LATEST: Rapper 50 CENT has laughed off the restraining order banning him from contact with his ex-girlfriend - insisting he hasn't seen her outside of a courtroom in more than a year.
On Friday (20Jun08) a New York judge agreed to Shaniqua Tompkins' request, which will prevent the star, real name Curtis Jackson, from being on the same premises as the mother of his 11year-old son Marquise.
But 50 Cent's lawyer Bret Kimmel claims the petition is merely a "tactic", because the former couple has no contact anyway.
His statement reads, "Outside of courtrooms and lawyers' offices, Mr. Jackson hasn't seen nor spoken with Ms. Tompkins in a year and a half, and he has no interest in doing so now.
"The petition is little more than a tactic and a vindictive response to the petition Mr. Jackson filed seeking an order holding Ms. Tompkins in contempt of court for refusing to permit him to be with his son."
The pair has been battling in court over 50 Cent's Long Island, New York home, where Tompkins and Marquise have been living. The house was destroyed in a suspicious blaze in May (08).
The rapper is currently suing Tompkins for defamation after she accused him of starting the fire.
Friday 27 June 2008
Hikaru Utada
Artist: Hikaru Utada
Genre(s):
Pop: Japan
Discography:
Flavor Of Life
Year: 2007
Tracks: 5
Flavor Of Life
Year: 2007
Tracks: 5
She dominates the charts in Japan whenever she releases a individual or album, but to call off her a J-pop singer ignores Utada's American roots and her desire to better all the rules of the genre. Born January 19, 1983, in New York City to a traditional Japanese-style singer mother and a musician/producer begetter, Hikaru Utada grew up in the recording studio apartment. Her father's production job bounced her between New York City and Tokyo, with the only constant existence naps and homework in the studio. She was bilingual at an early geezerhood and before long came to understand both American and Japanese cultures.
She had composed and recorded her first Japanese-language song by the years of 11 and her first album in English by 13. What stood out to the few world Health Organization heard the record album was what an accomplished composer Utada was. A Toshiba-EMI administrator approached the singer to see if she could drop a line her pop songs in Japanese. She could, of course, and her Japanese-language debut album, First Love, pip numeral one on the Japanese charts during its low gear workweek of dismissal, breakage the record for first-week gross sales of a debut album, and has sold baseball club meg copies since its release in 1999.
Unitary Japanese-language platinum-selling album subsequently another followed and the Japanese press took preeminence of Utada's unique stylus, influenced by the alternative stone from America. Academics unbroken her off from doing many interviews, and her mystique grew as a result. In 2004 she announced she was moving to the Island-Universal Music Japan label and recording an English-language album. Her individual "Exodus 04" became a heartbreaker for her solid fan base when her lyrics were interpreted as a bye to Japan.
The album Exodus was released in Japan on September 8, 2004, and Utada right away held the record for largest-ever one-day dispatch of an English-language album by doubling Mariah Carey's previous record of D,000. The album miscellaneous pensive pop and sparkling dance music and featured manufacturer Timbaland and Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore. American J-pop fans were mindful of her for long time, but Utada got her low gear mainstream U.S. exposure when the "Fiend Inside" individual appeared in September 2004 with Rjd2, the Scumfrog, and Richard Vission treatment the remixes. Exodus standard its American release on Island in October of the same year. In 2007 EMI announced that Utada had set a record for a Japanese recording artist with combined gross sales of 7.7 meg across all formats (CDs, digital downloads, ringtones, etc.).
Hulk to Linda: It's Not Me, It's the Economy!
Thursday 26 June 2008
Minneapolis' Tony-winning Jeune Lune to close
MINNEAPOLIS —
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A Tony Award-winning Twin Cities theater is closing and will be sold to repay a $1 million debt.
Theatre de la Jeune Lune, which won a Tony Award in 2005 as the nation's outstanding regional playhouse, is closing at the end of July. The performance company's board voted Saturday for the closure.
Theatre de la Jeune Lune means "Theater of the New Moon."
For three decades the company often borrowed text from ancient playwrights or contemporary writers and blended it with their own words, music and imagination.
The company was founded in 1978 by Minneapolis resident Barbra Berlovitz and Parisians Dominique Serrand and Vincent Gracieux. The three studied together at the International Theater School of Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Robert Rosen, a childhood friend of Berlovitz, also joined the group.
The group split time and performances between France and the United States before settling in the Twin Cities in 1985.
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Fccs Test Market Doesnt Know Its Being Tested
Wilmington, DE may be the first city in the nation to switch from analog to
digital-only television on Sept. 8, but only 18 percent of the residents of the
city are aware that the switch is coming early, according to a survey by the
National Association �of Broadcasters. Wilmington has been singled out as a
test market by the FCC to determine what problems, if any, might occur when the
nation as a whole is required to make the switch to all-digital next February
17.
06/06/2008
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Jakob Dylan sets aside the band, goes to school with Rubin
NEW YORK - At 38 years old and the father of four, Jakob Dylan won't be taking any backpacking trips through Europe. A musician's equivalent of that, however, inspired the first solo album of his career.
Asked by friend T Bone Burnett to be his opening act on a tour last year, Dylan eagerly accepted. It was a break from the rock band he fronts, the Wallflowers, and a chance to hang out backstage with musicians he admires like Burnett, drummer Jim Keltner and guitarist Marc Ribot.
"It was the opportunity I was kind of waiting for," he told The Associated Press recently. "I was kind of confused. I didn't want to get right back on the treadmill and write another record for the band. Relationships with the record company (Interscope) had dissipated. It was a bad relationship. Not a crossroads, but we just weren't sure what to do next."
Dylan landed at Columbia, his father Bob's label, and told label chief Rick Rubin he was writing some songs without the band in mind.
He couldn't have gone to a better person. Rubin has produced his share of rock and rap, but his ability to rip protective layers off an artist to get to the essence of a song - his work with Johnny Cash, for instance - is the defining characteristic of his control room talents.
So Dylan entered the School of Rick Rubin, leaving with the disc "Seeing Things." The stripped-down affair highlights Dylan's voice and acoustic guitar with only a few musical colourings.
"There's really no point in being in the studio with any producer unless you're willing to learn something," Dylan said. "You have to. There's a lot of trust involved. As soon as anyone opens their mouth, your first instinct is to think they're wrong ... I trusted him implicitly with the material and I didn't feel proprietary toward it once we started discussing it. His taste is that good."
Dylan has no ambition to be a troubadour, yet he's always wanted to show more sides of himself musically than he believes he has so far.
Stark and impressionistic, the songs on "Seeing Things" require concentration. With no band behind him, Dylan needed to carry them on his own. For the most part he does, although a lack of variation in tempo is a weakness.
He likens his compositions to paintings, with rich imagery the brushstrokes. War is a frequent backdrop to these songs, although the author is quick to say it's not necessarily the current one. He's not much for explaining songs, anyway, feeling listeners have the right to take what they want from them.
More literal songwriting, with phrases that can be used as "bumper stickers," isn't his thing, he said.
The solo album doesn't mean the end for the Wallflowers. It was just a break; the band has some gigs this summer. His band members are always busy with studio work, so it's not as if they sit around waiting for him.
"A couple of them are happy about it, to tell you the truth," he said.
Dylan going acoustic is sure to invite comparisons to pop, who, you might recall, had some success in that arena. Musically Jakob is his own man, however. The new song that most makes you think of his father is the opening "Evil is Alive and Well," which structurally and thematically sounds like an inverse to "Gotta Serve Somebody."
Whether his father's work influenced his interest in doing "Seeing Things" is the one question he knows will come up in virtually every interview. He's easygoing and funny about it.
"I probably let my vanity down in that department a long time ago," he said. "If that was my concern, there wouldn't be a lot of options for me to do, period, in my life. If you talk to some people, somebody will tell you he actually invented soup."
By waiting until he was 38 to make this sort of disc, some may think he was purposely avoiding it, he said.
"I really don't care," he said. "I love songs. My life would be shortchanged if I let that affect whether I did this sort of thing or not."
It's tempting to ask: With a father generally acknowledged as the world's greatest living songwriter, do you avoid the subject with him to keep your own artistic identity and talk about the grandchildren instead? Or do you go to him for advice?
Silly question. Of course you ask him questions.
So...
Like what?
"I'd have to charge for that," he said with a smile.
-
On the Net:
http://www.jakobdylan.com/
http://www.wallflowers.com/
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Jay-z To Buy Share In Yankees
Hip-hop mogul SHAWN JAY ZCARTER is looking to expand his range of investments into the baseball world - he wants to own shares in the New York Yankees.
The rap superstar already heads up an empire that includes the Roc-A-Fella Records music label, Rocawear clothing and Armadale vodka - in addition to being a shareholder in the New Jersey Nets basketball team.
He has previously been linked to a deal with London soccer team Arsenal Football Club, and while Jay-Z admits the rumours were true, negotiations fell through in 2005.
And now the star has a new sporting interest - he's in the midst of talks to buy shares in the Yankees.
He tells London's Time Out magazine, "I had invested in the Nets, and they (Arsenal bosses) asked me if I was interested in investing. But I get that from time to time.
"Someone told me yesterday that someone else had a piece of the New York Yankees - 'We wanna talk to you, yadda yadda yadda.' I mean, I love the Yankees so I'm in the middle of following that through, but sometimes it comes to be nothing.
"That (Arsenal) was one of the times it came to nothing."
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The Puppini Sisters
Artist: The Puppini Sisters
Genre(s):
Other
Pop
Discography:
The Rise and Fall of Ruby Woo
Year: 2007
Tracks: 13
Boogie Woogie Bugly Boy
Year:
Tracks: 1
Lily Allen: You Kiss Your Mom With That Mouth?!?
Our photog asked Lily Allen what she thought about the rumored LiRo-mance ... but her vulgar response wasn't quite what we were fishing for.
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