Shawn Stockman's Sing Off.

1- Final days of the fasting month. Most of my friends have already fled and I am still here in the office, reading blogs and trolling people right, left and center. In case I forgot, I would like to wish a prosperous celebration of Eid to everyone.  I will be celebrating Raya in KL this year, like every other year.

2- Have you watched Shawn Stockman's Sing Off? A singing competition featuring Acappella groups from all over the United States with Shawn Stockman, Ben Folds and Nicole Scherzinger (for season 1 and 2, Sara Bareillis will be taking her place for the third season) judging.

3- You wont be able to get the show here in Malaysia since no Malaysians are interested with an Acappella singing competition like Sing Off but you can still view the show via youtube. By the way, the third season will be starting on September 19th with 16 new groups competing for the championship. Cant freakin wait.

4- It is fascinating indeed to learn that one of the competing groups is called Urban Method. I seriously thought it was the Malaysian Urban Method. Remember that five piece RnB Hip Hop group that topped the charts with their hit single, Wajah Rahsia Hati? But this Urban Method is from Denver. Could Mahathir and co moved out of Malaysia and now based themselves in Colorado? What could have caused them to move out? Was it the dull Malaysian RnB scene? Haha. Unfortunately, this is a totally different group. Watch out for these cats.

5- The winner of the first season was a group called Nota and Committed championed the second. Nota played this percussive acappella (most probably due to their latino blood) which was not really my cup of tea while Committed was this gospel boys doing straight out RnB which was fun, until I thought that they can only do RnB. The harmonies were complex as fuck and individually, all the six singers got crazy vocal shits going on in their larynx especially the boombox guy. Well, after years of listening to african americans doing RnB and Acappella (read: BoyzIIMen, Azyet, All4One, Shai), it seems to me that there is nothing new and impressive with what Committed was doing.

6- For the second season, I was rooting for Street Corner Symphony, five white boys doing acappellas with all the rock vibes and shit. The group might not be vocally excellent and harmonically creative as Committed, but the capability to something extremely different but mainstream all at the same time, SCS deserved a standing ovation.   

Benign