On why she hasn’t blown up after all of these years and accolades:

“I don’t think there’s any one reason in particular,” she answers, a soft sigh escaping her. “That’s the only thing that I know for certain. I really try to judge [my music] by its worth and the beauty of the creation. I have to, because if I had to judge it by hard numbers, then I would feel like a failure. And I don’t feel like that.”

More at Creative Loafing Atlanta

Rowr! Display proudly or give as a gift to your favorite fanboy.

Artist Chris Bishop goes behind the battle-lines, giving us a glimpse of Andy, Steve, and the war between Google and Apple.

Available as a t-shirt and poster.

via Andy vs. Apple

Halle Berry covers Vogue‘s coveted September issue this year. There was no way she could say no to being on the magazine’s biggest issue of the year; especially since she’s the first black woman to appear on Vogue‘s September cover since Naomi Campbell in 1989.

This being Vogue, the photographs are amazing. No surprise there. Halle Berry holds the (dubious) honor of being the only celebrity I’ve met whose beauty I describe as “disarmingly stunning” on a constant basis.

In the accompanying interview, Berry speaks about her daughter, Nahla, balancing life, her perspective on love, returning to acting, and working with women and their children who leave abusive relationships.

Regarding the biggest misconception about her:

That I am this brooding, twisted, lovesick person who just can’t get it right in life. Every story about me is so heavy and dramatic. That’s not how I do life. But that’s the impression people have, and that’s what keeps getting reiterated. As if I’m still stuck in all the muck of the past. And I am so not.

More about love, and the pursuit of it:

I don’t think I’m unlike a lot of people. I am just someone who is trying to find that mate, and I think it’s a really hard thing to do. And I’m not willing to stay somewhere where I am really not happy. And I am not willing to pretend I am for the kid’s sake or so that I don’t have to go through another public humiliation.

It’s about accepting who we really are, not who we want to be. As much as I have always wanted to be in this committed relationship and have the picket fence and grow old with the same person, I’m coming to terms with: Maybe that’s just not who I am.

I don’t buy magazines, anymore. But I may flip though this one in the grocery store.

via Vogue

Jamie Lidell’s latest album Compass is soulful, grungy, electronic and uneven as all get-out. However, he still manages to deliver some gems along the way. One of my favorites is the old-school flavored “She Needs Me”. Lidell packs enough soul/funk (with shades of Prince and Al Jarreau) into this one song to put R&B radio playlists to shame.

Listen to “She Needs Me” on Posterous

People who say they don’t make songs like they used to, simply need to look a little harder. In his (profanity-laden) words:

With that song, I challenged myself to write a song in one evening. I basically ad-libbed the whole vocal over a loop on my laptop. I was just singing in my living room, just feeling the magic. Then I took it to a session at Ocean Way studios, where James Gadson added his drums. You’ve got to have Gadson for that shit. I mean, he played on “Let’s Get It On”. You can’t dream of telling a drummer these days, like, “Hey man, let’s try to do a really fucking sick slow jam.” People can try, but Gadson is that sound. Whenever I’m playing with him, some crazy lock goes on I’ve never experienced with another musician, ever. He’ll just look over and he’s smiling and nailing that fuckin’ beat. And when he finished the track, he’s like, “I got it from you!” Fuckin’ no ego on him. “She Needs Me” is about musical pleasure. It’s about a lot of kinds of pleasure but, ultimately, the musical pleasure needs to match the sexual pleasure. [laughs] Otherwise, it’s no fun.

quote via Pitchfork