The Music of "Entourage"

"I put in work and watch my status escalate,” rapper Guru, the vocal half of Gang Starr, proclaims as Vince and the boys walk in to a Bentley showroom in the first season of HBO’s wildly successful comedy Entourage (Episode 2, “The Review”). Of course, Guru had no intention of summarizing in 1998 the premise of a television show that didn’t premiere until 2004. The producers—or editors or sound engineers or whoever gets the enviable job of choosing a television show’s soundtrack—however, have their ears on the pulse of the music scene. They also have a time machine, because they have a knack for finding songs from various eras. By not limiting themselves to whatever the top 10 charts say that month, they can find whatever sound fits the scene best.

That’s not to say Entourage doesn’t date itself. Years from now, when our children look through and watch our DVD collection from the ‘00s, they will laugh when they hear both “Hey Ya!” by OutKast and “Cold Hard Bitch” by Jet in the pilot episode. They will also cringe when they hear “Ms. New Booty” is Turtle’s ringtone (“Crash and Burn”). In order to keep the show current and hip, the soundtrack needs to have some of those regrettable track choices.

Entourage, since its inception, has always had a strong relationship to music. Unlike a more serious show in which the entire score is orchestrated and rehearsed and arranged and composed, Entourage is more like a Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof comes to mind) movie in that most, if not all, the music comes from prerecorded pop songs. This gives a facet to the show that further engages the music nerds in the audience. I remember watching my first episode of Entourage in the summer of 2006 and feeling very proud for recognizing Jane’s Addiction as the performers of the theme song. I’ve also been known to send my friends very excited texts saying things like, “Holy balls, The Cool Kids just came on Entourage!” Not only does it make me feel cool to recognize a little-known group on a big-name show, but it also makes the show look very “with-it” to include something like that. Street cred all around!

Entourage, beyond using music well, has been a unique source for new music. In season three, Turtle became the manager for an up-and-coming rapper, Saigon. Saigon is an actual rapper who got a gig on Entourage to play a fictionalized version of himself, illustrating how his manager helps him become popular. Unfortunately, even after being on the show and putting his raps in the soundtrack, Saigon is still a relative unknown and it appears as though his fifteen minutes are over. He did prove, however, as Turtle explains to Ari, “All rappers act!”

Saigon isn’t the only rapper to have a debut on Entourage. Before Episode 53, “No Cannes Do,” America had not heard the song “Good Life (feat. T-Pain)” by Kanye West. To promote the album “Graduation,” Mr. West made a cameo. Thanks to him, and his superior thoughtfulness and success, the boys can go to the Cannes Film Festival on ‘Ye’s private jet; apparently he and Turtle are close friends. However, debuting “Good Life” on Entourage was a smart move; the show becomes an important player in pop culture, and Kanye caters to a target market.

In addition, HBO’s website offers an episode-by-episode breakdown of the songs used and in which part of the episode. If you hear a track you like, you can jump on your laptop and see that the song played during the end credits of Episode 74 (“The Sorkin Notes”) was Yeasayer’s “Sunrise,” another musical sighting (hearing? listening?) that triggered one of my blast texts.

Which brings us to the end credits. In any motion picture, from TV commercials to feature films, the music in the background tells the audience how to feel about what’s happening on screen. The score sets the tone. Think about it: would Up have made you cry without sad orchestration in the background? The music adds another emotional dimension, and nowhere is this truer than in Entourage. Every episode, almost without exception, ends on only a handful of feelings: happy and auspicious, dubious or doubtful, or completely dejected. Usually, the characters will say something that illustrates this emotion, there will be a short pause while the characters look at each other, and then a corresponding song will play over the entirety of the final credits. It’s an excellent formula, because no matter how you feel, it makes you want to watch next week. If you’re happy, you want to keep that going. If you’re worried about Vince’s next career move, or how he and E are getting along, then you want to keep watching next week to see if things get better. All these thoughts are set to a song that tells you how to feel. For example, when we learn that Vince may not get to act in “Smokejumpers” because Ed Norton has the lead and the project is fronted by a man who hates him, we’re a little bummed (“Fire Sale”). But then we’re totally skeptical when Cold War Kids’s “Something Is Not Right With Me” comes on and we hear singing that’s just off-key enough to be off-putting, rather than grating.

Season 6, the most recent iteration, has continued the show’s tradition of excellent music, crossing boundaries of genre, chronology, and obscurity. Some artists included this year: Eazy-E, The Cure, The Verve, Santigold, LL Cool J, The Buzzcocks, Paul McCartney, Van Halen, Three Dog Night, NWA, Testo, Vi, Yeasayer, Cut Chemist, Aqua, Pop Levi, Marvin Gaye, Andre Allen Anjos, The Stooges, and, of course, Michael Jackson. Admittedly, there are some obscure names on this list, and there are people who I’ve honestly never heard of before. However, even those little-known artists are talented. I’m not sure if I’ve consciously said to myself this season “Damn, that scene was cool, but that song sucked!” That only happened when Gnarls Barkley’s dismal cover of The Violent Femmes’s “Gone Daddy Gone” came up during season 3 (“Vegas Baby, Vegas!”).

Unfortunately, if you were to go on Amazon and find the CD soundtrack for Entourage, you’d be disappointed. Because of the nature of ongoing TV series, the official soundtrack for the show is lacking. Only 14 tracks long, HBO released the disc in 2007, so it’s already several seasons behind. The show’s songbook is too vast to be released on a compilation CD. To truly nerd out and appreciate the show’s repertoire, even a casual viewer will need the DVDs and an Internet connection, perhaps with a bookmark to Wikipedia.

Entourage is not the kind of show to jump the shark or start declining in quality as it gets older. This is partly because of HBO: being a premium network, it can afford to cancel shows that are still going strong, such as Rome. The feeling is that more important than keeping a show running is making sure it stays a quality show. However, Entourage is also too tight a show to slip, and it is too broad in scope. The characters are well rounded, the show is exceptionally well-written, and there will never be a dearth of things for our five main characters to do in the heart of Hollywood and the movie industry, which is itself vast enough to fuel a series such as Entourage. Not only will the show continue to be great television, but its soundtrack will never be exhausted. Music, new and old, mainstream and indie, will continue to “put in work” for Entourage, always creating another level to the narrative of the lives of Vince and the boys.

- Adam Lauria

Hip Hop Is Dead! Or Is It?

So I’m sitting in a lecture hall, listening to my professor talk about the Tao Te Ching. But instead of thinking about Yin and Yang and their relative duality, I’m thinking about the music video for Crookers’ remix of Kid Cudi’s “Day N Nite.” And it all seems clear—I now understand this new movement in hip-hop.

XXL Magazine ran an article in late 2008 (November?) about hip-hop’s incoming Class of 2009 Freshmen: the newest acts projected to blow up this year. They included Cudi, along with Charles Hamilton, The Cool Kids, Asher Roth, The Knux, Wale, and sundry others. That same issue included a feature about the end of gangsta rap. The movement that started in the late 1980s has continued up until now, with Ludacris and 50 Cent and T.I. topping the charts, rapping about guns and girls and violence. Except, their record sales are declining. People are not as interested in the harder raps as they were in the late 1990s. Although the mag did not make a specific correlation, it must follow that these new acts are replacing those thugs from the ghetto.

What’s the difference between these artists? All these new players in the game, the up-and-comers, are at a similar state in their careers. They have a mixtape or an EP available online, and one single that is big with those in-the-know listeners and getting lots of downloads on iTunes. Everyone is waiting for their full-lengths to drop, which makes it seem that 2009 will be a pretty sweet year for hip-hop. We’re all waiting, and these excellent singles are shameless teases. Wale released “Chillin” a couple weeks ago, and it has been on my Last.fm nonstop since; but his LP is going to come out soon, and it will be great. The Cool Kids have released two excellent EPs and one track off the upcoming record, “Pennies,” which is also excellent; they’re even giving select bloggers access to the album, and calling the feedback “positive” is an understatement. If this album is half as good as these early projections say, then it’ll be the biggest thing since The Low End Theory. Kid Cudi put “Day N Nite” on his free mixtape, and that track is being called a single and will hopefully be on the full-length. Which brings me back to that song’s music video.

The original video is unremarkable. The song is good, and the video is kind of cool in its visual effects, but it’s not very relevant. What is culturally relevant is the video for the remix. The music of the remix itself is also unremarkable: a couple different beats and DJ-induced vocal staggers, but it’s essentially the same track. The video, however, says something about the current state of hip-hop. Cudi is working the night shift at the Day-N-Nite convenience store, and his manager tells him to keep it orderly and essentially not screw anything up. Late in the evening, as he’s drifting in and out of sleep, his mind wanders and he imagine girls stripping and dancing to the song. At one point, while he watches some girls shopping by the soda aisle, he is delightfully surprised to learn that he can get them down to their skivvies with just a click of his clicky pen. But wait! you must be thinking. Who cares if there are hot biddies in a hip-hop video, that is in no way original or interesting? And that’s true. But the part that’s different—the departure from videos of gangsta rappers smoking cigars and watching girls grind on each other, alternating with shots of the rapper being lauded and worshipped—is that this isn’t really happening. Within the story of the video, these girls are just Kid Cudi’s imagination. The video is really about the mundane activity of running a night shift. And that is what makes this new movement in hip-hop so fun and exciting. These new raps, what some unenlightened commentators are calling “hipster rap,” are about regular things.


No longer are the kids content with idolizing gunrunning and crack slinging. The reason Eminem’s new track “Crack A Bottle” (which features gangsta veterans Dr. Dre and 50 Cent) is being reviewed as boring and derivative is because we’ve heard it all before. It’s getting old and listeners are gradually stopping to care, so the new thing to do, logically, is to rap about the opposite. Kid Cudi’s video is totally relatable to anyone who’s tried to stay awake while performing a boring task. Kidz In The Hall rap about the simple feeling of coolness that accompanies “driving down the block,” bumping hip-hop from your speakers. The Cool Kids use cereal to make a simile on “A Little Bit Cooler”!

Of course, some of these rappers have existed already. Atmosphere has been spitting about the human condition and relationships for over 15 years now. MURS has been dropping science for a while, too. But these acts have remained in the underground, and they would not have appeared on iTunes’ Top Songs list; now, Asher Roth’s “I Love College,” an anthem about a standard college experience, has been on there for weeks. The climate is finally right, so hopefully formerly obscure rappers can rise to alongside the relative newcomers.

The future of hip-hop will be these new players, content to rap about literally flossing their teeth (The Cool Kids’ “Pennies”) instead of standing on the block, flossing some new chains while dealing dope. I can’t wait. I suppose, however, that the success of the MCs rapping about the quotidian can only come after the rise and fall of the thugged-out rhymes; one is dependent on the other while being its opposite. Perhaps I understand Yin and Yang better than I once thought.

- Adam Lauria