Wake Up! (John Legend And The Roots Album)
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Wake Up! (John Legend And The Roots Album)
''Wake Up!'' is a collaborative studio album by American R&B recording artist John Legend and hip hop band The Roots, released September 21, 2010, by GOOD Music and Columbia Records. It was produced by Legend with band members Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and James Poyser, and features guest appearances by CL Smooth, Malik Yusef, Common, and Melanie Fiona, among others. Inspired by the 2008 United States presidential election, Legend and The Roots primarily covered 1960s and 1970s soul music songs for the album with social themes of awareness, engagement, and consciousness. The album debuted at number eight on the US ''Billboard'' 200 chart, selling 63,000 copies in its first week. Upon its release, ''Wake Up!'' received positive reviews from most music critics, who complimented its production and the artists' treatment and performance of the material. It would go on to win the 2010 Grammy Award for Best R&B Album. Background ''Wake Up!'' follows the releases of Legend's '' Evo ...
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John Legend
John Roger Stephens (born December 28, 1978), known professionally as John Legend, is an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and record producer. He began his musical career by working behind the scenes, playing piano on Lauryn Hill's " Everything Is Everything", and making uncredited guest appearances on Jay-Z's "Encore" and Alicia Keys's "You Don't Know My Name". He then signed to Kanye West's GOOD Music and released his debut album ''Get Lifted'' (2004), which reached the top ten on the ''Billboard'' 200 and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Legend received nine nominations at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards, including nominations for the singles " So High" with Lauryn Hill and "Ordinary People", with the latter song winning for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. The album also earned him awards for Best New Artist and Best R&B Album. His second studio album ''Once Again'' (2006), spawned the single "Save Room", and became his ...
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Questlove
Ahmir Khalib Thompson (born January 20, 1971), known professionally as Questlove (stylized as ), is an American musician, record producer, disc jockey, filmmaker, music journalist, and actor. He is the drummer and joint frontman (with Black Thought) for the hip hop band the Roots. The Roots have been serving as the in-house band for ''The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon'' since 2014, having the same role in ''Late Night with Jimmy Fallon''. Questlove is also one of the producers of the cast album of the Broadway musical ''Hamilton''. He is the co-founder of the websites Okayplayer and OkayAfrica. Additionally, he is an adjunct professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University. Questlove has produced recordings for artists including Elvis Costello, Common, D'Angelo, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Bilal, Jay-Z, Nikka Costa, and more recently, Booker T. Jones, Al Green, Amy Winehouse, and John Legend. He is a member of the production teams the Soulquar ...
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Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and previously worked as a civil rights lawyer before entering politics. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. In 1988, he enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the '' Harvard Law Review''. After graduating, he became a civil rights attorney and an academic, teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Turning to elective politics, he represented the 13th district in the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004, when he ran for the U ...
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Billboard (magazine)
''Billboard'' (stylized as ''billboard'') is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style related to the music industry. Its music charts include the Hot 100, the 200, and the Global 200, tracking the most popular albums and songs in different genres of music. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows. ''Billboard'' was founded in 1894 by William Donaldson and James Hennegan as a trade publication for bill posters. Donaldson later acquired Hennegan's interest in 1900 for $500. In the early years of the 20th century, it covered the entertainment industry, such as circuses, fairs, and burlesque shows, and also created a mail service for travelling entertainers. ''Billboard'' began focusing more on the music industry as the jukebox, phonograph, and radio became commonplace. Many topics it covered were spun-off ...
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Grammy Award For Best R&B Album
The Grammy Award for Best R&B Album is an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for quality works on albums in the R&B music genre. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by The Recording Academy of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position". According to the category description guide for the 54th Grammy Awards, the award is reserved for albums "containing at least 51% playing time of newly recorded contemporary R&B vocal tracks" which may also "incorporate production elements found in rap music". From 2003 to 2011, a separate category was formed, the Best Contemporary R&B Album, meant for R&B albums that had modern hip-hop stylings to them, while more traditional and less electronic-styled R&B music still fell under ...
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52nd Annual Grammy Awards
The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards took place on January 31, 2010, at Staples Center in Los Angeles honoring the best in music for the recording year beginning October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009. Neil Young was honored as the 2010 MusiCares Person of the Year on January 29, two days prior to the Grammy telecast. Nominations announced on December 2, 2009. The show was moved to January to avoid competing against the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Only ten of the 109 awards were received during the broadcast. The remaining awards were given during the un-televised portion of the ceremony which preceded the broadcast. Beyoncé, who also received the most nominations, with ten, won a total of six awards breaking the record for most wins by a female artist in one night. Taylor Swift won four while The Black Eyed Peas, Jay-Z and Kings of Leon won three. Artists who won two awards include A. R. Rahman, Colbie Caillat, Eminem, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Maxwell, Jason Mraz and Rihan ...
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Billboard 200
The ''Billboard'' 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States. It is published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine and is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Often, a recording act will be remembered by its " number ones", those of their albums that outperformed all others during at least one week. The chart grew from a weekly top 10 list in 1956 to become a top 200 list in May 1967, and acquired its current name in March 1992. Its previous names include the ''Billboard'' Top LPs (1961–1972), ''Billboard'' Top LPs & Tape (1972–1984), ''Billboard'' Top 200 Albums (1984–1985) and ''Billboard'' Top Pop Albums (1985–1992). The chart is based mostly on sales – both at retail and digital – of albums in the United States. The weekly sales period was originally Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but since July 2015, tracking week begins on Friday (to coinc ...
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Soul Music
Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the African American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues. Soul music became popular for dancing and listening, where U.S. record labels such as Motown, Atlantic and Stax were influential during the Civil Rights Movement. Soul also became popular around the world, directly influencing rock music and the music of Africa. It also had a resurgence with artists like Erykah Badu under the genre neo-soul. Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the lead vocalist and the chorus and an especially tense vocal sound. The style also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls, and auxiliary sounds. Soul music reflects the African-American identity, and it stresses the importance of an African-Ameri ...
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Cover Version
In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song released around the same time as the original in order to compete with it. Now, it refers to any subsequent version performed after the original. History The term "cover" goes back decades when cover version originally described a rival version of a tune recorded to compete with the recently released (original) version. Examples of records covered include Paul Williams' 1949 hit tune "The Hucklebuck" and Hank Williams' 1952 song "Jambalaya". Both crossed over to the popular hit parade and had numerous hit versions. Before the mid-20th century, the notion of an original version of a popular tune would have seemed slightly odd – the production of musical entertainment was seen as a live event, even if it was reproduced at home via a cop ...
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2008 United States Presidential Election
The 2008 United States presidential election was the 56th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, and Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Obama became the first African American to be elected to the presidency, as well as being only the third sitting United States senator elected president, joining Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy. Meanwhile, Biden became the first senator running mate of a senator elected president since Lyndon B. Johnson (who was Kennedy's running mate) in the 1960 election. Incumbent Republican President George W. Bush was ineligible to pursue a third term due to the term limits established by the 22nd Amendment. McCain secured the Republican nomination by March 2008, defeating former governors Mitt Romney, Mike Hu ...
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Melanie Fiona
Melanie Fiona Hallim (born July 4, 1983) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario.Melanie Fiona: Priceless
RapIndustry.com. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
She began her career in 2002 as part of a Canadian girl group trio, who was nominated for a for the group's self-titled album. She went on to be part of The Renaissance (with rapper ), and under the name Syren Hall, recorded some reggae songs. Fiona's debut solo a ...
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Common (rapper)
Lonnie Rashid Lynn (born March 13, 1972), known by his stage name Common (formerly known as Common Sense), is an American rapper and actor. He debuted in 1992 with the album ''Can I Borrow a Dollar?,'' and gained critical acclaim with his 1994 album ''Resurrection.'' He maintained an underground following into the late 1990s. He achieved mainstream success through his work with the Soulquarians. His first major-label album, '' Like Water for Chocolate'' (2000), received commercial success. In 2003, he won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song for the Erykah Badu single " Love of My Life". His 2005 album '' Be'' was also successful and was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 2006 Grammy Awards. He received his second Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "Southside" (featuring Kanye West), from his 2007 album ''Finding Forever''. His best-of album, '' Thisisme Then: The Best of Common'', was released in late 2007. In 2011, he launched Think Common Entertainmen ...
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