The highly anticipated video of LeBron James getting dunked on leaked Wednesday, despite Nike and LeBron’s attempts to keep it under wraps. In other weekly pop culture news, the Erin Andrews “peeping tom” video also leaked, gaining major exposure thanks to ESPN’s legal team. In both cases, the corporate push for surpression had the opposite effect, giving the videos the extra publicity they needed to go fully viral. This unintended effect happens so often on the Internet that it has an official name:
The Streisand Effect refers to “an Internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires… [and] instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity, often being widely mirrored across the Internet, or distributed on file-sharing networks (Wikipedia).”
See you learn a new term everyday. Hit the jump for the Complex’s history of the Streisand Effect, when censorship failed, and everyone got a look, listen, and feel of the supposedly “banned” content…
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Gamers rejoice! Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, the second live action movie based on the famed video game fighting franchise, hits theaters today. And lucky for us, this time the movie focuses on Street Fighter’s sexiest character.
Bringing the role of Chun-Li back to life this go around is former Smallville star Kristin Kreuk. We think she’s a good choice, but according to your votes, no one is beating the original video game version of Chun-Li. Well, if you have a thing for 64-bit boobies, then you might enjoy our list of ten more video game vixens we’d go digital for. Let’s get it on.
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With all due respect to other brands, we prefer Ford’s big bodied, well-oiled machines. Forget the American-made cars on Detroit’s assembly line, the curvaceous Ms. Melyssa Ford has better whip appeal. It’s been 10 years since homegirl first made a splash in music videos for folks like Jay-Z (”Hey Papi”), Jadakiss (”Knock Yourself Out”), and Usher (”Yeah”), and there’s no denying that Melyssa’s assets helped donkey kick start hip-hop’s trend for featuring girls with thick hips, and thighs (butter faces included).
As a companion to our Super Two’s Day column, we’re kicking off Thickness Thursday, where we pay tribute to women who have curves all over. With Melyssa’s birthday celebration jumping off tomorrow, we thought it would be appropriate to take a look back at some of the best shots that earned Melyssa her alias Jessica Rabbit. Check 'em out below…
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Photo:Duran Rose
The setting for Kid Cudi’s first music video was like a homecoming. Since the 23-year-old Cleveland native took up residence in Brooklyn three years ago, he’s been treated like one of the Big Apple’s own, mainly by the pack of self-made cool kids who appear in his new video “Heaven At Night”. To help bring the song to life, he teamed up with multi-tasking party promoter/director Vashtie, who’s known for her unique take on the Pharrell, Lupe, Kanye banger “Us Placers”.
While Cudi’s runaway hit “Day And Night” pushed his name past the indie world, he was still lacking a formal introduction to the world. That is, until this summer when he dropped his Man On The Moon mixtape, which garnered even more attention from influential folks like Kanye, who recently called Cudi the “best new artist.” Can’t beat that. In this exclusive Complex interview, the kid talks about making powerful music, being a dork, and the vision for his forthcoming album…
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After the grainy, low-fi performance video for their comeback single “Machine Gun,” we had been hoping that Portishead would choose a more striking visual for the follow up. So on the second video from their latest album Third, the Bristol-based trio turned to indie-director Nick Uff to bring “The Rip” to life. The hazy, hypnotic animation was all hand-drawn and recorded on 16mm film, lending a raw feel to the scenes that are half dream and half nightmare. Watch things get warped out after the jump.
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After their trippy dance party video for “Run” got banned for not passing the Harding seizure test, Gnarls Barkley’s new album The Odd Couple didn’t get as much commercial shine as it should have. So it’s probably good that the video for their new single “Going On” keeps the mind-bending psychedelic visuals to a minimum. The story follows a group of kids celebrating on their way to a mystical door that leads to another dimension. What lies beyond the door is an unknown unknown, but we’re guessing it’ll probably give you seizures too. Watch the video after the jump.
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It was a rainy night during the first week of February when ?uestlove from The Roots spoke with Complex about the band’s eigth studio album, Rising Down. That same evening, he granted Complex access to Battery Studios to get the full scope of the dark and stormy album, which finally hit stores today. ?uest had this to say about the crew’s evolution:
Between the last album and this album, I think the one thing I take for granted that I have to keep reminding myself [of] is that not everyone's an engineer. In the beginning, we were on a mission to prove to people we can be boom-bappy. We lost ourselves in terms of us wanting to prove, ‘Ahh, see, you think that's a drum machine right there don't you? Nah, nigga that's me!” So now the pendulum is swinging on the other side and we want people to know that this is us. That was the main mission of the Game Theory album. It just continues with this [album]. You truly know that it's a band.
After the jump, watch all 4 Rik Cordero-directed music videos from Rising Down.
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Lately, independent Bronx rapper Mickey Factz has been doing an excellent job of positioning himself amongst hip-hop’s new breed of MCs. In his new video for “Rockin N Rollin,” Mickey shows his chemistry with some other key players in hip-hop’s 2008 class, The Cool Kids . In their first video together, Mickey, Mikey Rocks and Chuck English keep it simple with a black and white clip featuring cameos from their fashion-minded comrades: Kidz In The Hall, Plain Pat, Kid Cudi and New York’s multitasking party girl Vashti Kola. The Guggenheim, bitches! Watch it after the jump.
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KOCH’s new marketing campaign for Cam’ron.
The Real has a lot of bad (yet hilarious) ideas. Surprisingly, one of their recent ones'convincing DJ Drama to let them host a Gangsta Grillz mixtape'might not be that far off. According to a message on their Facebook profile, Drama saw their proposition video and thought it was “hilarious.”
While the world waits for this mother of all collaborations (sorry G-Unit x Gangsta Grillz), watch a new video after the jump that exposes some of The Real’s other ideas that didn’t get such a good response, including pro-New York rap protests and the new “Soulja Boyz II Men” mash-up.
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Joe Budden said it best on 2003’s “Fire”, “Fuck Sound Scan, I ain’t buying that, cause y’all sell ‘em to the stores then buy ‘em back.” After Rick Ross‘ debuted at #1 last week, outselling Snoop Dogg and Fat Joe, rap fans gossiped in disbelief, wondering who really bought all those units. Now, The Real addresses the situation with a funny infomercial for Def Jam’s marketing department. Watch the “incredible video one time video limited package video offer video” after the jump.
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