Today's Dance of the Day is the Filipino dancing inmates moving in unision to the piped in sounds of Flo RIda featuring T-Pain's "Low" (single released earlier this year by Poe Boy/Atlantic and available at Amoeba Music). The video is one in a series from the inmates at the CPDRC facility performing their unique monthly prison-wide group dance. This particular recorded dance is from June 28, 2008 and, like all of the group inmate dances at the Filipino CPDRC facility, is choreographed by Byron F Garcia, who has helped stage (and film) numerous other recorded mass inmate dance displays including one from February this year to Soulja Boy and MC Hammer. 

Although some (mostly non inmates) have critized this forced dancing on inmates as "cruel" or "inhumane," Garcia firmly believes that dancing is a postive force and hence a good tool in the rehabiliation of prisoners. I have to agree with him (the inmates all seem pretty uplifted from these dances) and I can't help but wonder what the results would be if a similar program were adapted in US incarceration facilities. 

Last night as I was listening to, and really really trying to like, T. Pain's latest over-produced and overly guest heavy new album Thr33 Ringz I quickly determined that Mister Pain is still painfully over-using that vocoder like voice altering program which I had hoped would have stayed back in the summer of 2007 when near every damn rapper had some digitally altered ear-piercing robot voice effect prominent in their sing-songy rap hit single/video. I thought or rather hoped the fad was long over. But I was wrong.

Apparently here at the end of 2008/cusp of 2009 this gratingly annoying vocal effect is still very much alive as proven by such current hits as the T. Pain featuring Lil Wayne single "Can't Believe It" --  found on the R&B singer's aforementioned recently released new album.

But let's leave T. Pain alone. Even more painful to these hip-hop loving ears is Kanye (the artist formerly known as a hip-hopper) West, who recently, in an interview about his rap-free new LP, announced that "hip-hop is over for me" and who dedicates his heartbreakingly-hard-to-listen-to entire new album (808s and Heartbreak) to (like T.Pain) singing through the vocoder like autotuner effects. Jeesh. I guess his hanging out with Daft Punk just rubbed off on him way more than anyone could have ever anticipated. Below is a clip of Kanye performing a track off this new album on Letterman earlier this week. Disappointing? Hells yeah and not coz the autotuner is a bad piece of musical recording/performing equipment. But like anything in music, as in life, it comes down to how you use it, or rather don't use it (3 words Kanye: "less is more").

This has to rank as one of my favorite videos ever. Snoop is just crazy! I like how the video begins and ends like it was recorded off a VCR. It reminds me off watching a late night video show and waiting for my favorite video to come on, then pressing the record and play. Everyone in the 80's/early 90's had that one VHS tape full of your favorite videos. The song's pretty out there as well. It's Snoop meets Prince/The Time/Vanity 6 meets T-Pain meets Daft Punk. BTW, Snoop's album drops March 11th.