BEYONCE’S REP TALKS ABOUT ‘THE FALL’: Publicist tries to downplay tumble; plus, singer does pre-fall Q&A with AP.
*By now, everyone has seen Beyonce’s unfortunate slide down the stairs during her concert Tuesday night in Orlando. A rep for the singer has come forward with attempts to put the tumble in its proper context.
"Beyoncé's fall on stage last night in Orlando, Fl. during her performance of 'Ring The Alarm' was a mere spot on an otherwise sensational, flawless show," the rep told People magazine Wednesday. "It was a case of her coat's hem getting caught in her shoes, but Miss Knowles picked herself right up, without missing a beat, showing to all that she is the best."
Bey, dressed in a trench coat and high heels, somehow escaped serious injury in the fall, her rep said. People magazine quoted concertgoer Anette Nelson, who said of Beyonce’s spill: "Everyone gasped. But she got up right away and acted like nothing happened. I don't even think she missed a word of the song! Everyone started cheering her on, because she recovered like a real professional."
Meanwhile, before the fall, Beyonce sat down for a Q&A session with AP writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody. Here are some excerpts:
AP: Does it ever get easy to dance on stage in high heels?
Beyonce: The easiest part is dancing in the heels. I don't even think about it anymore; it's just second nature. But it is difficult to dance, to sing at the same time. I have to make sure I'm in shape and I'm hydrated ... I don't want to wear myself out and get exhausted.
AP: Were you surprised by the success of 'Irreplaceable?'
Beyonce: I always knew it was more of a commercial crossover pop record, and it's always someone ... who needs to hear those lyrics to have that anthem so they can be strong and get out of bad situations, get out of negative relationships. It doesn't matter if you're a woman or a man. The song is so powerful, every night, I don't even have to sing it, I can put the mic out and they know every single word.
AP: You auditioned and hired an all-female band for the tour. What has it been like?
Beyonce: I'm used to all females. I grew up in a house with so many women. I love being around women, I love being around talented women and supportive women. Everyone is so supportive of each other. We do things together, like yesterday we went skating; I rented out a roller skating rink for all of us and everybody's families to come. Also, I have eight female dancers and four males ... they are the only men on the tour, I feel bad for them being around all us women!
AP: So it's not true that women can't get along?
Beyonce: I was afraid of that in the beginning when I had the idea. I was like, this will never work ... (but) I found focused and incredible musicians that are just as good or better than any guy. And then I was like, well, even if I do find it, after a while, there will be some problems.
(Laughs.) But it hasn't been any problems, and everyone is just talented and secure and excited.
AP: I've been reading you're going to do another musical — Elton John's 'Aida.'
Beyonce: Oh yeah, I read that too. The 'Aida' thing? I mean, I would love that, it sounds like a good idea. But I haven't had any meetings about it.
AP: The gossip sites are always running something about you. Do you troll them? Do you ever feel like posting an anonymous comment?
AP: Sometimes I'll run across certain things, usually in the paper, because I read the paper more so than the Web. There's one or two sites that I can go to. But if I go on the Internet and try to see what people are saying, I'll probably want to crawl under a rock. (Laughs.) Because I'm still human and certain things, it just hurts, so I try not to read the Internet too much.
IS JAY-Z LEAVING DEF JAM FOR COLUMBIA?: Mogul reportedly trying to get away from Jermaine Dupri.
*The arrival of Jermaine Dupri as president of the Island Urban music division in February has apparently rankled the president of Island’s Def Jam label, Jay-Z.
The New York Daily News is quoting sources who confirm that Jay-Z is in talks to join rival label Columbia Records, in part to get some distance from Dupri’s kingdom under the same Island umbrella.
"There isn't room for two kings at one label," says a source. "Why would Island bring in another power-hitter urban guy?"
Ironically, Dupri’s girlfriend Janet Jackson recently left Virgin two weeks ago and followed signed with Dupri’s Island Urban, while Columbia is the label home of Jay-Z’s girlfriend, Beyonce.
Also, Columbia’s new co-chairman Rick Rubin has been looking to shake up the label’s A&R department.
"He's creating a supergroup of staff," a second source tells Daily News column Gatecrasher. "So it would make sense that he would want Jay on his side."
HAROLD PERRINEAU RETURNS TO ‘LOST’: President of ABC reluctantly makes announcement Wednesday.
*Fans of ABC’s “Lost” last saw Michael and his son sailing away from the island toward home having betrayed the rest of his fellow castaways.
It was announced Wednesday morning by ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson that Michael, played by Harold Perrineau, will find his way back to the people he deceived when the show returns for its fourth season.
McPherson reluctantly made the announcement Wednesday morning at the Television Critics Association Press Tour in Beverly Hills. He had planned to reveal the news this morning at Comic-Con International in San Diego, but TCA critics pressed him to spill the beans early.
McPherson first played coy, stating: "I've cast Don Imus on `Lost.'"
Finally, after continued grilling by reporters, he announced that Perrineau will be back on the series when it returns in January.
He would not reveal if Michael’s son Walt, played by Malcolm David Kelley, will also be back on a regular basis. Kelley appeared in an episode last season as part of another character’s vision.
Based on the final scenes of the season three finale, it appears as if “Lost” will begin its next season sometime in the future – following several key characters who have somehow gotten off the island – and work its way backwards for the next three seasons.
Earlier this year, ABC announced that “Lost” was renewed through the 2009-10 television season.
LIL WAYNE; JA RULE ARREST UPDATES: Rappers released on bond; each rep swears guns weren’t theirs.
*Rappers Lil Wayne and Ja Rule, both arrested Sunday in separate incidents following Wayne’s concert in New York, are out on bond and claiming that the guns found in their cases were not theirs.
According to their attorney Stacey Richman, Lil Wayne was released Monday evening on $70,000 bond and will appear in court again in November on a felony charge of gun-possession. He was arrested following his headlining show at New York’s Beacon Theatre.
Ja Rule, who features Lil Wayne on his current single, “Uh Oh,” was released on $150,000 bond and expected back in Manhattan Criminal Court on Nov. 7 to face a felony charge of criminal possession of a weapon. Both rappers spent Sunday night in jail.
Richman tells MTV News that both arrests seem a little suspect. As for Lil Wayne, “he was in the bus in his boxer shorts with a number of other people," she said. "Unless his boxer shorts had a pocket for this gun, I don't understand how he had it on him."
Richman's father and legal partner, Murray Richman, believes Lil Wayne’s arrest was a result of an action by New York's police-detective "hip-hop squad," which "staked out the [tour] bus," Richman told MTV.
Murray Richman added that the .40-caliber gun police found in Wayne’s tour bus was in the same area in which Wayne was changing clothes and was a legally registered handgun, but did not belong to the rapper.
Also, the attorneys are wondering why the other 12 to 20 people on the bus were not arrested along with Wayne, given New York laws requiring everyone in a vehicle with an unclaimed gun be charged if that vehicle is searched by police.
Prosecutors claim that as police approached the bus after smelling marijuana, the man later charged with marijuana possession allegedly flushed
7 ounces of the substance down the bus' toilet. The marijuana was retrieved and introduced into evidence.
In Ja Rule's case, Stacey Richman claims the .40-caliber Taurus pistol police recovered from inside the 2004 Maybach that Ja was riding in belonged to someone else. Ja; his driver, Mohamed Gamal; and his road manager, Dennis Cherry, were all charged with criminal possession of a weapon.
According to Richman, the car in question was a company vehicle owned by Gamal's Maximum Transportation firm and is used by his clients.
"If you get a car, and something's left in the car, is that yours?"
Richman wondered to MTV. "How you can ascribe that anybody knows what's in a car?"
She also says the car was stopped about a block away from the Beacon Theatre and that it had been "parked outside for two and a half hours, with the police department, and they ran the plates — they could have just handed out a ticket then, but they didn't. They waited for [Ja Rule] to get into the car."
NJ COPS WANT SWIZZ BEATZ TO STOP ‘SNITCH’ TALK: But artist says they’re barking up the wrong tree.
*The police department in Camden, New Jersey is threatening to pull its sponsorship of today’s scheduled “Peace on the Streets” rally unless one of the performers, Swizz Beatz, agrees to stop his anti-snitching campaign.
In his current single, "It's Me Snitches," Swizz raps: "Freeze, you know who it is/ It's me, snitches" and "I ain't gonna shoot ya/ I could just choke ya."
It’s those kinds of lyrics that trouble the police department, who fear that lines advocating violence and the removal of snitches will stir up trouble in a city that is already among the most violent in the nation.
However, Swizz released a statement to the AP explaining the “Snitches” part of the song title.
"The use of the word `snitches' in the song was just an edit for radio," Swizz says. "If I supported violence or the `Stop Snitching'
campaign, I wouldn't have agreed to be a part of the event ..."
Other city officials say they have been assured that Swizz is no longer rapping about hard-core violence and will have a positive message in the two songs he's scheduled to perform at the rally today.
"He's actually sharing a lot of positiveness," says the Rev. Tony Evans, a spokesman for Mayor Gwendolyn Faison. "A lot of artists, even though they have material that might not be appropriate for all ages, they do want to position themselves as having a positive impact on communities."
Swizz, whose real name is Kasseem Dean, is to be paid by Philadelphia radio station Power 99 to appear at the rally, sponsored by local government and school board.
RIHANNA CAPITALIZES ON CURRENT SINGLE: Singer reportedly teams with Totes to release own line of um-ber-rellas, ellas, ellas.
*British-based Web site NME.com is reporting that Rihanna will be releasing her own line of umbrellas in the wake of her monster hit single, “Umbrella,” which just became the longest-running U.K. number one single in a decade.
The Barbados-born artist has teamed with British clothing company Totes to put out a collection of five different umbrellas in the U.K. The series will be available in different colors.
“Umbrella,” meanawhile, has lodged its tenth week at No. 1 on the British charts, and there’s a joke going around Britain that the track is the cause of this summer’s heavy rains and flooding in the area.
The song spent seven weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in the U.S.
MAGIC JOHNSON RECEIVES CIVIL RIGHTS AWARD: NBA star named Tuesday among Freedom Award honorees.
*Magic Johnson is among the list of people named Tuesday to receive the National Civil Rights Museum's annual Freedom Awards.
The museum, located at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, will hand out the awards Oct. 23. The honorees are John Hope Franklin and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.
Johnson, according to the museum, is being honored for his work since leaving the NBA on promoting economic development, improved health care and educational opportunities in low-income urban neighborhoods and other "underserved communities."
Franklin, 92, a chronicler of civil rights history, was part of a legal team from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that helped develop the Brown v. Board of Education case. The case led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.
Johnson-Sirleaf, 67, was inaugurated in January as president of Liberia.
Known as the "iron lady," she is her country's first elected female president.
R. KELLY’S ‘CLOSET’ COMING TO DVD: New IFC deal includes saga’s release on home video as well as cable broadcast.
*As R. Kelly prepares for child pornography trial, his “Trapped in the Closet” music video collection makes its way toward a full DVD release on Aug. 21 via Jive.
As previously reported, the singer inked a deal with the Independent Film Channel to air all 12 of the original “Trapped” episodes, which will take place in the weeks prior to the DVD release.
IFC will also partner in the DVD release, and has assisted Kelly in the filming of 10 new chapters. The entire 22-installment series will eventually stream on IFC’s Web site.
The 10 new "Trapped" installments features Kelly portraying an elderly man named Randolph, complete with a pot belly and a fake white beard that nearly falls off mid-scene, as well as a preacher in a gray Jheri-curl wig and garish orange suit, reports Billboard. Kelly's Sylvester character talks business with a "Sopranos"-esque mobster who is eating a giant plate of spaghetti, according to the trade.
As previously reported, jury selection began Friday in R. Kelly’s child pornography trial.
USHER AND TAMEKA WEDDING RUMORS RETURN: Word has it that the ceremony will go down this weekend.
*If current rumors are true, Usher and his fiancée Tameka Foster will be a married couple by Monday morning.
A source close to the couple tells OK! magazine that a ceremony will be held this weekend at music exec LA Reid’s estate in the Hamptons. The source said they want to have the wedding "sooner rather than later because they wanted to get married before Tameka has the baby."
Last month, the R&B star and his bride-to-be announced they are expecting their first child together in the fall. It will be Usher’s first offspring, and Foster’s fourth.
Last week, Usher made headlines because of his legal team’s attempt to shut down one of his fan sites because of its constant quips against Foster.
PAULA ABDUL AXED FROM ‘BRATZ’: Word has it she was ‘a nightmare to deal with.’
*Producers of the new live action film version of “Bratz” have reportedly had enough of Paula Abdul.
The loopy “American Idol” judge, who has said previously that she was the film’s choreographer, costume designer and executive producer, is now none of the above, reports the New York Post.
Folks associated with the film tell Page Six she “was not ever really a part of the movie…there was no way that was going to work.”
In any case, footage on her Bravo reality show “Hey Paula” this week shows the former Laker Girl receiving a message that she’s no longer needed for the “Bratz” project. According to Page Six, producers said she was “a
nightmare to deal with.”
JOHN SINGLETON TO DIRECT HALLE BERRY IN ‘TULIA’: ‘Boyz’ helmer replaces previous director, Carl Franklin.
*John Singleton has told Blackfilm.com that he will be replacing Carl Franklin as the director of “Tulia,” a Lionsgate film that reteams Halle Berry with her “Monster’s Ball” co-star Billy Bob Thornton.
The movie is based on the true story of a massive racial profiling case in Tulia, Texas. Ten percent of the town’s black population was arrested for a drug crime, although no drugs or money were linked to the people in custody.
The undercover agent who conducted the bust was indicted for perjury, and most of the 46 arrestees were pardoned by Texas Gov. Rick Perry last year.
Berry will portray the key attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund who worked on the case. According to Blackfilm.com, she’ll be playing a character who is Indian.
Columbus Short is also being sought for the film, the Web site reports. Filming will take place in Texas.
Meanwhile, Franklin just signed on to direct “The Maintenance Man” for Screen Gems.
ITTY BITTY BITS: Banner’s ‘Story’; TV One nabs Baisden; XM nabs Jolley.
*Mississippi rapper David Banner is in the final stages of completing his new SRC/Universal Motown album, “Greatest Story Ever Told,” for a fall release. The first single, "Speaker," features Akon, Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg. Other artists and producers on board include Chris Brown, Jim Jones, UGK, Cool & Dre and Nitti.
*TV One teamed up with FarCor Studios and Baisden Film Works to create a new primetime talk-show series featuring radio personality Michael Baisden, to debut in October. Titled “Baisden After Dark,” the show will tackle a wide range of provocative topics and feature celebrity guests from the worlds of entertainment, politics, sports and music, according to company executives. Along with Baiden, the series will feature as regulars George Willborn, winner of TV One's “Bill Bellamy's Who Got Jokes” comedy competition, and singer/producer Morris Day.
*Last week XM Radio along with Radio One, signed Willie Jolley to a national radio show, called The Willie Jolley Show. It will air on Saturday mornings from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. EST, on XM Station 169, The Power and will re-broadcast on Sunday mornings. This show will feature TIPS (Techniques, Ideas, Principles and Strategies) from Jolley and his friends on improving the quality of people's lives and helping people to live the life they desire.
EVENT CALENDAR: ‘Rick Ross Be Out Day’; Mos Def, Talib Kweli at Black August Festival.
*Miami rapper Rick Ross has teamed with Magic Johnson's Burger King Restaurants to host the 1st Annual Rick Ross Be Out Day on Aug. 8 from 12 to
5 p.m. at Miami Carol City Senior High School. The event is designed to prepare students for the upcoming school years by providing backpacks, pencils, pens and other school supplies. WEDR 99 Jamz jock DJ Khaled will co-host the event with Ross, along with recording artists to be announced.
*Talib Kweli and Mos Def will, for the 10th time, headline The 10th Annual Black August Festival, which takes place Aug. 26 at the Nokia Theatre in New York. The event from the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement aims to facilitate exchanges between international communities by promoting awareness about the social and political issues that affect young people in their communities. This year, the event promotes the MXGM's “Hands off Assata” public awareness campaign that focuses on the persecution of 1970’s activist Assata Shakur. Tickets – $30 in advance and $35 at the event – can be purchased by going online at www.nokiatheatrenyc.com or Ticketmaster charge by phone at 212-307-7171.
*ReverbNation.com has announced plans for a 10-city Showcase Series in partnership with digital distribution company SNOCAP. The ReverbNation New Blood Urban Showcase Series kicks off Aug. 12 in Denver at Club Feel and will feature the top unsigned urban artists from each market performing in front of A&R Representatives from Bad Boy Entertainment, Rawkus Records, UnAuthorized/Asylum and Imperial Records. The event moves onto Houston on Aug. 25. The series will run through March 2008. Aspiring artists and producers are encouraged to visit www.ReverbNation.com for showcase consideration.
*Michael Jackson’s daddy, Joe Jackson, will host his own birthday party today in Las Vegas. The event, which promises to be “celebrity filled,” will double as a benefit for the Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes Foundation. “We have a fun filled night planned for Mr. Jackson and his guests, starting with cocktails, followed by dinner, live performances, and speeches from many entertainers influenced by Mr. Jackson,” read a press release. “There will also be a silent auction of many items, donated by celebrity friends and family.” Jackson will also be signing copies of “Redemption,” author Geraldine Hughes’ authorized account of” the conspiracy behind the Michael Jackson trial.” To purchase tickets, visit http://www.blendedthemovie.com/birthdaytribute.