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Off the record
By David Smyth, Evening Standard 17.08.07
Man with the headphones: Caine in his 1975 film, The Romantic Englishwoman
Showing off his moves: Kanye West gets set to take on 50 Cent
Adding gloss: Lil Mama
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MY NAME IS MICHAEL CAINE AND I'M THE DJ
People do mellow with age but, at 74, Michael Caine has taken it to the extreme. In a break from filming the next Batman movie, he's about to release a compilation of his favourite chill-out music.
Cained, a reference to getting stoned that the actor hopefully understood when he approved it, is released by Universal on 3 September, featuring soothing electronica from the likes of Chicane, Bent, Delerium and St Germain.
"I have to confess that I am a secret disc jockey and have been making tapes and CDs for myself and my friends for over 40 years," the acting legend reveals.
As you might expect of a Hollywood star, his record deal didn't come about in the usual manner. On his delightfully amateur website, he explains: "I was having dinner with Elton John at his house in Nice and he had on background music, and as we were going through the dinner several of my favourite chill records were played and I kept naming the tune or the artist much to Elton's surprise and ... he got me a three-record deal."
What's most surprising in all this is that chill-out is such an odd genre to be so passionate about. Briefly fashionable at the start of the Millennium, it's modern-day muzak, now only heard in the lobbies of overpriced boutique hotels. Picking chill- out as your favourite music is like your alltime favourite car being a Vauxhall Vectra.
Most of the collection drifts by perfectly pleasantly, with some gravitas added by the presence of vocal samples of Nina Simone and John Martyn, plus tracks by Bob Dylan and jazz man Stan Getz. But a computerised remix of Holst's Jupiter is so naff it should be sealed in a box and fired into outer space.
Nice try, but I'm holding out for a dubstep mix by Sean Connery.
KANYE UNVEILS 'THE MOST IMPORTANT RAP' EVER
The first chance to hear Kanye West's new album in London was calculated to make it seem as if the hip hop egomaniac has come up with a new Bible.
What a fuss to see a man sitting on a stage fiddling with a laptop.
On arrival at the BBC's Radio Theatre this week there were metal detectors and two separate cloakrooms, one where visitors were obliged to give in their bags and the other where any electrical goods were sealed in envelopes and placed firmly out of reach. It was like being admitted to prison.
West produced his computer from a hefty Louis Vuitton bag and presented his third collection, Graduation, nodding and mouthing every word, his hands fluttering with pleasure at his own brilliance. Us Brits don't seem to worship him as much as he does himself; I heard an almost imperceptible snigger when he announced: "I definitely am one of the greatest rappers living", and later, when he declared that Big Brother, a new song about his admiration for Jay-Z, "will probably go down as one of the most important rap songs in history".
But the 400-strong audience did seem broadly impressed with the new, synth-heavy sound he called "stadium music".
You can judge for yourself when the event is broadcast on Trevor Nelson's BBC1Xtra radio show tomorrow (4pm-7pm).
But insufferable show-off or not, I'll still pick Kanye over rap oaf 50 Cent when their albums come out on the same day next month.
AN EARLY LISTEN TO ...
Annie Lennox
Songs of Mass Destruction (RCA)
As the title of her fourth solo album implies, Annie Lennox is joining plenty of other musicians by exploring her politics in song but the long-term humanitarian has managed something rather more interesting than simple President baiting.
Two songs, Womankind and Sing, are explicitly feminist, and it is the latter that will gain much attention when it is released on 1 October. Composed to benefit women with HIV and Aids in South Africa, it features the world's most starry choir - 23 women, almost all of them household names including Madonna, Dido, Pink and Shakira, singing "Sing, my sisters, sing" en masse.
It's not quite the new Band Aid - Lennox does most of the vocals aside from an instantly recognisable bellow from Anastacia - but most impressively, it's remarkably upbeat for something so worthy.
NEW ON THE NET
Another week, another new way to sell an album. As with Paul McCartney in Starbucks and Prince in the Mail on Sunday, it always seems to be an act whose best material was written many years ago, but bless them for innovating. Now political rappers Public Enemy have put out their latest album, How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Have Sold Their Soul, using a service called Musicane, which can place a box selling the songs as downloads on to any web page. If you put it on your own site you'll get 15 per cent of any sale. Pick it up at www.myspace.com/ publicenemyofficial.
At the extreme opposite end of the hip hop spectrum is Brooklyn teenager Lil Mama, whose catchy playground chant Lip Gloss is about nothing more than make-up and sounds like an inevitable big hit to me. Out properly on 10 September, it's already in download stores.
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