How can Young Jeezy outdo himself this year? Well, Jeezy has just been announced as the headlining act for one of the biggest hip-hop concerts of the year: Atlanta radio station 107.9's 14th annual Birthday Bash.
Jeezy has the task of closing the concert that also features Rick Ross, Gucci Mane, OJ Da Juiceman, Soulja Boy Tell'em, Yung L.A., Trey Songz, Young Dro, Hurricane Chris, Jeremih, Keri Hilson, F.L.Y., Lil' Will, Pleasure P and Plies. Birthday Bash 14 takes place June 20 at Philips Arena in Atlanta.
At last year's Birthday Bash, Jeezy stole the show, bringing Kanye West and Usher onstage, among others.
"I gave you a show," Jeezy told us backstage after last year's show. "[At the] Birthday Bash two years ago, I brought out Jay-Z. Shout-outs to Hov. It's about topping it. Making people step their game up. Relationships is everything. When you really know people, you tell them, 'Come through, we got Birthday Bash. Be there,' and they there? To me, that means everything. This year I called out Dream, Kanye, Usher, Blood Raw. ... I'm from Atlanta, so they pretty much see you every day. They know you gonna come out, but when you bring those special people out, it just gives it that extra umph. Me, personally, I take pride in Birthday Bash. Birthday Bash 13 was mine, by the way.
"Shout-out to Kanye, he flew all the way in," Jeezy added about West, who had another concert the same night. "I had to throw him a private jet courtesy of Young." Usher flew in last year from Japan.
Jeezy had a huge moment last week at Hot 97's Summer Jam in New Jersey when he brought Jay-Z and Drake onstage for his set.
Source:MTVNEWS
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MIAMI — It almost seems impossible, but it's tragically true. Scott Storch squandered $30 million. Not only that, he did it in less than six months.
"[It was] unlike anything I've ever seen in my entire life," the producer's manager, Derek Jackson, told MTV News of his friend of almost two decade's monumental fall. "Historical! It was historical without question."
Storch's decline started in 2006, which was arguably his most successful year creatively and definitely his most fruitful year financially. He was one of the top producers in the business, having worked on hits by Beyoncé, 50 Cent, the Game, T.I., Chris Brown, Christina Aguilera, Dr. Dre, Nas, Snoop Dogg, Pink and many others. He had a long way to fall.
"Honestly, about three years ago, he got really shady," said Jackson, sitting just a few feet away from Storch at Miami's Hit Factory studios. "And that's the best term I could use. He went from what his normal vices were to suddenly becoming a person who was infatuated with the drug, and I saw it constantly."
Storch's drug was cocaine. The abuse of the narcotic almost cost him his career — and his life. Earlier this year, he was arrested for grand theft auto for allegedly failing to return a Bentley he'd leased in 2006. And last year, Storch hit legal trouble after reportedly falling behind on both his child-support payments and his property taxes.
"A lot of the work that we would do and how much we would do of it, that started to scale back. I have to say the magic month was August of 2006," Jackson continued. "I will never forget it. It will be something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. You know, '06 for us was the magic year; we hit Lotto. Everything worked. I mean, there was nothing that we did that did not work. I gotta honestly say, outside of my kids, it was the greatest year of my life. It was so many [hit records] I can't even tell you. That was the year he won [ASCAP's] Songwriter of the Year [award]. We broke records — lots of [chart] records we broke and he did them quick. It was just a wonderful year, but I think it was defined by that magic month of August. He ran into the Hollywood class — and when he went to Hollywood, all things changed."
Most notably, Storch went on vacation.
"It was the first time he took off in, I would say, the duration of his career. I've been with him since he was 17 years old. I found Scott [playing keyboards with] the Roots in 1992, so for the duration of that, he's always been a worker bee, that's just his spirit. But in August of 06', we took a month off. It was over. Never came back."
Literally. Storch got addicted to drugs and just stopped caring about his career.
"Scott, I have to be real because, once again, it's about a story that has to be told," Jackson said. "We made a lot of money — I mean a lot of money that year [2006]. And Scott — in all honesty — he was broke by January. It was the quickest [loss] of money that I've ever seen in my entire life."
"The cost of the drug didn't effect my life," Storch weighed in. "It was the poor decisions I made, that were so poor financially, that caused me to go into this situation where I was forced to change my lifestyle ... forced to change a lot of things.
"[I had] 15 to 20 cars at all times," he continued." That's not smart. I would take one of 15 half-million-dollar cars I owned and go to the mall and spend that much money. Stupid, stupid stuff. It's like it didn't make a difference. They were ego investments. I would have been great with three or four cars! I didn't need a 117-foot boat."
"Cars!," Jackson explained of how Storch lost his fortune so quickly. "Private jets are expensive — please leave them alone if you can't afford them. Trips to the Riviera on a private jet is $250,000 one way. I'm talking about, it was a routine [with Scott]. Spending on others — if you can't take care of yourself, how you gonna take care of everybody else? And it got out of control."
Storch weighed in, "I watched my own father, he went bankrupt and had problems with the IRS. He was living beyond his means, and I guess I was doing the same thing and not even realizing it."
As much as he was making, Storch was spending double on drugs and overly luxurious living. He was out of control, and Jackson takes some of the blame for not intervening sooner.
"I was an enabler, I was an enabler," Jackson admits. "And it wasn't until I got a phone call — rest in peace [former Def Jam Records President Shakir Stewart, who died of an apparent suicide last year]. My man, one of my closest and dearest friends in the music business, said, 'D, what are you doing? Scott has Janet Jackson sitting in his studio and it's going on five hours. Where is he at? What are you doing, D? What are you doing?' And I knew the routine started to become like that. We did it to a lot of people in '07. It's when it all went bad. We had people sit in the studio for upwards of 10 hours at a time. And I would never be real to [Scotty]. I guess I got to a point where I stopped caring. We made money, I watched him blow it, I didn't care anymore. But then I watched that phone call come from Shakir."
Eventually Jackson would exhaust himself trying to get his friend to clean up, so he resigned as Storch's manager. Scott still didn't get point: His addiction had tapped his inspiration to make music.
"It started affecting me where my own son would be like, 'Dad, what's up? When's the next hit record coming up?' " Storch recalled. "I didn't have a answer for him."
It wasn't until 18 months later that Storch and Jackson would see each other again. Storch had decided he needed help.
"[It was] probably in the worst state I've seen [anyone] in my life," Jackson said of Storch. "Somebody that you knew when they were young and full of zest and fire and excitable — the spirit that the kid had was incredible. But to come back to black eyes, bloodied and bowed and unlike the person you knew. To be quite frank, he was a junkie. He was a junkie. And it was unlike anything I had seen in him, ever. Ever."
Jackson checked Storch into a rehab facility called Recovery First. Thomas Trevino, a mental health tech and a three-quarter-way manager at Recovery First has been working with Storch for the past few months.
"I can clearly remember the first day he came in," Trevino recalled. "The guy just looked like many others clients we've got: emotionally, physically and spiritually broken. Throughout the time, he resided in our in-patient program and he eventually graduated into an out-patient program; he was then taken into our three-quarter way house.
"I have seen him change," Trevino continued. "I've seen his mind is totally opposite from day one. The guy couldn't even carry on a clear conversation when he first came in. And now I have been having the honor and privilege to come with him to the studio a couple times and check him out, see what he's doing. And it seems like he's back on track, man. He's a great inspiration for many out there who are trying to do this line of work — and at the same time he's a great inspiration for many drug addicts out there who want to stay clean and live this way of life."
"It's just that type of deal," Storch — who is still under treatment — said of his fall and his climb back to the top. "I've lived it, done it. I've been around a lot of greats I seen in this industry that have problems, but the comeback can be that much greater. It's a well of creativity in my mind right now; it's not being hindered and being in love with the music again — seeing the day and taking advantage of the opportunities I've been afforded."
Storch is back at work, and says he's better than ever. He's in the studio with the Game for three days, and next week goes to Orlando to work with Chris Brown. There's also a track in the works involving him, Quincy Jones and Jennifer Hudson, as well as Kat DeLuna's potential first single. Outside of music, he's been shooting a reality show and has guest appearances from the Kardashians.
"This is God's work," Jackson opined. "So he has to respect that. I just hope that the people out there that watch this take the time to understand that even in the lowest of moments — because it was low for me, it took a year out of my life, it destroyed my life because I was so in tune to him — to always remember you can come back, you can clean your life up. You can be the same again. It's never too late. Never too late — never! So hopefully from this, people will understand that there's always a tomorrow."
Source:MTVNEWS
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Approximately one month after his release from prison, West Coast lyricist Ras Kass is ready to get back to work, he told AllHipHop.com in a recent interview.
But his new direction may surprise some of his fans.
The former Capitol Records artist, born John Austin IV, was arrested in October 2007, reportedly for violating the terms of his probation for a previous arrest, by appearing at the BET Hip-Hop Awards in Atlanta.
While he would not speak about the circumstances that lead to this most recent arrest, Ras Kass was very candid about the recent adjustments he’s had to make.
“I’m kinda numb, evidently happier and appreciative,” Ras Kass told AllHipHop.com. “Any situation where you’re removed from day-to-day normality, you have to get used to it. The adjustments are everything. It’s sensory overload, especially in respect to where I just came from, where everything is regimented.
“[But] It’s a time when you just gotta grow up, in whatever respect it is. So it’s certain things I can and cannot do. Ninety percent of it is recognizing that. The other ten percent is putting it into action.”
Ras Kass said he took advantage of his two-year sentence to study the business side of the game.
His motivation for such research, he explained, was the disparity between his level of talent and his level of success as he sees it.
“My whole thing was sitting back and doing a lot of third-person critiquing of Ras Kass,” the rapper recounted. “'He’s probably arguably in my opinion, one of the greatest lyricist that has many a time been swept under the rug by the music business. Part of the problem that has held Ras Kass back is having the right team, the right marketing, the right company behind him for him to be able to do the same things as other talented people such as Outkast or TI or Nas or Jay-Z or Eminem. Talented people who make it to the next level.’”
“My thing was, I don’t need to write a rap. I’m good at that. That’s not the issue,” the lyricist continued. “So I wanted to focus on the business. Imma probably do online just to get acclimated. And it’s not like I can’t record during that time, but my focus is the business and putting the right team together.”
Ras Kass is also undertaking a great challenge in his personal life: seeking a college degree, something he’s been wanting to do for nearly a decade.
Apparently, he and rapper Xzibit had discussed the idea of not only going through the experience together, but also documenting it, even before the advent of reality TV.
The likeliness that Ras Kass’ college experience will become must-see-tv is unlikely, however, as he says he’s in it for the education at this point.
He reassures his fans that none of this means he is retiring from rapping.
“It’s my passion,” he asserted. “I’m not retired, it’s just I have to reassess, even before this situation happened, what needs to be done. Some of my s**t, [people] are just gonna have to rediscover it. If we talking about body of work, as a solo artist, 16 bars, three verses per song: dude, I’ve said some s**t! And I don’t get the same credit that the more known people get. The goal is 90% business and 10% music. If the business isn’t right, the music’s always gonna suffer.”
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The American accused of murdering British student Meredith Kercher took the witness stand for the first time today and told an Italian court how she smoked marijuana and had sex with her boyfriend on the night of the killing.
But Amanda Knox insisted she spent the whole night at boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito's flat and claimed the last time she saw Meredith alive was hours before she was found with her throat slit.
Prosecutors contend that Knox, an exchange student from Seattle who called herself 'Foxy Knoxy' on her MySpace page, and Sollecito killed 21-year-old Meredith Kercher in the apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia
Kercher's body was found there on November 2, 2007, and legal experts said she was killed the night before.
'On November 1, I told Raffaele that I wanted to watch a movie so we went to his place,' Knox said.
'After dinner, they went upstairs to his room. I sat on the bed, he sat at his desk, he prepared the joint and then we smoked it together,' the 21-year-old woman continued.
'First we made love, then we fell asleep.'
During her testimony, Knox alternated between English and Italian, occasionally pausing to take a breath, her voice shaky at times.
Knox said she last saw Kercher on the afternoon of November 1. They talked about what they had done the night before - a Halloween night out - and Knox said Kercher still had a bit of her vampire makeup on.
Sollecito then arrived at the house. He and Knox had something to eat while Kercher was in her room, Knox told the court.
'She left her room, said "bye" and walked out the door,' Knox said, at this point speaking Italian. 'That was the last time I saw her.'
Sollecito, 25, has said he was at his own apartment the night of November 1, working at his computer.
He said he does not remember if Knox spent the whole night with him or just part of it. The two have said they could not remember events clearly because they had taken drugs.
Knox also repeated her accusations that she was beaten by police and confused when she was questioned in the days after the killing. Police have denied any misconduct.
After the killing, Knox accused Diya 'Patrick' Lumumba, a Congolese man who owns a pub in Perugia, of being the culprit. Lumumba was jailed briefly in the case, but he is no longer a suspect and is seeking defamation damages from Knox.
Knox was called to testify both in her own defence and in a civil case brought by Lumumba.
'The declarations were taken against my will, so everything that I said was said in confusion and under pressure,' Knox said under questioning by Lumumba's lawyer.
'They called me a stupid liar; said I was trying to protect someone. I was not trying to protect anyone,' she said.
'I didn't know what to respond. They said I left Raffaele's home, which I denied, but they continued to call me "stupid liar".'
Knox smiled as she walked into the court before her testimony. She was dressed in a white shirt and white trousers and had her hair pulled into a ponytail.
Earlier Knox waved at her father Curt as she arrived into the courtroom, who was present along with his new partner Cassandra and Knox's aunt Christine Hagge.
As he walked into court this morning, Mr Knox said: 'Today we are going to see a new Amanda - she is not the dark angel that she has been described.'
He had flown to Perugia from his home in Seattle, Washington, and last night defended his daughter, saying: 'Amanda has nothing to hide. She is nervous but she is also at the same time comfortable with what is about to happen.
Kurt Knox defended his daughter before the trial: 'She has nothing to hide'
'For the first time the judge and jury will be able to hear her version of events and they will be able to see her come across as 100 per cent innocent. She will field all the questions no matter who they are from.
'She has nothing to hide.'
Knox and Sollecito have been jailed since shortly after the slaying. They are both charged with murder and sexual violence.
They could face Italy's stiffest punishment, life imprisonment, if convicted of murder. The trial began in January and a verdict is expected after a summer break.
A third suspect in the case, Ivory Coast national Rudy Hermann Guede, was found guilty of murder and sexual violence and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
He was given a fast-track trial at his request, and his appeal is set to start in November. He, too, denies wrongdoing.
The trial has been closed to cameras but the presiding judge, exceptionally, allowed them in to film for Knox's testimony - only to ask them to leave in a few minutes for causing too much disruption.
The cameras were then crammed in the press room, where proceedings were being shown on a screen.
Source:DailyMail.co.uk
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The highly anticipated album by Hip-Hop collective Slaughterhouse has been pushed back to August 11, over a month from its original date.
The group, comprised of Joell Ortiz, Joe Budden, Royce Da 5’ 9” and Crooked I, had a release date in early July, but that is no more.
Royce said that the group wanted more time to put into set up and marketing with its label E1.
“Even though this [group] is a new way of doing business, we still gotta stick to the old school script when it comes time to market this, to have the proper time to set up a record,” Royce told AllHipHop.com.
“We’re not idiots. We understand the concept of labels throwing something against the wall and seeing if it sticks. That’s not what we are in business to do. We’re still in the business of selling records, because we feel we have a great product to present to the public.”
The Detroit rapper also stated that the lyrics and the music came together in a way that made them want to generate maximum interest in the self-titled debut.
“All the push back has to do [with] is the set up. It’s great music,” Royce continued. “My biggest concern with making the project is us picking the best beats possible. Rhyming is there. The best music possible is what I was always concerned with, that’s why a lot of songs came out so good.”
Joell Ortiz, a Brooklyn-bred artist, said that the process of creating the album was arduous, yet fun.
“It was definitely the busiest session I had ever seen in my life,” Ortiz said. “To come out with the product that we do have, was ridiculous.”
The group may ad another song to round off the album, but noted that it was close to completion and the delay had nothing to do with the music. The bulk of the album was finished in six days.
Source: Allhiphop
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After 5 years as a mainstay on Irv Gotti’s The Inc., R&B singer Lloyd has declared his time with the former powerhouse label has “run its course.”
Although he released his third LP in August 2008, the young crooner feels his career has become stagnant in the wake of The Inc’s separation from parent label Universal Records.
“I’m ready for a change,” Lloyd said. “There’s no bad blood. I just feel I need to take more control over my career and get a fresh start. Hopefully Irv can understand my position.”
Lloyd’s announcement comes just one month following the departure of Inc first lady Ashanti, who was granted a contract release after years of distancing herself from the beleaguered label’s legal and professional conflicts.
While his own situation plays out, Lloyd is moving forward with a new mixtape to build anticipation for his fourth studio album.
“We have plans to get in the studio with Jim Jonsin, The Runners, Cool & Dre, Rodney Jerkins, and others,” Lloyd detailed. “In the future, I still hope to work with Irv as a producer as well.”
Lloyd’s manager Henry “Noonie” Lee framed his client’s decision as an essential business necessity to prevent any further career monotony.
“We find ourselves in limbo for the second time in three years,” Lee said in a statement. It’s frustrating to know that opportunities to advance Lloyd’s career are out there but we can’t exploit them due to our current situation. Even though Lloyd is appreciative of the opportunity that has been afforded him by The Inc, he feels it’s time for him to move on and seek opportunities that will allow him to build and enhance his brand.”
At press time, Inc CEO Irv Gotti could not be reached for comment.
Lloyd is best known for his hit single’s “You” and “Get It Shawty.”
He released three albums on The Inc: Southside (2004) Street Love (2007) and his most recent, Lessons In Love (2008).
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