Very tragic accident. This is not for the squeamish. RIP Jeremy Lusk
Chris Brown has officially been stripped of his milk mustache.
via TMZ
In the wake of his arrest — and the allegations he beat up Rihanna — the “Got Milk” people have wiped Brown’s ad from bodybymilk.com and fired off the following statement:
“The Milk Mustache campaign is taking the allegations against Chris Brown very seriously. We are very proud and protective of the image of the Milk Mustache campaign and the responsible message it sends to teens. Mr. Brown’s ad was launched last fall and is scheduled to end this week.”
Rihanna’s ad still appears on the website.
This was suppose to be the first single off of T-Pain’s Three Ring Circus album.
via Village Voice
Pop Matters today publishes an essay, “Watching Rap,” which starts like this:
In March of 2008, the LA Times published an article that implicated Sean “Diddy” Combs and his associates in the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur at Quad Recording Studios in New York. A few days later, the Times retracted the article once it became apparent that the author, Chuck Phillips, had relied on fabricated documents and less-than-credible sources. Nevertheless, despite the quick (and embarrassing) retraction, the story got nearly one million hits on latimes.com, more than any other story for the year, and as a result, the story-within-the-story became the overwhelming public interest in the shooting, even 14 years after the fact.
And, after a kind of survey of why one million people would care about this story–the fact the deaths remain unsolved, the allegations of police involvement in Pac’s death, the rise of so-called hip-hop cops, and so on–the piece’s author, Erik Nielson, winds up here: “This recent mainstream interest in the subject may suggest that these kinds of surveillance tactics are new, but the existence of the “hip-hop cops” is really just further evidence of a long-standing tradition of institutional surveillance of rap as a whole–a tradition that has been so pervasive that in many ways it has become intrinsic to the genre as we know it.” So far–great.
It can’t be understated the degree to which this surveillance is weird and threatening and, relative to the amount of crime that actually takes place in the (narrowly-defined) rap community, completely disproportionate. Hip-hop cops are, as Nielson points out, a naked throwback to “the COINTELPRO days of the ’50s and ’60s, when black artists and activists were routinely monitored by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies”–except these days, the New Yorker writes bemused profiles about the cops involved. I have yet to read an even remotely convincing justification for their existence, although Ian Frazier did give it a shot in that New Yorker piece: Fabolous shouts out Street Fam, which is in fact a criminal gang, all the time; Vibe reported on Young Jeezy’s ties to the “ATL street crew” Black Mafia Family. So yes, these dudes knew/grew up with/are still friends with criminals. Read more…
via Nahright
In a move reminiscent of Jay-Z’s monumental deal with Live Nation, Snoop Dogg, who just split with longtime label Interscope Records, has announced that he will release his next album Malice In Wonderland, through MTV. He will also launch a new nighttime variety show called Dogg After Dark, and will leverage MTV’s popular Rock Band video game as a distribution platform. Deals like this speak volumes about the state of the majors. Or, at the very least, artists perceptions about the majors ability to effectively sell their music.
Full press release.
New York, NY – February 10, 2009 – MTV and rapper, icon, record producer, entrepreneur and actor, Snoop Dogg today announced a first-of-its kind global deal that will bring the entertainers’ personality to television in a new variety talk show, “Dogg After Dark,” and his music to fans with a new album release and into the best-selling music video game Rock Band®.
Premiering on Tuesday, February 17th at 9pm ET/PT on MTV, Snoop Dogg will host “Dogg After Dark,” a new jam packed weekly variety talk show from Los Angeles hotspot Kress on Hollywood Boulevard. “Dogg After Dark” will bring his Doggystyle swagger to the airwaves with raw interviews with A-list celebrities and musicians, hilarious sketch-comedy segments and musical performances from the hottest artists. The show will air every Tuesday night for seven weeks and feature Snoop’s own in-house band, the “Snoopadelics.” Read more…
via CNN
(CNN) — Gold teeth, luxury cars and diamond chains heavy enough to slump a bodybuilder’s shoulders have been ubiquitous symbols in hip-hop music for years, if not decades.
But — as you may have noticed at the Grammys on Sunday — there are signs that the genre’s high-dollar bling may not survive the economic recession.
Many rappers came to the annual music awards show wearing sleek suits; their famous jewels were conspicuously absent. Artist Lil Wayne, who accepted two of rap’s biggest awards — Grammys for best solo rap performance and best rap album — performed wearing a T-shirt. Only a modest necklace dangled from his neck.
Like everyone these days, rappers are feeling the effects of the country’s economic meltdown. But industry commentators are split on whether they think financial woes will cause rappers to give up their hefty jewels.
Some experts contacted by CNN said the bling era soon will come crashing down.
We just came out of the ‘bling era,’ where everything was about wealth and what you could attain, and I’m starting to see artists being more socially conscious,” said Amy Andrieux, a senior editor at The Source magazine, which covers hip-hop.
President Obama’s election has inspired some of the change, Andrieux said, but rappers also “just can’t afford what they used to” because of the recession.
Top artists such as Lil Jon, who once made about $80,000 per track, now are grappling with the fact that they may get half that sum if they’re lucky, said Bryan Leach, senior vice president of urban music for RCA Music Group.
And while most Americans may not weep over the fact that famous rappers may make only $35,000 per song, the price cuts — and layoffs — are sending shocks through the recording industry, Leach said.
“Every major label has been laying people off,” he said. Read more…
via NY Mag
Even though Rick Rubin’s victory as Producer of the Year at last night’s Grammy ceremony was pretty much a foregone conclusion — Nigel Godrich and Will.I.Am never stood a chance with the elderly voters in the Recording Academy — we’d imagine it still made things a little awkward this morning at the offices of Columbia Records, where Rubin reportedly never shows up, despite being the label’s co-head. On Saturday, the Times ran a hilarious story about continued speculation over what, if anything, he’s accomplished since landing his cushy executive gig in 2007. You know, besides producing hit albums for other record labels.
So far, to the naked eye, it would appear that Rubin has failed to enact any major changes that might help ensure Columbia’s long-term survival (unless you count his spearheading the company’s move to expensive new office space in Beverly Hills). According to his co-workers, he’s “steadily lost influence” at the company and several executives close to him have been laid off, despite his objections. Rubin’s friend Russell Simmons, with whom he founded Def Jam Records in 1984, tells the Times, “I don’t know what his role is [at Columbia],” and sources at the company “were at a loss to name a notable act that Mr. Rubin has brought to [the label] in his executive capacity.”
He did, however, somehow find time to produce five albums during the Grammys’ 2008 eligibility period, including two (Metallica’s Death Magnetic and Weezer’s The Red Album) that were hits for Warner and Geffen, respectively.
Rubin’s contract with Columbia still has three years left on it, and he’s currently hard at work helming a new album by Josh Groban (another Warner artist), so there’s practically nothing standing in his way of collecting multiple paychecks and Grammys through 2012 (except the imminent death of the music business, which nonsense like this will surely help expedite).
Producer’s Track Record as a Label Executive Is Raising Questions [NYT]
Nail in his proverbial coffin.
Some of the slimmer eye candy from the folks over at Sports Illustrated. Also featuring Damaris Lewis from my beloved borough of Brooklyn!!
Ariel Meredith
Damaris Lews
For more pics of these beauties click here
It seems that Rick Ross gang affiliations don’t go past youtube videos.
via TSG
FEBRUARY 9–The rapper Rick Ross would have his fans believe that he made millions trafficking cocaine while running with one of Miami’s violent street gangs. Of course, that claim took a hit recently with the disclosure that Ross (real name: William Leonard Roberts) actually once worked as a corrections officer, news that was met with derision in hip-hop circles.
Now, records show that Ross’s own lawyer last year disputed reports that the performer has ever been affiliated with any gang. Ross’s purported hoodlum connections were explored last April during a deposition of Officer Rey Hernandez, a Miami Beach cop who arrested Ross in January 2008 on gun and marijuana charges (one of the few blemishes on Ross’s rap sheet). As seen in the below transcript excerpts, Ross’s lawyer, Allan Zamren, asked Hernandez why Ross’s case was assigned to the gang task force. “Because your client claims affiliation with Carol City Cartel and other known gang members,” Hernandez replied.
The cop then directed Zamren to “some literature or video on U-Tube that you can pull up for yourself.” Zamren then proceeded to press Hernandez on Ross’s supposed gang ties. “Do you have anybody from a Carol City gang that you have information on or basis of any knowledge that says he is affiliated with them?” Hernandez answered, “No.” Zamren then asked, “Do you have anything that shows you he was affiliated with any gang?” Hernandez replied, “No, I do not.” Zamren also got Hernandez to acknowledge that, prior to the January 2008 bust, Ross had never been arrested in Miami-Dade County, where he has long resided.
In response to a Freedom of Information request, a copy of the Hernandez deposition was provided to TSG by the Miami-Dade Office of the State Attorney, which is prosecuting Ross on the gun charge (the pot count was was dropped)
via NY Times
YouTube and the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent agency, are close to signing a deal that would place the company’s clients in made-for-the-Web productions.
The deal would underscore the ways that distribution models are evolving on the Internet. Already, some actors and other celebrities are creating their own content for the Web, bypassing the often arduous process of developing a program for a television network. The YouTube deal would give William Morris clients an ownership stake in the videos they create for the Web site.
Two people close to the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their companies to speak publicly about the deal, described the arrangement as YouTube’s most sweeping attempt to date to add professionally produced videos to its Web site, which mostly features amateur videos uploaded by users. The people cautioned that the deal had not been completed. Representatives for YouTube and William Morris declined to comment Wednesday evening.
The addition of more videos by A-list actors, musicians and other stars would bolster YouTube’s identity as a next-generation entertainment source and, more important for the site’s parent company, Google, could help answer a riddle it is trying to solve: how to wring cash from the hundreds of millions of videos it hosts free. Read more…
This only aired once and was immediately pulled off of the air. SNL’s founder Lorne Michael told the New York Daily News he “didn’t think it worked comedically.” But this clip pretty much sums it up when it comes to MSM (Main-Stream Media).
Wow, I had no idea that denial of the Holocaust is actually a crime…on the books!
via Yahoo
CITY (Reuters) – World Jewish leaders told Vatican officials that denying the Holocaust was “not an opinion but a crime” when they met on Monday to discuss a bishop they accuse of being anti-Semitic. 
The meetings, the first since the controversy over Bishop Richard Williamson, who denies the extent of the Holocaust, began last month, took place three days before Pope Benedict is due to address a group of American Jewish leaders.
Williamson told Swedish television in an interview broadcast in January: “I believe there were no gas chambers.” He said no more than 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, rather than the 6 million accepted by most historians.
“Today we strongly reaffirmed that the denial of the Shoah is not an opinion, but a crime,” said Richard Prasquier, president of the French Jewish umbrella organization CRIF, using the Hebrew word for Holocaust.
Prasquier and Maram Stern, deputy secretary of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), held talks with Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Vatican office that handles religious relations with Jews.
“We want the Vatican to realize that by accommodating anti-Semites like Williamson, the achievements of four decades of Catholic-Jewish dialogue … will be put into doubt,” WJC President Ronald Lauder said in a statement.
“We now believe that our message has been understood. The controversial debate of the past three weeks has had a positive impact,” said Lauder, who did not attend the meetings. Read more…
via Yahoo
Who’s next?
With consumers shutting their wallets and corporate revenues plunging, the business landscape may start to resemble a graveyard in 2009. Household names like Circuit City and Linens ‘n Things have already perished. And chances are, those bankruptcies were just an early warning sign of a much broader epidemic.
Moody’s Investors Service, for instance, predicts that the default rate on corporate bonds – which foretells bankruptcies – will be three times higher in 2009 than in 2008, and 15 times higher than in 2007. That could equate to 25 significant bankruptcies per month.
We examined ratings from Moody’s and data from other sources to develop a short list of potential victims that ought to be familiar to most consumers. Many of these firms are in industries directly hit by the slowdown in consumer spending, such as retail, automotive, housing and entertainment.
But there are other common threads. Most of these firms have limited cash for a rainy day, and a lot of debt, with large interest payments due over the next year. In ordinary times, it might not be so hard to refinance loans, or get new ones, to help keep the cash flowing. But in an acute credit crunch it’s a different story, and at companies where sales are down and going lower, skittish lenders may refuse to grant any more credit. It’s a terrible time to be cash-poor.
[See how Wall Street continues to doom itself.]
That’s why Moody’s assigns most of these firms its lowest rating for short-term liquidity. And all the firms on this list have long-term debt that Moody’s rates Caa or lower, which means the borrower is considered at least a “very high” credit risk.
Once a company defaults on its debt, or fails to make a payment, the next step is usually a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Some firms continue to operate while in Chapter 11, retaining many of their employees. Those firms often shed debt, restructure, and emerge from bankruptcy as healthier companies. Read more…
via Space Marauder
Researchers at CERN have released a new timetable for the restart of the Large Hadron Collider after a problematic electrical connection forced the facility to be closed for repairs, just 9 days after its launch. Originally slated for an early spring restart, the announcement points to a restart in late September with the first proton collisions to occur about 4 weeks later.
The Large Hadron Collider is contained in a 17 mile long tunnel under the Swiss-French border. Over 1 billion people watched as protons first passed through the tunnel on September 10th. On September 19th, researchers were testing the electrical wiring to make sure that it could handle the massive currents needed to pass protons around the ring when the connection between two magnets melted, causing the cryogenic plumbing to be damaged. The plumbing keeps the superconducting magnets frigid at nearly -455.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
The damage caused a helium leak in sectors 3 and 4, and in order for repairs to take place 53 of the LHC’s magnets had to be brought to the surface. The repairs and other preventive measures are expected to cost CERN nearly €20 million. New monitoring systems include 230km of cables that will detect nano-ohm rises in electrical resistance in the wires that are used to conduct the massive currents used to bend the magnets. Physicists were not able to reach an agreement however on another preventive measure that would have each magnet fitted with helium valves to reduce the impact of a specific failure in the system. Read more…
Hands down the funniest cat in the game. Hip Hop needs Curtis for his honest commentary. Pure f*ckin’ comedy!
I’m feeling this joint even though they kinda flowing on and off beat. Homie from Wild’N Out even jumps on and spits his 16! Nice.
via TMZ
DMX is officially on “lockdown status” in Arizona’s Tent City Jail for one of the dumbest moves an inmate can make — dude threatened to fight the guards.
After X failed to report for his medication, officials say the former platinum rapper began cussing at officers and threatened to “assault somebody to get some respect.”
DMX was immediately thrown into lockdown and punished with a “special diet that is a form of bread and water.”
It all started when he refused to report for work, telling officers, “I already have a job and don’t need this (expletive).”
Sounds like he’s finally reforming…
via LA Times
Reporting from Sacramento — A panel of three federal judges, ruling that overcrowding in state prisons has deprived inmates of their right to adequate healthcare, today indicated they would order the state to reduce the population in those lockups by as many as 58,000 people.
The judges issued the tentative ruling after a trial in two long-running cases brought by inmates to protest the state of medical and mental healthcare in the prisons.
Although the order is not final, U.S. District Court Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt effectively told the state that it had lost the case and would have to make dramatic changes in its prisons unless it could reach a settlement with inmates’ lawyers.
If the state is ordered to reduce the population, it would likely be able to do so over several years by limiting new admissions and other measures, so that it would not have to release large numbers of prisoners at once.
State prisons right now operate at about double their designed capacity, and the judges found that with inmates crammed into institutions, they could not receive the care to which they are entitled. Read more…
Skee TV reports “Snoop Dogg talks about Gangs, Crips, Bloods and resolution! Snoop gives his insight on how gangs effected his life and his perspective on Baron Davis’s movie Crips and Bloods: Made In America “
via Thisis50
Snoop Dogg has confirmed that he will no longer record with Interscope, his label home for over 10 years.
The split comes nearly one year after the release of Snoop’s ninth studio album, Ego Trippin’.
Lead by the crossover, 80s inspired ballad “Sexual Eruption,” the LP debuted at #3 on Billboard’s Top 200, but fell short of gold certification.
While the West Coast veteran declined to give specific details on the reason for the sudden split, Snoop verified there will not be any final albums with Interscope.
“We are pushing the envelope on getting everything finalized,” Snoop told AllHipHop.com. “But I will not be releasing anymore projects under Interscope/Geffen.”
In his first tenure with Interscope under Death Row Records, Snoop released his classic, 4X platinum debut Doggystyle (1993), the platinum Murder Was the Case soundtrack (1994), and the double platinum sophomore solo Tha Doggfather (1996). Read more…
via Apple 2.0
Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle has a skinny sister – the Kindle 2.
At a press conference Monday morning in Manhattan, CEO Jeff Bezos introduced a thinner, lighter and faster version of the company’s surprisingly popular handheld electronic book reader. The price is the same – $359 – and it goes on sale today for delivery in 15 days. The new device looks very much like the old one, with these improvements:
* Thinner: 0.36 inches thick, 25% thinner than an iPhone 
* Quicker: Turns pages 20% faster
* Longer lasting: 25% increase in battery life
* Better display: 16 shades of gray (was 4)
* Bigger memory: Stores up to 1,500 books
* Bigger vocabulary: Built-in 250,000 dictionary
* Better navigation: With a 5-way joystick
* More vocal: Able to read text aloud in a semi-robotic voice
* Less accident prone: The page-turn buttons are smaller and harder to hit by mistake
* More wired: New Whispersync technology (more below)
“We want the Kindle to disappear,” said Bezos before a packed audience in the basement of Manhattan’s Carnegie Library. “It’s designed so nothing interferes with that incredibly pleasurable mental flow-state you get into when you are reading a good book.”
Bestselling thriller author Stephen King read from new a short story – “Ur” – that is available, for now, exclusively on the Kindle. “I’m the entertainment,” he quipped. The original Kindle allowed users to download books (standard price: $9.99) wirelessly from the Internet using a built-in 3G cellular modem. Read more…
via CNN
NEW YORK (Reuters) — Identity theft has become more prevalent, with nearly 10 million American victims losing $48 billion in 2008, but the average loss is falling as consumers and businesses detect fraud faster, a new study shows.
The number of victims rose 22% to a record 9.9 million in 2008 from 8.1 million a year earlier, with about one in 23 U.S. adults becoming victims, according to the fifth annual study by Javelin Strategy & Research, released Monday.
Total losses increased from about $45 billion, following three straight years of declines. The average loss fell 12% to $4,849 from $5,488. One positive trend was that consumers spent less to clear up a fraud — an average $496, down 31%. More than half spent nothing.
The economic recession that began in December 2007 is likely a factor in the increase in theft cases, according to James Van Dyke, the president of Javelin.
“Identity fraud has been dropping until last year, boom, there was a turn-up,” he said in an interview. “The only thing we can logically attribute that to is the economy. If people need to make money, and decide to do so illicitly, identity fraud is the logical opportunity.”
Improper use of lost or stolen wallets, checkbooks, and credit and debit cards remained the most common means of fraud, constituting 43% of all incidents. Roughly one in four victims had personal identification numbers (PIN) compromised on their ATM cards. Online fraud totaled 11% of cases.
People who made more than $75,000 were more likely to be fraud victims than those who made less. By age, the fraud rate was highest among people 35 to 44 years old. Read more…
Sorry, Barry but you lost some cool points for this. Yeah, I know Bush did it, but you shouldn’t be doing anything that follows in his footsteps, no pun intended.
via ESPN
His voice shaking at times, Alex Rodriguez met head-on allegations that he tested positive for steroids six years ago, telling ESPN on Monday that he did take performance-enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers during a three-year period beginning in 2001.
“When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure, felt all the weight of the world on top of me to perform, and perform at a high level every day,” Rodriguez told ESPN’s Peter Gammons in an exclusive interview in Miami Beach, Fla. An extended interview will air on SportsCenter at 6 p.m. ET. “Back then, [baseball] was a different culture,” Rodriguez said. “It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naïve. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time. “I did take a banned substance. For that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful.”
Rodriguez’s admission comes 48 hours after Sports Illustrated reported that Rodriguez was on a list of 104 players who tested positive for banned substances in 2003, the year when Major League Baseball conducted survey tests to see if mandatory, random drug-testing was needed in the sport. Read more…
via XXL
After appearing as a judge in The Pussycat Dolls’ “Girlicious” reality competition, Lil’ Kim will now be switching roles as she has signed on to star as a contestant in the new season of “Dancing With The Stars.” According to the Los Angeles Times the controversial Brooklyn rapstress will be a part of the new cast of the popular TV series, joining comedian David Alan Grier, “Jackass” alumnus Steve-O, former NFL player Lawrence Taylor and singer Jewel, among others.
“It’s the most diverse cast we’ve had,” Deena Katz, the show’s Senior Talent Producer, told People magazine. “The women are phenomenal and the men are such great characters.” The show is scheduled to air on March 9 on ABC. In related news, Kim has been making headlines for comments she made about the Biggie biopic, Notorious. The outspoken rapper has publicly announced her disapproval of her portrayal in the movie.
In an interview with Hip-Hop Weekly she even threw shots at Big’s mother, Voletta Wallace, who produced the film, and widow Faith Evans. “I’ve had enough and I’m about to expose them both … I’ve been quiet for a long time,” she said. “I’m very disappointed in Faith,” she added. “There’s nothing Faith or Ms. Wallace could do to stop me from reppin’ B.I.G. all day. I’m gonna always do that … It’s time for Ms. Wallace to be exposed.”
Finally she can look in the mirror, but they need to get us a pic of how she looks after the surgery has healed.
Photograph released by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) shows Lakhmani Devi with a large parotid gland tumour (left) and after an operation to remove the growth. An Indian woman has had a tumour as big as a football removed from the side of her face, 25 years after it first developed
via Breitbart
An Indian woman has had a tumour as big as a football removed from the side of her face, 25 years after it first developed.Doctors who performed the operation believe 67-year-old Lakhmani Devi’s parotid gland tumour, which weighed nearly two kilogrammes, may have been the biggest ever removed from a human.
“It was made of solid tissue and was the largest I have come across in all the medical books,” K.K. Handa, the operating surgeon at New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, told AFP on Monday.
“The patient was told by doctors in her village that she would die if it was removed so she coped with it for decades. But she is now eating well and should make a full recovery.”
Devi, from the eastern state of Jharkhand, is expected to be discharged from hospital 10 days after the surgery on February 4.
Her son, Lallan Singh, said that the operation would give his mother a new lease of life.
“The tumour kept on increasing,” he said. “She felt uncomfortable and embarrassed and stopped going out of the house. We can’t thank the doctors enough.”
via Hypebot
Sony posted a whopping 95% decrease in profits last quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Gaming was was the biggest disappointment down 97%, but music did its part to contribute to the downward spiral. Even when factoring out the expensive purchase of BMG’s half of the former Sony BMG, music profits declined 41% driven by a 22% decrease in sales.
Sony has avoided the recent wholesale staff cuts made by other labels favoring more targeted layoffs. But as losses mount and the world economy worsens, sources hint that Sony’s layoff scalpel could become a hatchet.
via Hypebot
For once the artist really has come out on top, as singer songwriter Amanda Ghost has been named the new president of Epic Records, part of Sony’s Columbia/Epic Label Group. She replaces Charlie Walk, who left Epic after his contract expired late last year.
Ghost has written songs that sold more than 25 million records in the last three years including James Blunt’s “You are Beautiful”; Beyoncé & Shakira’s “Beautiful Liar” and Jordin Sparks “‘Tattoo.
”I’m not a conventional choice as an executive in the music business, but it is testament to the new mood at Sony where content is now king and the music business is being put back in the hands of creative talent such as myself,” says Ghost. “I’m here to draw on my experiences as an artist, songwriter and producer to make the new and existing artists signed to Epic as brilliant and successful as possible”.
Amanda Ghost released her own major label debut “Ghost Stories” (Warner Bros.) in 2000 and later went on to release records in the UK on her own record label, Plan A distributed through Universal Records. During that time she also started a publishing label and music production company where she signed new and developing artists, most recently, Hugo Chakra, who is licensed through Jay Z’s record label Roc Nation.
“I am delighted that Amanda has chosen to bring her creative vision and flair to the Epic label. In the changing environment of the music business record labels undoubtedly need to be complete partners with the artistic community and Amanda will be the perfect executive to meet that challenge,” Rob Stringer, Chairman Columbia/Epic Label Group said in a statement.
via Inquisitr
There is a nervous chill going through the music industry bloggers corner of the larger blogosphere and it has to do with posts of theirs just disappearing. Literally one minute they are there and the next minute they are gone. LA Weekly is reporting on the story that the bloggers that are being affected are all using Google’s Blogger platform which needless to say has a lot of music bloggers looking for new homes.
The story first came to the forefront when Ryan Spaulding, the writer behind the Boston based music blog Ryan’s Smashing Life, noticed that moth old posts that he had written; as well as much older ones, were disappearing from his site. As far as he could see there was no rhyme or reason to it. Unsure of what was happening he started comparing notes with other music bloggers and as a result found that posts right across the web – everything from posts about Abba to Zappa, had vanished.
It was only after a number of emails and conversations that Ryan and the other bloggers figured out that all the affected blogs where located on Google’s Blogger platform
Eventually, though, a consensus emerged: Each post takedown occurred on a blog hosted by the Google-owned Blogger platform, the publishing system used by the majority of mp3 sites, particularly those founded prior to 2007, when the open-source WordPress software became the vogue. Google, the bloggers believe, has quietly changed the methods by which it enforces its user agreement. Whereas in the past, a blog owner would receive a warning before a post’s removal, Google is now simply hitting the delete button. In Spaulding’s case, this means that posts written over the past year or more on Wilco, the Annuals, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Matisyahu and Earth, Wind & Fire are gone.
“I’d received the label’s press releases and followed their directions, spending my time and energy to promote their albums,” explains a frustrated Spaulding. “By pulling down my post, they destroyed my intellectual creativity, the very same thing they’re erroneously accusing me of doing. Say someone had linked to that post, or [blog aggregator] Hype Machine — it’s gone completely. If I go into my Blogger table of contents, it’s gone. Not de-published — gone.” Read more…
via Time
A girl I knew in high school has memorized all of Janet Jackson’s dance routines. A college acquaintance is afraid of train whistles. Five separate people harbor lifelong desires to visit New Zealand. How do I know these things? Because they won’t stop writing about them on Facebook!
Facebook’s “25 Things About Me” meme seems harmless enough; people write 25 facts about themselves and post them on their Facebook pages, just as they do with videos, status updates and photos of last weekend’s party. An estimated 5 million of these notes — that’s 125 million facts — have appeared on the website within the past week. Assuming it takes someone 10 minutes to come up with their list, this recent bout of viral narcissism has sent roughly 800,000 hours of worktime productivity down the drain. (Read “Does Facebook Replace Face Time or Enhance It?”)
But it’s just so stupid. Most people aren’t funny, they aren’t insightful, and they share way too much. Facebook is a loose social network; a “friend” on Facebook might translate to someone you’d barely recognize in real life. I don’t care that my college roommate’s sister is anemic or that my stepcousin’s boyfriend gets nervous around old people (apparently he’s afraid they’re going to die). (See the best social-networking applications.)
Below are 25 facts I wish people hadn’t told me about themselves. They come from friends, friends-of-friends, friends-of-friends-of-friends and coworkers. They are all real, though I wish some of them were not. Read more…
via Engadget
Verizon’s BlackBerry Storm is getting a little kick in its pricing courtesy of an Amazon rebate-free rebate. The deal here is that the infamous touchscreen BlackBerry is now $99.99 on a two-year stint, no rebate paperwork, no mailing things anywhere, just shell out cash, get phone, call people. Verizon has a buy one get one free thing going on right now, so if you’re looking for two Storms for the price of one — and that one is still $199 — you can head on over to see them. Everybody happy now?
via Hypebeast
This week marked the released of the much anticipated Clark Kent x Nike Air Force 1 sneaker.
Created in honor of the NBA All Star Game taking place in Phoenix Arizona, DJ Clark Kent teams with Nike for another quality limited release. The Phoenix Suns colorway is built with premium materials ranging from nubuck to patent. Three sets of Starks laces and a pair of lace locks round out the detailing of this AF1.
Available now at Bodega.
Its Halle, need I say more?
Proppers to Lil Weezy for repping for his hometown New Orleans. This was a moving tribute to a forgotten American tragedy. Wayne did the unexpected with this one and merged the Marti Gras flavor in it as well. Even Robin Thicke got it all the way in, he was groovin’ wasn’t he? Still think he got jerked on the Album of the Year but hey, that’s life for ya!
REMEMBER MS. KATIE, I’M A GANGSTA!!
via USDA
Actor Eddie Murphy has agreed to pay out $51,000 a month in child support to his former lover, singer Melanie Brown.
The former Spice Girl hit the headlines in 2006 after embarking on a short fling with the Beverly Hills Cop star and falling pregnant with his child. Murphy sparked a war of words with Brown following their break-up when he suggested it was possible he wasn’t the father of the baby. He subsequently took a DNA test which determined daughter Angel Iris – born on Murphy’s birthday, April 3rd 2007 – was in fact his.
British tabloid the News of the World has revealed that Dr. Doolittle star Murphy has agreed to a support package totaling more than $10 million, following a 15 month court battle in Los Angeles.
No one on that stage had swagger like her! Salute to M.I.A. for holding it down, virtually bout to pop out her belly.
SNL brings it home with this one. Kudos to them, Jordan Tower holla at Phelps and let him host the Smoke-a-Thon. Hip Hop needs to step up to the f*ckin’ plate and help homie out!!
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