Released today, Judah's new album, P.U.S.S.Y. (Please Understand She Saved You), continues the story of Amber, except the mood isn't quite so romantic. Instead, the album is mostly sullen and unorthodox, complete with random vocal samples (weed-smoking chicks, the guy from the All-State insurance commercials, a clip from Spike Lee's equally weird She Hate Me). All told, P.U.S.S.Y. won't knock you out upon first listen. But it grows more intriguing with each playback. Also, the cover art is pretty NSFW.

P.U.S.S.Y. is for sale on iTunes. You can find my review later this week online and in Washington City Paper's print edition. Here's the trailer for the album:

"Lucifer In A New Suit" finds Slim battle-rapping over Kanye West's "Devil In A New Dress" while "While I'm From" is a gritty ode to D.C. over Jay-Z's song of the same name. On "Exhibit A," which borrows Jay Electronica's standout 2009 track, Slim gets spacey: "You can tell by my wave pattern/So out of this world, I can wave at Saturn."

2dopeboyz has the mixtape. The Beam Up 3 is scheduled for a spring release.

Double the Throne: Chris Richards explains that Jamey Johnson and Kanye West are the same person: "Both West and Johnson gave glowering performances, brows furrowed with focus. Both tempered that intensity (and their reputations for being grouchy) with lyrics that made me laugh. Both are stronger craftsmen than performers, but the strength of their material made their performances shine. Both are considered renegades, yet appear to seek the affirmation of their fans and the respect of their heroes with an almost noble desperation."

Joke About D.C. Being No More Than Khakis: Buffalo Exchange is coming! Buffalo Exchange is coming! Apparently, the proprietors scouted for a D.C. location for four years. The Post has quite a bit more about the second-hand clothing chain, which should fit in nicely on 14th Street NW. Current Boutique is effectively the same concept, no?

Yesterday on Arts Desk: Roald Dahl (and other boldface-worthy authors) lived in D.C.! Books of potential interest!

Is “Otis” a terrible song?

I thought so. It’s a lazy, looped beat that is trampled on by weak punch-lines, and is just about impossible to consume. But three songs into Thursday night’s Monsters of Rap summit, the track felt central to whatever cultural unifiers linger in the middle class’ societal fabric. An extended intro turned the Verizon Center into “Try a Little Tenderness” karaoke in the dark, then a big fucking American flag adorned the biggest of the three platforms Jay-Z and Kanye West would go on to occupy; lasers and fire came next.

Just like the $300,000 Maybach the duo carelessly destroys in the "Otis" video, Jay and ‘Ye proceeded to carve into an untouchable standard because they could afford to clear the Otis Redding sample. Wealth is just stuff and the '60s were just things that happened 50 years ago. The united reciprocity from attendees was unguarded catharsis, building up ever since Keith Richards told my generation that Puff Daddy’s “Come With Me” wasn’t real music. And about those attendees: Generation X played cool older sibling, representing the Tunnel Banger era in Timbalands and puffy Gore-Tex winter-fresh vests; white students bobbed along politely, harmless with hoods up; pre-teens who couldn’t discern “Jigga What, Jigga Who” from “Nigga What, Nigga Who” waited patiently for Watch the Throne cuts; and the crowd’s backbone of area African-Americans dressed up for a night at the lounge made everything fun.

It was my fourth time seeing these artists dating back to September 2010 at Yankee Stadium. That show was a brandishing of status fueled by a king’s court of guest stars. March’s undone-by-probing-Tweets South By Southwest mess was about a feigned egalitarian spirit that failed because it turned into a Darwinian model of exclusivity. The summer festival performances by West were theater: inventive and brilliant, led by structured queues. Thursday night was a loose, celebratory rap concert.

After emerging from dueling, elevated blocks on what amounts to opposite ends of where Javale McGee rolls out his “just dunks” offensive philosophy, our heroes stacked two-minute versions of hits for more than two hours. There were nearly 40 songs that took it back to Volume II—a token Reasonable Doubt bone would have been sweet—with a booming parade of muscular tracks everyone knows: “Run This Town” and then “Monster,” “Empire State of Mind” and then “Runaway,” “Big Pimpin’” and then “Gold Digger.”

Collectively, Jay-Z and West have released hugely popular, memorable albums every year since 1996. Extrapolate the smash singles and the night’s playlist was crowded with songs that have big-budget music videos. Under all of the lights, folks knew all of the words.

The same experience happens at Celine Dion or Paul McCartney concerts. But two non-singles brought rare vitality to the traveling arena spectacle. Both of Watch the Throne’s excellent Frank Ocean hooks became reflective bits about where, exactly, a certain class of people sits in society. Leading up to “No Church in the Wild,” a stirring short film of gruesome highlights in American history—race riots, children in KKK outfits, atom bomb tests—compelled even the night’s protagonists to gawk at the screens. During “Made in America,” montage footage of Dr. Martin Luther King played in slow motion; it was another fish- in-a-barrel move that nonetheless stopped everyone in their tracks because of the circumstances surrounding its presentation. Even the club promoters had to breathe it in before eagerly littering 7th Street with glossy invites to exclusive afterparties.

Photos by Ramon Ramirez

This Guy: Huffington Post DC blogger Ben E. Kessler is back with another silly missive about the rock scene, this time something to do with geographic origins of bands. Apparently, if you're from Bronxville or Binghamton, you're not allowed to tell people you're from New York. (Which means I grew up in Albany, um, Canada?) Also, "the last globally recognized music scene was Manchester, England in the mid-to-late 1990s"? So, now he's holding out for that never-gonna-happen Oasis reunion?

In Which the Authenticity of Punching an Old Lady in the Face is Discussed: Their setup, not mine. DCist's Michelle Nail interviewed comedian Brian Posehn, that lumbering, bearded fellow from The Sarah Silverman Program. On the definition of being "metal": "It is possible to punch a lady in the face and be false. ... but first if you have Metallica “Ride the Lightning” on your headphones and you're just walking around.....if you're just walking around and you're just, like, "YEAH!" You feel it then it's real. Then go ahead and punch her." OK, then. Oh, this was just Part 1 of the interview?

Today on Arts Desk: Lots of Louis Jacobson reviews. Ramon Ramirez watches the throne.

Watch the Throne is often noisy, gutless, and absurd: like every time a limping Jay-Z grabs the mic and raps about his American Express Black Card over techno. Lyrics skate by on familiar vocal timbres that rehash classic lines from more fruitful years, like “I’m from the murder capital/where they murder for capital.”

But how often do you get to see the world's two biggest rappers live, with ludicrous production budgets? I'd be there, but I'll be too busy jet-setting tonight. 7:30 p.m. at the Verizon Center. $59.50-$250.

MUSIC

The Ives Project kicks off at Strathmore—read Mike Paarlberg's interview with the pianist leading the program, the very quotable Jeremy Denk.

ESL Music is hosting a low-to-the-ground show at Montserrat House starring lounge bohos AM & Shawn Lee. $10, and you should probably buy ahead of time. 10 p.m. Wear a vest, probably.

THEATER

The Occupy D.C. protests don't end at McPherson Square, it seems. In Keegan Theatre's thoughtful take of The Crucible, religious anxieties give way to class tensions—and it's no accident,Rebecca J. Ritzel writes, that the production has some 99 percent vibes on offer: "Not only are these text-grounded interpretive twists timely, they make The Crucible more than an allegorical tale about revenge, paranoia, and religion. And given that themes of paranoia, inspired by the 1950s Red Scare, established The Crucible as an American classic, that’s high praise. Credit director Susan Marie Rhea with closely reading Miller’s text, and honoring it with a production worth seeing."

STORYTELLING

In a furniture store.

Downward Facing Degas: Last week's edition of Phillips After 5 was all about—wait for it—yoga! What? Kimberly Wilson, a D.C.-based yoga instructor and tranquility specialist (OK, we'll just go with it), led a couple of "chair yoga" classes in the Phillips' main foyer. There were beverages supplied by Silence Tea. The whole somnambulant evening was designed to celebrate—quietly and demurely, no doubt—the 100th anniversary of Wassily Kandinsky's treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

This Week in Zaklash: Karaoke cab? Way more interesting than Curtis Sliwa's wannabe cops. Also, not a poem!

Today on Arts Desk: New Windian releases! The latest at the Hillyer! And the wondrous filth of The Aristocrats!

This is the spotty tenure as president of Def Jam during which Jay pissed off colleagues like Redman and Joe Budden; the time Jay had Chris Brown booted from a BET awards bill; the anti-Autotune rant that put serious dents in the prospects of the harmless and charming T-Pain; and most recently when the pair jacked buzz from up-and-comers at the annual South By Southwest music conference with an exclusive, Vevo-sponsored clusterfuck gig.

More importantly, Watch the Throne is often noisy, gutless, and absurd: like every time a limping Jay-Z grabs the mic and raps about his American Express Black Card over techno. Lyrics skate by on familiar vocal timbres that rehash classic lines from more fruitful years, like “I’m from the murder capital/where they murder for capital.”

On “Made in America,” Kanye raps about ignoring critics, except that lead single and album teaser “H.A.M.” got nipped from the final tracklisting because of lukewarm reception upon its January release. With a constant ear to the digital streets, Jay and Ye’s ability to create feels compromised, and that's the album’s most cancerous problem. Rappers often name their album before it exists, and while the practice nets cool and unifying moods (there’s a great moment on The Blueprint III when guest rapper Young Jeezy snarls, “This is that Blueprint III shit!”), here the self-inflicted pressure to forge an important, forward-thinking album from royalty—that is simultaneously for the peasants—proves to be a suffocating M.O. We don't get "I started this gangsta shit and this the motherfucking thanks I get?" but instead "I took care of these niggas’ lawyer fees, and this is how they rewarded me?"

It’s not as easy as playlisting the gems and avoiding the blemishes, because every track has dumbfounding chunks propped up by sweeping highs. On “Who Gon Stop Me,” Kanye compares the rap game to the holocaust, drops Pig Latin, and compares himself to Oprah; Jay-Z brags about wearing all white, with no socks. But then there’s a great one-liner about being racist because you only like green faces.

It's why that Will Ferrell clip dropped into "Niggas in Paris" actually works: "What does that even mean?” “Nothing it's just provocative. It gets the people going!"

Justin Vernon—the women’s studies major and Wisconsin indie-folk hero—co-writes a song called “That’s My Bitch” on which Jay-Z directly addresses Beyonce’s oglers. Island Def Jam ex-pat Frank Ocean puts aside his public label battles and crushes a hook on Def Jam’s most valuable release of the year. Jay and Kanye compare themselves to LeBron James and Dwayne Wade, instantly retract the boast, and likewise mock Wade and James’ inability to seal the deal with a verse that ends in, “oh wait…”

On “Otis,” we’re to believe our protagonists are back to drop gutter rhymes like it’s 10 years ago. The beat is purposefully entry-level: a D+ sample from an Otis Redding classic, looped over and over like it was made with a pirated copy of Fruityloops in a Howard dorm room circa 2002. But the rapping isn’t vital and the song is a complete failure. I think it’s because Kanye is perpetually starstruck by Jay and this doesn’t allow him to be like, “Yo Jigga, that last take was pretty wack.” Think back to the colossal verses Kanye coaxed from Rick Ross (“Devil in a New Dress”), and Pusha T (“Runaway”) as a producer, and then look at the lazy Jay-Z rhymes he fails to filter:

Ball so hard, this shit crazy

Ball so hard, let's get faded

Ball so hard, motherfuckers wanna find me

None of this connects, and the result is a rap album you can multitask to at work while the experimental and pretty production takes center stage. Beyond standard figures like Nina Simone and the aforementioned Redding, sticky samples from Cassius, Indiggo, Flux Pavillion, Spooky Tooth, and Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera lay foundations for handfuls of nasty beats.

There are hot moments fans of Jay-Z and Kanye's discographies will subconsciously consume more than they expect to because, well, this is that Watch the Throne shit. But the sonics should never walk away with the most swagger on a Jay-Z record.

So it should come as no surprise that Twink's debut project—KanyeNay East: A Snares & Kixtape—is a tribute to the Chicago MC and his multifaceted production. The seven-track download, released last night, finds the Mambo Sauce drummer adding distinctive live percussion to Kanye's most recent work, including "Hell of a Life" and "All Of The Lights." On "Power," Twink ratchets up the already-energetic remix with crisp percussion, amplifying the original's...well, power.

And while Kanye's songs are plenty dynamic, Twink says she wanted to make them better while showcasing her talents as a producer. Twink's next project will feature all original work from musicians from the DMV and beyond. Until then, she's hoping Kanye will listen to her current tape and dig the sound.

Go here to download KanyeNay East.

On the Prince-influenced "Love Faces," Raheem's up to his usual tricks, detailing the intricacies of a booty call over a slow, piano-laced melody. Then on the funky "Candy Girl," the vocalist picks up the pace, lending his high-pitched falsetto to a midtempo, guitar-heavy groove.

Jackin for Beats Vol. 2 is DeVaughn's 12th mixtape release. On the first Jackin 4 Beats mixtape—released in November—DeVaughn remixed Kanye West's "Runaway," "Power," and Wacka Flocka Flame's "No Hands," among several other tracks. Go here to download DeVaughn's new mixtape and look out for his fourth studio album, A Place Called Loveland, dropping later this year.