Crazy Like a Foxx

Does he think he's blind now, too? No wonder he always wears sunglasses indoors.

I've been meaning to post this for a while. You see, I thought I had reached Détente with Jamie Foxx. When last we checked in with him, it appeared he had finally given up his Ray Charles schtick. It appeared. I was ready to move on. He wasn't.

So, a couple weeks ago, just before The Grammys, I turned on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Jamie Foxx was the guest. This is some of what he had to say:

I’m gonna tell you why this CD is number one. For one, we did a movie called Ray Charles [sic]. And when we did Ray Charles [sic], a young man by the name of Kanye West who is so genius and myself and Kanye are kinda like the Batman and Robin of number one songs [shouldn't he say "Kanye and myself" because honestly, in that analogy, Jamie Foxx is Robin at best], you know, and after we did that, Kanye was looking at the movie when we were doin’ [sings:]“Well, I got a woman, uh uh, way over town, uh uh, that’s good to me.” And he took this “She take my money, uh, uh…” so he took that and made a special hook called “Gold Digger” as you know, [sings:]“I’m not saying she’s a gold digger, but she ain’t messing with no…” you know the rest…

Okay, so he still doesn't solve the mystery of who sings on the "Gold Digger" hook. Though this article from MTV News might (via Wikipedia):

"He did that beat a while before the movie ['Ray'] was even thought of," West's A&R rep, Patrick "Plain Pat" Reynolds, said of the song many [including, apparently, Jamie Foxx] thought was conceived after West saw Foxx's Oscar-winning performance as Ray Charles.

...

The idea to make Jamie Foxx a part of "Gold Digger," which had initially used a sample of Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman," came after West went to see "Ray" with his friend John Mayer.

"It was the natural thing," Pat explained. "If we couldn't clear the sample, we were going to use Jamie. There's actually a version with Jamie singing all the way through the song. It's good, but it didn't feel the same because we had to replay the instruments too.

So, there you go. Finally!

Anyway, back to Jamie and Ellen:

Yeah, so that’s why it’s so special that it’s number one because Ray’s album came out, after he passed away, it was the number one album in the country without a number one song. And this album is the number one album in the country without a number one song. So it’s because of that.

Um, what?

Ellen responds:

That's incredible.

Uh, yeah. It certainly is. Incredible.

Jamie to Ellen:

Thank you.

Then later, Ellen brings up how he's up for a Grammy. He makes it sound as though he's up for more than one:

We were nominated for “Slow Jamz”, but this one is… I mean “Gold Digger”’s like the national anthem right now. So it’s up for, like, you know, Best Song of the Year [actually, it was up for Record of the Year and Best Rap Solo Performance, not Song of the Year, but that's an easy mistake to make] and also we did a tribute to Luther Vandross and so we’re up for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance [that category, he got right].

Now, he never outright says that he is nominated for his work on "Gold Digger" (he wasn't), but he certainly implies it.

Oh, and one last exhumation of his Ray Charles persona: Near the end of his performance of "Unpredictable" he tosses in this line:

I'm gonna make it do what it do, baby

Anything but unpredictable. Oh, and I just discovered that there's a song on his album called "Do What It Do."

Not So Predictable After All

Okay, so I finally made it all the way through Jamie Foxx: Unpredictable. And well... I owe Jamie Foxx an apology. He made it through the entire hour-long special without once mentioning Ray Charles. And the only time he invoked the late singer at all was when he sang a snippet of "I Got a Woman," leading into the introduction of "Gold Digger" (for the record, this came at the 22 minute mark). Then he introduced a special guest... Snoop Dogg? So alas, no live performance of "Gold Digger" or its mysterious hook.

I guess this means Foxx's year-long (and then some) one man tribute band is finally as dead as the Original Famous Ray. I already kinda miss it...

Who would've thought that his special would feature more skits featuring an actress playing his sassy grandmother, more pregnant women on stage, more shots of crying women in the audience or more attempts by Foxx to squinch his eyes tight and force out a tear during the emotional finale than mentions of Brother Ray? Certainly not me.

I was way off. I'm sorry. I guess I should stick to predicting Academy Award nominations, which I did quite well this year (if I do type so myself).

I got 72½ (I'm counting the wrong song from Hustle & Flow as half right) out of 95 overall (for 76% accuracy) and in the so-called "Top Eight" categories, I called 36 out of 40 (90%), including all of the Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay nominees. Still, I'm most proud (if one can be proud of something so lame as Oscar prognosticating) of going 4 for 5 in the usually impossible categories of Best Documentary Feature and Best Foreign Language Film (the latter with very little information to guess on).

Predictable

Okay boys and girls, time for another Pop Culture Petri Dish challenge! As always, you're competing for The Official Pop Culture Petri Dish Gold Star, a modeling contract with top management company Ford Models and a photo spread in Elle Girl magazine shot by renowned fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon (just wanted to see if you were paying attention -- actually, you just get the Star).

In honor of tonight's very special "All-New NBC Music Event" honoring Ray CharlesJamie Foxx, Jamie Foxx: Unpredictable, I want you to predict:

A) How many minutes into the show Jamie Foxx will first reference Ray Charles...

and

B) How many times Ray Charles is mentioned by name (this includes "Ray Charles," "Ray," "Charles," "Mr. Charles," "Brother Ray," "Ray Charles Robinson," "Ray Robinson" "Mr. Robinson" or anything similar).

Bonus: How many times will Jamie Foxx speak/sing as though he IS Ray Charles?

Post all predictions in the Comments section. I'll attempt to tabulate the results, if I can make it through the entire hour.

Crip Digger

This just in:

Oscar winner Jamie Foxx is to join Snoop Dogg on his upcoming tribute to condemned former gang leader Stanley "Tookie" Williams.

The rapper has recorded a new track, Real Soon, as an anthem for those fighting to save Williams from death by lethal injection next week , and Foxx will sing on the record.

No word yet on whether Foxx plans to sing in character as Williams.

Ray-traction V?

One of this blog's most visited (and most controversial) posts claimed that it was Ray Charles, and not Jamie Foxx, singing the hook on "Gold Digger". A concerned reader commented:

The song Kanye sampled for Gold Digger was from Ray Charles. Jamie resung the hook.

Don't be an idiot your entire life.

I conceded rather easily (and snidely), presuming that someone who founded a professional website dedicated to hip hop (which you can read more about here) would know more about this subject than a casual music fan like myself. And admittedly, as I admitted then, I hadn't done enough research. I'm an idiot, end of story.

Now, today, I look again at the comments section on that old post and see two new ones. The first:

you should at least edit the original post so you don't keep spreading fud

Loathe as I am to spread fud (But was I really spreading fud? Uncertainty and doubt (or "ud"), maybe, but are people really afraid that Jamie Foxx didn't sing the hook on "Gold Digger"? Unless Anonymous was using the word in the Scottish sense, in which case, that's just nasty), I feel the comments section on that post speaks for itself. However, I'm happy to bring this heated debate to a new post, especially after reading the next new comment:

I am a hip hop fan and it annoys and frustrates me that everyone thinks that it is Jamie Fox singing on this track. I live in NYC and even the two hip hop radio stations here seem to think he is singing on this track as well. He is out there taking credit for something the late, great Ray Charles did (Not specifically for this track, he was obviously sampled) did, not him...

Great. So maybe I was right the first time and retracted too quickly. But then again, what makes Freddy a more reputable source than Steven Samuel?

A simple Google search reveals that there is still no consensus. Wikipedia says:

Though he is given full credit as a featured artist on "Gold Digger," Jamie Foxx's only vocal contribution is the a cappella introduction to the song, an interpolation of Charles's "I Got a Woman" (Foxx opens the song with the line "She take my money/when I'm in need/Yeah she's a trifling/friend indeed," and it's repeated throughout the song).

Meanwhile, contactmusic.com offers this take:

Taking it’s framework from Ray Charles "I Got A Woman" and using the man who played him in the movie Jamie Foxx as the vocalist. Jamie’s voice is so uncannily like Ray’s that had ray not died last year I’m sure someone would have claimed that Jamie was Ray’s reincarnation.

Interestingly, when the track was nominated for two Grammys last week, Foxx's name was not included among the nominees, even though De La Soul were cited for their contribution to Gorillaz' "Feel Good Inc.", also nominated for Record of the Year. In addition, "Gold Digger" was mentioned in the Best Rap Solo Performance category and not under the Best Rap/Sung Collaboration umbrella (where West was nominated with John Legend for "They Say").

So at this point, the only thing I feel safe saying with any certainty is that there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding Foxx's involvement in one of the hottest singles of the year. If anybody can point me to a definitive statement, preferably straight from the mouth of either West or Foxx, I would greatly appreciate it.

This is Just Ludacris!

I hate to beat a dead horse, but, well, that's exactly what Jamie Foxx is doing. And playground logic backs me up on this point: "He started it!"

Just a few posts (and many weeks) ago, I noted that Mr. Foxx still thinks he's Mr. Charles. Now he's at it again, earning a "Featuring Jamie Foxx" credit on Ludacris' new single "Georgia" for singing one word over and over again (that would be "Georgia", natch) in the style of the inimitable apparently quite imitable Ray Charles. Now, would it have been so much harder/more expensive to just sample the original recording? It's not like they had to add any words like "golddigger" or "triflin'"... Charles sang the word "Georgia" plenty of times in his own song (quite well, I might add).

This has been going on for over a year now. Ray Charles is starting to drop more tracks than Tupac. How much longer can Foxx drag this out?

Oh, and if Joaquin Phoenix pulls this same stuff, somebody please shoot me (just to watch me die).