Today's Pick

J. Cole sends a message about the government's war on drugs, and specifically those innocent victims who are lost in its battle in the visuals for his TLC-featured single "Crooked Smile," the second official single from his sophomore studio album, "Born Sinner," which is split into two halves as the 28-year-old North Carolina rapper explained to Hartford, Connecticut radio station Hot 93.7: "The first half is depressed and like hell. The second half is like heaven. 'Crooked Smile' is the theme song for the second half of the album. It is like making it out of the depression and celebrating it."
Samples Jennifer Hudson's "No One Gonna Love You," this piano-driven banger "Crooked Smile" is an uplifting ode to all those who continue to self-love, hold their heads up, especially women, and the importance of inner beauty. Produced by Cole himself, the song finds him counseling women to embrace their inner beauty and what God has already created with his paint brush. "It's a very empowering song," Cole said of the track at a London playback of the record. "I don't have that Colgate smile and people keep reminding me about it. People are always looking to criticize you and I started to feel self-conscious about it - it takes you back to high school."
The song features Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas from iconic R&B girl group TLC singing on the track's hook. Originally a trio, along with the late Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, the R&B threesome recorded a string of hits in the 1990s. Though Cole really does have a crooked smile, he said that the tune's message is bigger than his own imperfections. "The song is bigger than just my thing, it's about everybody's thing," he said. "Society tries to tell you there's something about you that makes you inferior to the images they're trying to put out there. [The song] is really me embracing my [imperfections] and trying to get other people to embrace theirs."
In the video for "Crooked Smile," there's nothing to smile about when watching the heavy narrative unfold. The song is a pleasant bit of self-empowerment, but the video has an even bigger message, taking on racial profiling and the war on drugs. Dedicated to Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a 7-year-old girl who was shot and killed during a police raid on her house in Detroit back in 2010, the Sheldon Candis-directed clip features a plea from Cole at the end: "Please reconsider your war on drugs." Though the track, which depicts two family stories that converge during a raid. Midway through the song, as tragedy unfolds, the song drops out and echoing the sentiments of Cole's "Miss America."

Soulful songstress Melanie Fiona serves up another helping of her sophomore studio album, "The MF Life" with the video for her latest radio banger, "This Time," featuring your favorite sideline story. The 28-year-old Canadian R&B/Soul singer opens her second studio album, "The MF Life," with this optimistic track, in which she leaves her anger at her heart being broken behind and embraces positivity instead.
In a press release, Fiona explained the album's title, "the 'MF' in the album title represents my initials, but it also gets at the many facets of myself as an artist and a young woman. It can be viewed as the 'Mighty Fine Life' in times of triumph and success, but also the 'Mother-F-ing Life' when I'm dealing with frustration or misfortune. I celebrate both. I feel it would be dishonest if everything was all about glitz and glamour. It's about the balance of life, the yin and the yang, the good and the bad, all of that." Its music expands on the classicist R&B influences of Fiona's 2009 debut album "The Brdige," and its songs deal with themes of aggrievement, longing, and romantic triumph.
The song features Fiona's Roc Nation label mate J. Cole. After the pair both worked on "Beautiful Bliss," a track on Wale's debut album "Attention Deficit," the pair became friends and talked about doing a song together. "I wanted some male energy on this record," Fiona said. "I reached out to Cole and we had already done a song with Wale ['Beautiful Bliss'] and we all just really had great chemistry on the record. I was a fan of J. Cole. We met at the very, very beginning of his career, so we've kind of come up together."
Fiona and rapper also team up and come together for a brand new visual for a sexy and romantic duet of sorts with their new hit collabo "This Time." Directed by Colin Tilley, and shot in Los Angeles, the brand new video really gives fans a visual to the heart-felt and sensual lyrics of this track. Check out the two whose sound is undeniable together. Fiona explained, "I wanted this video to be really beautiful with really good elements of photography, and great angles I wanted people to get a vibe for me. Now they have it thanks to director Colin Tilley."

J. Cole has dropped a visual for the moody piano tune "Sideline Story," the title track from Cole's critically-acclaimed debut studio album, "Cole World: The Sideline Story," which has more bright spots than lowlights and serves as a solid debut. "I wish somebody made guidelines, On how to get up off the sidelines," the 27-year-old rapper said.
This dubstep-tinged electro-rap tune finds Cole spitting rhymes in which he justifies splashing out on an expensive chain and watches as time is fleeting. "They say time is money, but really it's not," the North Carolina rapper spits. "If we ever go broke, girl, then time is all we got." The song title was borrowed from his label boss Jay-Z's 1997 track "A Million and One Questions." During a listening-session for the album, Cole said he thought about using this song's title after reading it as a headline in a "rich person's magazine."Directed by Axel Laramee and Adam Roy, the clip documents Cole's international 2011 tour, capturing the song's straightforward production and lyrics, representing the journey Cole has taken with the release of his first album and setting the stage for his follow up sophomore effort. It encapsulates his persona well. He's a guy born in the struggle and determined to not be poor for the rest of his life.
Cole gives viewers an inside look at his touring lifestyle in his new video for "Sideline Story." The cameras follow Cole around the world: Amsterdam, Stockholm, Birmingham, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Oslo, Liverpool, London, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are all cities the North Carolina native hits, serving the masses with his lyrical punches in the video. Shots show him commanding the stage in front of packed stadiums and during down time he plays a game of cards, dabbles in some pool playing and gazes up at the Eiffel Tower.

J. Cole dropped the visuals in support of his latest offering "Nobody's Perfect," the third single from his debut LP "Cole World: The Sideline Story," which he made big waves last year and just one month after his appearance at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards for his Best New Artist nomination, he's rocking the waters once more with the video for "Nobody's Perfect," featuring Missy Elliott.
The self-produced track samples Curtis Mayfield's song "Think," and features Cole reflecting on the way his life has changed for the better since signing to Jay Z's Roc Nation label. It also features rapper/singer Missy Elliot singing on the hook. Cole said that he wrote the chorus for her after she became familiar with him through his sampling of her song "Best Friend" on his "Friday Night Lights" mixtape.
Cole and Elliott seek perfection as they vibe out in their conjoining rooms in the Collin Tilley-directed video, as Elliott plays a wise therapist who is deal with his anxiety and assures him that he needs no worry because everybody has their own flaws. Tilley employs a series of clever animations combine images like dead fish, flashing cameras and the standard shot of a busty lady with miniature figures hopping off a boat, to move the song's narrative, and also uses broken letters from a computer keyboard to spell out the song's lyrics and then flashes them onscreen on cue.
The clip opens with the 27-year-old highly critical rapper holes up in a hotel room, rapping about his upgraded lifestyle as a number of video cameras capture his every move, from every angle, while chills out in the room next door. Sure, that doesn't sound all that exciting, and yet the clip takes a turn for the absurd with a handful of trippy visuals. The new video is drastically different from Cole's "Work Out" and "Can't Get Enough" videos. The expectations for Cole's "Nobody's Perfect" video weren't very high but it was certainly a pleasant surprise to see how well it was put together.