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Spotlight

Terrific Twitter Trio of the Week

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Lots of musicians tweet – but all that Twitters is not gold.

That’s why you’ll want to check out SPIN.com every Friday to see whose tweets we’re reading this week – then update your TweetDeck! (Obligatory Self-Promotion: …while you’re at it, be sure to follow @SPINmagazine!)

This week’s winners:

  • Questlove
    @questlove

    Who: The Roots’ Questlove (@questlove)

    Why You Should Follow: We’ve been longtime fans of his tweets, but this week the legendary Roots drummer and music producer reached new levels of Twitter cred when the President of the United States’ account (@BarackObama) re-tweeted one of Questo’s messages about voting. When he’s not making political statements (or advocating that Obama should make the tongue-in-cheek What the Fuck Has Obama Done So Far? his new official website), he’s tweeting back and forth with all sorts of rappers, pop stars, porn stars, and celebrities, documenting his adventures with the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon crew (including a trip to D.C. this past weekend for Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity), and sharing little behind-the-scenes stories as they film the show (“successfully talked huey lewis off the ledge! traded in his new album cut for ‘heart and soul’ #dointhecarltonindrumbooth”). He isn’t afraid to say exactly what he thinks (case in point: “@kanyewest longtime fan I am. Please PLEASE PLEASE re-engineer Monster so that a mofo can spin this ish in a club w/o all that muddy bass”), making his tweets some of the more honest and refreshing ones out there. P.S. Look out for awesome Twitpics of jam sessions with Slash and rehearsals with bands like Shiny Toy Guns (pictured) and Miniature Tigers.

    Best Tweet of the Week: “5:54 AM. gettin up to go to philly to vote. #thatsall” – and by 9:30 a.m., he was tweeting that he was on his way back to New York. That’s commitment.

  • Lil Wayne
    @liltunechi

    Who: Lil Wayne (@liltunechi)

    Why You Should Follow: Just before he was sentenced to a year in prison for criminal possession of a weapon, this Young Money rapper did something strange – he set up a Twitter account. While he was at Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York, his Twitter carried on without him: Rapper Lil Twist tweeted in his stead, posting #FreeWeezy countdowns and relaying Lil Wayne’s personal messages to the fans who’d written him letters or tweeted at him (sample: “Christel Givens- I Bet ya poems R great, cuz u seem to be. I luv da magnets on da fridge in ur pic. i remember havin those when i was a kid”). Twist has also been updating the site Weezy Thanx You with the rapper’s prison letters, journal entries, and shout-outs. Now that Weezy is out of jail, he’s resumed tweeting, so you can probably expect to see quite a bit more from him as he continues to work on his next album, Tha Carter IV. Bonus points: “#weezysfirsttweetfromjail” was already a trending topic a few days before he was released – talk about a Twitter following!

    Best Tweet of the Week: “aaaaaaahhhhhhmmmmm baaaaakkkkkkkkkk,” Wayne’s first tweet out of prison.

  • Chairlift
    @Chairlifted

    Who: Chairlift(@Chairlifted)

    Why You Should Follow: This Brooklyn-based electro-pop group is relatively new to Twitter (they just joined the site in August), but they’ve already make good use of it, tweeting as they work on recording their new album, the long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s Does You Inspire You. Even though they occasionally question what they’re doing (“once in a while there are moments when making music seems so insignificant and self-indulgent compared to other things. short moments”), their passion and creativity is evident in their tweets (“Recording a special pre-album song for the world. Hint: Listen to Syd Barrett’s ‘Golden Hair’, and find out where he got the lyrics”). Look out for lots of links to the music they love – from a cover of a Violens song in French (“Cue red berets, fall leaves, and hash”) to Das Racist’s latest mix tape. Also, in case you were wondering, vocalist and synthesizer queen Caroline Polachek’s recent participation in a lingerie lookbook was due to “hypnosis,” according to the band’s tweets.

    Best Tweet of the Week: “We ordered a prophet and an old man showed up at the studio… We thought it was a keyboard.”