Em Joins Busta Onstage, Jamie Foxx Smooches Fantasia At BET Awards
LOS ANGELES — It wasn't quite as scandalous as Madonna and Britney — or Madonna and Christina for that matter — but Tuesday's BET Awards will likely be remembered for one of the steamiest smooches in award-shows history.
Midway through an already salty call-and-response performance of "DJ Play a Love Song," Jamie Foxx and surprise guest Fantasia went in for a surprisingly long-lasting lip-lock that involved plenty of tongue, according to Foxx.
(Click here to see photos from the 2006 BET Awards' red carpet.)
"I didn't expect it to be that intense, but I didn't mind it either," Foxx joked backstage.
The kiss was a fitting symbol for a night that seemed all about the love, which isn't usually what the BET Awards is known for — remember the Snoop Dogg/ Suge Knight feud from a few years ago, for instance (see "Ja Rule, Missy, B2K Win, Suge And Snoop Exchange Words At BET Awards").
Beyoncé opened the show by debuting her new single, "Déj Vu," and bringing her beau, Jay-Z, onstage to perform his featured spot on the track. Busta Rhymes brought along all his homies, including a surprise appearance by Eminem — alongside Missy Elliott, Lloyd Banks and Rah Digga, among others — for a truly show-stopping rendition of the "Touch It" remix. And the night's top honor, Video of the Year, was shared between Mary J. Blige (for "Be Without You") and Kanye West and Jamie Foxx (for "Gold Digger").
And then there was Chris Brown, who literally went to great heights (via a crane) to pick a young lady from the Shrine Auditorium crowd to serenade, and brought up his manager and mother to help him collect his first trophy and Ne-Yo for the second. Now that's love.
"A lot of people try to make us compete, but we been friends before we were signed," Brown explained backstage. "I was like, 'Man, this is both of our awards, 'cause we both doing our thing.' "
Along with Brown, who won Best New Artist and the Viewer's Choice Award, Blige, West and Foxx were the night's only other double winners: Blige for Best Female R&B Artist and West and Foxx for Best Collaboration. And thankfully West was awarded, because after losing Best Male Hip-Hop Artist to T. I., reporters backstage were wondering if there might be a repeat of the 2004 American Music Awards, when West came backstage fuming that he lost Best New Artist (see "Usher, Outkast Clean Up; Kanye Strikes Out At American Music Awards").
"Me and Kanye are good friends. I ain't tripping on that," T.I. said backstage, smiling. "We support each other. He beat me for the Grammy, and I didn't get mad."
In the Best Female Hip-Hop Artist category, Missy Elliott took the trophy once again (she's only lost it once), while Prince won Best Male R&B Artist — his first BET Award — and Black Eyed Peas won Best Group. The latter's Will.I.Am appreciated the award but was more in awe backstage about his two performances, with Busta Rhymes and Kelis on "I Love My Bitch" and his show-closing freestyle with Prince.
"It felt really good, 'cause I'm black but BET don't play a lot of Black Eyed Peas," Will said. "So to be up there amongst my peers and culture — Busta, Missy, DMX, Rah Digga, and here comes Eminem out on the floor — that just made my heart. It's been a battle getting recognition. And then being in the audience sitting down, and Prince throws the mic at me. I'm rocking with Prince. You don't understand what that feels like."
Prince also hit the stage twice, appearing earlier to honor Chaka Khan alongside Stevie Wonder, Yolanda Adams and India.Arie. "Talk about star power," Fonzworth Bentley said as he watched backstage. "That's huge." Chaka, who won the BET Lifetime Achievement Award, performed a medley that included "I'm Every Woman" with the all-star backing band.
"I'm a little upset I had to come and do press," Ne-Yo said backstage. "Not that I don't love you all, but Prince is onstage right now!"
Ne-Yo left empty-handed but proved worthy of his upcoming co-headlining slot with Chris Brown with his classy, straightforward take on "So Sick" (see "Chris Brown To Join Ne-Yo, Dem Franchize Boyz On The Road"). Other memorable performers included Blige, Keyshia Cole and T.I., who was introduced by Don King and dedicated his show to his late assistant, who was killed last month (see "Deadly Shooting Causes T.I. To Re-Evaluate His Life"). "Big Phil, rest in peace, I love you partner," Tip said.
In a similar move, Busta dedicated his show to his recently slain bodyguard as well as Eminem's best friend, Proof (see "Busta Rhymes Issues Statement On Bodyguard Shooting" and "D12's Proof Shot And Killed At Detroit Club").
Damon Wayans hosted the show but kept the jokes to a minimum, save one skit featuring his "Men on Film" character from "In Living Color." Other winners included Anthony Hamilton for BET J's Cool Like That Award, Kirk Franklin for Best Gospel Artist, Terrence Howard for Best Actor, Taraji P. Henson for Best Actress, LeBron James for Male Athlete of the Year and Venus Williams for Female Athlete of the Year.
Axl Rose Released From Jail After Bar Brawl, Leg-Biting Incident
Except for that scuffle with Tommy Hilfiger in New York last month, things were going so well. But trips to jail aren't uncommon on Guns N' Roses tours, and Axl Rose started a rap sheet on the band's latest incarnation when he was arrested by Swedish Police early Tuesday (June 27).
According to a Swedish police spokesperson, Rose got into an altercation with a hotel security guard early Tuesday morning at an afterparty following Guns N' Roses' sold-out gig at the Globe Arena in Stockholm, Sweden. Towe Hagg, a spokesperson for the Stockholm Police Department, told MTV News that Rose had been arrested and held in jail by prosecutors on suspicion of damaging property at the hotel, assaulting a security guard and threatening police.
Rose was released from jail late Tuesday after confessing to the charges and agreeing to pay a fine of $5,500, according to The Associated Press. Officials also ordered Rose to pay $1,300 in damages to the security guard whom he assaulted.
Hagg told MTV News that Rose remained in a holding cell much of the morning sobering up before officers could speak to him about the incident. One of the arresting officers told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Rose was "aggressive and acting out" following his arrest and was handcuffed due to his outbursts.
"We had a great gig in Stockholm and I am not going to let this incident spoil that," Rose said in a statement. "My assistant Beta and I were talking in the lobby of the hotel when security started to give us a hard time. My only concern was to make sure she was OK."
Swedish media reports had the band partying at the prestigious Café Opera early into the morning following its show at the Globe. Rose reportedly joined the crew after 2 a.m. and was surrounded by a bevy of leather-clad blond women, as per the band's request in the local media prior to the show. A spokesperson for Café Opera would not comment to MTV News about the band's visit to the club or who attended the afterparty.
It was when the party shifted to the Berns Hotel, where the group was staying, that things reportedly got ugly. While a hotel spokesperson did not return calls for comment, hotel manager Joakim Olauson confirmed for Aftonbladet that there was an "incident" involving Rose.
Hagg said Rose got into an altercation with a woman at the hotel's bar around 8 a.m., and when a hotel security guard tried to stop the fight, Rose attacked him.
"He bit him on the leg and then the hotel staff called the police and we came and apprehended him," Hagg said. During the brawl, an enraged Rose broke one of the hotel's mirrors, but due to the ongoing investigation, Hagg could not give details on what Rose said to the arresting officers that could land him a charge of threatening a police official. That crime is punishable by jail time, but it is not likely Rose would be incarcerated in this case.
"He was drunk, and in the police station they took him to a cell to sleep for a few hours," Hagg said.
A spokesperson for the band's Swedish promoter, EMA, said on Tuesday morning that her understanding was Rose had not yet left jail but that the situation would likely be resolved in time for the band to play a scheduled Wednesday night show at the Spiktrum in Oslo, Norway.
"As far as I know, the concert tomorrow will be OK and will not be canceled," EMA's Catarina Oscarsson said.
In May, Rose and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger fought at a New York nightclub after the frontman reportedly moved the drink of Hilfiger's girlfriend.
A statement from Rose's manager was expected Tuesday afternoon, but has not yet been issued.
Nelly Furtado's Loose Claims #1; Busta Rhymes' Bang Takes A Big Hit
Sometimes you have to tank a bit to get your mojo back. After failing to grab fans with her second album, 2003's Folklore, Nelly Furtado is back on top with her third effort, Loose, which will debut at #1 on Billboard's albums chart according to the latest SoundScan totals. Thanks to the ubiquitous Timbaland-produced hit "Promiscuous," Loose's week-one sales of 219,000 were more than enough to earn the singer her first #1 debut.
Florida metalcore band Underoath score a surprisingly high debut with the #2 ranking Define the Great Line, but fall well behind Furtado. The band sold 98,000 copies of its latest album to land Underoath their highest-ever chart position, nudging the Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way down a notch to #3. British piano-rocking trio Keane also slip in with a top-five debut, cruising into the #4 position with their second album, Under the Iron Sea, selling 75,000 to reach their highest spot on the U.S. charts.
Last week's #1, Busta Rhymes' The Big Bang, takes a big hit, dropping down to #5 on sales of 69,000 — a 67 percent slip from the rapper's first-ever chart topping debut. The "High School Musical" soundtrack proves more resilient, slipping two spots to #6 after moving 66,000 copies for a week-to-week decline of just 17 percent.
Albany, Georgia, rap duo Field Mob debut in the top 10 for the first time with their third album, Light Poles and Pine Trees, which ranks at #7 with 63,000 units scanned. After seven weeks on the charts, Gnarls Barkley finally crack the top 10, climbing three spots to #8 with their debut, St. Elsewhere (58,000), while AFI's Decemberunderground drops six places to #9 (57,000). Rounding out the top 10 was the soundtrack to the animated movie Cars (56,000).
The Red Hot Chili Peppers drop out of the top 10 for the first time since their double album, Stadium Arcadium, was released seven weeks ago, landing at #13 with 54,000 in sales. Three Days Grace took a 55 percent hit, selling 35,000 copies of One-X, which plummets from #5 to #21.
There are plenty of chart debuts just outside the top 10, including R&B singer Donell Jones at #15 with Journey of a Gemini (49,000), critically acclaimed crooner Corinne Bailey Rae at #17 with her self-titled debut (40,000) and quirky rockers Guster at #25 with Ganging Up on the Sun (30,000).
Other releases cracking into the top 200 include the CD/DVD of Madonna's 2004 tour, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, which makes a modest debut at #33 (25,000); the soundtrack to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which hits #40 (21,000); the Counting Crows live disc New Amsterdam - Live At Heineken, in at #52 (17,000); and You Hear It First subjects Cute Is What We Aim For, who make a solid bow at #75 with 14,000 sales of their debut, Same Old Blood Rush With a New Touch.
British power metalers Dragonforce land at #103 after moving nearly 10,000 copies of their third album, Inhuman Rampage. And old-school R&B stars are also represented on the top 200, with Smokey Robinson in at #109 with Timeless Love (9,000 copies sold) and Diana Ross taking #146 with Blue (6,000).
The week's biggest-gainer award goes to Oscar-winning rap crew Three 6 Mafia and their Most Known Unknown, which scored a nearly 250-percent bump. The album, which fell out of the top 200 on the last chart, jumps to #54 with 17,000 copies sold.
MySpace Restricting Adults' Access To Teen Users
MySpace.com's tagline is "A place for friends." But in the shadow of a string of recent high-profile incidents involving teens and older users, the popular social networking site is planning to roll out a series of new rules that will restrict how some of those friends can interact. Specifically, it will limit the amount of contact adults can have with the site's younger users.
According to The Associated Press, the new rules, expected to be announced Wednesday (June 21) and take effect next week, will bar MySpace users who are 18 or over from requesting to be on a 14- or 15-year-old's friends' list unless they already know either the youth's e-mail address or full name.
Any user will still be able to get a partial profile of younger users by searching for other attributes, such as display name. That is different from the current options, which allow adults to be added to a youth's list to view the full profile. Under the new rules, that option will disappear for adults registered as 18 and over, according to the AP. (Partial profiles only show gender, age and city, while full profiles have information on schools, hobbies and any personal details the user posts.)
MySpace already prohibits users who are 13 and under from setting up accounts and displays only partial profiles for those registered as 14 or 15 years old unless the person viewing the profile is already on the teen's list of friends. Users under 18 will still be allowed to contact minors, and because the site has no reliable mechanism for verifying that users are submitting their real age when registering, adults could still sign up as teens and request to join a 14-year-old's list of friends, which would give access to the full profiles.
Besides the new contact restrictions, all users will have the option to make only partial profiles available to those not already on their friends list, the AP reports. All users will also get an option to prevent contact from people outside their age group. The site will also rework its ad-targeting software to avoid showing gambling and adult-themed ads on minors' pages and instead display safety-themed public-service announcements.
Since the purchase of MySpace's parent company last year by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $580 million, the site has come under increasing scrutiny for a series of incidents ranging from teens posting inappropriate material about their teachers (see "Cops Investigating Fake MySpace Page That Defamed Minnesota Teacher "), to death threats and photos of illegal activities (see "Twenty Students Suspended In Latest Round Of MySpace-Related Busts"), which have led to bans from a number of schools citing fears about child predators. Of the site's estimated 87 million users, more than 20 million are registered as minors.
The move to beef up security comes just two days after a 14-year-old girl filed a $30 million lawsuit in Texas against MySpace and News Corp. claiming she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old man she met on MySpace (see "Teen Sues MySpace For $30 Million Over Sexual Assault Claim"). The suit alleges that the site has "absolutely no meaningful protections or security measures to protect underage users." And earlier this month, a 16-year-old girl tricked her parents into getting her a passport so she could fly to the Mideast and marry a 20-year-old man she met through MySpace. U.S. officials in Jordan persuaded the teen to turn around and go home before the arranged marriage took place.
MySpace hired former federal prosecutor Hemanshu Nigam to be the site's first chief security officer earlier this year and rolled out a series of public service announcements about online safety. MySpace officials told the AP that the new restrictions have been long planned and are unrelated to recent events.
Beanie Sigel Calls Gun Violence 'Epidemic' — But It's Not Just A Rap Problem
NEW YORK — If you thought the Notorious B.I.G. had a "Story to Tell," Beanie Sigel said you should wait until you hear his new album.
"I got a helluva story," Beanie said with a huge grin, sitting in Studio 59 at Chelsea Piers on Wednesday. Sigel was doing a photo shoot with Dame Dash and Cam'ron for Dash's host of brands, including his CEO clothing line and Armadale vodka.
"I'm coming," Beanie said of his new album. "I'm in the studio every day. I know y'all wanna hear some Sigel music. But the music game, I don't fit right now. My album, Return of the Bad Guy, I'm not in the club right now with it. I'm not partying. I can give you that from time to time, but I'm a soulful brother. I been through a lot. I'm just giving you my life."
Through the years, Beanie has established himself as a top-tier hip-hop lyricist, and many critics called his last LP, The B. Coming, a classic (see "10 Candidates For The Next 'Greatest MCs Of All Time' List"). But Sigel's rounds in the headlines the past couple of years have mostly been about his troubles in the streets and run-ins with the law. Just a few weeks ago, he was shot in Philadelphia (see "Beanie Sigel Recuperating After Being Shot During Robbery Attempt"). Sigel was struck in the arm, admitted to the hospital and released the same day.
While Sig said he couldn't talk about the incident, which is still under investigation, he did give his take on recent violence involving MCs such as T.I., Busta Rhymes, Proof and Cam'ron.
"Look at life," Beanie said. "Take all the rappers out of the equation and look at your local news wherever you at. Don't look at rappers like, 'Why is this happening to rappers?' This is happening to 13-year-old kids, 15 year-old kids. ... This is what's happening in the streets. That's what's happening in every neighborhood. I don't care if you from Detroit, Philly, Atlanta — it's out there. It's epidemic. ... Our situation is sensitive. It gets blown up because we're on TV."
A few minutes later, Dame Dash, fresh from being photographed, came in, and the mood got considerably lighter.
"Don't you love that?" Dash asked about his red T-shirt that read "CEO" across the chest. "What I represent is my clothing line.
"What he represents is his clothing line," Dash added, pointing out Sigel's hoodie with the words "State Property" across his heart. Dash and Sigel share that line. "That's the best hustle on the planet. I'm about getting money, being a CEO. ... Unfortunately [Sigel's] been about state property, but we gonna get some money off that. That's what hustlers do," Dash said, sharing a loud laugh with Sigel after Dame's loving jab about Beanie's time behind bars (see "Beanie Sigel Released From Prison").
Sigel's album has no release date, and he said he's not ready to reveal what label will put it out.
Playa Rater: The 10 Most Influential Video Gamers Of All Time
Do gamers matter?
Over three decades of video game history, joystick genealogists have debated the impact of top-10 video games and 10-best game designers. They have discussed the five coolest first-person-shooters and the five worst 3D fighting games. They have argued the relative merits and impact of various controllers, consoles and characters.
In short, they've rated everything except the players.
So how do gamers themselves rate? Gaming is a more interactive medium than reading a book, listening to music or watching a movie, so theoretically gamers play a role in their chosen form of entertainment. But can the roles they play — or the ways they play those roles — exert enough influence to create a list of the 10 Most Influential Gamers of All Time? (One thing's for sure: trouncing your friend in "Halo" probably doesn't earn you a spot on the list.)
So who qualifies?
Famous people who talk publicly about their gaming habits like Elijah Wood, Jon Stewart and Method Man? How about the first well-known female gamer, Stevie Case, or members of girl-gamer groups like the Frag Dolls and PMS Clan, who may have inspired girls to take up a keyboard or controller? Should the list include filmmaker Uwe Boll, the casual player of PC and Xbox who became the world's most notable — and notorious — creator of video game movies? And what about game journalists or even developers themselves, most of whom started as serious gamers?
Sticking to a basic principle — gamers whose time playing actually affected the culture, creation or business of video games — we have assembled a first-run ballot for the 10 Most Influential Gamers of All Time. Let the debate begin ...
- The Advocates: Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. If there's one thing game-playing generates, it's vociferous opinion about all that is right with games — and so much of what is wrong. Most of that group-grumbling has no clear effect, but that's not the case for Washington state's Krahulik and Holkins. Eight years ago, the two friends created the online comic strip Penny Arcade and began merrily skewering all that was wrong with games. They developed an online following of millions and have become proven tastemakers, even on a Web that is cluttered with gamer opinion. They do exert some influence — like last year when they cowed "World of Warcraft" publisher Blizzard Entertainment into an apologetic interview regarding that game's early troubles. But more importantly, they have become the closest the medium has to leaders of a gamers' movement, going so far, a couple of years back, to launch [the equivalent of] an annual E3 for gamers, the Penny Arcade Expo.
- The Egg De-Scrambler: Adam Clayton. In 1980, give or take a year, a Salt Lake City-based gamer named Adam Clayton (age 12 or 13, as best he can remember) found something strange in one of the walls in a board of the Atari 2600 game "Adventure." He poked around and discovered a hidden room that brightly proclaimed Warren Robinett the developer of the game — a secret Robinett had hidden in 1979 as a protest to his bosses at Atari. "I almost thought, 'There's something wrong with this game,' " said Clayton, who now works for game developer Avalanche Software. So he wrote a letter to Atari about his discovery. Independent of Clayton, other gamers had found the hidden bonus — or Easter Egg — that the game's creator had laid, but as far as Robinett knows, Clayton's letter was the first tip-off to Atari. The popularity of the "Adventure" surprise, and the ability of players like Clayton to find them, helped make Easter Eggs a gaming staple for decades since.
- The High Score Hero: Billy Mitchell. These days, he runs a hot-sauce company. But back in the early 1980s Billy Mitchell was a bona-fide arcade king. In 1982, Life magazine featured a 17-year-old Mitchell in a spread about the masters of those wild new video-game-things. Mitchell's claim in Life was 25 million points scored in "Centipede" — but that wasn't all. Among the high-score chasers chronicled by the gaming referees at the record-keeping outfit Twin Galaxies, Billy was one of the best. He hit the maximum level in "Donkey Kong." He rocked "Pac-Man," eventually scoring a perfect game in 1999. Mitchell's accomplishments helped fuel the motors of thousands of players determined to play well and rank well in gaming record books, a fever for achievement that still manifests itself in online rankings and Xbox Live leader-boards.
- The Land Baroness: Ailin Graef. For one thing, credit is due to any gamer who becomes renowned by the name they use while playing. In the case of the Germany-based Graef, that name is Anshe Chung, the persona she inhabits as a self-made real-estate maven in the online game "Second Life." Since 2004 she has been one of most visible, notorious and entrepreneurial citizens, flipping virtual land rented from "SL" developer Linden Labs into prime plots of spruced-up real estate that she sub-lets to her fellow residents. News accounts estimate her 2005 profits at over $100,000. In the wild west of the malleable 100,000-player "Second Life," Graef and gamers who run casinos, shooting ranges or even develop in-game games have proven that the way you play a game can redefine the game you're playing. The same can be said for the citizens of the six-million-strong "World of Warcraft," or of other large multi-player games where clever profiteering based on the re-selling of precious virtual items makes playing games a profitable experience.
- The Never-Winded Athlete: Im Yo Hwan. In America, pro gamer Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel appears on "60 Minutes," endorses his own line of computer equipment and serves as living proof that, yes, you can make money for being really good at video games. But it's in South Korea — where at least a third of the country plays online games, where multiple TV stations broadcast pro-gaming tournaments and where tens of thousands of thunderstick-waving fans pack outdoor, rock-concert-style pro-gaming showdowns — that players enter by speedboat. The nation's favorite game is the sci-fi strategy title "StarCraft," and the most famous gamer who ever played it is Im Yo Hwan, a.k.a. "Slayers Boxer," who mastered the game's least-respected warrior class to become, for a time, the Michael Jordan of "StarCraft." With bodyguards and screaming female fans, a 2003 autobiography and at least a quarter-million dollars in annual profits (one longtime game announcer pegged his annual take at over $1 million), Im Yo Hwan isn't an underground curiosity. He's a national sports icon.
- The Re-Makers: Minh Le and Jesse Cliffe. At some point, every great game designer crossed a line that transformed them from avid player to accomplished play-maker. In the 1990s, the onset of software modding blurred that boundary by empowering gamers to tweak their favorite games into new, playable experiences without getting a job in the industry. None were more successful than Le and Cliffe, who in 1999 re-engineered the first-person shooter "Half-Life" into a team-based multi-player game they called "Counter-Strike." Thousands played — then millions. It became a top online game and a standard sport for pro-gaming competitions. In 2000 Le and Cliffe were hired by "Half-Life" developer Valve, making "Counter-Strike" official. Even today the game is among the biggest titles online, logging 120,000 players during a random lunch-time check last week — and a mighty 4.6 billion minutes of logged playtime over the last month.
- The Sex Spotter: Patrick Wildenborg. "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" wasn't just Dutch gamer Patrick Wildenborg's favorite thing to play last year. It's also the game he inadvertently managed to get knocked from store shelves for a time after he discovered animations and controls for a half-cooked sex-game buried in the code. Hackers have been scouring game guts for years, sometimes finding cool extras developers never fully programmed (like a skateboard also found in "San Andreas") or sometimes to fix games they think are broken (like the mangled ending of the second "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic"). But no previous discovery quite outraged U.S. politicians and parents, got a game re-rated for Adults Only and forced publisher Take-Two to re-print a sellable M-rated version at a $24 million cost.
- The Unwelcome Guest: Peter Ludlow. It's not every day that getting kicked out of an online video game puts you on the front page of The New York Times. But University of Michigan professor Peter Ludlow's disputably "bad" behavior in "The Sims Online" did just that in January of 2004, after the game's publisher, Electronic Arts, revoked Ludlow's online citizenship. The offense was Ludlow's publication of a "TSO"-centric newspaper that chronicled creative and sometimes troublesome behavior of other gamers in the world, including allegations that under-age players were involved in virtual-sex-related activities. EA claimed Ludlow's newspaper violated the terms of service for playing "TSO." Ludlow quickly took his act to the online world "Second Life," where he began to rake muck for a new newspaper, "The Second Life Herald." If you, too, dream of playing a game so sensationally that the game's creators take notice, then Ludlow is the role model.
The Death Of Al Qaeda Leader Al-Zarqawi — A Game Coming To Your PC This Week
NEW YORK — On Wednesday, June 7, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed by an air strike from U.S. jets.
This Friday, a little more than two weeks after that event, the world will be able to play a video game about it.
The result of harried breaking-news development by a handful of game creators in New York, "Kuma\ War Episode 75: The Death of Zarqawi" will put players in the position of a U.S. soldier just outside the house in Hibhib, Iraq, where al-Zarqawi was killed. The game presents a first-person shooter scenario — players can either call in the same air strike that killed the terrorist leader, or test an alternate attack by rushing the guarded house on foot in an attempt to take al-Zarqawi alive.
"When the Zarqawi event took place, there was no way we could just not report on it," said Keith Halper, CEO of Kuma Reality Games. "It's one of the key events in the war so far" (see "Autopsy Finds Al-Zarqawi Died Of Internal Injuries 52 Minutes After Bombing").
Not every game executive would describe creating a game as "reporting." But that's what Halper says his company has been doing since early 2004, when his vision for episodic game missions focused on modern combat and his team began creating what grew into 74 single- and multi-player PC missions based directly on engagements from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The company also does contract work for the U.S. military, providing game development that is used for training.
"Kuma\ War" has depicted the U.S./al Qaeda firefight of Operation Anaconda and the no-shot-fired capture of Saddam Hussein. Halper said the "Kuma" missions have been downloaded 800,000 times.
"Our job is to set up these variables exactly as they were at the beginning of one of these events and then allow the player to go through and do what they will," he said. "Anybody who's played a game like 'Grand Theft Auto' understands that the free-form nature is what makes this a wonderful experience. I can go in and interact with the environment and see what would happen otherwise."
The news of al-Zarqawi's death broke on the morning of Thursday, June 8. Kuma artist Ed Jeudy was riding the subway to work when he saw al-Zarqawi's dead face on the front page of the New York Post. "I was thinking, 'Wow, I bet I'm going to hear about that today at work,' " he said.
On Friday, Halper returned from a trip to California, and the 10 men at Kuma who would design the game met in a conference room in a Park Avenue office building, on a floor Kuma shares with Miller beer sales reps, a tennis hall of fame and a group that protects migrating fish.
The first 74 episodes of "Kuma\ War" had been built with a graphics technology that allows them to create an al-Zarqawi mission in one week. But there had also been plans to start making "Kuma" with the licensed technology that rendered the award-winning "Half-Life 2." Making the al-Zarqawi game with the "Half-Life" technology, which promised superior graphics, would require two weeks.
That's what the Kuma team chose. They hoped to assemble a chronology of al-Zarqawi's death, but news was still trickling in — including reports that the al Qaeda in Iraq leader had briefly survived the air strike.
On Monday at 5:30 p.m., the team met again, minus lead designer and dozen-year game industry veteran Dante Anderson, who had headed off to a pre-planned Caribbean vacation. The team's researcher, phoning in from Ithaca, New York, said there had been reports of a child found in the bombed house, and that those reports were now being refuted.
Halper had ideas for two scenarios. One would have the player on the ground, calling in the air strike: "There's no game-play in this one. It's purely about getting a front seat in this important event."
The other approach — storming the house — was inspired by a question he'd seen posed to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about why soldiers weren't sent in to capture a target who would have been more valuable alive than dead. Rumsfeld had said that there was a risk al-Zarqawi would have escaped; Halper wanted his game to help test that theory. "Then you've got something that feels more like a video game," he said.
Another designer suggested that the player could be racing in to grab al-Zarqawi in the scant minute or so between the first bomb of the air strike and the second. "See, that would be fun," said Halper.
The Kuma team often finds that even detailed news accounts don't provide the specifics needed to render a three-dimensional, historically accurate environment. What did the house look like on the inside? Were there windows in the back?
And what should the game sound like? The air strike happened just after 6 p.m. local time. Did that call for night sounds? Asked Jeudy, "Are there crickets in Iraq?"
Thursday — just eight days before the game's planned release — brought another Kuma team meeting. Halper had conferred with Thomas Wilkerson, a retired Marine general who often advises Kuma's mission creation. Wilkerson had pointed out that any plan to capture al-Zarqawi would not have involved an initial aerial attack from a 500-pound bomb if a person inside the house was wanted alive. The "Rumsfeld scenario" would have to happen without any bombing runs, and therefore without a race against the clock between a first and second bomb.
Meanwhile, the team's artists — who had been working feverishly on the project since the first meeting — were getting more comfortable with the "Half-Life 2" engine. The house was coming along, and the model for al-Zarqawi looked real. Somebody had rendered a virtual teddy bear because of the aforementioned report of a child's remains being found in the bombed house. In the interest of accuracy, Halper told them to scrap the bear; the child hadn't been there.
Animator Zancois Rice had developed a stumble for the al-Zarqawi character, and a shell-shocked look. He was working on movements that would depict American troops capturing him. "Make sure the soldiers are acting in a professional manner," instructed Halper. "No Guantanamo Bay sh--."
Four days before launch, Anderson was back with a tan and rallying the team. The project was coming together, and he said it would be done on time. The cricket question had yet to be answered, but guns were working in the game, cinderblocks were rendered and artist Mike Thompson was able to run a character through the tree-lined area near the house, kick open the door and run into the room where the al Qaeda leader would be waiting.
Since the game was coming along, Halper was now free to speculate on the "Kuma\ War" project's merit. He knows Kuma has its critics.
He said one Iranian newspaper accused his company of being a government front; he denies this, though he notes the company's contract work for the military.
There are also people who bristle at video games being used to depict current wars, as well as the larger question of which subjects are appropriate for gaming (see "Columbine Victim, Game Maker Speak Out About Controversial Role-Playing 'Massacre' "). "If we're making a movie about it or if we're writing a newspaper [story] about it, I think people wouldn't be quite as concerned," he said. "I think it's our responsibility to use these new vehicles for storytelling to get these stories across."
Halper lobs back a critique of his own: Traditional news outlets can't provide news the way his video game can. "When we come out with a 'Kuma\ War' episode, we're providing reams and reams of news information," he said. "We're telling people what happened. We're telling them the forces involved. We're giving them the history of the area. We're showing them satellite maps — the kind of things that they are very unlikely to tune into C-SPAN for an hour and a half to get."
"Kuma\ War Episode 75: Death of Zarqawi" is expected to launch Friday evening as a free downloadable mission for PCs at www.kumawar.com.
Slash: No GN'R Reunion, No Reply To Christmas Cards, So Onward With Velvet Revolver
If Slash were ever to look at his Caller ID and see Axl Rose's name, what would he do?
"Oh, I'd answer it," the former Guns N' Roses guitarist said recently. "But I know he would never call me. I've actually sent him Christmas cards, just to be cordial, but he never returns anything."
In other words, rumors from last month that Saul "Slash" Hudson would perform with Rose and his new GN'R in New York were just that (see "Guns N' Roses Live: No Reunion Of Classic Lineup, But Great Anyway"). In March, just two months before those gigs, Rose filed suit against his former bandmate to confirm his "ownership of his own creative works" in response to an action Slash and former GN'R bassist Duff McKagan had filed over royalties (see "Axl Files Suit Against Slash, Lashes Out At Ex-Bandmates").
"I don't know where [the rumors come] from, but I haven't dealt with Guns N' Roses any more than I have in the last 10 years," which is not much at all, Slash said. "So it's not really a thing with me. I have, in the foreseeable future, no re-involvement with that band whatsoever."
Instead, Slash is fully focused on his multiplatinum new band, Velvet Revolver, and their forthcoming second album, the follow-up to 2004's Contraband.
"We're in preproduction and it sounds amazing," Slash said. "I'm just really excited 'cause hopefully we'll get this thing out before the year's over. The material is amazing and ... we've grown so much as a band."
While frontman Scott Weiland has called the material a concept album and bassist McKagan said the band will record with a variety of producers (see "Velvet Revolver Bassist Promises 'Stinky' Pharrell Collabo"), all Slash would reveal is that the LP is coming together naturally, and "it's not phony in any way, shape or form, and the band's whole-heartedly into it."
Well, that and the album title.
"I don't want to say [anything specific about] the songs, but the name for the album is Libertad, which is Spanish for 'liberty,' " Slash said. "It's something that we feel strongly about: liberty, freedom, you know ..."
Slash did take a break from writing Velvet Revolver material to pen a song and score some music for the just-released movie "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift."
"It's one of those things where you don't really know what you're doing, but they feed you what you need to see, certain scenes," Slash said. "It's easy to [write rock material] when you're watching cars going on their sides at breakneck speeds."
In the end, Slash reported that he enjoyed watching the film's action scenes, but not quite as much as he enjoyed the footage he saw on TV of Rose getting into a fight with Tommy Hilfiger.
"I thought that was pretty funny," Slash said. "That sounds about right."
New Releases: Nelly Furtado, Madonna, Korn, Hector Bambino, Keane, Underoath, Three 6 Mafia, Pearl Jam & More
Much Ado About Furtado: Nelly's back, but it isn't getting "Hot in Herre." No, this is new mom Nelly, and she's letting Loose her first LP since November 2003. It's a bummer for the babe that her recent hookup with Justin Timberlake didn't make her new LP, but with Obie Trice having bumped his record at the last minute to August 15, she's still got a great shot at being the highest debut on the next Billboard albums chart. Oh, and she's got Pharrell, Timbaland and Scott Storch on the record, which should help a wee bit.
All in la Familia: Jay-Z's looking to launch his Roc la Familia division with a Bamb as Puerto Rico's reggaetón master, Hector Bambino, cracks open some new cuts for the dance floor. Jay gives his blessing at the top of Roc la Familia & Hector Bambino "El Father" Present Los Rompe Discotekas, lacing the first single, "Here We Go Yo+," with an introduction. Fat Joe, Memphis Bleek, Don Omar and Freeway also show their support.
Ubiquitous? U Bet: Just in case the albums, re-releases, tours, promotional campaigns, hometown honorary ceremonies and airborne concerts weren't enough to satisfy Madonna and Korn fans, there's more coming this week. Madge has a DVD/CD set, "I'm Going to Tell You a Secret," that shadows the singer as she hops around the world on her Re-Invention Tour. The Jonas Åkerlund (U2, Blink-182)-directed documentary has unlikely appearances by Iggy Pop, Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Moore, while the CD features 14 concert cuts, including "Die Another Day" and "Mother and Father."
Also in the DVD racks is Korn's "Live on the Other Side," which they're putting out through live-entertainment company Live Nation. That would be the third label to put out official Korn content in the last seven months, with Virgin having released the band's See You on the Other Side late last year and Korn's former label, Epic, putting out the Live & Rare comp in May. The "Other Side" video bundles together the band's recent show at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom, footage from its performance onboard an airborne private jet and a glut of interviews. Ambitious covers of Pink Floyd and Metallica tunes help seal the deal.
Still Pimpin': No doubt trying to capitalize on their still-fresh-in-mind Oscar shocker, Three 6 Mafia are pimping two new items. After having already put out a separate DualDisc version of last year's platinum Most Known Unknown, the toothy Memphis rappers are stepping up with a third edition that features the indispensable "Hustle & Flow" theme tune, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," as a bonus track. The "Ultimate Video Collection" is even more straightforward, cobbling together key clips from over the years.
Also double-dipping this week are Motion City Soundtrack, who are making the best of their time in the limelight by re-releasing last year's Commit This to Memory in deluxe form. Unlike Three 6, the wild-haired pop-punkers are giving fans their money's worth by slapping a bonus track, "Invisible Monsters," onto the end of the CD and chalking up an added DVD overflowing with three hours' worth of performance footage, interviews and more.
Playing Hard to Get: As for Pearl Jam's re-emergence less than two months after putting out their new studio LP, record-store clerks everywhere are grateful that the band is only sending one new live disc — not 72 — to the bins. Live at Easy Street is actually a seven-song EP that, following a similar tactic recently executed by Boy Least Likely To and J Mascis, will only be available at Coalition of Independent Music Stores. If you dug Pearl Jam's more comprehensive approach, go to their site, where they're posting downloads of concerts one to two days after they perform them.
Also going the nontraditional route is dance favorite Sasha, who is both creating and releasing a new double-disc Saturday at Los Angeles' Avalon club. Joining forces with Instant Live, the DJ will simultaneously transfer his two-hour set to CD as he performs it live, leaving fans with a pretty nifty souvenir to go home with. Even more fascinating, Instant Live already pre-licensed all the songs by other artists that Sasha will be sampling that night, so they don't hit any bureaucratic snags. Ten-thousand numbered packages will be made, and if you can't make the show, head to InstantLive.com or DJSasha.com to preorder.
Last but not least, Jay Love Japan by hip-hop's recently departed quiet genius, Jay Dee, will hit the aforementioned country this week — and remain there exclusively until BBE delivers the disc to the States in December.
Cashing in Before They Cash Out?: Is Fatboy Slim trying to tell us something with the lackadaisical title to his new collection, The Greatest Hits: Why Try Harder? Probably not, since a new single, "That Old Pair of Jeans," adorns the disc. And don't be confused by Christopher Walken gracing the cover of the album — even though this comp features "Weapon of Choice," for which Walken appeared in the award-winning video, that clip isn't on this LP. That'll appear instead on Norman Cook's July 18 DVD, the obviously named "The Greatest Hits: Why Make Videos?"
As far as roots rock goes, Old 97's were on the fritz for a while, only to come back with last year's double-disc Alive and Wired. Now comes Hit by a Train, an 18-track hoedown recapping the bulk of the band's career, from 1994-2001. Included is the 97's contribution to the "King of the Hill" soundtrack, a couple of rare live tracks and a B-side, "The Villain." Another hiatus probably isn't on the horizon, though, since they just dropped a new live EP earlier this month.
Definitely done are Luna, the indie stalwarts who closed their career with a farewell tour last year. Produced by linchpin Dean Wareham, The Best of Luna touches on seven of their eight studio records, excluding 1992's Lunapark, and captures their collaborations with underground legends Tom Verlaine of Television and Sterling Morrison of the Velvet Underground. And American Film Institute Director of the Year Matthew Buzzell got behind the lens for "Tell Me Do You Miss Me," which follows Luna as they brought their career to a solemn close.
Song Title of the Week:
"Your Lips Are No Man's Land but Mine" from the Gersch's self-titled record
Other Notables:
Keane's Under the Iron Sea: U2 and "Trainspotting" writer Irvine Welsh have taken the Brit-pop trio under their wings, but that didn't stop the sophomores from nearly breaking up after their first record. Instead of using guitars, Keane rely on effects pedals, granting the murky record "soundscapes that range from the percussive to vast oppressive walls of distortion," they say in their first-person bio.
Underoath's Define the Great Line: For their third effort, the post-rock powerhouses enlisted Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz to co-produce and the incomparable Chris Lord Alge to mix. The limited-edition digipak has a bonus DVD with behind-the-scenes footage and, more unusually, a special clip on the making of the album art.
Frank Black's Fast Man/ Raider Man: Seems like pouring his energy into the reunited Pixies has left Charles Thompson — a.k.a. Black — with a lot to say. The 27-track double-CD was tracked in Nashville and Los Angeles with some eminent session players you probably won't recognize, including Spooner Oldham, but it also features members of Cheap Trick, the Band and Tom Petty supporters the Heartbreakers. Yeah, you probably haven't heard of them either, huh?
Stuart Staples' Leaving Songs/ Lucky Dog Recordings: The Tindersticks frontman also holed up in Nashville last year to craft 10 tunes with Mark Nevers of Lambchop, singer/songwriter Maria McKee and world artist Lhasa de Sela. Stuart's 2005 solo debut, Lucky Dog Recordings, is tacked on for those who don't already have it — which would be just about all of us, since it hasn't been out in the U.S. yet.
New Releases:
Notable Reissues and Archival Material:- Gene Autry and Friends - Year-Round Cowboy: Songs for the Whole Year (Varèse Sarabande)
- Canned Heat - Vintage (Fabulous)
- Marc Cohn - The Very Best of Marc Cohn (Rhino)
- Paula Cole - Postcards From East Oceanside: Greatest Hits (Rhino)
- Ronnie Earl - Heart and Soul: The Best of Ronnie Earl (Shout! Factory)
- Fatboy Slim - The Greatest Hits: Why Try Harder (Astralwerks)
Buy Now: The Greatest Hits: Why Try Harder (Astralwerks)
- Aretha Franklin - Legends Collection (Madacy)
- Anson Funderburgh & the Rockers - Blast Off: The Best of Anson Funderburgh & the Rockets (Shout! Factory)
- Guitar Shorty - The Best of Guitar Shorty: The Long and Short of It (Shout! Factory)
- Coleman Hawkins - An Introduction to Coleman Hawkins (Fuel)
- Hee Haw Gospel Quartet - Hee Haw Gospel Quartet (Time Life)
- Tommy James & the Shondells - Legends Collection (Madacy)
- Luna - Best of Luna (Rhino)
Buy Now: Best of Luna (Rhino)
- KC and the Sunshine Band - Legends Collection (Madacy)
- The Monkees - Legends Collection (Madacy)
- Motion City Soundtrack - Commit This to Memory (deluxe edition with bonus DVD; Epitaph)
Buy Now: Commit This to Memory (Epitaph)
- Willie Nelson - The Complete Atlantic Sessions (three-CD box set; Rhino)
- The Old 97's - Hit by a Train: The Best of Old 97's (Rhino)
- Gram Parsons - The Complete Reprise Sessions (three-CD box set; Rhino)
- Queensrÿche - Operation: Mindcrime (deluxe-edition box with two CDs and one DVD; Capitol)
Buy Now: Operation: Mindcrime (Capitol)
- The Rascals - Legends Collection (Madacy)
- The Rembrandts - Greatest Hits (Rhino)
- Diana Ross - Blue (Motown)
- Siouxsie and the Banshees - Once Upon a Time/ The Singles and Twice Upon a Time - The Singles (Fontana)
- Thin Lizzy - The Definitive Collection (Mercury/ Universal)
- Three 6 Mafia - Most Known Unknown (special edition; Columbia)
Read: "Kanye, Bow Wow Guest On New Three 6 Mafia Remixes"
Buy Now: Most Known Unknown (Columbia)
- The Vogues - The Best of the Vogues(Varèse Sarabande)
- Scott Walker - Humble Beginnings: The Scott Engel Sessions (Empire Musicwerks)
- Matthew West - Sellout (Universal South)
- Various artists - Eclectic Café (Water)
- Various artists - GU 10 (limited edition; Global Underground)
- Various artists - Hip-Hop Super Hits (Universal Latino)
Music DVDs:- Bruce Anderson - "Anthology" (three DVDs; Sanctuary)
- The Clarks - "Still Live" (High Wire)
- Gwar - "Blood Bath and Beyond!" (DRT)
- Hocico - "A Través De Mundos Que Arden" (Metropolis)
- Journey - "Live in Houston 1981 - Escape Tour" (Columbia)
- Korn - "Live on the Other Side" (Live Nation)
- Luna - "Tell Me Do You Miss Me" (Rhino)
- Madonna - "I'm Going to Tell You a Secret" (with CD; Maverick)
- Gram Parsons - "Fallen Angel" (Rhino)
- Thin Lizzy - "Greatest Hits" (Mercury/ Universal)
- Three 6 Mafia - "Ultimate Video Collection" (Columbia)
- Various artists - "Sounds of the Underground, Volume One" (DRT)
Coming Attractions:
June 27:
July 4:- Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways (Lost Highway)
- Rise Against - The Sufferer & the Witness (Geffen)
Buy Now: The Sufferer & the Witness (Geffen)
- Hans Zimmer - "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" soundtrack (Disney)
July 11:
Hip-Hop Bling King Jacob The Jeweler Arrested
Hip-hop's favorite iceman has found himself wearing the kind of bracelets that nobody likes: handcuffs.
Jacob Arabove, known to the music industry as Jacob the Jeweler, was arrested by DEA task force officers at his 57th Street store in New York on Thursday (June 15). According to an affidavit from the U.S. attorney's office in New York, an arrest warrant had been issued in Michigan's Eastern District Court last month on money-laundering charges.
Arabove is one of 41 people named in a federal indictment released last month in Detroit that includes a litany of charges, such as drug trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy. Several members of the Black Mafia Family — including Demetrius "Meech" Flenory — were also named. That indictment accused Flenory and company of building a drug empire in Detroit and expanding it to other cites. BMF is known to hip-hop fans mostly for its independent record label, which has been putting out music, mostly in Atlanta, for the past few years.
Jacob has risen over the past decade to become the most recognized name in music when it comes to jewelry, chiefly because of his clients in the hip-hop community — Nas, Lil' Kim, Bow Wow, Jay-Z, Diddy, Busta Rhymes, R. Kelly, B2K and others — shouting him out on their records. He has also done work for the likes of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and a host of Hollywood celebrities.
Arabove's attorney was unable to be reached for comment.
During a hearing on Thursday, Arabove agreed to turn himself in to authorities in Detroit on July 12.
Fat Joe On September Release: 'Bet The Kitchen Sink On Me'
Fat Joe's feeling pretty good about himself these days. Not only has he gone into the studio to make what he calls "the most phenomenal album on the planet Earth," he's named the effort Me, Myself & I. Joe's eyeing a September release for the LP. Fat Joe's feeling pretty good about himself these days. Not only has he gone into the studio to make what he calls "the most phenomenal album on the planet Earth," he's named the effort Me, Myself & I. Joe's eyeing a September release for the LP. "Everybody I tell the title to, they be like, 'Ah, Jeee-sus! Joe is on that bullsh-- right now,' " he said from Miami, where he's taking in the NBA Finals.
"I'm trying to keep them looks up," he added. "When people think he ain't as strong as he used to be, I get them looks. But right now? Ah, man, forget about it. It's too much. I never had an album like this. I made straight monsters. It's really a problem. I'm ready, boy. I'm amped up. My album is crazy. It's over. Bet the kitchen sink on me. Bet it, run out, spend your life's savings. It's on and popping. It's crazy. I can't believe it's coming out crazy like that."
So far, Joe has worked with producers Scott Storch, DJ Khaled, the Runners, Street Runner, Big D and LV, who produced his current street buzzer, "Damn." Cool & Dre and Just Blaze are still on tap. Joe said he's expecting a better outcome than his last LP, All or Nothing, which was critically acclaimed but not a big seller.
"This album right here is way better than that album," he said. "N---as is just now coming up to me and saying, 'All or Nothing is sick.' I don't know if it was the beef with 50 Cent that [caused people to throw] their earmuffs on (see "Fat Joe Says 50's Taunts Led To VMA Dis") 'cause he was so strong. But n----as is coming up to me now saying, 'Yo, the album is ill.' "
Joe also blames the lack of sales on going hard with the single "Get It Poppin' " with Nelly. In hindsight, he thinks he maybe should have gone with "Listen Baby" or "Get Up" to start things off.
"N---as didn't want to see [my alias] Joe Crack, the guy that just did [Terror Squad's] 'Lean Back' and [Ja Rule's] 'New York,' with Nelly, dancing. Nelly is my n---a; I love him to death. I actually like the song, but it wasn't the right song at the time. But being that it was taking off on radio by itself, we was like, 'Let's go with it.' "
For his new album, Joe is negotiating to go the independent route but said he'll still be working closely with his longtime label Atlantic on distribution.
"I'm trying to work the album like I'm on major though," Joe said. "I'm trying to come with smashes."
On Sunday, Joe hosted the Puerto Rican Day Parade on New York's Fox and UPN affiliate stations. He called the experience historic.
"I gotta let them know that rappers are intelligent," he said. "They let me run with it. They was like, 'Go.' ... I didn't think they was gonna give me the ball like that.
"What shocked the people, I'm sure, is how much knowledge I had of the community," he continued. "When I tell people, 'I'm New York,' I'm New York for real. People were like, 'You had so much knowledge of the community.' I'm like, 'This is my neighborhood, New York City.' Of course I know who the congressman is. ... It's my job to know. This is what I rep."
Kanye Sued For Allegedly Not Paying His Mercedes Lease
Kanye West spends a great deal of time dropping the Mercedes-Benz brand name into his songs (check out verses from "Gold Digger," "All Falls Down" and "The New Workout Plan"). Perhaps that's because it's cheaper than leasing a real-life Benzo.
According to a lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, West hasn't been making payments on his lease for a 2003 Mercedes-Benz G500. And now the company that owns the title to that car is looking for damages and trying to get its Benz back.
In the suit, DaimlerChrysler Financial Services, a Delaware-based trust company, is suing West and his KonMan Entertainment for more than $53,000, alleging that they failed to make monthly payments on a G500 they leased from New Jersey's Prestige Motors in September 2002.
The suit also alleges that West personally guaranteed the lease's payment, which was $1,295 a month for 39 months.
"In order to extend credit to KonMan, West ... executed and delivered to [DCFS] a written guaranty ... to unconditionally and promptly pay any and all indebtedness," the suit read. "Due to KonMan's default in the surrender and payments, [DCFS] has elected to accelerate all amounts owed and declare the entire unpaid balance ... immediately due and payable."
When the lease expired in January of this year, according to the suit, West and KonMan refused to return the vehicle, which was valued at more than $75,000 in 2002.
"The vehicle is in the control of [West and KonMan]. ... Before the commencement of this action, [DCFS] demanded each of them to return the vehicle. Nevertheless, they refused to return said vehicle and still unjustly detain it," the suit read. "[DCFS] is entitled to immediate possession of the vehicle."
Though DCFS is based in Delaware and KonMan has offices in New York, the lawsuit alleges that the vehicle is currently in Sherman Oaks, California, which is why the case will be heard in a Los Angeles court.
In addition to the total amount of the unpaid lease, DCFS is seeking punitive damages from West and KonMan.
Calls to Kanye West's label, Def Jam, were not returned. And Rebecca Caley, the attorney representing DCFS, was in court and unavailable for comment on the lawsuit.
Kanye Hopes To Make ESPN Highlights With Fonzworth's New LP
anye West has a reputation for exaggerating now and then, to put it mildly. But if you're sick of hearing his hyperbole, too bad: He says he has no plans to stop going overboard with his stunting.
Talking to MTV News on Wednesday in Los Angeles. he revealed who he thinks is going to be "one of the number-one artists in the game": Fonzworth Bentley.
"They just gonna love it," he said of Bentley's new LP, CoolOutrageousLoversOfUniquely
RawStyle, or C.O.L.O.U.R.S. for short — the next album from West's GOOD Music label (see "Fonzworth Finds Worthy Collaborators For Debut LP: Kanye, Andre 3000").
"I'm gonna love it because of the haters," he added. "Even now, I love it. I love the challenge. You know how it is with [Michael] Jordan, how he just started trying other stuff? I feel like Jordan: Let me hit this three-pointer from half-court. If I can make it, it'll definitely make the highlights on ESPN. Bentley is the Play of the Week."
Kanye said he's heard the criticism about Bentley, who's best known as Diddy's assistant.
"I see some greatness in there," West said. "My job in life is seeking out people who are really talented and collaborating with them and applying my name with them to bring them to a pop level. 'Pop' meaning people know about it, whether it be Puff's personal assistant and giving him the lane to be one of the number-one artists. 'Kanye signed Puffy's butler,' that's what the naysayers are saying. At one point in time, I was working at the Gap. I'm Kanye West. That's what I was doing. That was my job. That's how I was able to pay to go to the prom, or whatever I was doing at the time. To get in this game, [working for Diddy] is low on the totem pole of what people did to get in the game. It's only a chosen few. This man is a star."
C.O.L.O.U.R.S. comes out in September, and the first single is "Laid Back."
"Its no secret I love wearing a lot of colors," Bentley said. "I always get asked, 'Bentley, what's your favorite color?' I don't have a favorite color, but I can tell you it ain't white."
Bentley said he's always been writing rhymes on the low, and he got the confidence to come out as an artist after his well-received cameo on Da Band's LP, Too Hot for T.V.
"Anybody who is a fan of hip-hop has written a rhyme at one point," Bentley said. "I kept it on the back burner. ... Actually Jay-Z was like, 'I like your flow on Da Band album.' I said, 'Can I quote you on that?' He was like, 'Yeah.' Then the next day, Kanye called me. They didn't even speak on it. Then I called a good friend of mine, Andre 'Been-Jammin,' you know him as Andre 3000, and said, 'I don't know where to begin.' He said, 'Just go in and record.'
"You'll get an understanding ... that I'm that funny, super-fly, incredibly handsome, very well-educated concert master. Or I'm just that funny guy with the umbrella. I think people will be able to see what's behind the parasol."
Bentley has been working with West and Andre 3000 on the album.
Living Things Say They Were Attacked Onstage By Alter Bridge, Band's Crew
Living Things singer Lillian Berlin is used to people taking issue with his Bush-bashing stage patter. Hell, three years ago at the Gypsy Tea Room in Dallas, he got pistol-whipped and nearly shot by three men outside the club because of his comments. But the provocative band's singer thought he might be safe from attack onstage, especially in the bastion of neutrality that is Switzerland. 'Fraid not, Lillian.
The 26-year-old singer/guitarist said his brother, drummer Bosh Berlin, 21, and the band's touring guitarist, Corey Becker, were attacked and beat up onstage Wednesday night during a show at the Rohstofflager club in Zurich, Switzerland, by the crew of the band Alter Bridge and at least one member of that band. The Alter Bridge camp is refuting those claims.
"We were in the middle of our second song, and I had some stuff to say about the current administration and the way they're handling the Iraq war," Lillian said. "The Swiss were all behind us, and the crowd was cheering me on. I was talking about this letter I got inviting me to a Democrat-bashing dinner at the White House. And we went into our fourth song, and some goon from that Creed band [Alter Bridge features three former members of Creed] came out swinging an American flag and then threw it at our drummer, Bosh."
Lillian said he thought the interloper was an excited member of the audience so he ignored him, but then on the other side of the stage, Becker was being "trampled" by two Alter Bridge crew workers and a member of the band, whose name Lillian said he didn't know.
"I was still unaware at this point that these weren't crowd people, so I started screaming for security to get them offstage," Lillian said. "The only reason I knew it was a guy from that band was because I met him backstage, and he had some sports team's ski cap on."
Alter Bridge are the band that was formed by three former members of Creed — guitarist Mark Tremonti, drummer Scott Phillips and bassist Brian Marshall — and ex-Mayfield Four singer Myles Kennedy after Creed's dissolution in 2004 (see "Life After Creed: Alter Bridge Look To A Stapp-Free Future").
A spokesperson for headliner Alter Bridge — who recently parted ways with their label, Wind-Up Records — denied the Things' version of the incident. In a statement issued Thursday night (June 15), the band stated, "Alter Bridge was not happy that this band chose to deliver anti-American statements to their audience.
"However, no Alter Bridge bandmembers were onstage, and their crew was in their designated working areas during this supposed incident. Alter Bridge thinks this is just a weak attempt by the opening band to drum up press for themselves. Alter Bridge will have no further comment on this as they are finishing up their extremely successful European tour and returning shortly to the U.S. to start work on their second album."
A source close to Alter Bridge even said it was the Living Things who started the fight backstage.
Lillian said the Living Things were forced to abandon the gig less than halfway through. As his band walked backstage, Lillian said, Alter Bridge and their crew yelled, "We love America," at the bandmembers, and a woman in their entourage said, "I love where I'm from, and you are shameful." According to Lillian, Bosh has a black eye and an injured left hand that made it difficult for him to play during the band's gig in Austria on Thursday, and Becker has black-and-blue marks on his neck from being choked, a black eye and a swollen nose.
Lillian has made a habit of speaking his mind during the band's shows, burning pictures of President Bush onstage using a pistol-shaped lighter and pretending to flog women in dominatrix gear while wearing a Bush mask (see "Living Things Make Political Point With Guitars, Blow-Up Dolls"). The group's 2005 Ahead of the Lions album is also full of incendiary songs like "Bombs Below" and "Bom Bom Bom," but Lillian said he never imagined another band would attack him onstage for "exercising our freedom of speech."
The two groups shared a bill again on Thursday at the Nova Rock Festival in Nickelsdorf, Austria, but Lillian said he did not see any members of Alter Bridge all day.
U.S. Marine Apologizes For Offensive 'Hadji Girl' Video
Albums like the recently released hip-hop project Voices From the Frontline showcase enlisted MCs such as Pyro, Miss Flame and Prophet voicing the frustration and loneliness of life on the war front. But 23-year-old U.S. Marine Corporal Joshua Belile took his recording far beyond simple military musing.
The Marine Corps is investigating whether Belile broke the Uniform Code of Military Justice or the laws of armed conflict by filming a video for his obscenity-laced song "Hadji Girl," in which he sings lighthearted lyrics about killing an Iraqi family.
Because of easy access to computers, miniature video cameras and plug-and-play music-editing software, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have already created one of the biggest archives of songs, movies and digital photos that chronicle the everyday lives of soldiers of any conflict in modern history.
But Muslim-rights groups have complained that the widely circulated four-minute video of Belile performing his song on an acoustic guitar in front of a group of cheering U.S. troops steps over the line of commentary.
The "Hadji Girl" video finds the Marine singing lines such as, "I grabbed her little sister and put her in front of me/ As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes/ And then I laughed maniacally ... I blew those little f---ers to eternity ... They should have known they were f---ing with the Marines."
The word "hajji" (which has several spellings) describes a person who has made the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, but U.S. troops in Iraq have also reportedly adopted the term as an insult. In addition to its offensive content, the timing of the video is unfortunate for the Marine Corps, which is in the midst of an investigation into the role of Marines in the deaths of 24 civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha in November (see "Pentagon Finds Haditha Cover-Up; 'Values' Training Ordered For Troops").
The Marine Corps is also investigating whether Belile — who returned from Iraq in March — broke military law by writing the offensive song and singing it in front of an audience of soldiers. In a statement, the Marine Corps says the video is "clearly inappropriate and contrary to the high standards expected of all Marines. The video is not reflective of the tremendous sacrifices and dedication demonstrated, on a daily basis, by tens of thousands of Marines who have assisted the Iraqi people in gaining their freedom."
Marine spokesperson Major Shawn Haney said the Marine Corps is conducting a preliminary investigation into the incident that is expected to last several days. After that fact-finding probe, the military will decide if a formal investigation is warranted, which could result in disciplinary action.
"Any inappropriate behavior is always looked into," Major Haney said, cautioning that there has not yet been any determination as to whether the video breaks any military rules. "We are Marines 24 hours a day, so our conduct reflects the Marine Corps at all times."
Haney said the video is believed to have been recorded during Belile's deployment in Iraq from August 2005 until March 2006.
Belile, who is stationed at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina, is a member of a band called the Sweater Kittenz. He told the Jacksonville, North Carolina, Daily News that the song was "supposed to be funny," with lyrics based on lines from the 2004 satirical war movie "Team America: World Police" by "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
"It's a song that I made up and it was nothing more than something supposed to be funny, based off a catchy line of a movie," Belile said. "I apologize for any feelings that may have been hurt in the Muslim community. This song was written in good humor and not aimed at any party, foreign or domestic."
The military investigation was spurred by a call from Washington, D.C.'s Council on American-Islamic Relations, which asked the Pentagon and Congress to look into the video. The clip first appeared in March on YouTube and was viewed by 50,000 people before being taken down following CAIR's complaint.
"The military has reacted appropriately and the person involved has apologized," said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. "We welcome the apology and are leaving it to the Pentagon to see if disciplinary action is warranted, but our concern is that it creates a negative impression of our nation's military. We're also concerned that it may be symptomatic of a callousness that is developing against Iraqi civilians, which is also not good for the military or for their image in the Muslim world."
Hooper said the "Hadji Girl" video is not the first example of members of the military posting inappropriate material on the Internet. "There have been several incidents in the past, including one in which a soldier sent a picture on the Internet that claimed to mock some Iraqi children," he said.
Helmet's Hamilton To Today's Punk Stars: Get Off Of My Lawn!
Page Hamilton, the prolific guitarist behind the thunderous hardcore outfit Helmet, is just going to assume that most of the kids attending this summer's Warped Tour don't know who the hell he is — or that his band's back catalog influenced perhaps half of the bands on this year's bill. But that's fine by him.
For Hamilton, playing Warped — something Helmet have never done before, although they've been asked several times since the tour's inception a dozen years ago — is all about challenging the audience (see "Warped Tour Kicking Off A Day Early — Dates And Venues Revealed").
"We did the SnoCore tour last year, and you could see 15-year-old girls who were horrified," he said. "If Helmet goes over their heads, or is too frightening for them, I can't really worry about it. Would I like them to like it? Yes. Do I think they would benefit from it? Yes.
"Being challenged is a positive thing," he continued. "There's some meat on [Helmet's] bones, musically, and I don't expect that you're going to hear any odd time signatures in straight-ahead punk rock these days. I don't know many of the bands on the [Warped] bill."
Hamilton — who has been rehearsing in New York this week in preparation for his band's headlining stint on Warped, which kicks off June 15 in Columbia, Maryland, and features Motion City Soundtrack, Thursday, Rise Against and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts — is in his late 40s, and just couldn't care less about appeasing today's punk and hardcore fans.
"I hear so many bands that, to me, I can't distinguish between them," he said, talking about the current scene. "It's sort of like, 'Insert four guys with tattoos here.' And it's pseudo-hardcore or pseudo-punk rock or emo. It just seems like you get your 'Rock Star 101' manual and fill in the blanks. This music just doesn't interest me at this point in my life."
Perhaps this irreverent attitude played a role in the band's formal divorce from longtime label Interscope Records late last year; Helmet's forthcoming sixth album, Monochrome, the follow-up to 2004's Size Matters, will be released by Warcon Enterprises, the label co-owned by Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman and the founder and CEO of Concrete Marketing, Bob Chiappardi, on July 18.
"It's always that sort of nebulous ground of 'Do they not want you around anymore?' or 'Do you want out?' " Hamilton said. "[For major labels,] it's about hits," he said.
"I write and sing and play all the songs in Helmet, and there's no team of songwriters behind me. I mean, Beyoncé must have a thousand people involved in every album. It's just a different world. Sure, you feel the pressure occasionally of, 'You should think about your image,' or 'You should write a radio-friendly song.' That's not why I do it. Helmet will be what I'm known for, and at this point, it doesn't make sense to fit in with what's going on in order to have some sort of commercial success."
In addition to working on his own material with Helmet — which is now Hamilton, guitarist Chris Traynor, drummer Mike Jost and bassist Jeremy Chatelain — and his Warped plans for this summer, Hamilton continues to produce albums for other bands, despite the fact that he's "not a hitmaker." Last year, he produced Distort Yourself, the debut by former Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale's new band, Institute. On April 11, Orange County neo-punks Bullets and Octane released In the Mouth of the Young, another Hamilton production.
In recent months, Hamilton has also worked with Northern Californian hard rockers Totimoshi and Australian outfit the Exploders, and has been approached about producing New England metallers Shadows Falls' Atlantic Records debut. He has been brainstorming with Bless the Nation, a New York-based rap collective who he says "will freak people out," and has met with pianist Guyora Katz, as well.
"I won't guarantee you'll have a multi-platinum record, but I'll make it sound better," he said of his production work. "I have heard some albums I didn't get the gig for, and it's like, 'Wow, that is not what I envisioned that becoming at all.' "
One such record was Avenged Sevenfold's most recent album, City of Evil, which "I was very disappointed in," Hamilton said. "I wanted to do it because I heard this Iron Maiden thing they had going. Bullets and Octane are friends with them and told me they can play, but you wouldn't know it from the record. The approach they took was completely wrong.
"We all make mistakes," he concluded. "I have made plenty, although I am not embarrassed by anything we've done."
Only Heavyweights Need Apply To Busta's Big Bang Tour
If you want to know how Busta Rhymes has lasted so long in the rap game, you don't have to look any further than the stage. Bus is arguably hip-hop's king of the stage, and this summer, he'll be giving refresher courses at a venue near you on The Big Bang Tour.
"We're planning the tour right now," he said on Monday in New York while pushing his new LP, The Big Bang (see "Busta Rhymes Album Preview: Bus Gets Deep About The Big Bang"). "I can't officially disclose [who I'm bringing on the road yet], but it's probably going to be one of the biggest tours this summer because, for the most part, it's only heavyweights on this lineup.
"I'm not saying that some of the new dudes ain't heavyweights, but you might be a new dude that got a smash right now, but what I mean by heavyweights is that you got a catalog of smashes," he added. "Which means you can take people through a timeline of hit records and you can put on a show for a lengthy amount of time and really give people their money's worth. Two, three songs, you might be able to come on and open as opening act."
Before he goes on tour, you might see Busta cruising the streets to see who is pumping his album. Rhymes said he wants feedback on what people are feeling about his album.
"The album got pushed back a couple of times because we wasn't feeling like it was 100 percent the way we wanted it to be," he said. "We felt if we waited this long, it made no sense of rushing it. Let's just get it right. That was Dr. Dre's whole philosophy: Get it right. Nobody is going to be mad if the project is a success. The more we worked, the hotter things were turning out anyway. So pushing it back was a matter of our personal liking to be satisfied. I'm extremely excited about the album coming out right now."
The Big Bang has already yielded two singles.
"I decided to follow up ['Touch It'] with 'I Love My Bitch' because now that I had the feel-good energy coming back, I wanted to keep it in the club. I also felt like I wanted a global record that could be shot down by no genre, no race. ... Love your chick, and chick, love your dude."
One of the songs that means the most to Busta is "New York Sh--," which is becoming a hometown anthem for the Big Apple.
"DJ Scratch produced the track," he said. "It felt like New York needed to have that sound, that identity of New York, to be brought back to New York. I don't think my album would have felt the same without that record on it."
Busta shot a video for "New York Sh--" with Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick, Wu-Tang Clan and Rakim on June 4. Part of the video was filmed during Hot 97's Summer Jam (see "Where's The Beef? T.I., Busta, Mary J., Diplomats Keep Summer Jam Light On Drama").
Radiohead Debut Seven New Songs, Please Crowd With Hits At NYC Show
NEW YORK — In the past decade, Radiohead have been called dour scientists who use the stage as a sonic laboratory. But during the first their of two shows at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, they were more like excited kids on a playground filled with exotic toys.
Singer Thom Yorke shook invisible maracas, twitched and talked into his guitar pickups as his bandmates wove a backdrop of skewed rhythms, unsettling noises and skittering electronic beats, which coalesced with Yorke's pained, elliptical vocals.
For some, this type of high art is sobering. For Radiohead, it's simply a blast. Clearly the bandmembers — Yorke, guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway — are meticulous about writing songs, but playing them is another matter. During the show, they grinned constantly, gleefully conjuring dizzying arrays of sounds from their main instruments, as well as a variety of pianos, samplers, stage drums and an electronic gizmo that looked like an oversized PSP. Even Yorke was in a spiritually sound place.
"I'm gonna have to try out the drum set later," he quipped before the new song "Bangers 'N' Mash," then laughed as a small kit was placed to the side of his mic stand.
The older songs Radiohead played were culled predominantly from the angular electronic rock material of 2000's Kid A and 2001's Amnesiac, and they worked well alongside the seven new songs. Not that they're returning to the enigmatic drum-and-bass clatter of "Everything in Its Right Place" or "National Anthem" — they're simply reclaiming their role as modern innovators after their somewhat lackluster 2003 disc Hail to the Thief.
Four songs into the two-hour concert, Radiohead introduced fans to the first new number, "15 Step," which featured soulful vocals, a jittery beat, artificial handclaps and watery slivers of jazz guitar before launching into a combination of galactic keyboards and hiccupy guitar noises.
Two of the new numbers rocked harder than anything Radiohead have done since OK Computer's "Paranoid Android." "Bodysnatchers" combined Yorke's trademark wail with the quirky dissonance of Sonic Youth and the drone of Velvet Underground, and the aforementioned "Bangers 'N' Mash" was a raw, propulsive audio melt of glam riffage, funk drumming and attitude that peaked with a dizzying pregnant pause before diving back into the melee.
The softer songs were equally captivating. During "Videotape," backward-sounding guitar gurgled through major, elegiac piano chords. Halfway in, an ominous beat cut through, and toward the end, O'Brien sat cross-legged twiddling the knobs of various effect pedals while Greenwood hunched over and sawed away at his guitar.
During "Arpeggi," a repeated three-note guitar arpeggio drove the rhythm while Yorke crooned. Sometimes it sounded like all the members were each playing a different song, but their parts intersected.
One of the many highlights, "Down is the New Up," rode a sturdy backbeat over jagged riffs, mournful wails and soulful background vocals, pausing in the appropriate places for textural washes of piano and guitar effects. The only head-scratcher was "House of Cards," a hazy number that resembled a U2 ballad.
While the true excitement of the show came from the sneak preview of new songs, Radiohead also rolled out a cavalcade of hits. "Fake Plastic Trees" showed how organic and vulnerable the band can still sound, while "Street Spirit" and "Lucky" reminded the crowd that Radiohead were a killer mainstream alternative-rock band long before the arrival of Coldplay or Keane.
Near the end of the first encore, Radiohead performed the soaring, arresting title track from their 1995 disc, The Bends. They then moved into Kid A's "Everything in Its Right Place," during which the band built tension gradually over a bed of clicks and blips, then released it all at once in a flood of computerized noise and echoed vocals.
Before releasing Hail to the Thief, Radiohead embarked on a similar series of European and North American dates to road-test their new material. However, while that tour was more of a trial to separate the wheat from the chaff, this time, the band seems proud to exhibit the new songs with the knowledge that they're all winners. For this consistently challenging band, 2007 could be a banner year.
AFI Score First Billboard #1; Ice Cube And Yung Joc Open Big
Prior to the release of 2003's Sing the Sorrow, an album that helped shoot AFI from relative obscurity into the musical mainstream, the Northern California hardcore quartet was largely considered an underground act. But with Decemberunderground the band's seventh studio offering, AFI have proven they're anything but. Following a solid performance during last week's MTV Movie Awards, the androgynous rockers' latest album has helped elevate the band to unfamiliar heights, earning the first Billboard-topping debut of its 15-year career.
Decemberunderground sold more than 182,000 copies during its first week out, ousting the Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way from the album-sales throne it held for two weeks. According to SoundScan, the initial tally for AFI's latest nearly doubles the debut of the band's previous effort — Sing the Sorrow debuted at #5 with 96,000 scans more than three years ago. That album has gone on to sell 1.1 million copies.
"It's an amazing feeling to have something that you believe in so strongly, that is so much a part of you, touch so many people," frontman Davey Havok commented in a press release issued late Tuesday. "But it was truly our fans that did this. They have brought us this recognition and we are deeply honored. I am truly elated not just for us but for them as well. This is one for the team."
But the Dixie Chicks didn't go down without putting up a fight. Taking the Long Way slides one spot on the chart to #2, with sales coming in at close to 175,000. And while AFI put up the strongest debut, 25 other fresh releases crack the next Billboard top 200 — with four discs bowing in the top 10.
Opening at #3 is rapper Yung Joc's inaugural LP New Joc City, which put up first-week sales of more than 148,000, besting Ice Cube's latest, Laugh Now, Cry Later, by nearly 4,000 copies. Cube controls the #4 spot, followed at #5 by the soundtrack to the Disney Channel original movie "High School Musical," with close to 87,000 scans. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium is at #6 with 86,000 units sold.
The soundtrack to the box office-busting animated film "Cars," featuring tracks from Sheryl Crow, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley, debuts in the #7 slot with 68,000 in sales, followed at #8 by chart regulars Rascal Flatts' Me & My Gang with week-10 scans reported at just under 66,000. Rihanna's Girl Like Me climbs two spots to #9, moving more than 51,000 units, followed at #10 by the 21st installment in the Now That's What I Call Music! compilation series, which netted another 49,000 in retail sales.
The rest of the chart is spattered with newcomers, including Terror Squad's DJ Khaled and his Listennn. . .The Album, which claims #12 with 44,000 copies sold — just behind Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere, which jumps three spots to #11 with nearly 48,000 scans. Gnarls Barkley's "Star Wars"-inspired performance at the MTV Movie Awards must have been persuasive, as sales of the disc received a 32 percent boost in the televised ceremony's wake.
The double-disc Warped Tour '06 compilation, featuring tracks by Underoath, NOFX, Helmet, Saves the Day and Motion City Soundtrack, among others, opens at #27, selling 30,000 copies during its first week in stores. Koast II Koast, the latest from the Kottonmouth Kings, follows at #39 with 21,000 scans, while Head Automatica's sophomore outing, Popaganda, debuts at #69 with close to 15,000 week-one sales. Zero 7's Garden lays claim to the #94 position after generating sales of around 11,000, while Cheap Trick's Rockford takes the #101 spot with close to 11,000 scans.
Elvis Costello is back in action with River in Reverse, which sits at #103 after more than 10,000 copies were snatched up during the album's first week in stores. Donavon Frankenreiter's Move by Yourself follows at #105 with 10,000 scans, just in front of Katie Melua's Piece By Piece, in at #108 with sales nearing 10,000.
SMACK: Streets Music Arts Culture & Knowledge — The Album, Volume 1, the first official release in the popular street DVD series, comes in at #120 with 8,000 units sold. The CD/DVD set boasts contributions from DMX, B.G., PNC and Juvenile, Redman, Eric Sermon and Keith Murray. The Bouncing Souls' The Gold Record opens at #141 with nearly 7,000 in sales. Paul Oakenfold's A Lively Mind ends the week with 6,000 scans, for a #145 debut, while (hed) pe's Back 2 Base claims the #154 slot with 6,000 sales.
Unsound, a compilation featuring From First to Last, Matchbook Romance, Converge and Bad Religion, takes the #172 spot with more than 5,000 scans, outselling Hopelessly Devoted to You, Vol. 6, a collection featuring tracks by Thrice and Avenged Sevenfold, by 23 copies (the latter finishes at #173). It's Alive, the latest from the Todd Rundgren-fronted New Cars, debuts at #193 with 5,000 copies sold.
Appearing on the "American Idol" finale two weeks ago really paid off for Live, whose latest album, Songs From Black Mountain, finally makes the chart five weeks after its initial release. With sales of 18,000 (a 570 percent increase), Live's album occupies the #52 spot.
'The Fast And The Furious' — Now With Brains Under The Hood
Its five-word title instantly invokes everything associated with one of the most popular, and harshly reviewed, movie franchises of the past decade — not to mention the questions that accompany any new installment of a film series. The Fast and the Furious" movies have made so much money being brainless, why should artistic-minded people put any real effort into a sequel? If the series' stars are missing, how can it still be considered a blockbuster? If there's no narrative thread throughout the series, why would audiences want to see it concluded?
Such queries have plagued 33-year-old director Justin Lin and his daring, largely unknown cast ever since they were handed the keys to the "Furious" franchise. When it came time to find answers, they insist it was just a matter of making sure that the audience got their drift.
"Let's be realistic, there's a lot of cynicism," Lin said recently of the challenges of bringing "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" to the big screen. "People feel like, by the time it hits part three, it's about recycling."
Another way to look at it is that Lin, the Taiwanese director who kicked down Hollywood's door four years ago with the indie hit "Better Luck Tomorrow," suddenly gained access to a toybox that would make even the most seasoned filmmakers salivate — and the last thing he was going to do with it was recycle.
"This is way different," insisted Bow Wow, who plays a car-racing con artist in the flick that explores a slick-wheeled Japanese racing phenomenon. "The styles of racing in the first two were basically similar, and in this one we're introducing a whole new style of racing called drifting. Also, there's just the fact that it takes place in a whole entirely different country.
"Once we went to the first meetings, the discussion was, 'How can we make it different and better and bigger than the first two?' " the 19-year-old star added. "We had to make it happen."
The result is — as you'd expect — an eardrum-assailing, lightning-paced, adrenaline-pumping thrill ride that might send your bag of popcorn flying through the air. The real shock, however, is that it's the first "Furious" movie with a brain under the hood.
"It's a self-discovery movie," Lin insisted, equating the story of street racer Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) to his own experiences as an Asian filmmaker navigating Hollywood. "This is really, at the end of the day, about this kid who is outside and comes into town. He gets into trouble and boom, boom, boom, you have the final showdown. ... He could be an outsider if he was living in L.A. or New York, just as much as Tokyo. And he defines himself as an outsider."
Lin made plenty of outsider decisions himself while injecting "Drift" with the one special effect that fans may find even more powerful than a tank of nitrous oxide: passion.
It was important to Lin that he told an outsider tale with as much power behind the plot as in the franchise's trademark cars, and it was equally important that he be able to bring some loyal friends along with him. Never was that more obvious than at the film's recent gala premiere, featuring a red carpet as gridlocked as Los Angeles' 405 freeway.
"I'm not going to lie and say it's easy," insisted Jason Tobin, a Hong Kong actor who appears in "Drift," his first summer blockbuster, after more than a decade attempting to crack Hollywood's racial barriers. "But I think [Hollywood's racial make-up] is changing, and what's great about being an Asian-American actor is that at least you're part of something special. You do see the crest coming over, and it's about to break, and you're part of that.
"The fact that I was in 'Fast and the Furious,' that's so cool," continued Tobin, one of the many actors Lin has brought along for his post-"BLT" adventures. "People say to me, 'Hey, you're in that groundbreaking Asian-American film,' and I'm like, wow, that makes me proud.""It's still funny sometimes," Lin added, saying that as passionately as he felt about exposing American audiences to his world, he realized on day one of the "Drift" shoot that he was still working in theirs. "The first day of my big movie, I drive on the set and the security won't let me in. They thought I was a P.A. [production assistant]! It happens all the time. Every time I go to a meeting, they're like, 'So, what are you delivering?'
"It constantly slaps me in the face, that I'm still perceived as a bit of an outsider," Lin lamented. "But it's cool."
Once the cameras started rolling, Bow Wow insisted, everyone was on an equal plane. "Out of all the directors I've worked with so far in my movie career, me and Justin really hit it off," he said. "We've just got so much in common, with us talking trash on the set about basketball — he knows I'm a Lakers fan, he's not a really big Lakers fan, and he used to tease me about that. It's just those types of things that can really bring everybody together. And he's one of the quickest directors I've ever worked with. That's how I like to work, at a very fast pace."
As it stands, "Tokyo Drift" is much like its director: fast, intelligent and unafraid to push some boundaries. And if audiences can get themselves past all that aforementioned baggage, Justin Lin and his cast are happy to take them on a very different kind of ride.
Turn Your Myspace into a Club, or any other site for that matter.
 There have been a lot of people to ask me about the turntables that I have up on this site and on my myspace page. Well after some long testing I have finally released the code for the public to use in their websites. Just go to www.djsonaronline.com/turntables.html and copy the code from their and post it where ever you like. These turntables will keep updating so you will get new music as well as new scratches and sound effects. In addition I am going to release codes for trance, house, break beat and drum and bass in the near future. In the mean time, just paste this code in your myspace and have a fun time cutting it up. And any suggestions about how to make them better will be much appreciated. Get the code here.
Oprah Says She Doesn't Have Beef With Hip-Hop
Oprah Winfrey says it's time to stop the hullabaloo: She's got no beef with hip-hop.
"I'm not opposed to rap," the mogul said Saturday in Manhattan while celebrating L.A. Reid's 50th birthday with Jay-Z, Young Jeezy, Babyface, Janet Jackson and Ciara.
The question of whether or not Winfrey likes hip-hop arose in recent weeks after Ludacris and Ice Cube alleged that they've been mistreated by her. Luda says some of his comments about hip-hop lyrics were unfairly edited out of Oprah's show when he went on late last year to promote "Crash." Ice Cube says Winfrey insulted him several years ago after inviting castmembers of "Barbershop" on her program but excluding him.
"Maybe she's got a problem with hip-hop," Ice Cube told FHM magazine recently. "She's had damn rapists, child molesters and lying authors on her show. And if I'm not a rags-to-riches story for her, who is?"
50 Cent has also publicly scoffed at Oprah, saying she doesn't make efforts to appeal to hip-hop fans.
"I don't have an opinion, because I am my own person," Oprah said on the birthday party's red carpet. "I respect other people's rights to do whatever they want to do in music and art and whatever. So I am my own person, they are their own people. I respect their rights.
"I am a woman who has worked very hard for my status in the world and as a human being," she added. "I don't want to be marginalized by music or any form of art. ... I feel rap is a form of expression, as is jazz. I'm not opposed to rap. I'm opposed to being marginalized as a woman."
Early last week, Ludacris, while promoting the basketball documentary "Heart of the Game," said that despite the rumors, he is not calling for a boycott of Winfrey's show. He said he would go back on the program if it were filmed live. He also said Oprah should invite a gaggle of MCs on at one time to have an intelligent discussion about hip-hop.
Panic! At The Disco Split Gets Nasty: Band Alleges Wilson Did Not Play On LP
The split between Panic! at the Disco and former bassist Brent Wilson just got a whole lot nastier, with both sides hurling unpleasant accusations at each other.
On Monday (June 12), MTV News spoke to Wilson at his home in Las Vegas, and it quickly became clear that he was in no mood to make nice with his former bandmates.
"I was kicked out of the band," he said. ""It was 100 percent a surprise to me. We were about to leave for a show in California, and they called me the night before and told me I was out of the band. The only reason they gave was that it was for 'musical purposes.' Everything was good and fine, we had just gotten back from a tour in Europe, and there had been no previous conversations about anyone leaving the band. I don't know why they chose me."
Of course, that story is in stark contrast to the one Panic told MTV News last month, when guitarist Ryan Ross said the split was "a decision we all came to as a band" (see "Panic! At The Disco Claim Split With Bassist Was Amicable, Mutual Decision").
"The [story] they told you made me really angry, because they said the matter was discussed as a band, and it wasn't discussed at all," Wilson said. "It was done as a phone call and the only person who spoke was [drummer] Spencer [Smith]. Apparently [frontman] Brendon [Urie] and Ryan were on the speakerphone too, but they didn't say a word. They never even said they were sorry."
And it's a pretty safe bet to say that Wilson won't be getting that apology anytime soon, because when MTV News reached out to Panic for comment on the matter, the bandmembers didn't pull any punches.
"We made the decision based on Brent's lack of responsibility and the fact that he wasn't progressing musically with the band," Smith said in a lengthy e-mail message. "Brent did not write any of his bass parts on the record. Brent did not record one note of bass on the record. Brendon and Ryan wrote all of the bass parts and Brendon recorded all of the bass parts. We had to simplify some of the bass parts that were recorded because Brent could not play them live.
"Our record would've sounded absolutely the same even if Brent wasn't in the band during the writing or recording process," he continued. "These are all things that only a few people know, and we were fine with that. Stating these things would only make Brent look bad and we had no intention of doing that."
Wilson also claimed that his departure means he'll miss out on the hefty financial windfall Panic was set to receive as part of their headlining tour, which kicked off last Tuesday (see "Panic! At The Disco Announce First Headlining North American Tour"). He says he can't help but think that the two factors were related.
"We were about to start a tour where the band would've been bringing home around $300,000, or something like $50,000 apiece, and basically they kicked me out, so the question about money goes through my head a lot," he said. "And I believe it. Brendan and Ryan can both play multiple instruments and Spencer handles a lot of the business, so that sort of leaves me as the odd person out."
Panic contend that this statement just isn't true, and that most of the money the band is set to make on the tour is being spent before it even materializes, on expensive stage props and guest performers (Los Angeles-based Vaudeville troupe Lucent Dossier was recently added to the bill for all shows).
"Anyone who goes to a show on this tour will see that we have a lot of production on the road with us," Smith wrote. "We are basically breaking even with the amount of money it is costing us to put on the show that we want to put on. So any statements from Brent about the amount of money that we are bringing in on this tour are uninformed. Brent showed no interest in the business side of the band, therefore he really doesn't have any idea what is going on money-wise with the band. ... We have never and will never make any decisions with this band based on money."
Wilson declined to comment on whether he plans to pursue legal action against his former band, but claimed that he's not looking for a big payday. He just wants the band's fans to know what happened.
"Panic was my life. I'm 18 and I thought I had things figured out: I gave up baseball in high school because of this band, and I could've gotten a college scholarship," he said. "Now I'm taking some classes and my dad owns his own business, so I'm helping him out. But I'm not going to lie: The whole thing is really difficult. I never thought my best friends would do this to me."
As for Panic, Smith said they'd like to put the whole thing behind them.
"With all of this being said, we hope we can move past this and continue to grow as a band," Smith wrote. "We would like to thank every single person who has supported us for the past few weeks and look forward to seeing you all in the near future."
Korn's Jonathan Davis Hospitalized With Blood Ailment; Tour Canceled
Korn frontman Jonathan Davis was admitted to a London hospital over the weekend for treatment of a blood disorder called immune thrombocytopenic purpura, forcing the band to pull out of at least one European festival gig and deliver an abbreviated set with guest singers at Saturday's U.K. Download Festival. According to a band spokesperson, Davis may be sidelined for the next three weeks, as he continues to recover.
Korn, who did not perform at Ireland's Download Festival on Sunday, are also expected to cancel a performance at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam on Tuesday; the remainder of the band's European tour has been canceled.
A post from Davis on Korn's official Web site confirmed the illness — a disorder in which a low blood-platelet count prohibits the blood from clotting as it should.
"I started getting these weird bruises all over my body about two weeks ago," Davis wrote. "I was getting very weak after the shows so I saw a doctor in London Friday. He took some blood tests and when the results came in, they rushed me to the hospital. It turned out that I have ITP ... a blood infection where, because of an allergic reaction I had to some medication, my blood platelets were really low. If I continued to headbang onstage, I could have had a brain hemorrhage and dropped dead on the spot."
According to Davis, while most people have between 140 and 400 platelets in their blood cells, "I had 5 — no joke." He has been ordered by his doctors to remain under the hospital's supervision until "they [can] get my blood in some kind of healthy shape. The doctors are telling me that each day I've been here in the hospital, my platelet count has been going up and I should be healthy to play in a few weeks. The doctors have cleared me to walk around a bit but I am unable to perform a show or travel right now. We will do our very best to come back soon to play any dates we are unable to play on this tour."
During the U.K.'s Download Festival, which took place at Donington Park, Korn delivered an abbreviated 30-minute set with guest singers filling in for Davis.
When guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer, bassist Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu and drummer David Silveria took the stage, a bandmember told the crowd, "We've had some issues" but would "play on with some friends of ours," the Download Festival site reports.
Korn recruited a number of artists to stand in for Davis. Jesse Hasek of 10 Years grabbed the microphone for "It's On!" while Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows belted out "Falling Away From Me." Former Coal Chamber and current DevilDriver frontman Dez Fafara handled vocals for "Somebody, Someone" and "Coming Undone," and Skindred's Benji Webbe tackled "A.D.I.D.A.S." Slipknot/ Stone Sour singer Corey Taylor performed "Clown" and "Freak on a Leash" and Trivium's Matt Heafy joined the band for "Blind."
According to a press release issued Monday afternoon (June 12), Korn are still expected to headline this year's 30-city Family Values Tour, which kicks off July 27 in Virginia Beach, Virginia (see "Korn Resurrect Family Values Tour With Deftones, Stone Sour "). The Deftones, Stone Sour, Flyleaf and Dir En Grey are also on the mainstage bill, with the second-stage bill to be announced in the coming weeks.
"We were truly looking forward to playing the rest of the overseas dates," the members of Korn said in a joint statement. "So we have tremendous regrets about not being able to connect with our fans, whom we know are the best in the world. We want to thank them for their understanding and loyal support — and, at the same time, let them know that we will see them when we return to Europe."
Video Game Chastising McDonald's Business Practices Too Good To Be True
For anyone anxious about global warming or just angry with the creators of the Big Mac, the new McDonald's video game presented at a conference in England on June 5 seemed almost too good to be true.
Andrew Shimmery-Wolf, an executive at a little-known interactive division of the burger giant, took his turn in a keynote address to kick off the International Serious Games Event, alongside developers and companies like Nokia and British Petroleum, showcasing "serious games" designed to express political and social views.
What Shimmery-Wolf showed was a game that indicted McDonald's' business practices.
Shimmery-Wolf and a colleague told the ISGE audience that a team of developers had cooked up a training tool for McDonald's managers and executives that took the form of a video game simulation of business, agriculture and the global climate. And what they found, he said, is that earnest McDonald's employees kept striving for virtual success in ways that wound up destroying the world.
"We tried to tell the players to do fewer of the things that were leading to calamity," he said, "to reduce emissions, stop cutting forests, etc. But they didn't. ... They might hold out for a while, but as soon as one took off towards greater profits, the rest did as well."
The game was an alarm from within, Shimmery-Wolf announced, alerting the company of the dangers of McDonald's' practices. "Although top management didn't react, many of the new hires who played it did and took the results to heart." And with that, he said, McDonald's Interactive intended to break away from the parent company to try and make things right.
Attendees were shocked and enthused. "I fully expected the guy to be sacked upon his return to work," said ISGE attendee Kevin Corti, the managing director of serious games company PIXELearning. "I can certainly confirm that the presentation had the halls alive with discussion afterwards."
Reached by phone on Thursday, a McDonald's Interactive representative told MTV News that the audience was clearly energized by the speech. "These are not revolutionaries in the audience," he said. "And yet as soon as McDonald's was saying to the audience, 'We are ready for revolution,' they were saying, 'OK. Let's go.' "
There was just one problem: The presentation was a hoax.
McDonald's Interactive isn't part of McDonald's. There never was a McDonald's Interactive video game.
Reached for comment Friday (June 9), McDonald's spokesperson Julie Pottebaum said, "This is an outright hoax and a complete misrepresentation of our people and our values. Anyone who knows the facts about McDonald's' social responsibility track record knows that we're a recognized leader on the environment."
The man who spoke to MTV News representing "Andrew Shimmery-Wolf" is a 37-year-old Parisian whose first name is Jean-Michel. His last name is as secret as the roster of five current and former McDonald's employees who joined him at the ISGE to pull one over on the estimated 100 game developers and corporate citizens in attendance.
"We did feel a little guilty," said Jean-Michel, who played a nonspeaking role in the hoax. But he felt fooling the well-meaning conference attendees had great merit. "We wanted people to imagine a real popular uprising as a possible and necessary thing. We wanted people to imagine that change. We wanted them to imagine it is coming from McDonald's."
ISGE's chief organizer, Dan Licari, did not respond to requests from MTV News for comment. "He can't be blamed, because nobody checks credentials for these conferences," said attendee Lisa Galarneau.
According to people involved in the hoax, the McDonald's Interactive charade began accidentally in early April, when an ISGE organizer reached out to the developers of a computer game called "McVideoGame" and mistook the satirical program for a product of the real McDonald's. In an e-mail, an anonymous member of the Italian consortium Molleindustria, which created "McVideoGame," said conference organizers wrote them a note that stated: "It would be a fantastic PR opportunity, let alone a chance for you to see what other organizations have achieved with Serious Games."
Sensing an opportunity, the Molleindustria team reached out to the loosely organized group to which Jean-Michel belongs. That group had called itself the McDonald's Resistance Collective and drew inspiration from a six-month 2003 occupation of a McDo restaurant — as they are called in France — to resist what members saw as unjust treatment of store employees and the environment. Jean-Michel said he and another McDonald's Interactive planner were among the strikers at the occupied restaurant in 2003.
They hatched a plan to exploit the ISGE's assumption that the conference was dealing with the real McDonald's. " 'Do we want to make it completely believable?' " Jean-Michel remembered the team asking. " 'Or do we want to do something very crazy and funny that will shock them and make them laugh?' We decided to do something serious because it is a serious issue."
They concocted screenshots for their nonexistent game, designed a professional-looking McDonaldsInteractive.com Web site and crafted their cover story about a breakaway division of the burger giant.
They reached out to the YesMen, a group of activists who managed to pull off a hoax presentation at a World Trade Organization meeting in 1999 and were advised to practice their story. They covered most bases, and according to attendees, there was little skepticism during the actual presentation.
By Monday evening, gaming blogs began to report about a stunning speech that had been made by McDonald's employees at a serious-game conference. Shortly thereafter, they began to sniff out the ruse. The McDonald's Interactive site had only been registered for a couple of months. Photos of the event seemed to peg the YesMen as the hoax's presenters.
Galarneau, who runs SocialStudyGames.com and gave a presentation at the conference, said she is 95 percent sure the YesMen were there. Jean-Michel would not deny their presence at the conference and admitted that the YesMen had, at the very least, advised his group to go ahead with the hoax and "not to worry about legal problems."
Since the big reveal, some ISGE attendees have expressed bemusement. Jean-Michel claimed that conference organizer Dan Licari called a colleague and said it was "very funny." But PIXELearning's Corti had a different reaction.
"I can't help but think that the perpetrators have used an event, a group of people and an industry that I would have thought they should be engaging with in a more constructive manner," he said in an e-mail. "They have damaged a fledgling event that was organized by a university, not an 'evil' [corporation], personally embarrassed the organizers, potentially annoyed other keynote presenters and, when small companies like mine are struggling to gain contracts to pay our staff, hurt those that could perhaps help them the most. To that extent, I have to say that I think it was ill-judged."
Now "McDonald's Interactive" is considering making a documentary about their presentation. "We will spend some time putting together a film about the event and seeing what distribution channels will like it," Jean-Michel said. "We want it to give hope and show that we are a mouse's width away from rebellion."
Dick Cheney Might Want To Be Your MySpace Buddy
That joke you made on your MySpace page about taking flying lessons but only wanting to learn how to land? The pictures of you posing with a fake rocket launcher? Sure, they seem funny now, but if the National Security Administration has its way, all of that information could go down on your permanent record, or into a security profile that could land you on a terror watch list.
According to a report on NewScientist.com, the Web site for the long-running British technology magazine, the National Security Administration is funding research into the "mass harvesting" of information people post about themselves on social-networking sites like Friendster and MySpace.
"I am continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves," said Jon Callas, chief security officer at the international encryption software company PGP.
New Scientist reported that the NSA, known for eavesdropping and code-breaking — and, more recently, for cataloging domestic phone records and monitoring overseas phone calls as part of its controversial warrantless wiretapping program (see "NSA Out To Track 'Every Call Ever Made'; Bush Calls Move 'Lawful' ") — is trying to figure out a way to use advances in Internet technology to combine data from social-networking Web sites with details such as banking, retail and property records. According to the site, that treasure trove of personal information would allow the NSA to build "extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals."
Even as the White House has urged Congress not to investigate the NSA's actions on wiretapping — there were reports this week that Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied telephone companies not to discuss classified information about domestic intelligence programs with the Senate Judiciary Committee — the NSA is pursuing plans to tap the Web as a deeper resource of information.
While phone records can help build a very basic picture of someone's web of contacts and show how many degrees separate each member of a group, NewScientist reports that by adding social-networking information to the phone data, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels through shared activities and interests, like taking flying lessons.
If your page links to your friends' blogs and includes details about political, sexual or media preferences, that information could be used to build a more detailed profile, which Callas said is another reason users should think twice about the personal information they are posting for the world to see.
"You should always assume anything you write online is stapled to your résumé," Callas told New Scientist. "People don't realize you get Googled just to get a job interview these days."
Data on the Web currently comes in a variety of incompatible formats that makes it difficult for the NSA to combine social-networking details with information on purchases, your movements (which are trackable through cell-phone records) and major financial transactions like buying a house — but that day might arrive soon. Over the next few years, New Scientist reports that the rise of the "semantic Web" could help iron out those incompatibilities using the Resource Description Framework, a common structure that will give all that data easily identifiable tags.
"RDF turns the Web into a kind of universal spreadsheet that is readable by computers as well as people," said David de Roure of Britain's University of Southampton. The magazine cautions that the NSA has not announced a plan to mine social networks using the semantic Web, but its interest in the technology was revealed in a funding footnote on a research paper titled, "Semantic Analytics on Social Networks," that was delivered at a gathering of Internet experts in May.
The footnote indicated that the paper was funded in part by the Advanced Research Development Activity, an organization that spends NSA money on research to "solve some of the most critical problems facing the U.S. intelligence community." One of the main jobs of ARDA (the group's name was recently changed to the Disruptive Technology Office) is to decipher the mountains of data the NSA collects.
Rakim, Common Rock Mics For Rhinos, Freestyle Fiercely For NYC Crowd
NEW YORK — The trailer that doubled as Rakim's dressing room Thursday night resembled a dressing room at an arena like Madison Square Garden or Nassau Coliseum, where he used to rock 20 years ago.
There was champagne flowing, accolades, handshakes and hugs from several of his friends and about a dozen photographers trying to capture images of Ra after he triumphantly laced his following with his classic lyrics and galvanizing beats.
But this wasn't the Garden or the Coliseum: it was Central Park, where Ra, Common, Lupe Fiasco and Rhymefest performed as part of designer Marc Ecko's Save the Rhinos 2nd Annual Benefit Concert.
"I'm in the Garden of Eden right now, Central Park," Rakim said shortly after leaving the stage. "I just got the stamp of approval from Central Park. I got my man Bill Blass, I got Brooklyn with me, my L.I. people, my Bronx people. Detroit is in the house!"
Ra, whose New York concerts have been rare the past several years, started and ended his set the same way — with timeless records.
"Turn up the bass, check out my melody, hand out a cigar," he began rapping, stepping onstage wearing shorts, a green jacket and towel on his head, covered by a matching green fitted cap.
"I'm lettin' knowledge be born," he continued, performing "My Melody," "And my name's the R-A-K-I-M/ Not like the rest of them, I'm not on a list/ That's what I'm sayin', I drop science like a scientist."
With Kid Capri taking the place of Eric B., who spun records for Rakim for years, Ra segued into "Don't Sweat the Technique" and "Follow the Leader," where he hit the crowd with his slow flow while seated in a chair.
Later, Rakim brought out special guest Styles P. of the L.O.X., who said he was like a kid in a candy store. Styles also said that all the fans who didn't know Rakim's music should go and buy all of his albums, especially if they are rappers. Rakim ended his set with fury, closing out with records like "Microphone Fiend," "I Ain't No Joke" and the finale, "Eric B. Is President."
"Tonight, I think it was 'Microphone Fiend' and 'Juice [Know the Ledge],' " Rakim said backstage of his set's highlights. "I was really feeling it from the crowd. This is big.
"It's like, sometimes I can't explain the way it feels to be around the game this long and for them to embrace me the way they do," he added. "I definitely appreciate it, word up. I'mma try to store the moment forever. It's just a beautiful thing. Thanks to the world for supporting all this time."
"When I seen Rakim, I stopped. He was 20 feet away, I couldn't approach him," admitted Lupe Fiasco, who opened the show, as did fellow Chicago MC Rhymefest. "I was like, 'Yo that's Rakim!' I couldn't say nothing. Then he came at me like, 'You gotta do it for hip-hop.' I was like, too much, too much! Rakim? Crazy."
Common was equally giddy to encounter the rap god. Before he went onstage for his set, Common came into Rakim's dressing room and the pair hugged, gave each other props on their music and started talking about possible future collaborations. Then, lo and behold, hip-hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc arrived and everyone took more flicks.
"That threw me off when [Rakim] said we needed that album, Be," Common said. "It was one of the most incredible albums to him. I was like, 'Damn, that's Rakim — he's listening to my stuff.' It's something when the people you grew up listening to are listening to you. I said we need him. I wanna hear some Rakim music. Hopefully we can do something together. We can light it up."
Common was commanding during his set. He had most of the crowd rapping along with every word on records like "Go!," "Be" and "The Light." But there was no mistaking Common's personal highlight: He brought Rakim onstage and the two freestyled off the top of the dome over Busta Rhymes' "New York Sh--" instrumental.
"I'm already excited to talk about that," Common said after the show. "I didn't know Rakim was gonna come up. I got charged and we put on that 'New York' beat. I already planned to rock to that freestyle. And for him to come up, and he started freestyling off the top of the dome. I didn't know he could come like that.
"I knew he was the best on the written side, but he was ripping it on the freestyle. I was like, 'Man, this is the reason I'm rapping.' For real. Rakim, when he made Paid in Full, it was something about his demeanor and the way he carried hip-hop. I was like, 'I wanna be that.' Rakim is usually the unseen MC. For him to be there and open, that was one of my great moments."
Besides celebrating hip-hop, the show was also meant to raise awareness and money for the preservation of rhinoceroses around the world. Designer Marc Ecko, who chose a rhino for his clothing company's logo, started working with the International Rhino Federation about seven years ago to help save the endangered animals. Last year he held a similar benefit concert in Central Park, which featured the Roots and De La Soul.
"These events raise, like, $150,000," Ecko said, "In addition to another couple of hundred thousand we raise during other events in the year."
Jay-Z To Perform Show Commemorating 10th Anniversary of Reasonable Doubt
One man, one night, one album," the show is billed.
Jay-Z has announced a concert commemorating the release of his landmark debut album, Reasonable Doubt, to take place at New York's Radio City Music Hall on June 25 — 10 years to the day after the albums' release.
Hova says he'll perform the entire album, possibly in the order the tracks appear on the LP. "Just maybe, I don't want to put myself in a box," he said when announcing the concert on New York radio station Hot 97 Thursday (June 8) afternoon.
Tickets for the show go on sale Friday, June 9 at 9:00 a.m. (ET).
"Anything can happen," Jay said when asked if he'll perform any other songs from his catalog. "I want the purist to be there — the Reasonable Doubt lovers."
As for the album's guest stars, Mary J. Blige and Foxy Brown have appeared onstage with Jay frequently over the years (see " 'Jay-Z And Friends' To Complete Best Of Both Worlds Tour"), and Memphis Bleek is a regular at most Hova shows. As for "Brooklyn's Finest," the album version of which features Notorious B.I.G., Jay has had the crowd or former Junior Mafia member Lil' Cease perform Big's verses in the past.
Rihanna, MTV Movie Awards Guest-Reporter, Conquers Nerves, Timberlake
CULVER CITY, California — Eighteen-year-old Rihanna is still new to the bright lights, aggressive paparazzi and rapid-fire interviewers of red carpets, let alone the frenzied planning that goes into making one happen.
Regardless, the Barbados-born beauty was up for the challenge when MTV News invited her to guest-report at Saturday's Movie Awards, following in the footsteps of respected celebrities-turned-journalists, like, er, Paris Hilton? Still, holding down the red carpet is no walk in the park. At the start, Rihanna was, in her own words, "very nervous" and in need of a little coaching herself. By the end though, she was "like a pro," even doing a victory dance to celebrate her big get. ( Click here to see Rihanna's night as a guest-reporter.) Here's how the transformation from shaky starlet to star reporter went down: - 11:00 a.m. Rihanna arrives at Sony Pictures Studios directly from Los Angeles International Airport, where she'd flown in from Australia.
- 11:30 a.m. In a red-and-white polka-dot dress, with her hair halfway ready for primetime, Rihanna makes it to the table-read right on time (in fact, earlier than her co-guest reporter, Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz). When Wentz arrives a few minutes later, she tells him, "I love your new video. It's dope. How long did it take to make?" "Three days — well, nights," he replies.
- 11:35 a.m. Rehearsing the opening of the pre-show, Sway asks Rihanna about her recent movie project, "Bring It On: All or Nothing." She tells him she always forgot her lines. Producers chuckle nervously.
- 11:37 a.m. Reading over the script, Rihanna makes a splendid discovery: She's penciled in to interview Justin Timberlake.
- 11:40 a.m. Reading over the script, Rihanna makes a not-so-splendid discovery. She's penciled in to interview Zach Braff. "Who's that?" she whispers to a producer.
- 11:57 a.m. Rihanna sees Owen Wilson's name and asks who he is, only to answer her own question seconds later, realizing, "Oh, 'Wedding Crashers.' " A producer suggests asking about sequel rumors.
- 12:10 p.m. In a rehearsal interview, Rihanna and Pete tag-team a producer pretending to be Borat. Rihanna cracks up at the impersonation, revealing, "I love him."
- 12:30 p.m. The read-through wraps and Rihanna asks the driver of her golf-cart (the choice mode of transport on the Sony lot) if she can take the wheel. "What if I take off my shoes?" she offers. He obliges after she loses her high heels — and Rihanna nearly runs over MTV News' Sway. A few minutes later, a security guard scolds her for driving in the wrong lane.
- 1:27 p.m. Rihanna, her manager and hair and make-up artists engage in a giggly conversation about an episode of "My Super Sweet 16" in which the pop star appeared. "We weren't late, they just did that to add to the drama," she insists.
- 3:00 p.m. Rihanna hits the red carpet (which is actually blue) for a run-through right on time, with her hair now three-fourths finished. She asks the technician if he has a pink earpiece.
- 3:22 p.m. Rihanna conducts her first practice interview with a Will Ferrell stand-in. She asks about a "Wedding Crashers" sequel. Producers are either worried or impressed that she remembered his uncredited part in the comedy.
- 3:40 p.m. Rihanna does a mock interview with one of her managers standing in as Justin Timberlake. It makes her nervous.
- 3:46 p.m. Sway tries to calm her nerves by joking around. "I'm not nervous she's gonna steal my job," he says. "I'm sure I'm as pretty as she is in some people's eyes."
- 3:55 p.m. Pete Wentz kills time by giving Rihanna a guided tour of his tattoos. "You're evil," she replies.
- 4:00 p.m. Rihanna returns to finish her make-up and wardrobe. "This is one of my favorite parts because I just get to sit and get dolled up," she says as she flips through photos on her digital camera.
- 5:20 p.m. Rihanna's name is announced as she hits the carpet and the paparazzi go crazy.
- 5:40 p.m. After stopping to give a few interviews and signing some autographs, Rihanna finally arrives at her station and awaits her first interview. Her publicist grabs her to take some photos with host Jessica Alba, who is not paying much attention. Midway through the photo session, Alba realizes who she's with. "Oh my God, you're so pretty," Alba says. "I love to watch your videos."
- 5:52 p.m. The first interview: LL Cool J. He's talkative. She's at ease.
- 6:15 p.m. Gnarls Barkley's Cee-Lo arrives, sweating buckets in his suit. Rihanna starts the interview but forgets her second question and stops. She starts back at the beginning.
- 6:20 p.m. After Amanda Bynes helps Rihanna settle down by gushing over her music, former pre-show guest host Ludacris approaches with some advice: "Just be yourself," he says. "And make sure MTV pays you. MTV got a lot of money." She laughs.
- 6:40 p.m. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock approach for what is supposed to be a tag-team interview by Rihanna and Sway, but Sway is pulled away at the last minute. Rihanna rehearses her questions with the producer until the second cameras roll, then nails the interview, even ad-libbing a question about romantic movies. Bullock notices a producer smiling and nodding and thinks he's reacting to her answer. "This is two big movie stars!" Rihanna says later. "So when they took Sway away, I was like, 'What?!' But I took care of it."
- 6:55 p.m. As the carpet segment is about to conclude, Rihanna receives word that Justin Timberlake is coming down. She insists on doing another mock interview on the spot to prepare, and goes over her questions a few times until he suddenly appears in front of her. "I'm here with the handsome Justin Timberlake," she begins. "Aw, you're gonna make me blush," he replies. With fantastic chemistry from the start, the interview goes off without a hitch.
- 6:58 p.m. As Timberlake walks away, Rihanna turns to her manager with a huge smile and does a little dance. "I'm a huge fan of Justin Timberlake, so for me to meet and interview him at the same time, my knees were shaking a little bit," she says.
- 7:20 p.m. While walking back to her trailer, Rihanna tells a producer she's ready to do it again. "It was exciting," she says. "But now I see it's not easy. When you're walking the red carpet and you're answering questions, you don't know they have to find out stuff about you first, then think about the best questions to ask and find out how long to take. It was fun, though."
- 7:30 p.m. Think Rihanna's now headed to a plum seat for the awards and an evening on the town? Wrong: She heads straight back the airport to catch a flight to New York. She has to work tomorrow — and not behind the scenes.
Gaming Summit Asks: How Can More Sex Be Worked Into Video Games?
Gaming professionals and enthusiasts are talking about sex in video games Thursday (June 8) in San Francisco, the epicenter of American game development and the staging ground for the Summer of Love.
And what the 150 developers, gamers, lawyers and sex-industry professionals gathered for the inaugural Sex in Video Games Conference want is more of it, not less.
"The perception is video games are for kids," said Brenda Brathwaite, a veteran game designer and the conference organizer. "But people have a right to do this. Don't tell me I have to abide by this little Disney-esque palette. I may never even use the hard-core end of the palette in any game I make. But don't tell me I can't do that."
The two-day event will play host to an array of developers who do intend to use that end of the palette, in everything from games that allow players to meet, flirt and sleep with each other online to single-player computer games that enable adult users to interact with a (usually) female digital model.
The conference will encompass the hard-core and the soft-, showcasing the latest breakthroughs in pornographic games while hosting discussions about how video games affect dating and personal identity. One transgender speaker at the conference, according to Brathwaite, grew up physically male before finding comfort playing online games as a woman.
Not scheduled for discussion is the national trend of states banning, or thinking about banning, violent and sexual video games (see "Is A Senator Trying To Ban Your Favorite Video Game? Web Site Helps You Find Out"). But Brathwaite said that — as well as ratings changes to "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" and "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" (see "Blood, Breasts Lead To New M Rating For 'Elder Scrolls' Game") — helped prompt the 48-hour conference.
Brathwaite isn't easily shocked when talking about sex in games. "The sex that was included in 'God of War' didn't feel sensationalized; it didn't feel out of place," she said, referring to the controllable but off-camera ménage à trois from last year's M-rated PS2 hit.
Brathwaite is a professor of game design at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. She's working on a nonsexual fighting game for Xbox 360 right now but says her nonsex games barely register with the people who know her. "I did 19 games, and it's all gone," she said of her new reputation. "I'm the sex-game lady."
She has worked in games since the mid-'80s. For two decades she worked on the sword and sorcery of games such as "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Wizardry." But a few years ago, she traded in that fantasy job for another, designing the 2005 Hugh Hefner simulator "Playboy: The Mansion."
Now she maintains a blog about sex games for the International Game Developers Association, giving equal time to Planned Parenthood's game about the acceptance of homosexuality and the trailer for "Virtual Hottie 2" (key innovation over the original "V.H.": Gameplay allows for "one-handed operation").
Many of the issues planned for the San Francisco conference, like those involving the convergence of games and porn or the panel about the rising tide of "massively multiplayer erotic games," are for adults only.
But Brathwaite said the discussion of sex in games should be a broad one — one that is even relevant to a PG audience. Romance, for example, fits into her definition of video game sex, as does flirtation and kissing, all of which she believes are still too rare in games.
"Fitting love and romance into games — to me, that makes sense," she said. "It's in every other form of media. It's very popular in every form of media. We don't get all excited and call each other and say, 'Oh my gosh, there's a love scene in that movie.' That's just so, 'Yeah, so what?' I think eventually it will get like that in games."
She noted that dating video games — hard-core ones and those that are squeaky clean — are popular in Japan but have yet to make inroads in the U.S. She hopes that will change.
Also relevant to the nonporn gamer is the scheduled discussion of graphics. Sex-game developers will discuss ways to span the uncanny valley — that problem where graphics that are made to look realistic but fall just a little short wind up looking more fake than cartoonish ones.
"Some people say we just need to make [graphics] look more realistic and [players] will be turned on," Brathwaite said. "But you wind up with [characters] who look plastic. They look undead. They look freakish."
Sex-game developers don't want their characters to scare consumers off, so the community is determined to surmount the challenge. Whatever accomplishments they make in the service of making flesh more realistic and flirtatious faces more believably expressive would likely benefit the looks of the characters in the next sex-free first-person shooter or fighting game.
Brathwaite hopes the San Francisco conference will get a sequel, but it's too early to say.
Being the "sex-game lady," she still has plenty more slated on a colorful to-do list. Among her goals is to identify the earliest occurrence of video game sex, possibly in certain online games that predate the text-only 1981 "Soft-Porn Adventure." She's also interested in getting game developers to team up with sexologists to find ways to create sex-therapy video games for troubled couples. And she has a sex-related game she's working on.
"It's not so much a sex game, but it certainly facilitates it," she said. "I would say it has definite erotic overtones." She's mum on the rest, but one thing is clear: She's not using the Disney-esque palette on that one.
Iraq's Most Wanted Terrorist, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Killed In Air Strike
The most wanted terrorist leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed during an air strike by American forces on his isolated safe house north of Baghdad on Wednesday evening. The strike near Baquba came after information on al-Zarqawi's location was obtained from a videotape he released in April, as well as tips from captured sources in Jordan and inside Iraq.
The death of al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq and the man credited with ordering kidnappings and beheadings and killing thousands with insurgent suicide bomb attacks, was confirmed by U.S. and Iraqi officials. General George Casey, the top American military commander in Iraq, announced at a press conference held with Iraq's prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, that Zarqawi's body had been positively identified by fingerprints, facial recognition and known scars on his body. Seven of his associates are also believed to have been killed in the air strike. Officials displayed a photo of the dead terror leader at a briefing on Thursday, but said DNA tests on the body will not be available for 48 hours.
President Bush commented on the death of al-Zarqawi on Thursday morning (June 8) in a Rose Garden speech, saying that "this violent man will never murder again." Praising the bravery and professionalism of U.S. troops, Bush said the strike was a serious blow to the insurgency in Iraq.
"Osama bin Laden called this Jordanian terrorist the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq," Bush said. "He called on the terrorists around the world to listen to him and obey him. ... Through [al-Zarqawi's] every action, he sought to defeat America and our coalition partners and turn Iraq into a safe haven from which al Qaeda could wage its war on free nations."
Al-Zarqawi, who had a $25 million bounty on his head, is believed to have been undone in part by a brazen videotape he released in April, in which he was seen speaking to the camera inside a home, firing a weapon and walking around with some associates. Acting on tips, U.S. forces were able to pinpoint the location where that tape was shot and famously found a "blooper" reel in which al-Zarqawi was seen struggling to fire his weapon.
The death of the Jordanian-born insurgent leader was hailed by al-Maliki at the press conference. "Today, we have managed to put an end to Zarqawi," said al-Maliki, who took office three weeks ago as the head of Iraq's first full-term government since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. According to CNN, officials said they have already zeroed in on the Egyptian man who is believed to be al-Zarqawi's hand-picked successor and are in the process of hunting him down.
According to The New York Times, al-Maliki said the death should be a warning to other insurgent leaders. "They should stop now," he said. "They should review their situation and resort to logic while there is still time."
Casey said the precision air strike that killed al-Zarqawi took out a single home in a densely wooded area north of Baquba. Video of the strike revealed that it involved F-16 fighter jets dropping two 500-pound bombs on the site that officials said they were 100 percent sure al-Zarqawi was inhabiting. The video shown on CNN of the aftermath of the strike depicted a building reduced to a large pile of rubble and twisted metal. The news channel reported that the targeting of al-Zarqawi came after U.S. forces began tracking his spiritual leader, Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, and traced him to the home where the fatal meeting took place. The strike led to a "treasure trove of information," according to Major General Bill Caldwell, which in turn led to 17 other raids.
Though his relationship with the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, was reportedly strained and uncomfortable, al-Zarqawi had pledged loyalty to the September 11 terror attack mastermind and he had come to symbolize the Islamic insurgency against the U.S. occupation in Iraq. He had introduced the use of suicide attacks by insurgents in the country and had been an elusive target for coalition forces, slipping through their hands at least once after being captured but not properly identified.
According to CNN sources, al-Zarqawi released the pivotal videotape in April in an attempt to shore up support for his cause, which had been waning in the region due to anger over the bloodshed it was causing to Iraqi civilians. Military experts saw it as a clear tactical error, as it gave away key information on his location, leading troops to his former safehouse, where they found the embarrassing outtakes.
Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari told CNN that in addition to the information obtained from the videotape, a key arrest in Jordan last month may have provided additional information on al-Zarqawi's location.
Al-Zarqawi pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden in October of 2004 and was believed to be behind a string of deadly attacks, including a triple suicide bombing of hotels in Amman, Jordan in November 2005 that reportedly drew the ire of al Qaeda leaders, who said that such attacks on fellow Arabs was turning the tide against the insurgency (see "Al Qaeda Claims Responsibility For Jordan Bombings; U.S. Vows To Aid Investigation").
In addition to ordering dozens of suicide bomb attacks that have killed thousands both inside and outside of Iraq, al-Zarqawi is credited with masterminding several kidnappings of foreigners in Iraq. His voice was also confirmed as that of the knife-wielding man seen in a May 2004 videotape in which kidnapped American businessman Nicholas Berg is beheaded.
Seeking to blunt recent headlines about a Marine massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha that has dominated the news (see "Pentagon Finds Haditha Cover-Up; 'Values' Training Ordered For Troops"), Bush credited the operation against al-Zarqawi as one conducted with "courage and professionalism by the finest military in the world." But the president warned that the death of al-Zarqawi doesn't mean the end of the difficult mission in Iraq. "We can expect the terrorist and insurgents to carry on without him. We can expect the sectarian violence to continue. Yet the ideology of terror has lost one of its most visible and aggressive leaders. Zarqawi's death is a severe blow to al Qaeda. It's a victory in the global war on terror and it's an opportunity for Iraq's new government to turn the tide of this struggle."
Ludacris Gets Vocal — About Girls' High School Basketball Team
When it comes to Hollywood, Ludacris isn't concerned with attaching his name to the most projects, but he does want to be involved in the projects with the most quality.
So after the success of "Crash" and "Hustle & Flow" last year Ludacris signed on to narrate "The Heart of the Game," an independent documentary by filmmaker Ward Serril; Luda said he thought the film was meaningful. After seeing "Crash," Serril was enthralled with Ludacris.
"He has one of the most tremendous voices," the director said of Luda at the film's New York premiere. "Just the resonance of his voice as an artist. But as a person, it's powerful as well, in terms of the conviction of what he believes in. He was available; he loved the movie. I was so grateful to have his involvement."
"He sent the documentary, I watched it, automatically loved it," Ludacris said. "I told him, hands down, I wanted to be a part of this project. I will narrate it. Even further, I wanna go out on a campaign and market it as much as I can so as many people can go and see it as possible. ... 'Cause people hear 'documentary' all the time, and you may not be excited because a lot of people think it may be boring. But this is in no way boring.
"The most important thing to realize is that it is real life," he added. "There are no actors. It's not written out. It's somebody following a team for seven years and getting all real-life situations. You don't know how it's gonna play out. So when you watch it, it touches your heart. It's almost like a dream come true."
"The Heart of the Game" centers around eccentric high school basketball coach Bill Ressler and his Seattle girls team, the Roosevelt High Roughriders. Not only do the ladies face adversity on the basketball court, but in the court of law and at home, as well.
"I think I'm a really weird person," said Ressler, who met the filmmaker at a mutual friend's house. "[Serril] told me I was a character. Apparently I'm a big enough oddball, he thought I was worth filming. I do have a fairly unique way of coaching. I think he wanted to see what I was going to run into."
The players had to get used to the constant presence of the cameras.
"At first it was annoying, [Serril] following us around the gym a lot," said Ressler's former star player, Darnellia Russell. "But after awhile, I got used to it like he wasn't even there."
Russell's struggles are at the heart of the film. After a dramatic change in her life, not only is her dream of making it to the WNBA in jeopardy, but so is her academic status.
"Some of the stuff [Serril] captured, I didn't even know he captured, and it was really emotional," Russell said. "But for the most part, it was really cool."
"I never knew where the story was taking me," Serril said. "It's a wander through the wilderness. It's luck, providence and luck. I'm as amazed at the ending as anybody else."
The story also amazed Ludacris, who said the film will be very inspirational for young girls.
"This film is great for the whole family, but young ladies in particular," Luda said. "We got a lot of issues with self-esteem and self-confidence with young ladies in society. After watching something like this, they have no clue the impact it will have on their lives. Overcoming the different obstacles — that's what this documentary is about. So when you see these young ladies and how many obstacles they overcame ... it's gonna give you self-confidence to make you realize you can accomplish anything."
Luda recently relied on his self-esteem to get through a hurdle in court. The rapper and Kanye West were sued by East Orange, New Jersey group I.O.F. for allegedly copying portions of their record, "Straight Like That," for "Stand Up," which Kanye produced for Luda in 2003. Ludacris' famous hook on the song goes, "When I move, you move, just like that."
"I was doing that not only for myself, but for all of hip-hop," Luda said, about fighting in court. "I was standing up for what I believed in. I wasn't gonna let anybody take advantage of me like that. It's not in me to let somebody walk all over me, so I fought to the very end. And it's, like, 2 percent of those lawsuits that make it to trial. So that means 98 percent get settled out of court. I was not settling out of court. I knew I was right in the matter. I believed in myself, and as you can see, we reigned supreme."
Luda's next LP, Release Therapy, comes out in September. "The Heart of the Game" hits theaters Friday.
Mary J. Taking Her Breakthrough Experience On The Road
What a year 2006 is shaping up to be for road-tripping women. First Madonna, then Mariah, and now Mary J.
According to Blige's representative, the queen of hip-hop soul will kick off her next tour July 14 at the UMB Bank Pavilion in St. Louis with openers Jaheim and LeToya Luckett. The last stop will be September 8 at Concord, California's Chronicle Pavilion. The singer, whose The Breakthrough LP is on its way to becoming her best-selling album to date, has named the outing Mary J. Blige: The Breakthrough Experience.
Blige, who was a headliner at Sunday's Summer Jam in New York (see "Where's The Beef? T.I., Busta, Mary J., Diplomats Keep Summer Jam Light On Drama"), will have two more high-profile warm-up shows before the official tour launch. She takes the stage with New Edition at Houston's Essence Music Festival on July 1, and she's also taking part in Milwaukee's Summerfest.
Mary J. Blige tour dates, according to her record label:
- 7/14 - Maryland Heights, MO @ UMB Bank Pavilion
- 7/15 - Indianapolis, IN @ Conseco Fieldhouse
- 7/16 - Charlotte, NC @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
- 7/19 - Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun Arena
- 7/21 - New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
- 7/23 - Camden, NJ @ Tweeter Center
- 7/26 - Burgettstown, PA @ Post-Gazette Pavilion
- 7/27 - Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center
- 7/29 - Cleveland, OH @ Tower City Center
- 7/30 - Bristow, VA @ Nissan Pavilion
- 8/4 - Atlantic City, NJ @ Borgata Casino and Hotel
- 8/5 - Raleigh, NC @ Alltel Pavilion
- 8/6 - Virginia Beach, VA @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
- 8/9 - Selma, TX @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
- 8/11- Dallas, TX @ Smirnoff Music Centre
- 8/12 - Memphis, TN @ FedExForum
- 8/13 - Kansas City, MO @ Starlight Theater
- 8/18 - Columbus, OH @ Germain Amphitheater
- 8/19 - Chicago, IL @ Charter One Pavilion
- 8/20 - Clarkston, MI @ DTE Energy Music Theater
- 8/25 - Miami, FL @ American Airlines Arena
- 8/26 - Tampa, FL @ Ford Amphitheater
- 8/27 - Atlanta, GA @ HiFi Buys Amphitheatre
- 9/1 - Irvine, CA @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
- 9/2 - Las Vegas, NV @ Mandalay Bay
- 9/3 - Universal City, CA @ Gibson Amphitheater
- 9/6 - Phoenix, AZ @ Cricket Pavilion
- 9/7 - Marysville, CA @ Sleep Train Amphitheater
- 9/8 - Concord, CA @ Sleep Train Pavilion
Katharine McPhee Eyes Acting, Goes 'Over The Rainbow' With Debut
After Katharine McPhee's rendition of "Over the Rainbow" wowed the "American Idol" judges last month, the singer called the song her favorite from the season.
Now, the "Wizard of Oz" classic is following the runner-up beyond the show. On June 27"Over the Rainbow" and the "Idol" original "My Destiny" will be released as what McPhee's new labels, RCA Records and 19 Recordings Limited, are calling a double A-sided single (instead of the usual A-side and B-side).
"My Destiny," co-written by Harry Sommerdahl (who has worked with Lindsay Lohan and Carrie Underwood), was, on the other end of the spectrum, hardly a judges' favorite, but Katharine has said her recorded version is better than how she performed it the final week (see "Katharine Congratulates '39-Year-Old' Taylor, Calls Meat Loaf Duet 'Interesting' ").
And speaking of recording, the Sherman Oaks, California, native has already booked studio time with famed songwriter and producer Diane Warren, whose credits range from 'NSYNC to Cher.
"I'm a big fan of her stuff, and we want to get together and start maybe writing some stuff together," McPhee said. "That's the only collaborator I know of so far." On the show, Katharine sang a variety of styles, and at times the judges suggested she was better fit for jazz material, but she's unlikely to go that route.
"It'll be top 40 kind of stuff," McPhee said of her album. "I think if I were to do bluesy-jazzy stuff with all the standards, I would do that more as a theme album. So probably something more poppy."
Music, however, is only one of Katharine's interests, which is one reason she figures coming in second this season might benefit her (see "Soul Patrol Rides On: Taylor Hicks Wins 'American Idol' ").
"It definitely leaves room for me to explore different things and have time for other mediums that I probably wouldn't have time to do because it's so much focus on promoting that 'American Idol' album," McPhee said.
There have been rumors that Katharine has been contacted by big-name directors like Steven Spielberg, but the singer refused to address them. "I really don't want to jinx anything," she said.
If she were to hit the big screen, McPhee would prefer to do a musical or romantic comedy.
" 'Moulin Rouge,' that whole movie was just so amazing, and I love those love stories," she said. "I would have loved to have played 'Pretty Woman.' I really love Julia Roberts. I'm a huge fan of hers, so pretty much anything she does. 'Notting Hill' is one of my favorite movies. 'Father of the Bride,' those kind of movies."
Before she does any acting, though, Katharine will join the other nine top finalists on the American Idols Live Tour, which kicks off July 5 in Manchester, New Hampshire (see " 'American Idol' Top 10 Add 20 More Shows To Summer Plans").
"There are so many different personalities, from Bucky to Kellie, it will be interesting to see," McPhee said. "I'm definitely excited to be back onstage with them. That was one of my favorite numbers in the finale, actually, was being able to perform with them. I love doing ensemble-type things."
Katharine's also looking forward to spending more face time with her fanbase, which dubbed itself the McPhans.
"I ran into this little girl after the finale and she was crying when I lost, and I saw her backstage and I was like, 'Oh, don't cry,' " McPhee recalled. "It really kind of got me choked up a little ... the loyalty that they have and everything. It gives me so much comfort knowing that they were rooting for me all along. I really just feel blessed and I would just love to be able to give back to them at some point."
The June 27 release date of McPhee's single comes two weeks after "Idol" winner Taylor Hicks releases his debut single (see "Taylor Hicks Includes Doobie Brothers Tune On First Single").
Bush Reiterates Support for Constituitonal Amendment Banning Gay Marriage
Trying to reconnect with his conservative base in the run-up to a pivotal mid-term election in November, President Bush again stated his support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on Monday (June 5).
In a speech delivered at the White House, the president said, "marriage is the most fundamental institution of civilization and it should not be redefined by activist judges."
Speaking to an audience he described as "community leaders, scholars, family organizations, religious leaders, Republicans and Democrats," Bush said he was proud to stand with the group on its support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. He urged Congress the pass the amendment, again invoking the specter of "activist judges," a threat he referred to more than a half-dozen times in the 10-minute address.
It was the second time in two days that Bush had weighed in on the controversial topic, following his comments during his weekly radio address on Saturday in which he said a constitutional amendment was necessary because activist courts "have left our nation with no other choice."
The strong push from Bush was seen by many as an attempt by the president to rally his conservative base amid near record-low approval ratings and emerging signs that Democrats could make solid gains in the House and Senate in November, which could stymie Bush's agenda for the remainder of his term. Until this weekend, Bush had barely mentioned the topic of gay marriage since the 2004 presidential race (see "President Bush Calls For Amendment Banning Same-Sex Marriage").
During the Monday address, Bush said, "For ages, in every culture, human beings have understood that marriage is critical to the well-being of families. And because families pass along values and shape character, marriage is also critical to the health of society. Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them."
Bush framed the debate as a fight between the right of the American people to decide on the "fundamental social issue of marriage" and the "aggressive" tactics of judges and local legislatures seeking to redefine the institution.
Bush ended by making a plea for tolerance in the debate, asking those on both sides to discuss the issue with civility and decency toward one another. "All people deserve to have their voices heard and a constitutional amendment will ensure that they are heard," he said.
Despite the strong rhetoric, the speech was seen by many as a largely empty gesture, as it is widely thought that the amendment prohibiting states from recognizing same-sex marriages does not have enough votes to pass in Congress.
Following three days of debate, the Senate is voting on the amendment this week and the House could take it up as early as July. But to become law, the measure would have to get a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and House and be ratified by at least 38 state legislatures, which is unlikely.
According to The Associated Press, the proposed amendment has just more than 50 of the needed 67 votes in the 100-member Senate, with several Republicans opposing it and only one Democrat, Nebraska's Ben Nelson, vowing to vote for it. A recent Pew Research poll found that only slightly more than half of Americans favor the amendment, a nearly 15 point drop from the numbers in a similar poll from 2004.
The amendment was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 18 along party lines after a tense debate that ended in a shouting match between Democrat Russ Feingold and the chairman, Republican Arlen Specter (see "Senate Committee Approves Amendment Banning Same-Sex Marriage"). Feingold walked out of the meeting and Specter bid him "good riddance."
The last time the issue came before the Senate, in the 2004 election year, only 48 Senators voted for it.
"This is all about politics," said one of the measure's opponents, Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who is also a minister in the United Church of Christ. "There is no one in Washington who believes this amendment will pass. The president has no role in the process of amending the Constitution and [these] actions are to remind his base that he is on their side on the 'social' issues."
Lynn said the support for the amendment could be a reaction to recent grumblings from Christian conservatives that Bush wasn't doing enough on those social issues, but he doubted it could help the president's sagging poll numbers (see "The 50-Point Drop: How Did Bush Fall This Far?").
"They're so low that in desperation he's resorting to this," Lynn said. "I don't think it will have much of an effect because it's hard to get any lower than [his current poll numbers] short of criminal charges being filed. The benefit is to get members of the Senate on record, so that the ones who vote against it can be declared anti-God or anti-family when the elections come in November."
Massachusetts' Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in 2003 (see "Same-Sex Couples Marry — Legally — For The First Time In U.S."). The next year, 13 states approved initiatives banning gay marriage or civil unions. This November, same-sex marriage initiatives are expected to be on the ballot in Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Prior to Bush's comments on Monday, White House spokesperson Tony Snow said the issue of gay marriage is of "keen interest to a lot of people." He said the proposed amendment would still permit states to make "arrangements" for same-sex couples that do not involve marriage.
Rob Zombie Resurrecting Michael Myers For New 'Halloween'
Metal god-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie has been tapped to revive the successful "Halloween" franchise, some 28 years after accomplished horror director John Carpenter's influential slasher flick first introduced the world to Michael Myers, an escaped patient who massacred his family on Halloween night.
Dimension Films issued a press release over the weekend, confirming weeks of online rumors that Zombie would be directing the film. Zombie will also serve as one of its producers, and act as the movie's music supervisor. "Halloween" will mark Zombie's third stint behind the lens, following his 2003 directorial debut "House of 1000 Corpses" and that film's sequel, 2005's "The Devil's Rejects," which centered around grease-painted sociopath Captain Spaulding and the murderous Firefly clan (see "Rob Zombie's Second Movie Drags Horror Into The Daylight").
According to Zombie, his vision of the next "Halloween" film features an entirely new take on the legend of Myers, and should oblige fans of Carpenter's classic legacy while opening a new chapter in the Myers saga. He assured that this next film, slated for an October 2007 release, would not be a copycat of any prior "Halloween" flicks. Malek Akkad, who produced 1998's "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later," and Andy Gould, who worked with Zombie on "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects," will be co-producing the project with Zombie.
"I have been a huge, huge fan of John Carpenter's original film since its [1978] release," Zombie said. "So when Bob Weinstein," co-chairman of the Weinstein Company, which owns the Dimension Films label, "approached me about this, I jumped at the chance to join forces with Dimension Films on this amazing project."The ninth installment in the "Halloween" franchise will be "a bit of a prequel and a remake, combined," Zombie said. The film will be set before the events of 1981's "Halloween 2: Halloween Resurrection," and will focus on Myers' origins and development into a serial killer — his youthful years before his commitment to a mental institution.
The news might come as a shock to some fans who read a message posted on Zombie's MySpace page last week, where the rocker shot down rumors that he'd been in discussions with Dimension to breathe new life into the pale-masked Myers.
"I don't know how this story all got started but I am not making 'Halloween 9'," he wrote in a post dated June 3. The next morning, he clarified the situation in a separate post, writing, "I am not making 'Halloween 9.' That series is done, complete, over. But what I am doing is starting totally from scratch. Call it a remake, an update, a re-imagining or whatever, but one thing that [is] for sure is this is a whole new start — a new beginning with no connection to the other series. That is exactly why the project appeals to me. I can take it and run with it."
Before accepting the job, Zombie told Variety he'd reached out to Carpenter, seeking his blessing.
"The original 'Halloween' is hallowed ground to me, and I talked to him about it and he was very supportive of what I wanted to do," Zombie said. "He said, 'Go for it, Rob. Make it your own.' And that's exactly what I intend to do. Over 25 years and a lot of movies, a very scary character became something of a Halloween cliché, with Michael Myers dolls that play the Halloween music when you press their stomachs. By the end of the sequel cycle, there was little connection to the original. I take that film very seriously, and I want to make it terrifying again."
Zombie, who will be heading out on the road for a full U.S. tour this fall with New England rockers Godsmack, continues working on "The Haunted World of El Superbeasto," an adult-oriented animated feature based on Zombie's comic book about a has-been Mexican wrestler; that film is also scheduled for a 2007 release. Oscar-nominated actor Paul Giamatti ("Sideways," "American Splendor") has signed on to voice the film's villain, while comedian Tom Papa is set to play El Superbeasto. Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, will play the title character's sister.
See "Throne Of Blood: Rob Zombie Rules As New Horror Royalty" for Zombie's thoughts on remaking fright-film classics.
DJ Green Lantern Gets Humiliated, Digitized For 'And 1 Streetball' Video Game
Last June, DJ Green Lantern thought a more suitable superhero name for himself might be Hip-Hop Aquaman.
Why? Because that's the kind of thought that goes through a DJ's mind when he's decked out in a skintight black-and-turquoise suit with 100 sensors attached to his face and body. Forget traditional hip-hop garb: The scuba-style getup was the only wardrobe required to record authentic Green Lantern moves for "And 1 Streetball," a basketball video game coming out this week from developer Black Ops Entertainment and publisher Ubisoft.
Typically, video game makers squeeze superstar basketball players, pro wrestlers or Tiger Woods into a motion-capture suit to accurately replicate their moves for games. White sensors shaped like ping-pong balls are attached by Velcro to the dark, form-fitting suit from neckline to toe (and on a decidedly un-stylish beanie cap). Cameras track the sensors' movements, record the data and apply them to video game dummies. If motion-captured facial movements are needed, the test subject gets more than two dozen pinhead sensors glued to their lips, eyelids, cheeks and jaw.
DJ Green Lantern — star record-spinner, sometimes-producer and former DJ for Eminem (see "DJ Green Lantern Explains Eminem Split") — was brought to Los Angeles' House of Moves motion-capture studio last June not for his basketball prowess, but for his DJ skills; his digital form will be featured courtside during many of the basketball games in "And 1 Streetball." Although he may also be featured as a bonus player in the game, he told MTV News he hasn't set foot on a basketball court in 16 years. "I got the late-night DJ physique going on now," he admitted. "I'd be really out of breath if I tried to D up."
Instead, Green Lantern had his DJing motion-captured so the game can include his finger-work on the turntables and cross-fader, as well as a series of gestures designed to pump up the crowd. Center stage at the House of Moves, he spent an hour working two turntables that were partially covered in blue tape so as not to interfere with the recording. The tape ended up gumming up the works, so he did most of his DJing for the session without even playing records — he was mostly acting.
After a few minutes in the suit, the DJ was, well, a bit embarrassed. "It's Green Lantern, the Evil Genius," he said, somewhat self-mockingly, on a tape of the session. "I don't feel really evil right now. They've got me looking really crazy out here. They just said, 'Listen, here's a bag of money, put this crazy suit on.' I said, 'I need a bigger bag.' So they sent me a suitcase. I said, 'I'll be right there.' So here I am."
According to the game's developers, skipping the mo-cap and simply animating a digital Green Lantern by hand wasn't an option. "We motion-captured DJ Green Lantern for the same reasons why we motion-captured the players: realism and authenticity," said Matt Leunig, an associate producer on the game. "Just as the 'And 1' streetballers have their unique styles on the court, Lantern has his own style of shout-outs, record flipping and scratching, which would be tough to reproduce by other means."
Because the authenticity of hip-hop-flavored video games is often questioned, the masterminds behind the "And 1" franchise opted to go as legit as possible for this release. The game features renowned streetballers including Baby Shaq, Professor and Helicopter, as well as 13 exclusive songs from the likes of Bun B, Clipse and Kool G Rap, with region-specific styles like crunk or hyphy playing when gamers reach different courts across the game's virtual America.
Green Lantern was hired to work on the soundtrack and produce a mixtape that will be released with the game. But the DJ was also brought in for his moves, which resulted in a few awkward moments during the mo-cap session when Black Ops president John Botti tried to convince Lantern to get a bit more animated. The wrinkle in the plan, it turned out, was that Green Lantern doesn't have a very physical DJ style.
Botti called out a plain scratch. Lantern did it. Botti needed him to do a transform. Not a problem. "Do you scratch with your elbow at all?" Botti asked.
"It's a little extra," Green Lantern replied.
"Turn-around scratch?"
"That's a little extra for the kid."
Green Lantern, the comic book hero, is said to be a man with no fear, just a weakness to the color yellow — DJ Green Lantern is a man with no fear of compromise. Botti explained that the DJ would be featured on the game's courtside perimeter, so he'd need to make bigger gestures to attract attention to his mo-capped moves. And so, as Green Lantern later explained to MTV News, he relented. "I did the little elbow joint," he said. "I did the little turnaround. I haven't really done any of the tricks in years."
The developers also captured Lantern pulling records from his crates, flipping LPs onto the turntables, answering his phone, acting like he spotted a hot girl in the crowd and pretending to be bored by players stinking up the joint. They also made him deliver a barrage of shout-outs, dropping slang and praising And 1, Black Ops and Ubisoft ("Shout out to Ubisoft, in control of this whole gaming thing").
In the end, Green Lantern said he was glad to be of service, and happy to return to some aspect of gaming after giving it up for a different pursuit — girls, he said — back in the age of the Atari 2600.
"And 1 Streetball" launches on PS2 and Xbox this week.
Track list for "And 1 Streetball":
- Clipse (featuring DMP) - "VA Streetz"
- Smitty - "Set the City on Fire"
- Bun B & the Middle Fingaz - "Hard in the Paint"
- San Quinn - "Take Money, Make Money"
- Stat Quo - "What's Next"
- Freeway - "Stand Up"
- Rhymefest - "Coming for You"
- Turf Talk - "Put Up or Shut Up"
- BG - "We"
- Devin the Dude - "Give It and Go"
- Peedi Crakk - "It Don't Stop"
- Ray Cash - "E-Room"
- Kool G Rap (featuring Hammerz and Scram Jones) - "This Is How We Do NYC"
Pharrell And Kanye Video Shoot Draws Killer Clothes, Diddy
A Pharrell Williams and Kanye West video could only mean one thing: killer fashion. And on the Miami set of Pharrell's "Number 1" video, the superstar rappers/producers didn't disappoint.
"It's just some super-fly sh--," Kanye said of his and Pharell's pastel ensembles. "He didn't know I was wearing this. And I didn't know he was wearing that. This is what happens when super-dope mutha----as think alike."
Kanye joked that he was an absolute terror to work with, but straight man Pharrell said the opposite.
"Working with Kanye was cool," Pharrell said. "I feel like we come from the same environment, different area ... but likeminded mentalities. Unafraid to challenge regularity and normality. Unafraid to take things to the next level."
"I was an a--hole in the studio," West said, laughing. "He couldn't get me there on time."
"Actually," Williams interrupted, giving the real scoop on how the song was born, "he was on his way out the studio. I was walking in. I said, 'I'm gonna play you something, and I want you to rhyme on it.' I played it for him twice, and he went in the booth and he does what he does. The whole virtual sh--: virtual paper, virtual pen."
When Pharrell sings about "number one" on the song, he's talking about his priorities, not his status, he said.
"I wanted to compare a girl to my work 'cause my work seems to come first," Pharrell said. "Even though my mom says I should keep God first ... I do keep God first, but beyond that, my work is very important to me. So I was thinking I wanted to make a record that was metaphorical about a girl that was metaphorical about a song that was metaphorical about a girl that was metaphorical about success. That's what happened."
The combination of Pharrell and Kanye was so huge (see "It's About Time: Kanye And Pharrell Come Together For One Big 'Number 1' ") that even Diddy came to the set to see exactly how it was going down.
"[Pharrell is] a music pioneer," Diddy said. "Pharrell is a visionary. A cultural icon. A leader. All-around great guy. The world needs his energy. I just came here to witness it. Some things you need to witness. Instead of watching it, you have to witness some things."
And Pharrell invited another great mind on the set for the video.
"I'm with Hype Williams, the best video director, the best film director," Pharrell said of his fellow Williams, who directs the clip.
"Number 1" is the latest single from Pharrell's In My Mind, which drops July 25 (see "Pharrell Says Delayed Solo Debut Is 'Finally Done' — LP Due This Spring
Where's The Beef? T.I., Busta, Mary J., Diplomats Keep Summer Jam Light On Drama
NEW YORK — Each summer, New York radio station Hot 97 gives the hip-hop community something to talk about for the rest of the year.
Something crazy always happens, whether it be a classic performance, like Puff Daddy bringing the whole Bad Boy crew in the late '90s, or a spark of beef, like when the Game delivered a faux beatdown to a man in a rat suit and called off a truce with 50 Cent last year (see "Game Ends 50 Cent Truce With Verbal Attacks At Summer Jam").
This year, classic performances seemed more likely because Sunday's headliners at Giants Stadium — Mary J. Blige and Busta Rhymes — really have no rap beef to speak of. Neither do Jermaine Dupri, Dem Franchize Boyz, Sean Paul, Three 6 Mafia, Remy Ma, T.I., Ne-Yo, Chris Brown or Young Jeezy. The only ones who could have used the infamous Summer Jam screen (which artists use to put their rivals on blast) are the Diplomats, who make their disdain for Jay-Z very public.
Last year the Dips were given a very unceremonious second-performance slot during the show. That means that as people were still filing in — many with their hearts set on seeing Cam'ron, Juelz Santana, Jim Jones and crew — the group was finishing a brief performance. This year, Hot 97 tried to make amends by letting the Dips go on last.
When Summer Jam's last acts hit the stage in past years (Eminem, R. Kelly, Snoop Dogg), a large portion of the crowd was either in the parking lot or on the New Jersey turnpike heading home. Not this year.
As the Dips hit the stage Sunday night, one big question hung over the crowd: Would Cam'ron, who just a few days ago released a dis track aimed at Hov, strike on a major stage? Nope. Cam & Co. didn't even mention Jay's name. The Diplomats started with Juelz Santana and Jim Jones, who performed the street anthems "G's Up," "Oh Yes" and "There It Go."
The Dip family had a good 50 people onstage, looking almost as deep as the crowd that paid to see them. Cam was introduced to a thunderous roar, coming on with "I Really Mean It" and later carrying the momentum to "Wet Wipes."
Busta Rhymes' set came right before the Dips', and he got the crowd laughing when he entered the stage wearing Jeremy Shockey's New York Giants jersey with shoulder pads and a helmet. Bust did get love, but he probably would have been able to maintain frenzied feedback throughout his set if he would have stuck with his earlier catalog rather than newer Big Bang songs like "Get You Some" and "In the Ghetto." The MC told the audience that it may not know his new material but will learn it by the time he rocks the next Summer Jam.
Busta paraded out several legends toward the end of his set, including the Wu-Tang Clan for "Triumph" and Rakim for "Eric B. Is President." Not to be outdone, Big Daddy Kane came out for "Warm It Up, Kane." The guests didn't end there: Slick Rick came out for "Children's Story," Q-Tip followed for "Scenario," and the set closed with Busta and Swizz Beatz performing "New York Sh--" with all the legends onstage.
But Jermaine Dupri got the award for the most stunting with guest appearances on Sunday. Not only did JD bring out his girlfriend, Janet Jackson, during his set with Dem Franchize Boyz (Janet kissed him on the lips before walking off and waving to the crowd), but he also invited Mariah Carey. For some reason, MC could not sing, but they played "We Belong Together," and the crowd sang along. Mariah mimed the words and waved the crowd as well.
T.I.'s show was basically an abbreviated version of the concert he gave at the Apollo a few days earlier (see "T.I. Mixes Party Anthems, Tribute To Late Friend At NYC Show"), but when he was getting ready to give the fans his biggest hit, "What You Know About That," his mic was cut. Just like Young Jeezy earlier in the night as he was getting into "Go Crazy," Tip apparently ran out of his allotted time.
The audience began to boo — not at Tip, but at Hot 97. The crowd had stood patiently through the rain and paid more than $100 per ticket, and T.I. had flown into Jersey that same morning after being in L.A. for the MTV Movie Awards on Saturday.
Jamie Foxx, who sang "Live in the Sky" with T.I., had his own surprise guest: LL Cool J. LL came out, and he and Foxx acknowledged that they used to have beef, but all is settled. "All I ever wanted to be was your hype man," Foxx told LL.
Still, Summer Jam was missing that one monumental Summer Jam moment. With no Jay, no 50, no Nas, there was no one who really left the stage in shambles.
Prosecutor Says Proof's Slaying Was Justified
A Detroit-area prosecutor said Tuesday (May 30) that the bouncer who shot and killed Proof on April 11 acted in his cousin's defense and will not face murder charges.
Mario Etheridge had been charged with weapons violations three days after the nightclub shootout, at which time Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy was still considering murder charges, noting that the investigation "was far from over" (see "Proof Shooting Suspect Charged — But Not With Murder").
In a press conference Tuesday, Worthy said the evidence clearly shows that Etheridge acted in lawful defense of his 35-year-old cousin, Keith Bender, the man allegedly shot by Proof (see "Man Allegedly Shot By D12's Proof Dies").
Etheridge, though, will still have to face the weapons charges and is due back in court Friday.
Worthy told reporters that Etheridge — a bouncer at CCC, an after-hours club on Detroit's Eight Mile Road — shot twice at the ceiling in an attempt to stop Proof before turning the gun at the rapper (see "D12's Proof Shot And Killed At Detroit Club").
Etheridge's lawyer, Randall Upshaw, has maintained that his client took a gun from someone during the attack, but Worthy said witnesses saw Etheridge with two guns on him. If convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and discharging a firearm in a public place, Etheridge faces up to nine years in prison.
Biggie Family's Lawyer: 'We Did Nothing Whatsoever To Misrepresent Anything'
In new court papers filed Tuesday, attorneys for the family of slain rapper Notorious B.I.G. rejected claims — made the week before by the legal team representing the city of Los Angeles in the long-running wrongful-death lawsuit — that they'd waged a deliberate and calculated campaign designed to deceive U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Perry R. Sanders Jr., one of several attorneys representing Biggie's family in these civil proceedings, countered in his response that the city's lawyers "gave a really incomplete view of what happened" when they'd accused them of misleading the court.
Sanders further characterized the city's actions as a "desperate attempt to prevent additional discovery" about widespread police misconduct within the department (see "Judge Says Notorious B.I.G.'s Family Misled Court").
Cooper — who'd declared a mistrial in the federal wrongful-death case last July, following concerns the Los Angeles Police Department had withheld informant statements and additional evidence, linking two rogue cops to the rapper's unsolved 1997 shooting death (see "Notorious B.I.G. Wrongful-Death Case Declared A Mistrial") — had ordered Sanders to shed further light on information provided by the defense which seemed to challenge fundamental claims made during last year's trial.
Sanders had said he had no information on an alleged police conspiracy behind the rapper's slaying, but the city provided Cooper with a four-page document prepared by a private investigator working for Biggie's family, which gives a detailed account of an interview with a prison informant about the police officers' alleged involvement.
Last week, the city's attorneys claimed they could prove the lawyers for Biggie's family had been supplied with that evidence back in late 2002, and requested that discovery process be suspended. Cooper told Sanders she was "absolutely outraged" by the city attorneys' allegations, "because I feel this court has been totally deceived."
Five months ago, she ordered the city to pay $1.1 million to cover the Wallaces' legal fees and expenditures, as sanctions for withholding the evidence (see "Notorious B.I.G.'s Family Awarded $1.1 Million From City Of L.A."). A retrial is set to begin later this year.
Sanders was given one week to respond to the city's claims, and the Times reports that the city's lawyers have seven more days to offer their own response. At that time, Cooper said, she'll "make a determination as to what, if anything, needs to be done," adding that this "might be the time to settle this case."
The wrongful-death suit against the city of Los Angeles was filed in 2002 and went to trial in 2005. Sanders told the Times late Wednesday that he "would hope the judge looks at [the filing] and realizes we did nothing whatsoever to misrepresent anything."
T.I. Mixes Party Anthems, Tribute To Late Friend At NYC Show
NEW YORK — New York fans are getting a healthy helping of T.I. this week. On Sunday, he'll be among the plethora of MCs unloading lyrics at Giants Stadium during Hot 97's Summer Jam. And on Thursday night, Tip and opener Yung Joc performed two shows (one at 8 p.m. and one at 11) at the legendary Apollo Theatre.
Tip started the last show of the night standing in the middle of the stage wearing a Bathing Apes hooded sweatshirt, orange shorts and sneakers to match, and a Louis Vuitton backpack.
The music for "King Back" started, and Tip removed his hood to reveal his face.
"I welcome you and get acquainted with the youngest in charge," he rapped. "Respected from East to West like he was running the mob/ Dictating, ain't taking orders from no one but God/ I know you n---as is broke, 'cause I know that you charge."
With DJ Drama on the turntables, Tip showed no signs of fatigue as he ran around the stage for "Top Back," "Rubber Band Man," "Motivation" and "ASAP."
"Apollo, let's get it," he yelled, making the letter A with his fingers; the crowd followed suit.
Some of the ladies in the front row found a different way to use their hands as they began grabbing at T.I. when he rapped in their section during "24's." Tip went into a string of his female-friendly records: "Freak Though," "Let's Get Away" and "Why You Wanna."
"Go and tell a n---a no, wit an ass so fat," the Apollo audience sang along. "Hey, why you wanna go and do that love, huh?/ Hey, hey, why you wanna go and do that, do that?"
"Y'all better act like the flyest mutha----a in the world is in here," Tip told the crowd. "I'm only gonna give you one more chance to get loose," he said before starting the song "Get Loose."
Tip then told the crowd to take out their cell phones and hold them in the air to let the light shine. He said he wanted to talk about those who weren't there because they're dead or in jail.
"How you live, you go," Tip told the crowd as the beat for his "Live in the Sky" dropped.
"Life's ups and downs they come and go," T.I. rapped. "But when I die, I hope I live in the sky/ All my folks who ain't alive, I hope they live in the sky/ Pray to God when I die that I live in the sky."
"We dedicate this to my partner big Phil," T.I. yelled for his friend Philant Johnson, who was killed in a shootout in Cincinnati in April (see "Deadly Shooting Causes T.I. To Re-Evaluate His Life"). "We still love you. Ain't sh-- changed."
T.I. started bringing his train into the station with "I'm Straight." Tip and his whole P$C crew were onstage, and every time he would rap "I'm straaaaiiiight," everyone would throw their arms open wide and lean back.
Tip ended the show with mega-hits "Bring Em Out" and "What You Know."
"When I chirp shawty, chirp back/ Louie knapsack where I'm holding all the work at!" he roared.
"What you know about that?" the audience responded.
"Hey, I know all about that!" he answered.
Busta Rhymes Album Preview: Bus Gets Deep About The Big Bang
or months, we've heard Busta Rhymes talking about how he must "secure the win" for his team with his upcoming comeback album, The Big Bang. It simply means that he can't be a flop critically, the streets have to embrace it, he must sell a boatload of records and can't make Dr. Dre look bad for signing him.
Of course, the tragic shooting death of his friend and bodyguard Israel Ramirez during the video shoot for "Touch It" (see "Busta Rhymes Speaks Out About Slaying, Defends Video") has understandably overshadowed his music, as have his recent difficulties with some members of the media. But if you look solely at what he's done musically this year, Busta seems to be right on track, like a pitcher going a strong seven innings.
He's made noise on the mixtape circuit with a ton of unofficial and official remixes, freestyles and underground bangers like "New York Sh--," the "State of Grace" remix with Raekwon and "Rough Around the Edges" with Nas. His bread-and-butter pitches, the Swizz Beatz-produced "Touch It" and the "Touch It" remix, have been right on point in the place where Busta has thrived most through the years: the club. And his latest single, "I Love My Chick," will probably get way more from a pop mainstream audience than the 'hood, but the video has been getting heavy spins on BET and MTV nonetheless.
"All of a sudden I'm hearing people in the streets talking about how Busta's back," Dr. Dre recently said in a statement released by his publicist. "In my mind, he never left, and that's why I wanted to f--- with him in the first place. He's got that drive, and he never stops trying to top himself. Anybody who knows Busta knows that he's always gonna come with heat."
So with The Big Bang's June 13 release date nearing, Busta does have fans and the music industry interested — not exactly the easiest thing to do in the rap world, after a three-year hiatus that followed two albums widely classified as mediocre.
"When you're in a comfortable space — mentally, physically, financially — you can afford to be more strategic on how you move your chess pieces," he said about the long album hiatus. "Watch things and analyze things with a much more meticulous point of view. As you grow, you value so much more, you don't take as much for granted. I felt like this time, while I'm growing and transforming into a new machine, I'll treat my blessing [musical gifts] with a dedication and commitment that I never treated it with before."
From the onset of recording The Big Bang, Dr. Dre let Bus know that he wasn't trying to change him; he wanted the Busta that fans love. And as far out as Busta wanted to go on the mic, Dre had his back — in fact, Dre dipped into his bag of tricks, too.
Take a session they had in L.A. where Dre bought in two buckets — one filled with dirt — and a shovel. Doc asked a studio attendant to bring in some plywood and give him five mics. Dre had an idea for a beat which eventually wound up on the song "Legends of the Fall," which centers around karma and a rapper coming to grips with the fact that his career is over, and all the cold-shoulder treatment that accompanies it ("N---as ain't giving a f--- about your flow," Busta raps). The perfectionist producer wound up recording the sound of dirt being shoveled (giving the song its grim cemetery feel) and Busta's own heartbeat, using both as part of the soundscape along with the famous Dre piano-pounding.
While the mood on that track leans more toward morose, the mirth that you would normally expect from a Dre-and-Busta collaboration is splattered all over "Get U Some," a celebratory anthem that mashes up West Coast G-Funk and outlandish East Coast brashness. The regal hip-hop must haves — "Money, cars, clothes, sexy broads ... mansions, yachts, planes, Phantoms" — are named on the hook like a checklist of what the Aftermath fam advises you to get.
Busta, who claims he feels like a "newborn n---a," is loud and boisterous, leaving no doubt about where his allegiance lies: "This ain't J Records/ I'm on Dre records: Aftermath!"
Dre isn't the only O.G. helping The Big Bang to bang just a little harder: For the first time, you actually hear Stevie Wonder's original vocals guest-starring on a hip-hop record (as opposed to being sampled). Wonder croons about life struggles on the Sha Money XL-produced "Been Through the Storm." (A track recorded with Eminem has apparently been cut from the album; see "Busta Making An Even Bigger Bang With Em, ODB, Neptunes, Rick James").
"Been through the storm and the pourin' rain," Stevie sings on the chorus. "Everything's still the same/ Can't control how I feel/ Sometimes it's hard to keep it real ... Everyday, landlord knockin' down my door ... Wonder where my next blessing is coming from."
"You never get to hear Stevie Wonder on a rap record," Busta said of the collaboration. "This is the first time it's even been done. I attribute that to Stevie, 100 percent. When a man could make $25, 30 million off of publishing alone because other artists take his songs and make him go multiplatinum with his own catalog, he ain't gotta do nothing. He ain't thirsty to do nothing with nobody; he wanted to do this record with me genuinely. That's one of the greatest rewards for me, because [he's] only gonna work with who he feels is credible enough to not only maintain the respect level of how he feels about music, but what he thinks is going to be beneficial to music overall. He doesn't have to do anything for his own personal benefit no more — he does it if it's gonna benefit a bigger picture."
In the verses, Busta walks us through real-life accounts of his strife, and the soul legend helps to illustrate further on the chorus.
"It was a tremendous learning experience for me and a blessing, because he didn't just do a record with me, he did a record talking about 'hood living," Bus added. "It's a straight picture of what the urban life is for most ghetto children that have parents that come from other countries — parents with the concept in their mind of coming to the alleged land of the free and opportunity, seeking refuge for some better life. They get here and realize the hard way that none of these promises are ever fulfilled in the way they are presented. That was one of the situations I thought would be dope to address, because I was one of those kids; my family is Jamaican. I love this country a lot, but this country misleads a lot."
"In The Ghetto," a remake of sorts of Rick James' "Ghetto Life," actually features James' vocals: "When I was a young boy/ Growing up in the ghetto/ Hanging out on corners/ Singin' with the fellas/ Lookin' for the cute chicks/ Trying to find a bit of fun/ Looking for some trouble/ Or anyone who'll give me some."
The track's producer, Green Lantern, came across some James vocal tracks he was originally going to remix for a project on Motown Records, James' former label, and slid them off to Bus. Rather than go the somber route, Rhymes outlines some of the trappings you'll find in the ghetto, but he also details the romantic concept some have of the streets and how the ghetto actually can help us get through life.
Bus and his good friend Q-Tip voice their disdain at some of the new MCs who aren't repping correctly on "You Can't Hold the Torch." "The game ain't the same," Q-Tip quips, with Bus affirming his stance.
"These n---as can't hold the torch/ So why should we pass it?" both ask later in the song.
As we all know, the day will eventually come when all MCs have to pass the torch, but it looks like that day won't be coming anytime soon for Bus. He should be able to go into the dugout with his head held high for delivering possibly his premier LP to date, and easily his best since 1998's Extinction Level Event (The Final World Front). We'll have to wait a few more weeks to see if fans agree.
"I consciously made an effort with establishing this project on a quality level to give other artists a blueprint to understand how to start making music," Busta said. "So that not only we get that quality that hip-hop has been missing, but New York can re-establish [itself as] the throne-holders and be able to dictate how the game should go."
Method Man Drops Diddy, Seeks Clarity On New LP, 4:21 ... The Day After
NEW YORK — Method Man says he's seen way better days.
In the few years since his last LP, Tical 0: The Prequel, dropped, he's read unfairly disparaging appraisals of his skills in magazines, had his pride tested, gotten his car and most of his jewelry stolen and seen his wife battle a severe illness.
"There were a lot of things that needed to be changed in my life and career," Meth said Tuesday at New York's Electric Lady Studios. "Everything! I needed that moment of clarity."
The title of Meth's new album focuses on that clear-headedness: 4:21 ... The Day After.
"Four-twenty [April 20] is the national weed-smoking day, according to those who chief," he explained, sitting on a piano bench. "I basically said '4:21' because I'm the day-after dude. Plus, four [and] two [and] zero only adds up to six. '4:21' gives you that perfect seven. So this is sort of the day after, a moment of clarity, so to speak. When you're waking up from that night of partying and sh-- like that, what goes down."
4:21's street record, "Yah Mean," features Fat Joe and Styles P. and is the kind of pavement-embedded record one would expect from Meth. The album's first single, "Say," includes a sample of Lauryn Hill's vocals from her 2001 performance of the Bob Marley classic "So Much Things to Say" on MTV's "Unplugged." The track finds Meth at perhaps his most pensive, talking about people who say he may not have it on the mic anymore, among other things.
"See, it was 'Clan in the Front,' " he raps over an acoustic guitar. "Now they just gon' front/ Like my joints is on Proactiv and they just don't bump/ Then n---as gonna say I lost my skill/ When in fact they all been programmed and lost they feel."
"I hate the way mutha-----s was talking, like I was the worst thing to happen to MCing," he said of the inspiration for the song. "And there's n---as out there doing way worst sh-- than I ever did in my life.
"It's like finally getting the joke and figuring out everybody is laughing at you — 'All this time, I ain't know' — but still having that power to strike back at 'em," he added. "Like 'I'm gonna reverse the joke. The joke is on y'all, 'cause I get it now.' "
Another moment of clarity arrived while Meth was figuring out who he was going to work with on 4:21, his fourth solo album. Kwame and Scott Storch both supplied beats, and RZA is back on board as well (see "RZA Happy To Once Again Be The Peanut Butter To Method Man's Jelly").
"On the third LP, it was suggested to bring in Harve Pierre and P. Diddy," he began to explain about exactly where The Prequel went wrong. "Who am I to argue? Puff knows how to sell some records. But that wasn't the direction to go in, and I know that now.
"I didn't know that when people look at me, they didn't just look at me as a performer who goes around and has fun all day," he continued. "They want me to say something. I got [so] caught up in the other hoopla that I stopped saying anything. I just got wrapped up in trying to make hit records and SoundScan. ... I just wanted to get my album out. Def Jam was going through their transition, and I felt that if I didn't get my album out, I wasn't gonna be at the label."
Now, looking back, Meth says he sees that he needed to look inward to find the right direction.
"I wasn't true to myself [on The Prequel] for the simple fact that, look at who I was working with," he said. "I'm not trying to take nothing way from Puff, he's the biggest artist on Bad Boy. But Puff with Meth don't mesh. We don't party the same way."
4:21 ... The Day After is due July 18.
PLEASE READ!!! Major Mistake on my part!!!!
 Recently, I posted a song up on my myspace page that was not mine at all. It was entitled Hips Don't Lie-(Sonarz ghetto beat remix) It was actually Kovas's-Ghetto Beat remix. I mistakenly posted his up there instead of mine. (My remix was derived from both Wyclef's and Kovas's and sinse Kovas was the main inspiration for my mix I just named it after his) Unfortunately, he was the one who found out. That doesn't make me look good at all. And I wanted to apologize to Kovas and to any others that may have thought it was mine. Let this be a lesson to everyone. First get your head out your butt and pay attention and two if you are a DJ and have a myspace account make sure you check your profile page, not just your emails, you may have posted something that isn't yours up there. To check out Kovas's myspace page click here.
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