The Debut of Habitt and Fat Daddy Records

The first release from Fat Daddy Records is due in late February by rapper Habitt entitled Talk of the Town. It's also the debut album for Habitt who now lives in Los Angeles but very much indentifies with Oakland. Fat Daddy Records is a new label begun by actress Yvette Wilson and her husband, Jerome Harry.

Juvenile Wins Copyright Suit

Juvenile has won a copyright lawsuit over various similarities between his song Back That Azz Up and plaintiff D.J. Jubilee's Back That Ass Up. Speaking of copyright, I initially found this article in its entirety at David Hooper's site Music Business with absolutely no attribution or link back to the original.

The Game Has 2 in the Album Charts

The Game's The Documentary hits the album charts at no. 1 and all of the attention has helped his earlier independent release Untold Story re-enter the charts at no. 191.

Hip Hop Bloggers Respond to Hot 97 Foolishness

An apology from Hot 97, a NY hip hop radio station that has come under fire for an overtly racist parody song regarding the tsunami disaster, is apparently not making their troubles go away.  In addition to responses from everyday people and civic leaders, some hip hop bloggers have become involved, most notably Jay Smooth of hiphopmusic.com who is closely tracking developments while stirring up a response.

I hope there is a serious price paid for this nonsense and also hope that media companies will learn from this incident and the current problems of Boston's Metro Times, whose acquisition by the NY Times is going poorly, in part, because of red flags initially raised by an exec's racist humor.  And, perhaps, this incident will encourage the idea that corporations ignore bloggers at their own peril.

More hip hop bloggers:

Hip Hop Blogs - Don't Fall into Hot 97's Tsunami Song Marketing Trap

Pop Life - Hot 97 Continued

Hip Hop Logic (that's me) - Hip Hop Bloggers Confront Racism

Update: The staff of "Miss Jones in the Morning", the show in which all the nastiness occurred, was taken off the air today.  Guess we'll see what that means soon enough.

Gotti and Brother Surrender

Irv Gotti and his brother Christopher Lorenzo surrended today to the FBI, while associate Kenneth McGriff was charged with murder.

Damon Dash to Market Boxing

Damon Dash and boxing promoter Lou DiBella are joining forces to promote young boxers and expand the boxing audience. They are expected to officially announce their partnership, Dash/DiBella Promotions, today in New York.

Gotti and McGriff May Be Indicted

Unnamed law enforcement sources claim that charges will be brought today against The Inc. head Irv Gotti and associate Kenneth McGriff.

Social Networking, Myspace Music, Bavu Blakes

Although social networking service Friendster has gotten lots of publicity and venture capital, Myspace is close on their heels.  One of the explanations for the appeal of Myspace over Friendster is that Myspace has been aggressively adding new features while Friendster remains a "look at my pictures, see my network of friends" kind of thing.

Since I'd checked out Friendster and occasionally go back when I get a request to check out new pictures, I have a sense of the limits of what they offer.  But I hadn't checked out Myspace until receiving an email from rapper Bavu Blakes of Austin/Dallas about his Myspace Music site.  There appear to be a lot of options, far more than Friendster has, and the topical focus seems like a good idea.  Bavu has been able to make pretty good use of it with such features as a streaming music video, an announcements blog, a schedule of upcoming concerts and a link to his homepage.  My only complaint based on seeing Bavu's page, as well as a few others, is that the videos seem to start up automatically with each return.  Don't know if it's the users or Myspace, but it quickly becomes the thing I have to turn off in order to check out the site.