The Round Table

We’ve seen a few sides to Keri Hilson up until now — there’s the catchy songwriter for pop’s massive stars like Britney Spears and the Pussycat Dolls. The there’s her vocal guest appearances on just about every Timbaland song for the past year that slowly helped her gain mainstream notoriety, which she’s managed to successfully parlay into her own budding solo career. Still, the songs we’re accustomed to hearing from Ms. Hilson have remained pretty stylized with slick production.

So, when I stumbled upon this acoustic performance of “Knock You Down” from Billboard.com, I immediately fell in love. This is exactly the type of performance video I’ve been waiting to see from Hilson. Admittedly, it’s taken me quite a while to warm up to her talents over the last year (almost to the day), my turning point being when she dropped the “Turnin Me On” Remix with Lil Wayne. There was a certain swag about her in that song, pure confidence, that as a solo artist, she was lacking up until then.

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We gave Matt Morris some love last week when we posted a live performance of “Bloodline,” which appears on his recently released debut album When Everything Breaks Open. Last week, you may have also caught Matt on the “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon, where he and Justin Timberlake wowed crowds with their rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

To say Matt’s rising up the star-rank quickly would be a drastic understatement. He recently stopped by MTV to perform two songs off the new album: “Un-American” and “Love.” I was pretty stoked to see this performance unplugged as “Un-American” is currently one of my favorite songs from the album. Watch both performances after the cut.

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Well, late last week we gave you a taste of the new single, “Belle of the Boulevard” off the upcoming album Alter the Ending by emo kings, Dashboard Confessional. This week, we bring you word that will offer a deluxe CD option for fans to enjoy.

As announced in Rolling Stone, Dashboard Confessional will go acoustic and electric on the new album. This decision was to appeal to hardcore Dashboard fans who have debated long and hard over whether they prefer Chris Carrabba unplugged or with his full band.

The Deluxe version of Alter the Ending will include a bonus disc which features acoustic versions of the album’s 12 tracks. Sounds like a win for everyone to us. And perhaps will satisfy our very own, Ghostface Millah, who noted the production on “Belle of the Boulevard” “sounded so slick that it was devoid of Carraba’s emotion.” Ouch! Guess we’ll have to see what the acoustic versions sound like come November 10th.