My father is obsessed with Stevie Wonder. I don’t mean he kind of is a fan of the man’s music. I mean he loves Stevie Wonder. I mean that one time my sister told him she thought Jodeci’s live version of “Lately” was better than Stevie’s, and she almost got disowned. So when I hear this song it sort of reminds me of my childhood, because this and others were sort of on a loop in the background of my early years. Although I had no earthly idea what a part-time lover was.

• New York magazine noticed a little too late that we weren’t ready to be cynical about Donda West’s death just yet. [Jossip]

• Also, TMZ does its best to honor that privacy request the West family made. [TMZ]

• In case you missed yesterday’s Breaking Into Fashion forum. [SYB]

• Usher’s new song sounds like the final cries of a mortally wounded robot. [CL]

• Right. I wish them all the happiness. [C&D]

As Clinton trudged through a week of momentum-sapping process stories — her supposed failure to leave a tip, the presence of a planted question in a town hall — Obama appeared to gain energy. His speech at the dinner was the performance of a politician, not a rock star. But he has found his voice.

Too little, too late? [TIME]

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]

James Browns’ first wife, who made headlines last week when she announced that she had never officially divorced the Godfather of Soul when they separated in the 60s, just got her memory jogged by the New York Times. Not only are Velma and James divorced, she filed the papers herself in 1969.

In a twist that shouldn’t be surprising, considering who we’re talking about here, the child, Lisa Brown, listed in the divorce papers is not part of Brown’s public history. So what’s the kid count now — 108, 109?

The Thanksgiving turkey may be on the back burner at T.I.’s house, but, according to Entertainment Weekly, there’s something stewing in his in-home studio.

A representative for the Grammy-winning artist, 27, says he has already completed six new tracks in a studio inside his Georgia home. T.I. hopes to release the disc, which he’s calling Paper Trail, in September 2008. The album’s title refers to the fact that T.I. is writing his new lyrics down — a practice he abandoned after his 2001 debut, I’m Serious. Each of his four subsequent albums, including this year’s T.I. vs. T.I.P., was composed without the aid of pen or paper. “He wanted to take more time to really put something down [this time],” explains his rep.

…because these days he has nothing but time, right?

When Yahoo’s web game designers run out of ideas, they turn to myths from the good ol’ days of colonialism for their inspiration. is a brilliant game that requires the player to move all of the “kind” missionaries to one side of the water before the evil (brown) cannibals eat them. No, really. Sound fun?

Bobby Brown got confused at a concert in DC this weekend. At least he was close?

As is always the case with Brown, however, what he said was far more interesting than what he sang.

“Baltimore!” Brown shouted at one point. When the crowd failed to react, he asked, “Where am I right now?” After figuring out he was playing to a Washington crowd, Brown said, “They told me I was in Baltimore — I guess so I could come out here and embarrass myself.”

Nicky Barnes, the drug kingpin known in his heyday as Mr. Untouchable because cops could never get charges to stick (until they did, and he went to jail, turned state’s evidence and found himself in the Witness Protection Program), fancies himself way, way smarter than Frank Lucas, the Harlem drug dealer at the center of the movie, American Gangster.

Barnes says, “I like Cuba Gooding Jr.,” who has a minor role playing Barnes as a loud-mouthed buffoon. “He probably did the best he could. But they depict me as a footnote in Frank’s life when it was the other way around.

“This whole thing about him being an entrepreneurial genius is nonsense,” says Barnes. “I didn’t see it. I did business in all five boroughs, Atlanta, D.C., Philly and Baltimore. Frank had 116th St. and maybe a few places in New Jersey…”

“I wore flashy clothes, but not outrageous,” says Barnes. “Check out the photos of me at the time. And have you listened to Frank talk? Frank is functionally illiterate. I’ve read all of Shakespeare. I can quote his sonnets. I read Dickens, Melville, Emily Dickinson. I won a poetry contest against inmates from the entire prison system.

If Barnes was really as smart as he thinks he is, he would know that there is little glory in winning a poetry contest when you’re in jail for being the most intellectual drug dealer in 1970s Harlem. Particularly when you’re giving an interview from an undisclosed location because your life is still in danger after you ratted out all of your business associates. []

Anyone tired of the racism news cycle? You know the one — it happened with Michael Richards, Don Imus, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and even with the Jena Six. The initial outrage! The talking heads discuss it on cable news and play it for entertainment value! The perpetrators meet with Al Sharpton and/or Jesse Jackson! The story fades! Certain white people feel it’s okay to say they didn’t think it was a big deal to begin with and that black people say/do that stuff all the time and hip hop sucks and !?! And so on, and so on…

The examined this trend in a recent story. Why do we treat these incidents as singular events instead of examining the larger problem of racism in this country? Why are we willing to complete this cycle over and over again instead of solving the problem? The answer they find is simple. If you examine Michael Richards and Don Imus as just cogs in the greater racism wheel, you’re admitting something that many white people don’t want to admit or honestly don’t believe — that racism still lives in this country, and not just when a tired, has-been comedian says “nigger” at a comedy club.

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