The Rock Bells Festival is currently underway in San Bernardino, California. Today is the first of two-day festival in the city.
Acts like Naughty By Nature, Common, DMX, Eve, Kid Cudi, J. Cole, Jadakiss, Tyga, 2 Chainz, Prodigy, Curren$y, El-P, Dipset, Yelawolf, Future, Kendrick Lamar with Black Hippy and more are taking their turns rocking the crowd.
*UPDATE* 8-19-2012
Day two has started in San Bernardino.
Nas, Pusha T, Wiz Khalifa, Ice Cube, E-40, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, DJ Quik, Big Daddy Kane, Salt-N-Peppa, Machine Gun Kelly and more will be taking the stage
Beyonce releases her new video for "I Was Here." The clip was filmed earlier this month in front of a live audience at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York.
She told CNN's Anderson Cooper she wanted to leave her mark on the world with this song.
"It says, 'I want to leave my footprints in the sands of time. And it basically is all of our dreams, I think. And that’s leaving our mark on the world. I feel like we all want to know that our life meant something. We all have our purpose, and we all have our strengths...it feels so wonderful to do something for someone else. And I think for the U.N. to want to include the whole world was something important, and I feel like that’s what I represent.'"
Beyoncé is donating the proceeds of the track to World Humanitarian Day on 19 August,
Jada Pinkett-Smith was one of Tupac Shakur's closest friends. Many people believe the two may have been romantically linked, but Jada denies they ever hooked up.
"We knew us being together in a romantic way would destroy everything because we were both fire," Jada told the COCO, Foolish and Mr. Chase radio show on WJLB in Detroit in a 2010 interview. "We would burn everything up! So we knew in order to preserve our relationship there was no way we could ever add romance to it cause we probably would've killed each other!"
Nevertheless it's obvious that Jada loved Tupac, even if it was only as a close friend. Jada's daughter Willow picked up on her mom's feelings for Pac and penned a letter to him.
Tupac is the 11-year old's favorite rapper and like many she believes he is still alive. In the undated letter posted to her Instagram account she asks him to come back so she and her mom can be happy.
"Dear Tupac, I know you are alive some place. I think that my mommy really misses you. Can you please come back so mommy and me can be happy! I wish you were here... I really do!" - Love, Willow
Azealia Banks recently showed that she is not all about beefing and is willing to admit when she is wrong. The Harlem rapper had a falling out with Oakland newcomer Kreayshawn, but has since patched things up.
The beef started back in January when Kreayshawn retweeted a Pornhub link which repeated a line from Azealia's breakout hit song "212."
"Have you guys heard @AzealiaBank's "212"? I guess that cunt gettin' eaten'," read the tweet.
Unhappy that her song was associated with a porn site Azealia lashed out at Kreayshawn.
Realizing she had made a mistake, Azealia apologized to Kreashawn on Twitter August 5th.
"@KREAYSHAWN I apologize for coming down on you so hard earlier this year,” Azealia tweeted. “I missunderstood that pornhub rt. I can be really defensive sometimes. I’m just naturally rude. LMFAOO it’s a NY thing… I can’t help it.”
Kreayshawn accepted her apology. “It’s all G! I fux with you[r] music above all!” she wrote. “You have those fire barz gurlll!”
In a new interview with MTV, Kreayshawn talked about the past beef and said that Azealia had initially apologized to her in private back in April.
"We had some shows in Japan together and we had a chance to watch each other perform," Kreay told MTV News. "I've always been a fan, and she hit me up and said, 'I really like your live show.' That was back in April, but no one even noticed that."
Kreay said they ran into each other again more recently at a show in L.A. and squashed their differences for good.
"I went to her Mermaid Ball show in LA because a lot of my homegirls were performing," Kreayshawn said. "She ended up hitting me up a couple of weeks after and said, 'I really wanna publicly apologize,' and I [thought that was] really dope. I think it's cool because there's so many girls looking up to everyone that all the beef tears our fans apart," the rapper continued. People feel like, 'I have to be this person's fan and hate on this person.' So I think it shows that you can forgive people, you can apologize to people, you can realize you're wrong and it shows camaraderie for all girls. It's for girl power."
The two have even discussed a possible collaboration. Kreayshawn's debut album Something 'Bout Kreay is due on September 18th.
Iggy Azalea releases a joint she's had in the vault for a minute. "Burgundy Sh*t" only features one verse from the Grand Hustle rapper over a super smooth beat, but it suffices.
U.S. Olympic gold medal swimmer might have trouble with his plans to trademark the phrase "Jeah" because Compton rapper MC Eiht claims he coined the phrase back in 1988.
Lochte is already selling "Jeah" sunglasses on his website for $14.99. You can cop a signed pair for $100. He is also selling t-shirts with the catch phrase on them.
The swimmer says he got the phrase from Young Jeezy. Taking the Snowman's oft-used expression "Cheah," and making it his own by dropping the "ch" for a "j."
Eiht told TMZ he finds Lochte's use of the word offensive and disrespectful.
"Why try and trademark something his a$$ didn’t even create? I am mad that he isn’t giving me proper recognition for taking my saying. He is just disrespectful."
Eiht goes on to say that this isn't about money. It's an issue of "respect and the truth."
He plans on sending a cease and desist letter urging Lochte to stop using his phrase.
Lochte's manager told TMZ, "Ryan has been using JEAH for years. This is the first I have heard of this claim by MC Eiht."
Wisin & Yandel party it up with Chris Brown and T-Pain in the music video for their single “Algo Me Gusta De Ti” (“Something About You.”). The song can be found on Wisin & Yandel's album Líderes.
You can pick up a copy of the album now from iTunes.
Here's a behind the scenes look at the Slaughterhouse crew of Joe Budden, Royce Da 5'9, Crooked I and Joell Ortiz in the studio recording their 15-minute long gem "Truth or Truth." The track will appear on their upcoming Gangsta Grillz mixtape, which should be dropping any day now.
2 Chainz was the musical guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon yesterday. The Def Jam artist performed "No Lie" and "Spend It" with some help from The Roots band.
Based On A T.R.U. Story is now available. Pick up a copy on iTunes.
YMCMB spitter Cory Gunz invaded the BET studios yesterday to drop a Backroom Freestyle. As usual Cory displayed a unique flow as he went in for two minutes.
Producer/rapper Hit Boy teams up with Cleveland rapper Kid Cudi for this new music video for "Old School Caddy." The song is featured on Hit Boy's new mixtape HITstory.
Nas is preparing to release a new music video for "Bye Baby." The track can be found on his latest album Life Is Good. Check out a few behind the scenes pics from the set.
Lil Wayne's single "Mirror" featuring Bruno Mars has reached platinum status. The song is the fourth single from the album Tha Carter IV to sell at least a million copies following "6 Foot 7 Foot," "How To Love," and "She Will."
Tha Carter IV albumhas itself reached double platinum status in the United Status.
Kanye West's dance team does their thing, flash mobbing 30,000 feet in the air on a flight in Australia.
Dancers of Kanye West in flight during Australian Tour 2012. Shot by choreographer Yemi AD. Postproduction & Art direction by Jan Černý. Post Audio Music Mix by Wayne Trevisani.
"The song 'Runaway' was used with permission of Kanye West. This video is a present for Kanye and all dancers, who took part in the concert shows during the 2012 Australian Tour."
Birdman is going to have to look elsewhere for a new alternative rock band because only 6 months after inking a deal with Cash Money Records, Limp Bizkit sounds like they are done. Well, they haven't exactly quit making music, but front man Fred Durst admits in a recent interview that the band's fans have moved on.
So what's the point of putting out an album nobody will buy? Birdman hasn't built his record empire by releasing albums from has-beens, it's doubtful he'll start now.
Here's what Fred had to say about his band when asked about touring according to Metal Injection.
“We don’t play back home. We’ve boycotted America for many years now. I don’t know, I just don’t wanna go out like that. We did a few radio shows in 2010 for a friend and that was it. We haven’t properly toured America since 2006.
The reason? We just don’t know what’s going on in America. It’s all about the new catchy thing and that’s always changing. America is driven by record sales. It’s the home of corporations. We’re just Limp Bizkit, so we don’t know how to do anything but Limp Bizkit.
But here’s the deal: say in 2000, there were 35 million people who connected to this band. Twelve years later, lots of those people have moved on. We were a moment in time and it’s over.”
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