Lil Boosie remains in prison, battling very serious charges of murder and conspiracy, but his music career has not halted.
On September 28, Asylum Records is releasing Incarcerated, the follow-up to 2009's Super Bad: The Return of Boosie Bad Azz. The project is mostly produced by B.J., but Mouse on Tha Track did board work as well. Webbie, Foxx and Lil Trill are among the LP's guests.
DJ Drama had a chance to get an early preview of the project and said Boosie's impact is immeasurable. "Lil Boosie is one of the most important Southern and street artists of this generation, period," Mr. Thanksgiving applauded. "Boosie always gives you the ghetto in a real and authentic way. The music on Incarcerated lives up to that standard. I hope and pray for Lil Boosie to get through his struggle."
Boosie, born Torrence Hatch, is accused of plotting to kill Terry Boyd in October of last year. In June, he pleaded not guilty to murder, drug and conspiracy charges. He has maintained his innocence and is currently preparing his defense.
Incarcerated track listing, according to Asylum Records:
1. "Devils" (produced by Savage)
2. "You Don't Know" (produced by B.J.)
3. "Betrayed" (featuring Webbie; produced by B.J.)
4. "Chill Out" (produced by B.J.)
5. "Bank Roll (Part 2)" (featuring Webbie and Big Head; produced by B.J.)
6. "How We Do It" (Featuring Webbie and Lil Trill; produced by B.J.)
7. "Cartoon" (featuring Shell and Mouse on Tha Track; produced by Mouse on Tha Track)
8. "Thugged Out" (featuring Foxx; produced by B.J.)
9. "Better Not Fight" (featuring Foxx, Webbie and Lil Trill; produced by David West)
10. "What I Learned From the Streets" (featuring Shell; produced by B.J.)
11. "Calling Me" (produced by B.J.)
12. "Do It Again" (featuring Lil' Phat and K.T.; produced by B.J.)
13. "Long Journey" (featuring Webbie; produced by B.J.)
14. "The Rain" (featuring Lil Trill; produced by B.J.)
T.I. recently discussed the sacrifices he was forced to make in order to have a successful production of his new “Takers” film.
In addition, T.I.s new character is described by IMDb: “T.I. is treacherous. He’s cold, he’s calculating and he’s out for millions. As the character Ghost in the upcoming film “Takers,” the beloved King of the South is all of the above, but he also sneaks in a few hysterical one-liners. It’s these multifaceted aspects that lured him to his role in the film. “
Among the sacrifices T.I. went through: Sleep deprivation.
“I did assist with the producing…I lost sleep to say the least,” he added about juggling all of his professional and personal obligations while “Takers” was in production. “I increased my responsibilities and just basically sacrificed my time. Just sacrificed in every way possible whenever necessary.”
As previously reported, and the second of several sacrifices, was the delay of the release of his new album “King Uncaged,” due to the focus placed on the completion of production on “Takers.” T.I. also discusses what acting lessons he learned alongside co-star Idris Elba (The Wire).
“I pushed the album back so I can completely focus my attention to the rollout and release of this film Takers,” he said. “I feel it wouldn’t be fair to the film or the album if I was splitting my attention span amongst the two, so I hit pause on the album to completely focus my attention to rolling out this here film. And once we prayerfully debut No. 1–25-plus, 20-plus million–then after those bottles have been popped and that celebration [is] underway, I will completely resubmerge myself back into the music, fully on album mode.”
“Idris is a phenomenal talent, an outstanding man. I learned a lot from his methods of acting and we hit it off personally as well as professionally. “Everybody was humbled. Everybody was down to earth. I loved working with Idris as well as the rest of the crew.”
“Takers” will hit theaters this Friday, August 27th.
In an interview airing on VH1's "Behind the Music" Tuesday, the "American Idol" winner, 26, said she wanted to die when she overdosed on aspirin and a sleep aid earlier this month.
"I didn't have any fight in me. I didn't care about anything. I just wanted out," Barrino says in the special, which airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
People magazine released excerpts of Barrino's interview on People.com today. "At that moment, I wanted out," she said. "I wanted it to be over with, all of it, all of that [expletive].
What The hell Is all Them Blacks On Here Ass LOL. She Don't Need TO Be showing NOBODY THAT.
TMZ has obtained several letters that Fishburne’s legal team fired off to a porn star named Brian Pumper — demanding that his production company immediately stop all sales of “Phattys Rhymes & Dimes 14” … which features a scene between Montana and Brian.
According to the letters, Montana never signed a release for Brian to use the X-rated material in his video.
As for why Montana agreed to engage in coitus in front of Pumper’s cameras in the first place — Fishburne tells us Brian offered to help her “practice” for her big debut with Vivid Entertainment … and the footage wasn’t supposed to be sold.
So far, we’re told Pumper has not responded to the letters.
Robert Hoobler, a former New Orleans Police officer, stands in front of the apartment where Grammy-winning musician Lil’ Wayne once lived in the Hollygrove area of New Orleans. It is the same home where Hoobler carried out a bloodied Lil’ Wayne after he was shot when he was 12 years old. Hoobler saved Lil’ Wayne’s life by driving him to a nearby hospital.
The celebrated New Orleans rapper would have bled to death on the floor of his mother’s Hollygrove apartment the afternoon of Nov. 11, 1994, at just 12 years old, after accidentally shooting himself in the chest while playing with a 9 mm handgun.
If not for Hoobler, the New Orleans police officer who cradled the bleeding boy in the back of a squad car that day on the way to the hospital, the Grammy-winning superstar would never have made the cover of the current issue of Rolling Stone.
The shooting, part of the Lil Wayne lore, has been chronicled before, but not its details, nor the tale of the man who saved his life: a 6-foot, 7-inch, 330-pound officer who responded to the shooting while off-duty, as was his habit.
Lil Wayne was 12 and B.G. was 14 (Thrill B'G)
That nearly fatal day, according to police records, 12-year-old Dwayne Carter Jr. left school early because it was report card day. He bought a hamburger, fries and soft drink from Burger King on his way home to 3409 Monroe St., Apartment D. He sat on the mattress in the master bedroom and began eating. But he stopped when he noticed a blue-steel Taurus 9 mm handgun.
The pistol had been left there the previous day, by a man who came over to watch a football game.
Little Dwayne picked up the gun and began horsing around with it in front of a stereo blaring music. At about 1:15 p.m., the boy accidentally fired a bullet through his chest. The slug then shot out the lower left corner of a window.
Somehow, it missed every vital organ. But the boy was dying.
Dwayne dialed 911, wheezing as he spoke. As blood poured out of the wound and formed a puddle near the stereo, the operator pressed for details. “You will find out when you get here, ” the boy said, according to the police report.
He crawled toward the front door, smearing a trail of blood behind him. He lay on the floor face down, pressing his right cheek to the ground, and waited.
Faint cry for help
Officer Robert Hoobler was on his way to an off-duty detail when dispatchers broadcast the emergency call.
Hoobler, who joined the New Orleans Police Department in 1988, regularly showed up at emergency scenes when he wasn’t working. Police work has been his passion since he joined the Air Force Military Police after graduating from high school in 1974.
Hearing the call, Hoobler, then 41, drove his squad car to the two-story four-plex, arriving at the same time as fellow officer Arthur Thompson.
The officers entered the complex and went upstairs. They knocked on the door of Apartment D.
“Police!”
No answer.
They could hear music. They knocked again.
“Police!”
Still, no answer. They tried the door, but it was locked.
As they stood in the hallway, Pamela Taylor, a woman living in Apartment C, walked up. The officers asked her who her neighbors were.
They just moved in, and she hardly knew them, she said. Taylor told them the maintenance man, who lived five blocks away, might help.
Thompson headed to the maintenance man’s house but found no one. Meanwhile, Hoobler went downstairs and paced around the apartment complex. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Confused, he went back upstairs and knocked on the door of Apartment D one last time.
“Police!”
This time, a faint voice answered.
“Help me! I’ve been shot! Help me! I’ve been shot!” Hoobler said he heard.
Hoobler kicked down the door.
He found a short-haired boy in jeans and a T-shirt, bleeding to death.
Hoobler radioed emergency medical services for help. As he awaited a reply, he spoke to the boy: “Talk to me, man. What happened to you? Stay awake.”
The boy just groaned.
Moments later, Thompson came in to the apartment. Hoobler searched the apartment for a gunman or a witness. He found the pistol at the foot of the bed. He noticed a shell on the bedspread, near the half-eaten hamburger.
Meanwhile, Thompson kneeled next to little Dwayne, urging him to hang on, asking him what happened. The boy said he shot himself by accident.
Hoobler asked 911 dispatchers how long it would take for the ambulance to get there.
“No unit is available, ” the dispatcher said.
Speeding to hospital
As Hoobler made sense of the dispatcher’s grim words, officers Kevin Balancier, Gervais Allison, Steven Williams and then-Sgt. Timothy Bayard arrived.
Hoobler met Bayard downstairs and briefed him. Bayard climbed upstairs. He saw the blood-soaked boy and heard him wheezing.
Bayard radioed the dispatcher and asked when the ambulance would arrive.
“No unit is available, ” the dispatcher said. “We’ll send the first one that is free.”
Bayard looked at Hoobler.
“Take him to the hospital yourself, ” Bayard, now a captain, recalled saying. “Grab him and get the f - - - out of here.”
Balancier backed a police car into the driveway and opened the back door. Hoobler scooped the boy up and carried him to the back seat of Balancier’s car “like a little baby, ” Bayard said. Hoobler lay the boy across his lap.
One officer suggested Charity Hospital, but it was too far away. “Take him to Ochsner, ” in Jefferson Parish, Bayard said.
It wasn’t as well-equipped to handle gunshot wounds like Charity — but it was much closer.
Allison sped out in front of Balancier and blocked traffic at major intersections. As Dwayne groaned and bled all over Hoobler in the back seat, Balancier sped to Claiborne and turned right. The street led right to Ochsner’s emergency room, which had already been notified of the situation.
Hoobler spoke to Dwayne the entire trip and lightly shook him to keep him alert. “Stay awake, son. You’re going to be fine. You’ll see.”
When they got to Ochsner, Balancier opened the door and let Hoobler out. Hoobler placed Dwayne on a gurney. Nurses and doctors frantically wheeled him away.
Hoobler went to the bathroom to wash off what he could. Most of his shirt, except for the sleeves, was tinted dark red.
Hoobler, Bayard and the other officers reunited in the emergency room lobby. A nurse told the group of winded officers, “If y’all had waited for EMS or taken him to Charity, he would have died.
“You saved that kid’s life.”
‘I almost died’
Years passed, and Hoobler went on to spend 10 years as a homicide detective. He began seeing and hearing about an up-and-coming Cash Money Records rapper named Lil Wayne everywhere: record stores, magazine stands, television and radio stations.
Meanwhile, whenever his work took him to Hollygrove, he came across the boy who nearly died in his arms.
He didn’t realize the two were the same person until after the rapper had hit it big.
One night, as Hoobler dined at a restaurant on St. Charles Avenue with a friend, a large man tapped him on the shoulder and told him, “Lil Wayne wants to see you.”
Hoobler cast a puzzled glance around the room and locked eyes with a man sporting wild dreadlocks and shiny chains. The man motioned him over. Hoobler didn’t recognize him until he stood over the table.
“This man saved my life, ” Lil Wayne said to several men and women around him, according to Hoobler. “I almost died, and this man saved my life. I’ll never forget him.”
He reached out and bumped Hoobler’s fist. They spoke briefly before they each returned to their meals.
Hoobler finished eating. When he went to pay for his meal, the waiter told him not to worry about it. Lil Wayne had picked up the tab.
Rock, not rap
Hoobler, who was born and raised in Gentilly and attended John F. Kennedy High School, left the NOPD after Hurricane Katrina. His home took on nearly 12 feet of water, he said, and his wife nearly drowned on her quest to safety.
After the couple was separated for five days in the flood’s aftermath, his wife convinced him to move to a small town in northern Mississippi. He got a job at a small police department, but became homesick. Now he plans to move back home, and hopes to get on with a local police department.
Lil Wayne, meanwhile, has gone on to record half-a-dozen studio albums and 11 mix tapes, selling millions of copies of his work and appearing in dozens of music videos along the way. His “Tha Carter III” was the best-selling album of 2008. He won four Grammys earlier this year.
Lil Wayne, now 26, would likely not be alive, much less the world’s most celebrated rapper, without Hoobler’s efforts.
Still, the officer said, “I’m proud of what he’s done, but I would’ve done the same for the guy no one ever heard about again.” Everyone else there would have, too, he said.
Hoobler has never bought any of Lil Wayne’s CDs. He mostly listens to rock bands: AC/DC, Nickelback, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica.
Hoobler brightened when he learned Lil Wayne has recorded a rock album and will release it later this month. That, Hoobler said, he might buy.
T.I. is heating up the promotion for his new street release, F--- a Mixtape. The King of the South and company sent an exclusive trailer to Mixtape Daily on Friday (April 16). The trailer features quick shots of T.I. performing, then transitions into footage of a cassette melting as we hear a brand-new record from the release, "Back to the Trap."
"Welcome back to the trap, and back to the grind," he raps on the chorus of the record. "I'm back on my hustle with an immaculate shine/ Welcome back to the trap, we back to the streets/ Homey, right after I release, see me right back with the heat/ Welcome back to the trap, and back to the grind/ I'm back on my hustle with an immaculate shine/ Welcome back to the trap/ I'm back on my sh--/ This the sh-- that you missin', you'll be right back on my d---/ Welcome back to the trap."
This week, Tip not only announced the title of his forthcoming official LP, King Uncaged (due August 24), but he also revealed his mixtape was coming soon. DJ Drama said the streets should be excited about the special edition of Gangsta Grillz.
"I think this is going to be exciting for the streets — it's a lot of sh-- that is '24s'-type Tip," Drama said, referring to the track from T.I.'s 2003 Trap Muzik LP. "Tip is like a f---ing superstar right now. He makes a lot of big records with a lot of worldly feels — but they gonna love this in Zone One."
Tip recently spoke to Rolling Stone about King Uncaged.
"Some songs talk about my time in prison — how I was affected by that, the way I've grown from that, things I see now that I may have not seen then," he said. "Sometimes I talk about love, some songs I talk about life, some songs I talk about me being the sh-- on every level."
Two weeks after being hospitalized for overdosing on aspirin and a sleep aid, singer Fantasia Barrino says it was no accident. She wanted to die.
"I didn't have any fight in me. I didn't care about anything. I just wanted out," the American Idol winner, 26, tells VH1 in a new Behind the Music interview, airing 9 p.m. ET/PT Tuesday, the same day her new album, Back to Me, is released. "At that moment, I wanted out. I wanted it to be over with – all of it, all of that [expletive]."
She continues: "I just sat in the closet and looked at the mirror and took all the pills in the bottle. I wanted to go to sleep and just be at peace. I knew exactly what I was doing. You can't accidentally take a whole bottle of pills."
Barrino's manager, Brian Dickens, recalls finding her lying on the floor in her room. "Her emotions were extremely low," he says. "She'd been crying all day. Fantasia was just numb. Fantasia texted me, saying 'I love you.' I wrote back, 'I love you more.' Then it hit me."
"I wrote, 'You better not do anything or think about doing anything stupid.' And I left it at that. About 10 minutes later, Fantasia texted me back, and she said, 'Already did.' I went into Fantasia's room and saw her on the floor, and my heart just dropped."
What made the successful singer, who's preparing to release her third album, want to end her life? "I was tired of people doing me wrong, constantly, over and over again, dealing with my family – my father, dealing with men and their [expletive] – I was tired," she says. "My head was hurting me. I was over it."
Affair with Antwaun Cook
To complicate matters even more, Barrino is now being threatened with a lawsuit by Paula Cook, the wife of Antwaun Cook, with whom Fantasia had been having an affair.
"When I met him, he was separated ... wasn't living in his home. He didn't want to be back with his wife – that is what I was told," Barrino says. "I remember waking up in the hospital [and thinking], 'It didn't work, I'm still here in this hellhole. Still here with all this drama going on.' "
Ultimately, the singer says the saving grace was her nurse. "My nurse Melanie was a blessing into my life because she didn't tell me what I wanted to hear," she says. "She told me what I needed to hear. And she looked at me and said, 'You gotta get up, and you've gotta get out of here, 'cause you haven't fulfilled your destiny.' "
"I realized how people end up in the grave. Because that one moment [snaps her fingers] of just breaking or feeling like I can't, I can't go on, it's too heavy. That was somewhere I don't ever want to go again."
T.I. tells Angela Yee that he is producing a cartoon series "Lil Homies," and may even provide his vocal talents to the show.
During a recent interview with Shade 45's Angela Yee, the King of the South T.I. said that he is planning to launch a cartoon series called Lil Homies. Although Tip has yet to secure a network for the show, he will act as producer. He even said that he may provide a voice over narrative to the show.
"I'm actually working on a TV show as a producer…a cartoon called Lil Homies, he said. "I may do [a] voice over, like a narrator," T.I. said.
R&B singer Faith Evans was arrested late Saturday after she was stopped at a drunken driving checkpoint near Marina del Rey, according to police.
The Grammy Award-winning songstress was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor drunken driving at 10:40 p.m. at a checkpoint at Washington and Lincoln boulevards, according to Officer Cleon Joseph of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Evans, 37, is the widow of rapper Christopher Wallace, also known as Notorious B.I.G. She won a Grammy in 1998 for the song, “I’ll Be Missing You.”
In 2004, Evans and her current husband, record company executive Todd Russaw, were arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and cocaine after a traffic stop near Atlanta and spent 13 weeks in rehab.
Evans, a mother of four, has lived in Venice Beach and is reportedly launching a comeback after a five-year hiatus. Upcoming projects includes a reality series “It’s All About Faith” and an album due in October.
About 48 hours ago, Rick Ross held court at Chene Park Amphitheater in Detroit. And during his performance, he brought out Big Meech’s mom, Lucille Flenory. A few weeks ago, Ms. Flenory told Frank Ski that she was flattered by Ross name-dropping her son on “B.M.F.”. Meech echoed the sentiment a month prior too.
On a yacht somewhere on the waters of South Florida, DJ Khaled officially became the latest free agent to sign a lucrative contract in Miami. He is now a member of YMCM, as his meeting with Birdman appeared to go very well. Apparently, Khaled signed an artist deal that left him with what looked to be a hefty signing bonus. The president of Def Jam South was a free agent until yesterday. He later tweeted, “Happy to be part of history! One of the greatest in the game who has ever done it.”
The small city of East Point, Georgia, took steps to prevent chaos from breaking out Thursday, a day after more than 30,000 people unexpectedly turned out to pick up public housing applications.
East Point, a suburb south of Atlanta, had expected only 10,000 people to show up Wednesday. But officials said crowd control became an issue after many families brought more than one member -- children, other relatives and even dogs in some cases, according to Kimberly Lemish, executive director of the East Point Housing Authority.
Thursday, people returned the filled-out applications for housing assistance. And officials used a different procedure in the hope of keeping order. Housing authority officials and police were accepting forms as applicants drove by. Those not in cars could walk up to tables where officials accepted the forms.
A steady stream of cars and some foot traffic was evident, but not the craziness of Wednesday, when the applications were distributed.
"As soon as the doors were opened panic ensued," the East Point Fire Department said in a news release.
Maj. Donald Chase of the East Point Police Department said the event was organized with several distribution centers, but people Wednesday tried to circumvent the lines and come around the sides to gain access.
"As you can imagine, this large of a crowd did have some instances of 'being out of control,'" East Point City Councilman Lance Rhodes said in an e-mail to residents. "However, the Police and Fire were in control. This is evidenced by the fact that no arrests were made."
Lemish said that, with the cooperation of East Point and nearby police departments, the housing authority did everything it could. "It was a success," she said. "We were able to do what we were set out to do. All of the people who wanted applications got them."
However, officials said so many people picked up applications that it could be 10 years before all the applicants are helped. Meanwhile, their names will be on a waiting list.
As part of this weeks World Basketball Festival celebration Michael Jordan debuted his own line of bikes at the Atmos NYC store. Michael Jordan recently started up Michael Jordan Motorsports, 23 Race and his own line of Suzuki bikes.
The Cash Money Records co-founder and CEO recently purchased a $2.1 million all red everything Bugatti Veyron, one of the most expensive automobiles in the WORLD. And not only that, it’s also the fastest street legal car on the planet, reaching speeds of up to 267 miles per hour according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Last week, video footage was released of Birdman (real name: Bryan Williams) wearing a matching red Adidas tracksuit as he showed off his brand new expensive toy, which we hear costs over $300,000 PER YEAR to maintain, and took it on a test drive shortly after it was delivered via a semi-trailer.
Germany – A German singer facing accusations that she infected a man with the virus that causes AIDS acknowledged in court Monday that she had unprotected sex despite knowing she was HIV-positive.
The 28-year-old Nadja Benaissa, a member of German girl band No Angels, is charged with grievous bodily harm for allegedly infecting a partner with the virus in 2004 and also faces charges of attempted bodily harm for having unprotected sex with two other men.
"I am sorry from my heart," she said in a statement read by her lawyer to the Darmstadt administrative court. "No way did I want my partner to be infected."
The man who claims Benaissa infected him says they had a three-month relationship at the beginning of 2004, and that he got tested after Benaissa's aunt asked him in 2007 whether he was aware that the singer was HIV-positive.
Prosecutors say Benaissa had known she was HIV-positive since 1999.
Benaissa was arrested in April 2009 and kept in custody for 10 days — a move that a German AIDS awareness group criticized as disproportionate. The Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe group argued that the question of whether her partners also carried a share of the responsibility had been neglected.
Benaissa joined No Angels in 2000 through the TV casting show "Popstars." The group sold more than 5 million albums before breaking up in 2003.
Benaissa helped reform the group in 2007 with three other members. The group represented Germany in the 2008 Eurovision song contest.
Young Buck's Tennessee home was just ransacked by several armed federal agents ... TMZ has learned -- and it was all over $300,000 in allegedly unpaid taxes.
According to Young's rep, IRS agents rolled up to the platinum-selling rapper's house in Nashville this morning to go on a repossession rampage over the alleged tax debt -- seizing assets like recording equipment, jewelry, furniture, his platinum wall plaques ... and even his kids' PlayStation.
The rep tells us, the feds in question were packing heat -- in the form of a shotgun -- and warned Buck not to interfere with the raid.
As for how he fell so far behind in debt, the former G-Unit member tells us, "This IRS situation came about because I trusted accountants, lawyers, and managers to handle my business for me while I focused on making music. From now on, I am going to stay on top of my own business."
