Who's in
50 Cent: I'll quit if Kanye sells more
50 Cent believes his new album will outsell Kanye West's upcoming disc, and he's betting his solo career on it. Both 50 Cent and West have albums due out on September 11. 50 Cent, who has sold better than West, has been riled by forecasts that sales of West's Graduation could rival those for his Curtis CD.
"Let's raise the stakes," the 31-year-old rapper told hip-hop Web site SOHH.com in an interview posted on Friday. "If Kanye West sells more records than 50 Cent on September 11, I'll no longer write music. I'll write music and work with my other artists, but I won't put out anymore solo albums."
An e-mail sent to West's publicist wasn't immediately returned on Friday.
50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson, has been publicly disparaging of West before. In 2005, he suggested the 29-year-old rapper's popularity was only possible because of 50's own success.
But they recently collaborated in the studio. Their work, though, isn't scheduled to appear on either new album.
Big news for Noth fans
Mr Big and Carrie Bradshaw will be together again, this time on the big screen. Chris Noth, who played Sarah Jessica Parker's love interest on HBO's Sex and the City, is slated to reprise his role in a feature film spun from the long-running TV series.
Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon will also reprise their roles for the romantic comedy, to be distributed by New Line Cinema in association with HBO.
"There is no need for funeral arrangements," said Michael Patrick King, who will direct the film. "I assure you that Mr Big is a very 'big' part of the Sex and the City movie."
"While I have not spoken to him myself, Chris Noth assures me that Mr Big is alive and well and ready to report to the set in September," King said in a statement on Wednesday.
Noth, 50, plays police Detective Mike Logan on NBC's Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Aretha has no respect for the heat
The Queen of Soul is cooling her heels. Aretha Franklin announced she has canceled her hometown concert on Sunday night at an outdoor amphitheater in suburban Detroit, citing heat exhaustion. With temperatures forecast to climb above 32 C, Franklin decided to call off the show at DTE Energy Music Theater and hopes to reschedule it at a later date.
Franklin, 65, said in a statement on Friday that the heat at recent East Coast shows has been "sweltering and all but overwhelming."
"Following the Weather Channel and the daily reports in the news via television and newspaper publications, I see that the temperatures in Detroit have been very similar," she said in the statement. "I am exhausted from the heat and cannot tolerate heat in these extremely high numbers and being in concert simultaneously."
Ready to be zapped?
Zap Mama is constantly exploring new identities. What started as an all-female a cappella project evolved through various personnel changes and Grammy nominations to include instrumental arrangements and more mainstream pop sensibilities and now is distilled to a one-woman collage of global sound produced by Congo-born and Belgium-bred vocalist Marie Daulne.
Supermoon is Zap Mama's debut on the Heads Up International label, home to Hugh Masakela and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. This is "world music" in the truest sense of the word, with various languages and elements of European, American and African music melded seamlessly. Daulne weaves tightly quilted vocal harmonies using cloned choruses of her ethereal, Bjork-ish voice on tracks such as Moonray. On Kwenda she re-creates that trademark Zap Mama atmosphere of a laid-back global block party, complete with crowd interaction.
The title song of the album is right on track as well. Supermoon is a word Daulne uses to identify people who are truly themselves, amid a culture that glorifies celebrities with questionable and artificial lifestyles.
Agencies
(China Daily 08/15/2007 page18)
