Odds are against the coupling, with moneyline odds – that is, the type favored by Vegas bookmakers – at -150 that they won’t get married, and +110 that they will.

So what does this mean to you? It means that you have to wager $150 to win $100 if they do get married by the end of 2012 (that is, you’ll lose $150 if they do get back together, but win $250 if they don’t), and if you bet that they will get married, you win $110 for a $100 bet ($220 in total), or lose it all if they don’t get back together. (Either way, as always, the house wins!)

As for whether the couple will get married or not, that depends on a number of factors. The relationship sure has ramped up quickly – Kanye even rapped about him wanting to put her “in a white dress” on his latest track – but there have been a number of claims from gossip site Hollywood Life that their relationship is nothing more than a publicity stunt.

According to the infallible font of celebrity gossip, Kim Kardashian is “100 percent acting like she’s in love with Kanye West.” And how do they know that? Because during her 72-day marriage with New Jersey Nets player Kris Humphries, she was throwing shade on him non-stop!
“Team Humphries is convinced that Kim’s feelings about Kanye are fake,” Hollywood Life wrote.

May 8, 2012

Sensuous U.S. radio hits from the Sixties and Seventies have a surprisingly able proponent in Rita Wilson, the L.A.-born actress and producer who debuts as a singer with this collection. Helped by Sheryl Crow (“Angel of the Morning,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”), Chris Cornell (“All I Have to Do Is Dream”), Faith Hill (“Love Has No Pride”) and others, Wilson renews Watergate-era gems with an expressive denim-and-suede soprano; on “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues,” she and Jackson Browne sing a song from 1971, but the stripped-down, bossa-nova-flavored arrangement, like much of AM/FM itself, feels timeless.

 

May 8, 2012

The forecast is stormy on Carrie Underwood’s fourth album – as usual. Cloudless skies don’t suit the country super­star – she’s most comfortable leaning into a stiff breeze, letting a blues growl creep into her phrasing while unleashing songs like “Two Black Cadillacs” (in which a wife and mistress murder a cad) and the title track, a wind-whipped ballad about, yep, a tornado. Underwood’s voice is as powerful as ever, but Blown Away tries too hard, ratcheting up melodrama with strings and effects. She’s at her best in a more restrained countrypolitan mode on the weeper “Wine After Whiskey.” As for “One Way Ticket,” a foray into Kenny Chesney-style country “reggae,” let’s just say beach weather isn’t Underwood’s thing.

May 7, 2012

When your claim to pop immortality is co-writing “Dick In A Box,” what do you do for a second act? For Asa Taccone, you turn a proven talent for smirking R&B into something deeper. The debut of his project with drummer Matthew Compton and inescapable producer/sessionman Danger Mouse is a Beck-ian journey into L.A. slacker soul, full of hooky neon jams that ponder fame’s fraught highway and the emptiness of modern life. Often – as on “Waves,” a dysfunctional love tune pitched with helium-sucking falsetto over a crack-pipe Motown groove – it’s unclear if the sentiments are intended as poignant or as punch lines. But on a set wired with this much sonic wit, the sincerity question may be moot.

 

May 1, 2012

Norah Jones sometimes gets derided for being too downtempo – which, really, is like hating on peaches for being juicy. But her fifth album is a brand-rejigging songwriting collab with Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton that both picks up her pace and pumps up her palette. See “Happy Pills,” the bouncy single that triangulates the sexy bounce of the Pretenders’ “Brass in Pocket” with a lite-soul kiss-off ballad and an AM-radio bubblegum tune. Call it Norah in Neon. Jones’ sweet-smoky purr has always sounded great with meaty grooves: Talib Kweli’s “Soon the New Day,” Wax Poetic’s “Angels.” Here, she frolics through reverb and gets frisky over Burton’s midtempo beats on “Say Goodbye,” savoring the word “misbehave” like a toddler with her hand in the cookie jar. It was fun to hear Jones, the archetypal girl-you’d-take-home-to-Mom, play the fallen woman on Burton’s Rome LP from last year. That project echoes through “All a Dream,” a ghostly mix of dub-reggae groove and spaghetti-Western guitar. On the best songs, the Danger Mouse thumbprint is fainter: “She’s 22″ sets Jones against wisps of guitar and piano, while “Travelin’ On” mates her with a moaning cello. It’s a balancing act, which the lyrics occasionally upend – Jones as a murderous lover on “Miriam” is a near-comic stretch. But even good girls need revenge sometimes.

 

May 1, 2012

With B.o.B, you have to take the good (Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj cameos) with the bad (Ryan Tedder, more Ryan Tedder). As on his first album, the Atlanta rapper has called in a crazy array of guests, some of whom (hi, Nicki!) upstage him; he has a few punch lines (“I’m Top Chef, you Top Ramen”), but his strength is being inquisitive, like detailing his wealth, then asking if it matters. Kanye West did this kind of thing for years, and he had punch lines like a Daily Show writer. In his heated drawl, his lovely singing, his producing and guitar- and piano-playing, B.o.B shows off a vast talent. But when the record ends, you just want to hear the Dr. Luke beats again.

March 28, 2012

The British-Irish boy band One Direction finished third on the seventh season of the U.K. talent show The X Factor, and took home the gold in the 2012 Hair-Moussing Olympiad. For would-be tween heartthrobs, that’s a fine start, and the 13 songs on their debut – including the chugging powerpop hit   “What Makes  You Beautiful” – are engineered by a cast of international songwriting and production heavies (RedOne, Kelly Clarkson) for optimal radio-readiness. But whereas Justin Bieber has charm, that telltale scratchy vocal tone and actual charisma, One Direction are simply five pretty guys with a few decent songs and not much personality. Call them One Dimension.

April 6, 2012

Nicki Minaj is a purist’s nightmare. She doesn’t just straddle pop categories, she dumps them in a Cuisinart, whips them to a frothy purée, then trains a guided missile at the whole mess. She is a rapper’s rapper, a master of flow and punch lines, with skills to please the most exacting gatekeepers of hip-hop street cred. But she’s a bubblegum starlet as well, delivering confections to the nation’s mall rats. “I’m in the HOV lane,” Minaj boasts on her second LP. It’s true: She’s one of the few performers who can rival Jay-Z‘s blend of artistic bona fides and sheer star power.

But Minaj is also in the Gaga lane, the Bowie lane, the Missy Elliott and Gary Glitter and Katy Perry and Betty Boop lanes. (By the sound of “Right by My Side” – a blustery duet with Chris Brown – she can cruise in the Jordin Sparks lane, too.) Then there’s the Roman Zolanski lane. Roman Reloaded opens with Minaj – a biracial woman from Queens via Trinidad – ranting in the voice of her (Polish?) homosexual “twin brother” alter ego. In the same song, she takes on the voice of Martha Zolanski, Roman’s mother, singing in a cartoon Cockney accent. “Take your medication, Roman,” counsels Minaj/Martha. “Quack, quack to a duck and a chicken, too/Put the hyena in a freakin’ zoo,” answers Minaj/ Roman. Later, she bursts into “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

She’s just limbering up. On Roman Reloaded, the energy never flags – it’s the rare filler-free mega-pop album, an achievement for a record that stretches to 19 songs and 69 minutes. Minaj fans dismayed by her post-”Super Bass” turn toward pop will be cheered up by the red-meat hip-hop here. There’s booming triumphalism (“Champion”), electro-rap boastfests (“Beez in the Trap”) and a couple of collaborations with her mentor Lil Wayne, in which she more than justifies the claim that ends the album: “I am the female Weezy.”

The beats, by young comers like Hit-Boy and Kenoe, are taut and lively, a good match for Minaj’s manic spirit and comic zingers – and comic anti- zingers. Here’s Minaj on taking in fashion shows with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour: “When I’m sittin’ with Anna/ I’m really sittin’ with Anna/ Ain’t no metaphor punch line – I’m really sittin’ with Anna.”

Beginning with Track 10, the thumping “Starships,” Roman Reloaded veers into radio pop, serving up club anthems, clobbering ballads and, on the Dr. Luke-produced “Young Forever,” the most shameless Rihanna-wanna-be song ever recorded, a tune worthy of the ambition. The album is neatly utilitarian and bifurcated – “Side One” for the hip-hop headz, “Side Two” for teenyboppers.

But why would you choose just one Nicki Minaj? With her, the point is plenitude: more boasts, more hooks, more craziness, more shape-shifting, more cognitive dissonance, more pleasure. If you believe that art and commerce and provocation and fun – and hip- hop and disco and teen pop – can all be one and the same, here’s a record for you. Come, all ye faithful.

 

April 24, 2012

The other English-Irish boy band to crash the States in 2012 is slyer than its apple-cheeked counterparts in One Direction, as evidenced by its demi-entendre hit “Glad You Came.” But on this EP, the Wanted take cues from Coldplay (“Clocks”-style piano shows up on “Gold Forever”) and Kings of Leon (“Use Somebody” moans swirl around “Lose My Mind”) to no avail, and their dance pop droops where it should bounce. Playing the brooding type might get girls’ attention, but it isn’t fun to listen to.