2D - The Michigan Daily - New Student Edition 2006

Hill

:U

Luda's
spot
By Evan McGarvey
Daily Music Editor
You could write a pretty decent
sociology paper about the crowd at
Hill Auditorium for Ludacris's per-
formance last night.
Graying ushers taking tickets
from 20-year-old guys in jerseys
and hats, high schoolers with
parents in tow.
Cheering masses of college kids
chanting along verbatim as Ludacris
tore through Top 40 hits.
Cousin Dre from Detroit's 102.7,
the radio personality who acted as
the night's master of ceremonies,
taunted the crowd with his usual
shtick before awkwardly shifting into
shout-outs for the University chapter
of Hillel, the University Activities
Committee and Michigan Student
Assembly.
Moments like these are what
made the great rap experiment at Hill
so compelling. But thankfully, and
most importantly, it was a complete
success for the artist and his music.
Hill's acoustics were Luda's right-

In defense of
Britney Spears

Party rap superstar Ludacris runs through his set at Hill Auditorium. The Luda show was the
concert held at the esteemed concert venue.

hand man; the bass stayed surreally
crisp on his set opening "Number
One Spot." Each loop on "The
Potion," a Timbaland-produced, tex-
tured jam from last year's The Red
Light District, was firm and distinct.
Luda's voice, adroit and boom-
ing on record, hit even harder live.
Even without any real "political"
slant to his rhymes - probably

the most socially responsible thing
Ludacris stands for is safe (but very
frequent) sex - it was impossible
to notice the similarities between
Ludacris's durable, echoing voice
and the timeless shout of Public
Enemy's Chuck D.
Both opening acts, P-Live and
later One.Be.Lo, were more reserved
than the headliner and struck to nice,


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I f there's no experience ina
woman's life as sacred and
life-affirming as the act of
giving birth, then the
princess of pop should
be feeling a cozy inner
glow. Britney Spears,
our culture's primary
source of male fan-
tasy, female adoration
and preteen anorexia
brought forth a sweet
new fragrance this past
week. And she popped
outa kid to boot.
On Wednesday AM
afternoon, Us Weekly AND
was the first to call the
pop singer's first suc-
cessful step toward overpopulating
the earth (her musical attempts at
world destruction now foundering).
Her website boasted an exuber-
ant Spears kissing a doo-rag-shod
Kevin Federline with baby-blue let-
TREVOR CAMPBELL/Daily ters proclaiming, "It's a Boy!" and
first major hip-hop a statement as touching as it was
grammatically incorrect, "We are
ecstatic to announce the birth of our
and forced, verses. son! Everyone is happy, healthy and
either opener had was doing wonderful."
by the seismic crowd It's been a long journey for
ris leap-frogged from Spears, and America has walked
he blistering opening every mile by her side: From reports
set. of her dalliance with family man
bulletproof career as Federline, to short-lived outrage at
he had an arsenal of the desertion of his pregnant girl-
which to choose. friend, to her over-the-top wedding
rough his two best and finally to rabid reports of her
appearances, "Act A reported pregnancy. In the home
'Area Codes," but he stretch, we've seen a photographer
easily omitted those shot at herbaby shower and enough
ff songs he left on the photos of the bikini-clad, barefoot
Out," "Fat Rabbit," baby mama to turn us off celebrity
it"). gazing for a week.
d snippets of others's So, Britney, congratulations. We
Ciara's "Oh," Usher's loved you circa 1999, and we total-
d gave a collage of his ly dig that Curious scent. We're just
est verses. confused at the moment because,
mpo numbers stayed for all the media hype surrounding
amished crowd, Lud- the birth of your little progeny, all
e reverberating over the continuing speculation about
lips from the Nep- what the Spederline offspring will
thrashing "Southern be christened (Us Weekly's call
In easily the night's of PMS Federline sounds pretty
cating moment, the good), no one is entirely sure why
'and irresistibly galli- you're still here.
acris changed a famed When Spears first hit airwaves
the song to "U of M across America, she was decked out
U of M head:" in a naughty schoolgirl uniform with
've howled in disgust, plaited hair, a cheerleader routine
this was what Ludac- and a somewhat unorthodox plea for
cted to bring. And he domestic violence. As fetish novelty
etty completely. acts go, Britney was an overnight
rious shift from bas- superstar. The moral implications
gh art" to "popular of her image were discussed ad nau-
'hat let the audience seum, with outraged soccer moms
n who once referred decrying the singer's coy and subver-
as the "abominable sive sexuality.
an ornate, gorgeous Then came the hits - "Crazy"
s one of the world's "Oops, I Did it Again' "Stronger"
s. - and they kept coming. The
mind that Dylan and schoolgirl became a pop-culture
ed Hill in decades icon, the definitive face, moniker
uch as Ludacris is and, for better or for worse, voice of
astute and utterly a generation. She sings, she acts, she
he's also com- peddles perfume and an unattainable
possession of this image of perfection.
Hill is made for She even remains famous when
al orchestras. Hill all the substance of her empire has
r Ben Folds. Hill is crumbled around her. Britney hasn't
udacris. headlined a major hit since "Toxic,
and that was only a punctuation of
This article originally an even longer dry spell for the one-
ran Nov. 4,2005. time hit factory. Even her overhyped

duet with Madonna did little more
than make headlines that nobody
read. With album sales down and
her tantalizing little-girl
routine three years past
its prime, Spears did the
least logical thing in the
world.
She got married.
In fact, she wed her
multimedia empire to
just about the scruffiest
and all-around skeeziest
man imaginable. Kevin
Federline, backup danc-
ANDA er and expectant father,
TRADE despite all objections
of morality, sanity and
basic hygiene, won the
heart of America's most famous pop
tart, and the joyful couple embarked
on a career-crushing whirlwind of
public adoration.
If that weren't enough, the whole
circus was documented for the UPN
reality show "Britney & Kevin:
Chaotic." The tedious celebration of
love failed in its debut, and only got
worse in subsequent airings. Com-
bined with sagging album sales and
a nonexistent film career, Britney's
only profitable venture remains
her perfume line - where, as J.Lo
proved, the famemongers go when
they've only got fame left to sell.
So what exactly happened to
Spears in the past few years to
reduce her from kittenish sex god-
dess to public punching bag? A
string of bad songs didn't hurt, and
her pregnancy weight suggested
she was preparing to deliver a small
village, or, at the very least, maybe
twins. But above any of this was
the fact that the illusion of Britney
Spears has been irrevocably shat-
tered. The Britney Spears that sold
out concerts but demurely pro-
claimed her virginity; the Britney
Spears who dated Justin Timberlake
and always had some excuse to show
off those impeccable abs - that
Britney is gone forever.
Today, Britney Spears is the
knocked-up, Southern-fried has-
been who walks into public bath-
rooms barefoot and dresses like a
13-year-old vying for the attention of
the Dairy Queen waiter. And for all
this, and not in spite of it, I have to
say: I love Britney.
Because Spears is unique among
the image-obsessed, fame-hoarding
universe of cardboard celebrities. In
a world where TomCruise has to
brainwash a cookie-cutter starlet to
pose on his arm and where Brange-
lina play peek-a-boo with the public
to plug their umpteenth bad movie in
the hopes of mutual career salvation,
Britney's personal life is completely,
absolutely her own. No publicist
anywhere, in any state of mental
disturbance, would have suggested
this path. Sure, her new perfume line
launched a day after her son's birth.
I'll give her a pass. That baby and
that husband are ravenous parasites
slowly draining her of every last
ounce of goodwill and fame she's
ever accumulated. And as far as Ican
tell, she couldn't be happier about it.
- This column originally
ran Sept. 19,2005.

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Landscape
art graces
Diag
By Andrew Klein
Daily Fine Arts Editor
Science has thrown art in our
faces, and frankly, it isn't so bad.
The neon moleculesthe redrib-
bon roots, the arboreal memorial,
the rows of smiling yellow tulip
pinwheels - these Diag instal-
lations are the products of Beth
Diamond's Natural Resources
and Environment 501 class docu-
menting the history and theory of
landscape architecture.
Diamond is a first-year pro-
fessor in the School of Natural
Resources and Environment's
department of landscape archi-
tecture, the only one of its kind in
the country.
This campus, Diamond said, "is
crying out for things that will get
people to talk to one another."
Said Diamond: "(We) are so
anesthetized to our environment.
How do you use a public space,
especially at a public university?"
Her solution was to blend the
spheres of art and ecology into
a visceral, 3-D medium that not

A tall oak outside the chemistry building sported a different kind of tree
skirt: Students cloaked its above-ground roots.

Pierpont Commons
(North Campus)

530 5. State Street
phone# 734.995.8877

only appeals to a sense of aesthet-
ics, but also challenges its viewer
to enter into a dialogue with the
work of art.
For instance, if you frequent
the Tisch Hall side of the Diag,
you probably spotted an inter-
esting installation just outside
Angell Hall. It's comprised of
logs and orange spray-painted
boughs forming concentric arcs
around a previously existing
concrete block, draped with a
black canvass.
Closer examination would show
you that each log lists in chrono-
logical order various arboreal
epidemics in Michigan's history.
With that in mind, the reasoning
behind the installation is made

clear: This is a tomb.
To be sure, it's a macabre image,
but it's also a pointed one.
"This is accessible," Diamond
said. "People are hungry for
interaction."
We need this.
The aesthetics of the Law
Quadrangle and the facade of
Angell Hall aside, we as a student
community need overt artistic
expression as a catalyst for our
imagination. We need evocations
of the earth's lifeblood. We need
to see 10-foot neon sculptures
of dioxin molecules. Go out and
enjoy them while you can.
- This article originally
ran Apr. 14, 2006.

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