebrity deaths to sports scores. So here’s a case where somebody took the time to update the site — and screwed it up royally. And, apparently no one else cares enough about the Grammys to have corrected the mistake a full 12 hours later.

UPDATE: Mere minutes after I posted this, Wiki corrected itself. I was also reminded that my colleague Andisheh Nouraee once changed the Wiki bio for James Garfield to read that he was the namesake for Garfield the Cat because he was the first president to eat lasagna in the White House – and it remained uncorrected for months.

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