Mandatory: "The Craziest Celebrity Albums"

[JamesG]

Ron Artest – My World






Basketball players have a long tradition of trying to cross over to the rap game. But for every Shaq who did OK at it, there’s a Ron Artest who didn’t.

Artest was the forward for the Sacramento Kings who became a national celebrity in the mid-2000s. But Artest, who grew up in the same New York neighborhood that spawned Nas and Jay-Z, had aspirations to rap, and in 2006, he started his own record label and dropped My World, a collection of hip-hop tracks that were unilaterally pretty bad.

Artest’s skills on the court didn’t translate to sales, with the record selling a dismal 343 copies in its first week.









Brian Austin Green – One Stop Carnival






There’s just something that makes white male teen actors from the 1990s think that they can rap. We’d blame Vanilla Ice, personally. One of the worst offenders was Brian Austin Green, who played David Silver on "Beverly Hills 90210".

Produced by Slimkid3 of the Pharcyde, the album is musically competent but once Green starts rapping things get ugly real fast. His delivery is influenced by West Coast heads, but it’s so nasally that every track is like dental surgery.

Then again, he went on to land Megan Fox, so he must be doing something right.









Joe Pesci – Vincent Laguardia Gambini Sings Just For You






Joe Pesci actually started his career as a lounge singer before Martin Scorsese cast him in Raging Bull and he became Hollywood’s go-to guy for short Italians with bad tempers.

After the 1992 comedy My Cousin Vinny became a huge hit, he went back to music – in character – for Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just For You.

Unfortunately, this album came out in 1998, six years after the movie was in theaters. The record is virtually unlistenable, with an insane amount of cursing barely making its way though Pesci’s nasally accent. The worst of the lot is 'Wise Guy', which takes Blondie’s 'Rapture' and puts it through the Mafia wringer.









Chris Burke – ... Singer With The Band






Chris Burke was an inspirational figure in the early 1990s with his TV show "Life Goes On", becoming the first Down Syndrome actor to star in a regular series. His work has inspired thousands of people with disabilities to follow their dreams.

All that said, he probably shouldn’t have put out ... Singer With The Band, his 1994 album with brothers Joe and John DiMasi. The album features cuts like 'Eating Is Fun, Eating Is Serious' about the importance of proper nutrition.









Christopher Lee – Charlemagne: By The Sword and the Cross






Typically celebrity albums are made by talentless schmucks desperately trying to wring the last few pennies out of their fleeting fame. But you can’t describe Sir Christopher Lee that way.

The legendary British actor has had a career lasting over half a century, starting out in classic Hammer horror films and moving on to playing a Bond villain, Saruman in The Lord of the Rings and more.

So, when he announced that he was releasing a symphonic metal album in 2010, it was a little surprising. The record, Charlemagne: By The Sword and the Cross, tells the story of Charlemagne, the first Roman emperor, with Lee’s narration over chugging guitars and synths.

It’s weird as hell, and there’s even a follow-up album coming out in 2013.









Hulk Hogan – Hulk Rules






Many professional wrestlers have tried to make it in the music biz, with John Cena being just the latest example. But the most demented example of wrestling rock is Hulk Hogan’s 1995 release with the Wrestling Boot Band, Hulk Rules.

A deliciously demented slice of '80s cheese produced by “The Mouth Of The South” Jimmy Hart, the album features maudlin slop like 'Hulkster In Heaven' about a fan who died before he could watch Hogan wrestle and the amazing rap of 'Beach Patrol'.









Fabio – After Dark






Long-haired romance cover model Fabio Lanzoni rose to fame in the 1990s on the basis of his long, luxurious hair and often bare chest. Dozens of people looked for ways to make money off of him, and one of the most ridiculous was the 1994 album After Dark.

Fabio is by no means a singer, or even a native English speaker, so the album has him seriously intoning sexy talk over R&B jams to hilarious effect. It’s the perfect soundtrack to an evening of romance if you never want to get laid again.









Jack Kevorkian – A Very Still Life






One of the most polarizing figures of the 1990s was Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan physician known as “Dr. Death” for his advocacy in the assisted suicide movement. When he wasn’t hooking elderly people up to machines that would kill them painlessly, Kevorkian enjoyed expressing his creative side through art and music.

In 1997, the Lucid Subjazz label released A Very Still Life, a long-player of Kevorkian-penned light jazz tracks in which the doctor plays the flute. It’s a very weird little detour away from an already unusual life.









David Faustino – Balistyx






After rising to fame as Bud Bundy on "Married with Children", David Faustino tried to make a grab at the brass ring with a hip-hop career under the name “D’ Lil.” The name was a reference to Faustino’s five foot three height.

Needless to say, his 1992 album Balistyx didn’t set the world on fire, spawning the single 'I Told Ya' with its hilarious video of Faustino cavorting with girls who were much taller than him.

The writers on "Married" obviously thought his rap career was as funny as we do, as they soon began having Bud Bundy call himself “Grandmaster B” and drop horrible Vanilla Ice-esque rhymes on the show.









Farrah Abraham – My Teenage Dream Ended






It’s a bit of a stretch to call somebody from MTV’s "Teen Mom" a celebrity, but this album is so intensely awful that it needs a spot. Farah Abraham’s one and only album, My Teenage Dream Ended, is an unlistenable mash of insanely auto-tuned vocals that sound like they’re from another planet laid over inept Casio beats.

She literally has no conception of rhythm or melody at all. This is music they could use to torture inmates at Guantanamo. Abraham moved on from this to trying to sell her own brand of spaghetti sauce, then making a porn video with James Deen that she tried to sell as a “sex tape.”

http://www.mandatory.com/2013/04/29/...record-albums/

[Zoneboy]

[UMFaninMD]

I listened to some of the Fabio album on I-Mockery some years back. It was hilarious.