Blogs

Drake's eighth annual OVO Fest is returning to Toronto on August 7. This year's line up includes Majid Jordan, PARTYNEXTDOOR Roy Woods and DVSN.

It will be held at the Budweiser Stage. Head over to Ticketmaster for ticket info.

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JAY-Z is prepared to release his highly anticipated "4:44" album as a TIDAL exclusive on Friday, June 30. Check out the commercial for "Kill JAY-Z" to promote the project in Stackerdecks below.

New 4:44 promo video "Kill Jay-Z"

This beat sounds incredible and bruh the visual..pic.twitter.com/fcU9FeFq4B

— New Life (@LordBalvin) June 28, 2017

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     Louisiana Emcee A.D.Q. has been building his name and perfecting his craft while earning his buzz. We don't want to give away to many details, because almost any detail, is a spoiler. But his new video release "Deep Feelings" is an astonishing piece of musical and cinematic creation. A.D.Q. tackles a touchy subject often avoided in hip hop, but a big problem around the world. Bringing almost a new age twist to the still popular Tupac song "Brenda's Got A Baby," A.D.Q. delivers an amazing song, and an amazingly professional short film that will quickly touch any listeners "Deep Feelings." 

    Quickly gaining a popular foundation of support "Deep Feelings" has been getting great feedback via Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. Even being re-uploaded to the popular Facebook page of Music Crowns. Check this video out today.

And keep up with A.D.Q. 1982 @

https://twitter.com/ADQ1982
https://twitter.com/YourOwnMusic

Chattanooga's own Karamel Kitty has recently released her new single entitled "Steph Curry". Coming off the win of the NBA finals it is a great time to be shouting Steph Curry! You can view this song & video below and also follow Ms Kitty on all social media.

Listen Here: Steph Curry

IG: @ihatekaramel

Twitter: @ihatekaramel

The Boy Illinois comes full blazing with a colorful 90’s feel visual fused with a Chicago edge. The concept of Dancing Like Diddy was inspired by The Boy Illinois mentor & Big Bro Lupe Fiasco after a bar from another single “Ruling Class.” The video kicks off with “Illi” riding through the city spreading love and bending blocks. From the clear sky to the 1-2 step, Dancing Like Diddy video paints a picture of fun, positivity and great music. Throughout the visual, the colors contrast creating vivid engagement from recreating “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” video,  Illi white shoes and colorful balls rocking to the bass. Stating his claim from the jump, “Dancing Like Diddy” is set to reach the masses.

Hot 97's Peter Rosenberg paid tribute to Prodigy of Mobb Deep during his most recent Real Late Show mix. Listen in Stackerdecks below as Eminem and Kendrick Lamar kick things off with two Prodigy verses.

If you're having trouble viewing this Stackerdecks post: Click Here

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Fat Joe recently sat down with Mass Appeal to talk about the tragic loss of Prodigy, how Mobb Deep impacted New York's sound and explains why their music is timeless.

"Tons of rappers studied Mobb Deep," Joe said. "And when you talk about the New York sound ... Nothing is more authentic and true to the New York sound than Mobb Deep. I saw Prodigy last week. He looked amazing. I know he was suffering for many years with the sickle cell, but he looked great to me. It's sad because I place him in the Mount Rushmore of hip hop.

"We on borrowed time, and it's like what you do while you're here. The impact you've made ... It's been twenty years since Mobb Deep and it'll be twenty years from now, they'll still be playing Mobb Deep and Prodigy," Joe continued. "His life was just very impactful. You can see how New York City is taking [his death], and the rest of the world is taking it. I personally, have never seen my Instagram like that, where every single page is Prodigy. I have never witnessed in the Instagram era, something like that."

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Young Buck is preparing to release his new album titled "10 Toes Down" on June 30. Check out the music video for "Up There" off of the project.

Pre-order "10 Toes Down" now on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/10-toes-down/id1243302249

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Calvin Harris releases an official music video for his single titled "Feels" featuring Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry and Big Sean.

Taken from the new album 'Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1.' dropping June 30. Available to pre-order now: http://smarturl.it/FWBV1?IQid=YT
Listen and download 'Feels': http://smarturl.it/CHFeels?IQid=YT

Subscribe to Calvin's channel: http://smarturl.it/CHVevo?IQid=YT

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Follow Calvin online: 
http://calvinharris.com
Snapchat: http://smarturl.it/CHSnapchat?IQid=YT
Instagram: http://smarturl.it/CHInstagram?IQid=YT 
Facebook: http://smarturl.it/CHFacebook?IQid=YT 
Twitter: http://smarturl.it/CHTwitter?IQid=YT 
Spotify: http://smarturl.it/CHSptfy?IQid=YT

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Denver Simmons admits to 4 prison murders to get the death penalty

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — One by one, Denver Simmons recalled, he and his partner lured inmates into his cell. William Scruggs was promised cookies in exchange for doing some laundry; Jimmy Ham thought he was coming to snort some crushed pills.

Jimmy Ham

Over the course of about a half-hour, four men accepted Simmons’ hospitality. None of them made it out alive.

Calmly, matter-of-factly, the 35-year-old inmate told The Associated Press how he and Jacob Philip strangled and beat their blockmates to death and hid their bodies to avoid spooking the next victims. They had nothing against the men; one of them was even a friend, Simmons admitted.

Why did they do it?

Convicted in the cold-blooded shootings of a mother and her teenage son, Simmons knew he would never leave prison alive. Tired of life behind bars, a failure at suicide, he hoped killing these criminals would land him on death row.

Officials say Philip and Simmons have confessed to the April 7 slayings of Ham, 56; Jason Kelley, 35; John King, 52; and Scruggs, 44. But until Simmons talked to the AP, no motive had been made public.

William Scruggs

The South Carolina Department of Corrections doesn’t allow in-person interviews with inmates. So the AP wrote letters to the two men. Philip’s attorney responded with an email: “Jacob is a severely mentally ill young man who has been so adjudicated by the court. Accordingly, I would ask that you make no further efforts to interview him or contact him.”

Simmons, though, called the AP three times, once using another inmate’s time slot. And he described a twisted compact between two men who had “a whole lot in common” from the moment they met — most important, both despair and a willingness to kill again.

“I’d always joke with him — from back in August and September and October of 2015 — that if we weren’t going to kill ourselves, that we could make a name for ourselves, so to speak, and get the death penalty,” Simmons, told the AP. “The end of March of this year, he was willing to do it. So, we just planned to do it. And we did it.”

Each man was serving life without the possibility of parole for a double murder.

In May 2010, Simmons shot an acquaintance, 45-year-old Sheila Faye Dodd of Round O, an unincorporated community northwest of Charleston. Prosecutors say he ate a pizza he’d bought with the dead woman’s debit card, picked her 13-year-old son, William, up from school and killed him.

Simmons agreed to plead guilty in exchange for prosecutors taking the death penalty off the table.

In August 2015, Philip pleaded guilty but mentally ill to strangling his girlfriend, Ashley Kaney, 26, and her 8-year-old daughter, Riley Burdick, two years earlier. At the time, he’d been attending the U.S. Navy’s nuclear training school in nearby Goose Creek.

Both men were sent to Kirkland Correctional Institution, a maximum security facility a few miles from the state capitol in Columbia. They were being housed in a unit for inmates who need significant mental health help but whose conditions aren’t serious enough to require hospitalization.

Simmons said spending the rest of his life in prison would be a meaningless life of fear and boredom. Inmates are always scheming to take advantage or hurt fellow prisoners and guards only see the men behind bars as numbers.

“It’s just not a good place to live, you know, day in and day out,” Simmons said.

Because of their relatively clean records in custody, Simmons said he and Philip, 26, were named “dormkeepers” for their unit. That meant their doors remained open when others were on lockdown.

Just two officers were assigned to the dorm, which housed 139 inmates, Corrections Director Bryan Stirling told lawmakers in April. He said pay that starts at $33,600 and chronic low funding from the Legislature make it almost impossible to even approach the national standard of four officers for every 30 inmates.

About 9:30 the morning of April 7, Simmons said, he hung a “flap” over the narrow window to his room — in this case, a clear trash bag on which he’d scrawled the words, “Using restroom. Don’t open.”

“You’re not supposed to keep a flap,” Simmons said. “But if you’re using the restroom, you know, they turn a blind eye to it.”

Simmons said the original plan was to wait until cells were being cleaned, “where ALL the doors were open.” But that morning, they opted for a different strategy.

“We just decided, you know, we’d use my room,” he said. “Until it was full. And then we’d use Jacob’s. And that’s just how it started.”

So, how did they choose their victims?

“This is the part that’s gonna sound bad,” Simmons said. “They, they trusted us. We talked to these people every day. One of them was a friend of both of ours. And they just trusted us. We come up with something for each one.”

The first name on the list was King, who was in for burglary, theft and larceny.

They knew King liked coffee. And there was a bonus, in Simmons’ mind: At 5-foot-4 and just 132 pounds, he was the smallest.

John King

“He was older, but he was small,” Simmons said. “And he wouldn’t offer much resistance.”

Since Philip was the experienced strangler, he took the first turn, Simmons said.

“He took his from behind and put his arm on his neck and just choked him,” he said. “It happened really fast.”

They slid King’s body under the lower bunk and went looking for their next victim in the common area known as “the Rock.”

William Scruggs, killer of a disabled veteran, was waiting in line for the restroom. Simmons knew him as a lifer who did laundry in exchange for goods from the canteen.

“I said I had some cookies for him. ‘Just come up to my room,’” Simmons said. Scruggs showed up a few minutes later, and Simmons said Philip dragged him to the floor.

Unlike Philip, Simmons said, he’d never strangled anyone.

“It’s totally different than killing somebody with your hands,” he said.

Simmons said he grabbed an extension cord from a lamp and wrapped it around Scruggs’ neck. Scruggs was facing him, but his eyes were closed.

“And, you know, he didn’t suffer a long time, man,” Simmons said. “I know that sounds lame. But he didn’t suffer a long time.”

The two placed Scruggs’ body, the cord still tied around his neck, on the lower bunk. They hung a sheet from the top bunk to conceal the corpse, then went in search of their next victim.

Simmons said Philip chose Jimmy Ham, who was to be released in November after serving nearly a decade for aggravated assault and battery, grand larceny and two counts of burglary.

“I didn’t want him on the list, because I knew he would fight,” Simmons said. “And Jacob, as big as he is, he’s not a fighter.”

But Philip prevailed, and Ham was invited in to snort some drugs.

Simmons said Philip told their guest to break up the tablets on a stool that was in the room. As Ham bent over the stool, Simmons said, Philip pounced — but he slipped.

Simmons said Ham had Philip pinned down on his back. As the two men struggled on the floor, Simmons said he grabbed a broken broom handle that he’d hidden in his room and hit Ham twice in the head with it. In the struggle, Simmons tried to silence Ham by jamming the broomstick in his mouth (“there could be no noise”) and Ham “just died. I mean, he died very fast.”

Simmons said they placed Ham’s body on the bunk beside Scruggs and let the curtain fall back into place.

“And we just went on the Rock,” Simmons said with a sigh, “and Jacob said, ‘Who’s next?’”

Simmons chose Jason Howard Kelley, who was serving time for stabbing his teenage stepson.

Jason Kelley

Everything about Kelley “was just annoying,” Simmons said. But unlike the others, he considered Kelley a friend.

Once in the cell, Simmons said, Philip told Kelley, “Look behind the curtain.”

“And he literally peeked behind and he said, ‘What the?’” Simmons recalled. “And Jacob grabbed him and threw him down.”

Simmons said he climbed on top of his friend and pressed the broomstick against his throat until he stopped struggling. And as Kelley lay there — dead or just unconscious, Simmons couldn’t tell which — Simmons thrust the stick in his ear.

By then, the murderers were too tired to bother with hiding Kelley’s body. When they stepped outside, Simmons said, he asked Philip, “Who do you want to do now?”

“I’m tired,” Philip replied, according to Simmons. “I don’t want to do anymore.”

“And I said, ‘Are you sure? Because this is going to be our only chance,’” Simmons recalled. “And he said, ‘Yeah.’”

It was just before 10 a.m., about 15 minutes before the next head count. Simmons said they walked down to the guard station and told what they’d done.

The Department of Corrections referred the AP’s questions to the State Law Enforcement Division, which has declined to comment on the case.

Simmons was asked why he did not commit suicide, if prison life was unbearable.

He said he’d tried several times: “You know, killing yourself is, it sounds easy. It’s really hard. Your body even fights you when you cut yourself.”

He said he’d even discussed having Philip “choke me out.”

“The original plan was that if I decided that I wanted to do it, I would be the last person,” he said. “And I’ll be honest with you. After I saw how it works, I guess you would say I was scared. I just couldn’t see myself going through with it.”

Simmons expressed no remorse for the killings.

“Honestly, we could have got staff members,” he said. “But they’re just there doing their job, you know? The people we killed, whether they deserved it or not, were not fine, upstanding members of society. You know, none of us are, or we wouldn’t be in where we’re at.”

And the more you kill, he said, the easier it gets.

“The second time, the third time, it’s just, I guess you’re desensitized to it.”

In retrospect, he said, the plan was not well thought out.

“Because Jacob’s not going to get the death penalty either way,” he said. “He’s legitimately mentally ill.”

As for himself, South Carolina hasn’t carried out an execution in six years, and court challenges likely will keep capital punishment on hold for the foreseeable future. Even a recently confessed killer of seven got life without parole, he noted.

Simmons said he imagines he’ll do the next 10 years in solitary and probably get another four life sentences tacked onto the two he was already doing.

“I did it all, I did it for nothing,” he said. “So that makes it especially bad for me, you know?”

___

Breed, an Associated Press national writer, reported from Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Sean Kingston drops off a new single titled "Trust Me." Listen up top.

www.facebook.com/seankingston
twitter.com/seankingston
Instagram @seankingston
Artwork by : @justinwilsxn

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Nicki Minaj was a performer at the inaugural NBA Awards show on Monday, June 26. She used the occasion to perform a medley of "Realize," "No Frauds" and "Swish Swish" with an assist from 2 Chainz.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MULTI-FACETED RECORDING ARTIST MARCUS SINGLETON DROPS 10-TRACK PROJECT, CHEMISTRY

Los Angeles, California’s Marcus Singleton has released Chemistry, an album which blends together many elements to create a sound that is entirely unique, though rooted in the rich musical history of those who experimented with sounds of the past. With the LP, Marcus aims to highlight both the metaphorical and literal interpretations of chemistry, applying the concepts of attraction and reaction to creativity and artistry. “Chemistry is something that one can not inhibit,” explains Marcus. “It is something that can not be forced, and it is also something that is profoundly routed in physical attraction. It not necessarily sexual, but through the progression of the music you understand that the impulse of wanting to be with someone is something that is intuitive and natural.”

Marcus Singleton 

"Too Good To Be True"

Available on: iTunes & Spotify

ABOUT MARCUS SINGLETON

Los Angeles Hip-Hop Soul artist Marcus Singleton is a multi-faceted musician whose latest album, Chemistry, showcases the multi-genre fluency with which he was raised. As the son of a professional touring guitarist, Marcus was exposed to everything from Jazz Fusion to Gospel and Reggae at a young age. Developing an ear for live instrumentation as a child, he idolizes the dynamism of artists like Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, and Earth, Wind & Fire - artists whose musical fingerprints can be found in Marcus’ own work. Far from referential, Marcus’ approach to production is as innovative as it is nostalgic, with live flute, saxophone, violin, bass, guitar, and keyboards merging with Hip-Hop Soul beats. Lamenting the saturation of 808s, hi-hats, and drug references in today’s popular music, Marcus aims to embrace the groove and substance of prior generations with the more contemporary stylings of artists like Common and Musiq Soulchild.

CONTACT MARCUS SINGLETON:

Website: www.marcussingletonmusic.com

IG: @FollowMarcus

FB: www.facebook.com/like.marcussingleton

Twitter: @FollowMarcus

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/marcussingleton

Get Cardi's new single "Bodak Yellow", available online now.

Buy/Stream "Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)": https://lnk.to/BodakYellow

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Ron Browz a.k.a. Ether Boy connects with G-Unit emcee Uncle Murda for his new single titled "Think Itz s Joke." Listen to it and download up top.

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Gennady 'GGG' Golvkin was a recent guest on The Cruz Show. He discussed his upcoming mega-fight against Canelo Alvarez, whether he'll retire afterwards and picked Floyd Mayweather to easily defeat Conor McGregor.

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Police in Los Angeles are looking into a robbery that may have involved rap legend Lil Kim.

TMZ reports that The Queen Bee rented a crib for the 2017 BET Awards weekend, but when she and her entourage arrived Sunday, June 25, at 2 AM, the "Crush On You" hit maker didn't think it was up to her standards.

Kim asked for her $20,000 deposit to be returned by the homeowner or property manager, but was denied.

An argument ensued and someone called the police. When the cops got to the scene, they informed both parties that their dispute was civil and there was nothing they could do about it.

Kim's team then left the scene.

At around 4 AM a group of people wearing ski masks and brandishing weapons arrived at the home, demanding Kim's down payment. After getting the funds back, the masked perpetrators slashed the victim's tires and stole a hubcap.

A robbery investigation has been launched by the LAPD.

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