Have been bogged down with other writing, but Dave just sent me an email with the subject line above, and a link to this wire story in the New York Post:

IKE 'BEATS' TINA TO DEATH

There are 110 Grammy categories. The only ones that get any attention are the biggest four or five—Best Album, Best Male Pop Vocal, Best Female etc. Looking at the names of the habitually wank nominees in those categories every year (big ups to John Mayer and the Black Eyed Peas) might lead you to believe that, as a reasonably cool individual of a certain refined taste, the Grammys aren't worth your attention.

You're wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. Once you're past the first ten or fifteen categories, the Grammys get interesting and, frankly, weird. I'll show you what I mean in a subsequent post, but first, a rundown of the Canadian contingent.

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It's led, of course, by Nova Scotia/Calgary/Queen Street's own Leslie Feist—quickly becoming the Anne Murray of the American Apparel generation. The former Peaches hypegirl is nominated for Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best Pop Vocal Album. In each category, she'll go head-to-beehive with the heartbreaking Amy Winehouse, whose handlers will hopefully be smart humane enough to spare her any Britney-style humiliation. Leslie's also nominated for Best Short Form Music Video, a nomination she shares with hotshot Californian director Patrick Daughters and video producer Geoff McLean. If she wins that one, the statuette should of course go straight to Steve Jobs's mantle.

Along with Winehouse, Feist is up against Maxim magazine's own Nelly Furtado for Best Female Pop Vocal. Nelly is nominated for "Say It Right" and, with Justin Timberlake, slips in on Timbaland's nod for Best Pop Collaboration, "Give It To Me." I haven't heard either song, but their smutty titles would seem to fit with her tiresome new image.

Michael Bublé, British Columbia's ersatz Sinatra, will be in the hunt for his first Grammy win after nominations in 2006 and 2007. The brash Burnaby native's Call Me Irresponsible is nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, but more remarkably, he breaks out of the crooners' ghetto that is the "Traditional" category with a Best Male Pop Vocal nomination for "Everything."

The Texas trust fund kids in Montreal's Arcade Fire land Neon Bible on the list for Best Alternative Album. It's not a great record, but I guess it beats She Wants Revenge.

While not precisely a Canadian nomination, keyboard giant Herbie Hancock's take on the Joni Mitchell catalogue, River: The Joni Letters (with appearances by Mitchell and Leonard Cohen), is a shock nominee for Album of the Year, never mind Best Contemporary Jazz Album, and his take on "Both Sides Now" gets singled out in the Best Jazz Instrumental Solo category. Don't write off Hancock's chances at landing the big one; remember Steely Dan.

La Joni, meanwhile, gets a token nomination in Best Pop Instrumental for "One Week Last Summer," a track from her latest exercise in oblique jazz-folk, Shine. You suspect there was a name recognition factor playing in her favour, given that she's up against the likes of Dave Koz and Spyro Gyra.

It's worth tipping our hats to honourary Canadian Levon Helm, late of  The Hawks and The Band, whose comeback recording Dirt Farmer has been tapped for Best Traditional Folk Album.

And finally, the legend continues: Walter Ostanek, the King of St. Catherines, Ontario, gets his 14th nomination for Best Polka Album. This time, it's a collaboration with Brian Sklar And The Western Senators called Dueling Polkas. While he's nominated most every year, the voters have criminally failed to hand Ostanek the hardware since he picked up his third straight gong in 1994. I guess it's like how Wayne Gretzky stopped winning Hart Trophies after the '88-'89 season. Once you've set the bar as high as Gretz and Ostanek did, you start being judged against your own unrealistically high standards—and thus do one-trick ponies and second-rate chumps like Brett Hull and Jimmy Sturr end up stealing what rightfully belongs to you. Grammy voters, it's not fair and it's not right. In 2008, please end our long national nightmare. Give Walter back his crown.

Congrats to all our nominees—especially to Bublé for the crossover nod. I like that.*

Note: Not an endorsement of Bublé's music,  heck no; but he seems like an alright dude.

UPDATE: Apologies, Rush fans—somehow I overlooked your boys' nod for Best Rock Instrumental. The track in question is from their album Snakes & Arrows, and is called "Malignant Narcissism." I wonder if it's about blogging.

Second acts are damned rare in hip hop. The curtain just came down on one of the few.

Pimp C—rapper, producer, and one half of Texas rap duo Underground Kingz—was found dead today in a hotel room in Hollywood, of causes unknown.

Pimp—Chad Butler, to his mother—may never have had a platinum record, but he and partner Bun B managed something more extraordinary: they forged a brilliant 20-year career in a genre whose artists have barely the shelf life of a carton of milk.

UGK developed a unique sound, redolent of the Southern soul sides for which Pimp's father cut horn tracks, and their music helped lay the groundwork for the Southern hip hop sounds out of Houston and Atlanta that would later monster the charts. Though it earned the duo a devoted underground following and plenty of critical raves, it never landed them the big paycheques; when it did look like they'd finally break through, on the back of an unexpected guest spot on a 2000 Jay-Z single, Pimp got himself sent to prison for three years on an assault charge, killing any momentum UGK might've mustered.

Then, after fifteen years of recording, the Kingz blew up. A self-titled double CD, released this summer, became a Billboard number one thanks to a hit that featured fellow Southern travelers Outkast. The album wasn't anything radically new or different for UGK—though a superior offering, it was distinctively them, top to bottom—but the combination of their devoted fan base, collapsing music sales for pop acts, and a mainstream that was finally catching up to its underappreciated forebears finally landed them in the spotlight.

There are takes on Pimp's death sprouting up all over the web today, but I'd take special note of Breihan for his thoughts on UGK's artistry and group dynamic, as well as his insight into Pimp's character, and his typically articulate expression of a fan's grief. Another must-read is XXL's three month-old interview, which captures in remarkably concise fashion the man's swagger and realness, as well as what Breihan calls the "unreformed knucklehead" side of his personality.

Hip hop is kinder to its martyrs than to its elders. There are few enough rappers with careers to speak of 20 years in; to hit a career peak after so long in the game is unheard of. It's a cruel twist that Pimp C became yet another hip hop casualty so soon after earning his status as one of its definitive survivors.

He was 33 years old.

Lots of music content in the print magazine recently. In case you've missed any of it:

• Maclean's supremo Ken Whyte sat down for a chat with jazz's foremost neocon, Wynton Marsalis. They talked about how Marsalis recently learned to play the trumpet again from scratch, whether there is still an audience for jazz music, and why rappers can't tell him nothing about being black. "We was black in the '60s, man. Now a [rap star] from Something Housing Project is going to tell me what it is to be black?" We'll be expecting the Marsalis dis track from Jim Jones any day, now.
  

• Senior entertainment writer Brian D. Johnson offered his thoughts on Todd Haynes' Dylan biopic, I'm Not There. The pop star biopic has become a formula, D. says, and he assesses Haynes's efforts to subvert its norms. I haven't seen the film yet, but I'm looking forward to it. (Also likely to subvert the norms of the pop star biopic: Walk Hard. There are some promising rock nerd inside jokes in this trailer. Please, please, please let this film be funny.)

• TV Guidance's Jaime J. Weinman is at wit's end over this Hollywood writer's strike. For solace, he's clinging to the promise offered by the reunion of the greatest pop act of our time: the Spice Girls. And by comparison, the Pussycat Dolls and Hannah Montana make them look better than ever.

• Fugitive Taste Policer Aaron Wherry considered the critical battleground that is the new Céline Dion album, and wondered whether it in fact challenges the very foundations of the vast majority of human civilization. He filed before this whole Halifax Commons mess really blew up in everyone's face, sadly. As an aside, if you're interested in a take on the Halifax story that's both unfunny and unencumbered by subtlety or nuance, try Yoni Goldstein over at the National Post's Full Comment blog, or listen (about 14:10 in) to Post ed board member Jonathan Kay's similarly thoughtful rantings on same. Kay apparently doesn't like the fact that the working class people living in social housing on his street in Toronto play Céline's music at high volume. I can't tell if his tongue is in cheek or not. Memo to Carl Wilson: please send Mr. Kay a copy of your book.

• Finally, Charlie Angus, NDP member for Timmins-James Bay, picked up a gong for Best Represents His Constituents in the annual Maclean's Parliamentarian of the Year survey of MPs. Back in the day, Angus was a member of Toronto punk band L'Etranger. That's him on the right, playing bass. Kick out the jams, Chuck!