• This is only because the Rock is apparently so high in demand. I, for one, had no idea. [People]
• All I have to say about this is that it’s not suitable for work. Or, really, anything at all. [C&D]
• Erykah Badu on Girlfriends? She doesn’t seem like the CW type. [RTNY]
• Beyonce says she can’t blame her infamous in-concert tumble on her long coat. I said it then, and I’ll say it again — all that fake hair messes up a girl’s center of gravity. [People]
• Police gave the Game back $40,000 they took during a sweep of his home earlier this year. He probably needs it. [SP]
• Blacks in North Carolina bring about $46 billion a year to the states economy. That’s all? They need to start helping out their state a little more. []
• Lots of people are pretty skeptical about this poll. [BAW]
• Mathew Knowles is trying to squeeze all he can out of the Beyonce Experience. [PE]
• Someone really, really liked Jay-Z’s American Gangster show at the Apollo. [MTV]
• Can we get some good black syndicated news shows on the radio? [BAR]
A Beyonce billboard for a local radio station has some Las Vegas residents pissed. According to some puritanical locals (but really, if you’re so conservative, why do you live in Sin City?), the billboard of a bikini-clad Bey is obscene. I have a feeling if they saw pictures of this ghostly makeup job she was sporting in Korea this weekend, they would think the bikini pic was benign.
[Image Source: WI]
Maybe it’s because, at the 2004 ceremony, Young Buck stabbed some guy with a fork after he punched Dr. Dre, or maybe it’s because the popular magazine’s award ceremony has sort of lost its magic in general, but the Vibe Awards got a serious downgrade this year. It’s now being aired on VH1 Soul (Nov. 14) and is called VH1 Soul Presents: Vibe Awards Special.
Beyonce (shown here on the cover of the December Cosmo), won big, along with Timbaland and Kanye West. Young Buck will not be making an appearance. []
• Readers in the New York area looking to break into the fashion industry and hear advice from blacks at the top of their game in the fashion world? Check out a panel discussion Sunday featuring Jay Alexander, Selita Ebanks, and Tia Williams (of Shake Your Beauty fame and, um, my mother’s womb), among others. Ticket sales go toward Designers for Darfur. [TL]
• Say goodbye to the black middle class? [BET]
• At least Jay-Z know who wears the performing-pants in his relationship. [HHDX]
• Among others, the granite industry is pissed that the statue for the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial will be Chinese made. But will it be an excellent statue? That’s all I want to know. [BG]
• Feds will “investigate” possible racism at a Louisiana public works department decorated with a bull whip, a noose, and a dart board with the bullseye replaced by a picture of a black man’s eye. Umm, yeah. Investigate that. []
Students at Ethiopia’s Theological College of the Holy Trinity know all about multi-tasking. On campus recently, a group of students railed against the school’s patriarch for committing the non-religious act of meeting with Beyonce before her Addis Ababa concert last month, going so far as to hunger strike. Other students involved in the protest didn’t get the exact same message.
Student Kinetibebeu Assefa, 25, said that he had joined the protest to demand an improvement in cafeteria food and the firing of some college officials.
“There is no problem with Beyonce,” he said. “But the (cafeteria) food is poisoned.”
One person’s Beyonce-related sacrilege is another person’s nasty cafeteria food. [EUR]
Beyonce, who is winding down her successful world tour, wants more international success (a la Rihanna) with her next album, according to the British duo supposedly helping her with her new material. Think more “Umbrella” and less “Get Me Bodied.”
Freemasons star James Wiltshire says, “The album is going to be huge. It will rival anything the likes of Britney and Rihanna have done recently. Beyonce and her team can see where mistakes were made on the last album. It was very American, very R+B and stripped back. “They want to go for a more international sound this time. She wants to hit as many audiences as possible.”
I think this Wiltshire character sort of lost all credibility when he threw Britney into that comparison. How hard is it to rival the stuff she’s done recently. But if this is true, bummer. I vastly prefer Beyonce’s music to Rihanna’s (although I might like Rihanna’s better if Beyonce was the one singing).
• Beyonce and Jay-Z will have an onstage performance at the pre-New Year opening of the 40/40 club in Las Vegas. Stans, start saving up now. [CM]
• Blacks are more likely to leave the hospital against doctor’s orders. [Reuters]
• Fifty-four percent of the nation’s low-income children are in Southern public schools. [FS]
• Blacks and our skin-color issues. [DFP]
• Are there now more spots for young black executives in the corner office? [NYT]
• A Beyonce show in Turkey was canceled, not because of wardrobe like her Malaysia gig, but because of Kurdish rebel attacks. Bummer for the fans in Istanbul. [DS]
• Joe Biden in race trouble again? [DI]
• Nooses, the Internet, Jews, Bigotry, Hate, etc… [ND]
• Dr. Dre recorded some Detroit city employees without their knowledge and now he’s getting sued. [Freep]
• Don’t worry, Arnold. Most people I know don’t consider it a drug either. [IHT]
