Houston Music - Rocks Off - "This Week In Beyonce" Archives

Sound Off on The Kanye's Jackassery at Sunday Night's VMAs

By Chris Gray in This Just In, This Week In Beyonce, WTF Island

Monday, Sep. 14 2009 @ 8:35AM

This is what happens when MTV pulls all its VMA footage from YouTube... their lawyers were up early this morning.

By now you've seen or at least heard about Kanye West's latest bit of spotlight-grabbing at Sunday night's MTV awards - Rocks Off doubts morning-drive DJs are talking about little else (Serena Williams, cough) - when Mr. "Love Lockdown" interrupted Taylor Swift's acceptance speech to let everyone know he thought Beyonce should have won. Which she did, a little later for Video of the Year, and graciously gave up her speech time so Swift could finish hers.

By now such publicity stunts are old hat for Kanye, and honestly, this shit got old after the 1998 Grammys of "Soy Bomb" and Ol' Dirty Bastard rushing the stage with the immortal interjection "Wu-Tang is for the children!"

Rocks Off would just like to get your opinion on a couple of things: How big an ass is The Kanye now? And how classy is Beyonce?

Beyonce: Not Just Dangerously In Love, Dangerous To Your Computer

By Chris Gray in Digitalia, This Just In, This Week In Beyonce, WTF Island

Tuesday, Aug. 25 2009 @ 11:30AM

Daniel Kramer

Via the Houston site of examiner.com, anti-viral software company McAfee ranks Beyonce near the top of celebrities for whom Internet searches are likely to lead to pages containing spyware, viruses or other technology-borne maladies. Searching Beyonce and other boldfaced names like Jessica Biel (No. 1 this year), the study says, could lead to pages "designed to damage one's computer." And you thought that "Single Ladies" video was viral.

Jennifer Aniston, Tom Brady and Jessica Simpson round out McAfee's Top 5. Rocks Off Googled Beyonce Wednesday morning and the first page or two of returns looked fine - her official site, Wikipedia and MySpace pages, YouTube playlist, etc.. (Not that we actually clicked any of the links... we're not that gullible.) Once we hit the 60s and 70s, we started getting sites like "Musicthatmakesyoudumb" and Photoshop Disasters. We caved in and clicked that last one - it's a picture of some amateurish airbrushing of B's phoenix outfit from the cover of Atlanta Social Season magazine - and nothing crashed except our opinion of her wardrobe designer.

This Week In Beyonce: Did Kelly Clarkson Bite "Halo"?

By Chris Gray in Texas Me, This Week In Beyonce, WTF Island

Tuesday, Jul. 28 2009 @ 4:06PM

(Listen to "Halo" here)

Texas' two biggest pop divas are currently embroiled in a feud only the media could love. It seems Kelly Clarkson's latest single from her album All I Ever Wanted, "Already Gone," sounds a lot like Beyonce's recent Top 5 smash, "Halo." Turns out there's a good reason for this - both songs share a backing track. It's a pretty important track too... as in the melody.

Clarkson told the Canadian Broadcasting Company that she didn't know her "Already" co-writer, OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, had also given the track to Beyonce, and that her record label, RCA, released the single against her will. As you might imagine, she's not happy about it at all.

Continue reading " This Week In Beyonce: Did"...

This Week In Beyonce: B Acts... Like What?

By Craig Hlavaty in Playbill, This Week In Beyonce

Wednesday, Jul. 1 2009 @ 3:59PM

Rocks Off can't argue with the fact that Beyonce Knowles is a stone-cold fox when she gets on the microphone and belts out a song, dripping in glitter and wearing a barely-there outfit. Her voice is at once menacing and thundering, but also femininely fragile. Plus she has to be super-cool behind the scenes for Jay-Z to call her his girl, because we are pretty sure he doesn't dig on crazy women as much as we do.

But sweet baby Jesus, she can't read lines or emote into a camera unless she's filming some melodramatic music video.

Since her debut turn in an MTV-produced adaptation of Bizet's Carmen, Lady B has been stinking up our DVD players and movie screens with her wooden acting. In early roles, she came off less like a silver screen ingénue than a ham-laden soap star.

In the third (and worst) Austin Powers film, 2002's Goldmember, she tried desperately to reenact the allure of blaxploitation-era Pam Grier and failed. We understand it was an Austin Powers vehicle, but that kind of role should have been easy to slam-dunk.

Continue reading " This Week In Beyonce: B"...

This Week In Beyonce: Who Dares Cover the Queen?

By Kim Douglass in Lists, Playbill, This Week In Beyonce

Tuesday, Jun. 30 2009 @ 3:30PM

Not strictly a cover, just one of those things we never get tired of posting...

As if Queen B weren't (Sasha) fierce enough on her own, it seems her majesty's minions - let's face it, we're all her royal peons; there isn't anyone left on Earth who hasn't heard one of her songs, or doesn't tap their foot a bit when "Single Ladies" comes on - adore their queen so much that they dare to be like her. In this case, Rocks Off is speaking of the numerous individuals who dare to cover - or remix, or mash up - one of her songs.

Some come off like bad karaoke, but minus the anger that comes from knowing you paid a two-drink minimum for this crap. Others are admirable, introducing an artist some might be put off by to a different demographic. Together, they help push the world's most famous Houstonian to whatever status is beyond "superstar."

Continue reading " This Week In Beyonce: Who"...

This Week In Beyonce: The Kanye Remixes "Ego," Crossing the Street, Hairstyle Retrospective, Jonas Brothers Love and More

By Kim Douglass in This Week In Beyonce

Thursday, Jun. 18 2009 @ 2:26PM

Can the world handle this much "Ego"? Kanye remixes B's latest hit.

TWIB loves Beyonce so much that we even put up with people covering her songs, for example up-and-coming R&B crooner Mateo and Teairra Mari doing "Diva."

"Diva" is definitely our word of the day, but then again, we are talking about Beyonce here. Who really does being a diva better than her? She can't even be bothered to cross the street on her own.

Would you Be-weave all the accomplishments Beyonce has made already?

Continue reading " This Week In Beyonce: The"...

This Week in Beyonce: Bjork, BET Awards, "I Saw Beyonce at Burger King" and A Two-Year Break?

By Chris Gray in This Week In Beyonce

Friday, May. 15 2009 @ 2:11PM

TWIB may be folding up shop soon: B says she's considering taking a two-year break.

Gay New York rapper Cazwell, self-described as "imagine if Biggie Smalls ate Donna Summer for breakfast, has a song called "I Seen Beyonce at Burger King" (see video above) on next month's album Watch My Mouth. Catchy and annoying!

Even Bjork can't resist that darn "Single Ladies" dance, apparently.

B pulled the modern-day Marie Antoinette move of converting one of her smaller apartments into a giant closet. Quoth Perez Hilton: "Now this is a diva!"

Continue reading " This Week in Beyonce: Bjork,"...

This Week In Beyonce: Obsessed No. 1 No More, Parisian Holiday, Glamour Cover, Dutch Tantrum and More

By Chris Gray in This Week In Beyonce

Thursday, May. 7 2009 @ 5:00PM

Jezebel, via infdaily.com

Well, what's Beyonce been up to this week? For starters, Wolverine blew B's semi-erotic thriller Obsessed out of the No. 1 box-office spot, notching $87 million last weekend. Obsessed was also edged by Matthew McConaughey's equally panned romcom Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which took in $15.3 mil to Obsessed's $12.2 mil.

No matter. Beyonce can sleep better knowing her movie will be the last non-blockbuster-type flick to top the box office until probably September. You know what, she probably doesn't have that much trouble sleeping in the first place.

What else?

B's all-over-the-place ensemble in Paris drew mixed reviews on Jezebel Monday. One commenter and Tracy Morgan fan wanted to take her skirt "behind the jr. high baseball field and get it pregnant," while another thought "this is like a grown-up version of what I call my 'Nature Store period' where every accessory I owned had little tumbled rocks on it."

Personally, Rocks Off digs the shades... and, OK, the legs.

Continue reading " This Week In Beyonce: Obsessed"...

This Week In Beyonce: Obsessed Rules, The Great Vienna Caper and More

By John Seaborn Gray in This Week In Beyonce

Friday, May. 1 2009 @ 7:30PM

Just today, as Rocks Off was remarking that "people are sick of PG-13 kiddie-suspense movies where there's no graphic violence or tits," he was informed that Beyonce's PG-13 thriller Obsessed took the No. 1 spot at the box office last weekend with $25 million, and had the largest-grossing opening of any release for the last week in April - ever. Boy, is our thumb ever not on the pulse of America's cinematic tastes.

It was an unusual week, even for Beyonce. Hot on the heels of the news of her film's success (and gawdawful reviews) were reports that she had "skived off" a museum tour (that's either English slang or a typo we've never seen) by sending a lookalike in her place while she went shopping.

It was discovered later that Beyonce had nothing to do with the skiving, it was all a stunt perpetrated by an Austrian radio station.

Frankly, we find it difficult to believe anyone fell for it. That lady looks more like a malnourished Tyra Banks than BeBe. Maybe she can sing?

Continue reading " This Week In Beyonce: Obsessed"...

This Week In Beyonce: Howard Stern Hoax, Obsessed Opens, Toyota Center Date and More

By Chris Gray in This Week In Beyonce

Thursday, Apr. 23 2009 @ 11:11AM

Following the exploits of the world's most famous Houstonian is a full-time job - to say the least; that must be why her publicist never seems to return our emails - but here at Rocks Off we do our best. Because Ms. B is never very far from the headlines, we decided the best thing to do would be a weekly digest keeping all the single ladies (and everybody else) up to speed.

Even though yeah, we fell for it at first too, Rocks Off was shocked - shocked! - to discover the audio clip of Beyonce mangling "If I Were A Boy" on the Today Show last fall that Howard Stern played on his show Tuesday was a hoax. Kudos to tmz.com for taking time between rounds of "Name Dat Butt!" to clear this up.

Even if you're as sick of "Single Ladies" as we are, bet you haven't heard it mashed up with the theme to The Andy Griffith Show.

As you can see above, these single ladies in London's Picadilly Circus were very excited to learn B will be performing a free concert, sponsored by Trident Unwrapped, in the UK capital come November.

But first, she'll be spending the 4th of July with her homeboys and homegirls when her I Am... tour stops at Toyota Center.

Continue reading " This Week In Beyonce: Howard"...