Atlanta MC Ludacris is about to drop his highly anticipated new cd ‘Battle Of The Sexes’

The disc will have features from male artists Plies, Ne-Yo and Flo Rida. So to even out the playing field XXL is reporting the album will also showcase the talents of red hot Young Money female MC Nicki Minaj, as well as Eve, Lil Kim and Trina.

The Disturbing Tha Peace General recently released a new mixtape ‘Conjure: A Hustler’s Spirit‘ to get the masses warmed up for his 1st album since 2008’s ‘Theater Of The Mind‘

With the lead single “How Low” steadily climbing the charts, word is the next one will be the Pharrell Williams produced track “Banger“

‘Battle of the Sexes’ is scheduled to drop March 16

Drake has opened up about his loyalty to Lil Wayne and why he decided to align himself with Young Money instead of other record labels last year.

According to Drizzy, his admiration and respect for Wayne goes unmatched.

“Everyone seems to have a comment for me about Young Money, ‘F*ck Young Money’ or ‘Why are you with them?’ But what people have to understand is maybe there was a way for me to be successful without Young Money. But we’ll never know. My loyalty is to Wayne, and that goes for anybody who genuinely believes in me. We don’t have the most personal relationship where we hang out every day or we talk that much, but Wayne’s admiration and respect goes without being verbally said. He put his neck out there for me at a very early stage, and those actions tell me everything I need to know about how he feels about me as an artist.” (Complex)

The Canadian-based emcee recently spoke on Wayne’s leadershp with Young Money.

“I think the best thing about Wayne is that he doesn’t really get too involved in us developing as artists,” Drake said about him. “He doesn’t give his input on how we should be, or how we should rap, or how we should dress. Wayne just gives us the opportunity. If you drop the ball, you drop the ball. But Wayne’s gonna give you the set-up. Wayne is gonna throw you the alley-oop — you just have to cut to the hoop and slam. With that being said, he really gives you the space and lets you become your own person. He respects [artists that know] about themselves. He doesn’t want to shape us all. I don’t really know who wants to do that anymore. That was like, in ‘96 or something, when labels would be like, ‘You got to be like this.’ Wayne doesn’t want to do that. Wayne wants us to thrive as the people we truly are, which is great.” (MTV)

Last year, Drake compared his studio work ethic to Weezy’s.

“Someone would really have to come to the studio to see me and Wayne together and how we work,” Drake said in an interview. “It’s the same sort of thing. I fear Wayne’s creativity. It’s endless. It’s a scary beast. He never takes one day off. When we get into the studio it is very competitive, but in a good way. You can’t just use a line you wrote Tuesday. Every line has to be thought out.” (The Boom Box)

The new Young Money album debuted in the Top 10 last month.

Lil Wayne’s Young Money compilation, We Are Young Money, debuted at No. 9 this week. The group’s debut album has sold 143,000 copies to date.

Jay-Z’s new avant-garde video for “On To the Next One” — with images of ram skulls, black crows and a Joker-like clown — has some bloggers talking that Jay is dabbling in demonic imagery and Freemason symbolism. Hov thinks that’s ridiculous.

“I got a lot of money,” Hov told Power 105.1 radio host Ed Lover Wednesday. “When people get a lot of money, they start getting those rumors like Tom Cruise, Willie Smith. That’s ridiculous.”

Hov is also the subject of new independent street DVD which alleges he is “Hip-Hop’s Master Mason,” and the Blueprint pays homage to a secret society.

“That’s crazy to me,” Jay scoffed. “I gotta remind people I’m from Marcy Projects. I can’t get into a golf club in Palm Springs.”

Swizz Beatz also denied rumors that the “On To the Next One” clip promotes devil worship.

“I don’t think about that. I know that’s a billion percent not true. The video displays another level of art and creativity from two great minds: the director and Jay — and myself, bringing the collaboration together. It’s no satanic ways around me and that’s for sure,” he explained. “I’m with Jay — I never see none of that stuff around him unless he’s hiding something, which I doubt. C’mon man. That’s silly stuff. That stuff you don’t even comment on, we on to the next one.”

“I’m aware of the stir the video has caused and what people are saying,” the clip’s director Sam Brown told Vibe.com. “I think when you’re dealing in abstract imagery people are going to want to draw lines between things and make sense of it. However, I’ve always felt that the viewing public was, in general, extremely visually literate. They don’t always want or need things to be spelt out for them. One of the great things about music videos are they can be enjoyed purely visually — it doesn’t need to mean anything or make any sense. Conspiracy theory is another thing entirely, and seems to me to be about projecting pre-existing beliefs and desperately looking for things that confirm them. There is imagery in this video that is drawn from all over the place. None of it is owned by any one culture or belief system. You can connect anything if you try hard enough, and make it mean anything you want it to.”

“It didn’t look like we was worshipping the devil,” Swizz continued, speaking on behalf of himself, Jay and Young Jeezy, who are all featured in the video. “It was easy. The song, the chemistry between me, Jay [and] Jeezy is a natural flow. When you put that in front of camera, it’s natural. Jay was on set, I think, for only two hours. I was on set for like, a hour. Same thing. Jeezy was there. It was real quick. The director took it and went on to the next one. … I never expected the video to come out like that … it’s like a portrait. It’s like a canvas he took, which was the green screen, and he took that canvas and really painted it Murakami, Basquiat style. There go the results.”

West Coast super lyricist Bishop Lamont has finally confirmed the rumors. He is no longer a part of Aftermath Records.

It was an amicable split with Dr Dre allowing Bishop to leave with 700 plus mastered songs. So expect to see his long awaited album “The Reformation” sometime in 2010.

Bishop sounded upbeat in a call placed into The All Out Show with Rude Jude and Lord Sear on Shade 45 radio yesterday (Saturday January 9th). He jokingly referred to himself as a prisoner who has finally been freed. After nearly five years signed with Dr Dre he felt it was just time to move on.

Bishop follows the departures in the last several years of artists like Joell Ortiz, Marsha Ambrosius, Dawn Robinson, King Tee and Rakim who were all at one point signed to Aftermath, but never released an album while there. Raekwon was supposed to release ‘Only Built For Cuban Linx II‘. through Aftermath in 2007, but eventually put it out through EMI in 2009.

In Bishop’s situation, he seems to point the finger at Interscope Records as the underlying reason his project never saw the light of day. Saying he couldn’t get the budget to shoot a video for his Dr Dre produced buzz single “Grow Up” as well as other songs.

The Aftermath roster currently looks something like this. 50 Cent, Eminem, Hayes and Slim Da Mobster (who is also signed to Shady Records & G-Unit Records).

Meanwhile, Bishop just left New York where his is talking to various labels about a new record deal.

Teen singing sensation Justin Bieber and Barbadian songstress Rihanna are paired up to entertain concertgoers at Pepsi Super Bowl Fan Jam. The two artists will be singing on the first day of the concert series on Thursday, February 4.

Justin is set to deliver songsfrom platinum debut album “My World” in front of the crowd in the South Beach of Miami. Meanwhile, Rihanna is scheduled to perform tracks from her fourth studio effort “Rated R”.

The second day of the gig, which will also be the last one, takes place on February 5. Nelly Furtado, Paulina Rubio and Pitbull are tapped to rock the event with singles from their latest studio installments.

“Entourage” star Kevin Dillon and TV anchor Nancy O’Dell will host the Thursday night’s concert, while Telemundo stars Leti Coo and Jessi Losada will host the Friday night’s festivity along with actor Karim Mendiburu. NFL players also will participate in the two concerts which will be aired live on VH1.

Free tickets for both gigs will be made available on a “first come, first serve” basis beginning Monday, January 11 on TicketMaster.com. There is limit of 10 tickets per person.

Keyshia Cole gives an update regarding her upcoming project and relationship with estranged family.

To all my friends and fans – It’s time that I clear the air. It’s not a secret that I haven’t been in contact with my mother Frankie, and my sisters Neffe and Elite and I never wanted to air out our differences to the public. While I won’t go into detail here I find it necessary to let you guys know I decided to stop communication with them because I was at a point in my life where I needed serenity and peace to move forward. Please know I love my family very much but it was time to let it go. You guys are a witness to a lot of what was happening from watching on air and online. Now that I am becoming a mom my passion for having a loving and peaceful home for my child is my #1 priority. It’s very important to both Daniel and I. My plate is very full; I have a new baby coming, we are planning our wedding and I am working in the studio on a new album that I am close to completing. The stress that my family is giving me with their constant false reports is not healthy and it’s not what I need at this time in my life. Please understand that there are only a few people that can officially confirm or deny anything that’s happening in my life and that’s me, Daniel, and my publicist, Tresa Sanders. And my girl Monica never lies.

Love Your Girl,
KC

In Esquire’s upcoming “People Who Matter” issue, writer Lisa Taddeo investigates Jay-Z’s cross-market appeal. She lets a few ho-hum theories fly — apparently, Jay-Z is successful because he is both a “gangster from the hood” and a “CEO in the boardroom” — and doesn’t get much access*, but the stuff about Steve Stoute and Jay-Z’s advice for Johnson & Johnson (“Baby oil, Jay suggested, should be marketed for its other uses, to remove makeup or to mix with suntan lotion so it glides on smoother”) is pretty great. Our favorite bit, though, came courtesy of Damon Dash. Unsurprisingly, Jay’s former bestie was available for interviews, and he provides the following anecdote about “the day he knew he’d lost Jay-Z.”

“It was me and Jay and the two Russians voting on every [Rocawear] decision, and I controlled the vote, because I always had Jay’s vote.” The two Russians were Alex Bize and Norton Cher, old-school clothing slingers from Manhattan’s garment district who ran the day-to-day operations. “But one day,” Dash says, “they brought me to a hotel … I said, ‘Why are we meeting at a hotel?’ and it was because they didn’t want anyone to hear me yelling. That was the day they told me they didn’t want [celebrity photographer] Mario Testino to shoot the ads.” Instead, they were going with someone cheaper, and they were going in a different direction altogether. “Here the Russians were telling me how to cater to my people! I wanted [Rocawear] to be sold at Bergdorf Goodman’s, not Dr. Jay’s!”

So there you go: Jay-Z and Damon Dash aren’t friends anymore because Jay-Z is cheap.