Despite his crew staging a mini-revolt and refusing to go to Japan due to earthquake and radiation fears, Justin Bieber is adamant that he’ll be there. The singer is scheduled to perform in Osaka and Tokyo later this month, but many of Bieber’s crew members boycotting the trip after the nuclear disaster. As a result, the May 17 and 19 shows are in limbo as of right now. While he hasn’t weighed in publicly on the feud between the crew and his manager, Scooter Braun, JB has reportedly decided that he’s going, period. If Bieber doesn’t have the crew to pull off stadium concerts, he’s willing to sing at smaller venues. Anything, sources say, not to let down his fans. Not sure how he’s gonna pull that off logistically on almost zero notice, but that’s dedication to the cause, people. Sometimes you just gotta Belieb!
Young Money rapper, who was born in California, visits ‘RapFix Live.’ By Rob Markman, with reporting by Sway Calloway Tyga Photo: MTV News This week, MTV is celebrating the “New West” by spotlighting California-bred artists like Odd Future, Nipsey Hussle, Dom Kennedy, Casey Veggies and, of course, this week’s “RapFix Live” guest Tyga. Sitting with MTV News’ Sway Calloway, Tyga commented on L.A.’s new sound, remarking that the new crop of Cali spitters fair better when employing a more-universal sound. It’s this attitude that Tyga said has helped rookie West Coast rappers make their mark in a post-gangsta-rap era. “I don’t think it’s that hard to break out of L.A. because there are a lot of new artists out,” he said. While the West Coast was traditionally associated with N.W.A. and Dr. Dre’s signature sound, things have been changing over the past few years. “Back in the day, when you had N.W.A., that was the sound for music, and a lot of L.A. artists sound like they’re from L.A. when they rap and stuff, and a lot of people around the world won’t relate as much,” said Tyga, who is currently signed to Lil Wayne’s Young Money label. “Odd Future, for example: [The group’s frontman] Tyler don’t sound like he from L.A., so he can get out to more people and his music can be more worldly because it’s a new sound.” Do you agree with Tyga about L.A.’s sound? Sound off in the comments below! Stick with us all week as MTV News turns the spotlight on the New West, the next wave of hip-hop acts helping to restore faith in the L.A. rap scene. From groups like Odd Future to rising MCs like Dom Kennedy, we’ll bring you up close and personal to these artists as they carve their own lanes in the post-gangsta-rap era. Keep it locked here all week for more on the West Coast up-and-comers! Related Videos ‘RapFix Live’ With Tyga
‘There are certain things that you’re not supposed to talk about,’ Nore tells MTV News of Mobb Deep MC. By Rob Markman N.O.R.E. Photo: MTV News Despite Prodigy’s account in his new book “My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy,” Queens rapper N.O.R.E. insists that he isn’t the shook one he is depicted to be. In the “Hell on Earth” chapter, Prodigy recounts an incident when members of his entourage jumped Nore in front of a Queens club, which led Noreaga and his crew to retaliate immediately with gunfire. For the full excerpt, head to MTV News’ RapFix blog , but here are a few salient lines from Prodigy’s book: “Come over here so we can talk,” [rapper Ty] Nitty told [Nore], putting his arm around N.O.R.E.’s neck and walking him into the street. After a few steps, Nitty started punching N.O.R.E. in the face while he had him in a headlock. N.O.R.E. dropped to the ground and the crew jumped him. Gotti, Havoc, and I stood by the trucks and watched them beat the clothes off that boy. Man, I never saw somebody get jumped so bad! In an exclusive interview with MTV News, Nore — who is dropping the free online mixtape NORE-Easter on Sunday — admitted that some of Prodigy’s accounts are true. Still, he expressed his overall disappointment in the Mobb Deep rapper’s decision to drum up old beefs. “There are certain things that you’re not supposed to talk about,” Nore said. “Now, I didn’t read the book and I don’t read where he’s going crazy. I read the little inserts where he [talked] about the jumping incident. Let me just clear the record up and say: None of the things that it says in the book would ever make me go at him. I’m not gonna see him and try to throw him in the full nelson.” Nore does admit to getting jumped that night in Queens, which he estimates occurred in either 1996 or ’97. “I did get jumped. They jumped me with 40 people,” he recalled. “If you ever see 40 people jump on one man, that one man never gets touched, because most of those 40 people are hitting each other. You can’t hit the target. I got up.” Next is where the two rappers’ accounts differ. In the book, Prodigy said that during the beat-down, N.O.R.E. was stripped of his chain. “I never got robbed in my life,” Nore fired back. Prodigy also said that the “Super Thug” rapper and his crew came back with a TEC-9; Nore said it was a 9mm. In the aftermath of the gunfire, Mobb Deep affiliate Ty Nitty was left shot in the back. “Why would you bring up something where your man got shot?” Nore asked. “I thought you would be cool with Ty Nitty. I like Ty Nitty.” Nore also revealed that he spoke to longtime friend and frequent collaborator Prodigy just a few days ago, and P assured N.O.R.E. that only positive things were written about him in the book. “When I spoke to him the other day, he said, ‘Yo, I only spoke about good things about you in the book, and when you see the book, you’ll realize that,’ ” Nore recalled. “I said, ‘Yo, P, first off, nobody can really make me change on you, because I know you.’ I know him personally. We’re cool. We speak.” The Queens MC doesn’t expect things to change between him and Prodigy, but he felt he had to respond. “I don’t know why he would bring up a situation where they clearly lost,” he said. Stick with MTV News for more on N.O.R.E.’s respond to Prodigy’s book. Related Artists N.O.R.E. Prodigy of Mobb Deep
In the early-mid 1990s, in a smoky pool hall in the Bronx, NY, Jay-Z and DMX went toe to toe in a war of words. Details about the legendary hip-hop battle are scarce, and those who were there admit that their memories of the event have faded a bit. HipHopDX spoke to three people who were at the battle: Ski Beatz , Sauce Money, and Ruff Ryders co-founder Waah Dean. The three men, to the best of their ability, gave an inside look into a battle of two of the 90s greatest emcees. Waah Dean: We did [the battle] on neutral grounds. Instead of doing it in Brooklyn or Yonkers, we did it in the Bronx. Ski Beatz: When I rolled up, I was with Dame Dash , Tone Hooker, Jay-Z, and I think some of Dame’s people from Harlem—his crew called The Best Out. That was the name of his crew, from Harlem. I think Dame set [the battle] up. It was like a Brooklyn-Uptown/Harlem kind of thing. So we all met at the pool hall, in the Bronx. Waah Dean: We heard some things about Jay-Z from Brooklyn, and from Dame, and we’d bump heads with their people every now and again. The word was out that we had these guys that was doing similar things—traveling to different areas and [battling]—so we knew in a matter of time we was gonna be in a place where somebody was gonna make the phone call, and say, ‘Yeah, we got this guy standing here, and they all wanna be here…’ and that happened. So we knew what was up. We didn’t really look for anybody, we just dealt with the situation as it was there. We knew [DMX] was one of the best, one of the greatest, so we wasn’t worried about no artist coming after him. Sauce Money: Everybody who battled, I think it was myself, there might’ve been a girl—we had a girl, her name was Roughness—and T-Strong, and Jay. We had to get on top of the pool tables, so whoever’s battling, they’re standing on the pool table, going at it. Waah Dean: There was no room in the building to stand at, so the only way to do it was to stand on the pool tables so everybody could see. Sauce Money: The pool table was like a boxing ring. We were standing on opposite sides of the pool table going back-and-forth. While we were rapping, n*ggas were pulling out guns—all kinds of crazy sh*t. Ski Beatz: People came in there strapped; people from the Bronx had guns, and people from Harlem had guns. Luckily it didn’t go down like that, but the atmosphere was Hip Hop, [and] at the same time, it was gangsta. Read the rest of article at HipHopDX ! RELATED: Jay-Z & Gwyneth Paltrow Interview Each Other For Their Own Websites RELATED: DMX Sentenced To Year In Jail, Gucci Mane Arrested In Raid
‘At this point I would say never,’ Queen Bee declares on ‘RapFix Live.’ By Alvin Blanco, with reporting by Sway Calloway Lil’ Kim and Sway Photo: Rich Sancho/ MTV News Lil’ Kim made her debut in the music industry as part of the Junior M.A.F.I.A. but chances of a full-scale reunion of the group the Notorious B.I.G. handpicked himself are minimal. The Queen Bee told us during Thursday’s edition of “RapFix Live” that in spite of the crew once being a tight-knit musical family, her continued disassociation with fellow M.A.F.I.A. member Lil’ Cease prevents her from ever reuniting with the crew. “No. Next question,” Kim said when asked by host Sway if there was a chance of a reunion. Asked about a possible Junior M.A.F.I.A. album, her response was equally terse: “Never.” The Junior M.A.F.I.A. — Lil’ Cease, Lil’ Kim, MC Klepto, Nino Brown and company — was conceived by B.I.G., who signed the group to Atlantic Records via the Undeas Entertainment imprint with his business partner Lance “Un” Rivera. Thanks to breakout performances on hits like “Get Money” and “Player’s Anthem,” from Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s debut album, Conspiracy (1995), Lil’ Kim was able to launch her own solo career. Her solo debut, Hardcore, was released a year later and is considered a hip-hop classic. Lil’ Cease would release his own solo album, The Wonderful World of Cease a Leo, in 1999, two years after B.I.G.’s untimely death. But Cease and Kim had a falling-out shortly thereafter, with the Queen Bee suing her fellow Brooklyn native for $6 million in 2005 over a Junior M.A.F.I.A. DVD. Last year, Lil’ Cease told MTV News that a Junior M.A.F.I.A. reunion “needed to happen.” But even when pressed, Kim maintained that the chance of reconciliation with Cease on a personal level was slim, at best. “At this point I would say never,” Kim declared. “Only God directs my life so I can’t say if I would ever speak to him in the future. But at this point, no. I have not seen a single change and then I’ve seen a bunch of talk and a bunch of contradictions, so no.” Do you think Kim and Cease should bury the hatchet? Let us know in the comments. Related Videos ‘RapFix Live’ With Lil’ Kim Related Photos The Evolution Of: Lil’ Kim Related Artists Lil’ Kim
Actor gets a military ‘do for ‘The Lucky One’ and urges film’s crew to get in on the haircuts for charity. By Terri Schwartz Zac Efron Photo: Twitter Zac Efron already ditched his token shaggy locks for a flipped-up ‘do in “Charlie St. Cloud,” but now he’s made a radical hair change that could rival Watsongate . Efron traded his pretty head of hair for a military buzz cut while he was filming on the set of “The Lucky One,” and a fan who snapped a photo with the former Disney star debuted Efron’s new look via Twitter. Filming wrapped on “The Lucky One” on Tuesday, but Efron decided he wasn’t going to be the only lucky member of the crew to walk away with a shorter haircut. Since everyone is feeling charitable for the holidays, Efron made a deal with the crew of “The Lucky One” last week. For every crewmember who shaved their heads like he did, Efron would donate cash to the local charity Kingsley House. The Louisiana-based organization lists its mission as educating children, strengthening families and building community. Thirty crewmembers took Efron up on his proposal, New Orleans’ daily paper the Times-Picayune reported, including two who donated their hair to Locks of Love. The exact amount of money Efron has agreed to donate to Kingsley House hasn’t been announced yet, but the Times-Picayune is reporting that it’s thousands of dollars. “He likes doing things for charity — two Make-A-Wish kids made a visit to the set while he was there — and he felt like he wanted to do something for a New Orleans charity since he had such a nice time shooting there,” Efron’s publicist Gina Hoffman told the New Orleans newspaper. So for everyone out there hoping Efron’s radical hair change was a result of his recent breakup with longtime girlfriend Vanessa Hudgens, your hopes have gone unanswered. When People recently caught up with Hudgens at her birthday party last week, she also confirmed that she and Efron are “good” after their split.
Designer Daniel Simon gives MTV News a behind-the-scenes look at how the film’s futuristic machines were built. By Eric Ditzian Lightcycle in “Tron Legacy” Photo: Disney The “Tron Legacy” vehicle design team had one goal: “We wanted to make the most sexy vehicles ever onscreen.” According to German-born designer Daniel Simon, who worked on transforming the original film’s iconic creations from clunky machines to sleek, futuristic works of art, the crew set the bar high for themselves. It was a four-year process that began with director Joseph Kosinski and production designer Darren Gilford, who conceived the overall concepts and then brought in folks like Simon, whose work includes designing real-world Bugattis and Lamborghinis. Not that they actually built the lightcycles and lightjets we see in the finished film, which hit theaters on Friday (December 16). While the crew constructed each vehicle’s cockpit, complete with LED lights and instrumentation, the machines only exist on the sketchpad and in the ultra-powerful computers with which Kosinski created his film. Simon called up MTV News recently to walk us through the creation of three of the vehicles in the new movie. Here’s what we learned. Lightcycles As fans of the 1982 film know, the first lightcycles — those bikes that race forward and emit beams of light — weren’t open-air vehicles but rather sported concealing shields. You couldn’t see the actors furiously riding through the movie’s CGI world. The tech team back then simply didn’t possess the computing power to capture such complexity. They had to hide the actors. The first thing Kosinski wanted was to make his “Tron Legacy” bikes open-air. “It was a pretty obvious choice. That is what most motorcycles look like,” Simon said. “They had exactly those ideas in the ’80s but didn’t have the technology to execute them. Making the lightcycles open-air was a way to show off our technological revolution. And it’s more fun for the actors, since they can be seen and they can interact with the environment.” To further update the bikes, the team drew inspiration from real-world bikes built to set speed records. “From the rider position and the wheelbase, it’s inspired by land speed-record bikes that you would see in Bonneville or El Mirage,” Simon explained. “Motorcycle fans will know Burt Munro, who set all these records in the ’60s, he used the same rider position. The only difference is that you can’t actually turn a bike like how the bikes are turned in the movie!” Lightjets Simon and his fellow designers got a few simple directives for the lightjets, a collection of elegant warships that do some crazy aerial battling late in the film. As Simon puts it, “They said they want this vehicle to look elegant yet aggressive, it has to fit three people in and it has to have a gun in the back and the wings should fold up. But out of that concept, you can make 5,000 different designs.” Nor were they constrained by real-world consideration for airplanes; these lightjets never had to land safely at LAX. Yet such freedom had its limits: The jets had to conform to what the public is generally familiar with when it comes to aircraft. With so many possibilities, they drilled down to a few concrete references. “The big jets should be more like gliders, laid-back but still sinister with guns and sh–,” Simon said. “The small ones should be like mosquitoes, aggressive and very agile.” Quorra’s Car Olivia Wilde’s Quorra drives a seriously impressive sports car in the film. And there’s simply nothing like it on Earth. “There’s not a real car we referenced,” Simon said. “It’s freaking huge — almost 9-feet wide. It would kick every Lamborghini’s ass.” The car, it turned out, was too huge, and Simon had to go back to the drawing board. “The door has this scissor-swing opening and it was difficult to design,” he said. “And then the room where they were going to shoot it was not high enough for the door to swing open. We were like, ‘Oh sh–, this has to be a foot shorter!’ ” Check out everything we’ve got on “Tron Legacy.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos ‘Tron Legacy’ Clips Related Photos The Vehicles Of ‘Tron Legacy’
Filed under: Kid Rock , Celebrity Justice , Fights Kid Rock and his crew suffered serious defeat today in connection with that nasty Waffle House brawl — in fact, a Georgia judge just ordered them to cough up $40,000 in damages to the victim. As we previously reported , Rock and his boys had been sued… Read more
‘I don’t feel so good,’ host tells her crew while running through a particularly ‘disgusting’ bit. By Kelley L. Carter Chelsea Handler Photo: MTV News Hosting MTV’s Video Music Awards can be a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. During Thursday’s show run-through, VMA host Chelsea Handler worked on hitting her marks, and we captured behind-the-scenes footage of her talking with her crew. “This is really disgusting,” the funnywoman deadpanned to the crew gathered around her. “This is really dirty. I don’t feel so good.” Of course, we’re not exactly sure what she was talking about, but we do know that Handler has been sizing up her post-VMA hookup possibilities. When MTV News interviewed her earlier, Handler talked about which rappers she might like to canoodle with once her hosting gig has wrapped up — including multiple nominee Eminem. “I’ll probably have sex with him after the show is over,” Handler said. “Probably. I don’t see why I wouldn’t.” Another potential Handler hookup? Master beatmaker Swizz Beatz. She digs the newlywed producer’s handle. “I like Swizz Beatz, just because I would like to yell out in bed, ‘Swizz Beatz! Keep it coming!’ ” she said. Handler is also stoked to be in the presence of Lady Gaga. “She’s pretty successful right about now. She’s got some good music,” Handler said of Gaga, who has a record 13 VMA nods. “She’s got a lot going on.” Plus, Handler loves Gaga’s fashion. “It’s always a jackpot, isn’t it?” she said about Gaga’s fashion choices. “Whatever she wears is amazing. You could watch her for hours just eat cereal. You don’t even need the cereal.” The 27th annual MTV Video Music Awards will be broadcast live from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday. The party starts with MTV News’ VMA Pre-Show at 8 p.m., followed by the main event at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Fans can go to VMA.MTV.com (or text VMA to 97979 if they are Verizon subscribers) to vote for Best New Artist from now through Sunday. Related Videos VMA 2010 Exposed MTV News Extended Play: Chelsea Handler Related Photos Can You Handle VMA Host Chelsea Handler? 2010 Video Music Awards Performers And Presenters
MC recalls hanging with fellow hip-hop heads on the latest episode, premiering Saturday at 11 a.m. By Mawuse Ziegbe Asher Roth appears on “When I Was 17” Photo: MTV News Asher Roth hit the hip-hop scene with a slew of mixtapes, which culminated with his cheeky 2009 debut LP Asleep in the Bread Aisle. His breakout single “I Love College,” an ode to the copious amounts of boozing and debauchery that comes with the pursuit of higher education, cemented his status as an inventive, fun-loving rap star. So it makes sense that he rocked a hip-hop career, because when Roth was 17, it was all about the music. “In high school, I ended up finding my home with kids who had one common interest, and that’s hip-hop music,” Roth says on the latest episode of “When I Was 17,” which premieres Saturday at 11 a.m. The episode also features teenage tales from former Playboy Playmate Kendra Wilkinson , who reminisces about putting the moves on her high school soccer coach, and Ozzy offspring Kelly Osbourne, who despite having spent many of her formative years on the MTV reality show “The Osbournes,” dishes about other memorable moments as a teen. Roth and his circle recall their shared love of hip-hop. “We’d be carrying boomboxes around in our book-bags like we were straight out of the ’80s,” says Roth’s homie Brian. “We started meeting regularly around school.” Roth reveals that in addition to a penchant for retro b-boy style, his crew went by an intimidating moniker: “We were called ‘Suburban Threat,’ ” Roth says. Even Roth’s mom can vouch for the crew’s intimidation factor. “They were boys from the suburbs, not boys from the ‘hood,” Roth’s mother says, before adding with a laugh, “And that could be threatening.” “When I Was 17” — this week featuring Kendra Wilkinson, Asher Roth and Kelly Osbourne — premieres Saturday at 11 a.m. on MTV. Related Videos Asher Roth And Kendra Wilkinson: When I Was 17 Ep. 17 Preview Related Photos When I Was 17 | Asher Roth When I Was 17 | Ep. 17 | Celebrity Photo Flashback
