The S. Carter Collection, Jay-Z's new sneaker, hit stores over the weekend and sold out in a matter of hours, becoming the fastest-selling shoe in Reebok's history. The rapper, who released a CD sampler with the first 10,000 pairs sold, appeared at a Foot Locker in Philadelphia on Thursday to promote the product. ...

P. Diddy and his Bad Boy Entertainment will host Bad Boy Weekends in 10 U.S. cities this summer, beginning July 18-20 in Detroit. The rap mogul, New Edition, Carl Thomas, Loon and Dream will be attending the events, which will be open to the public and will include a Queens of Comedy show, a white linen party and a celebrity basketball game. ...

Wilco have scrapped plans to release a six-song EP commercially, and have instead made the disc available for free online at www.wilcoworld.net to fans who bought their last album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. A code inside the packaging of the LP can be used to unlock the treasures of the new record, which features the new songs "Handshake Drugs," "Woodgrain" and "More Like the Moon," as well as "Bob Dylan's 49th Beard" and the Foxtrot outtakes "A Magazine Called Sunset" and "Kamera." All six tracks were originally issued as bonus cuts of the Australian version of Foxtrot. ... Is Ryan Adams hanging up his spurs? The alt country singer/songwriter posted on his official Web site, www.ryan-adams.com, that he plans to retire. "I'm not drunk," he wrote before proclaiming that he'll continue pursing musical endeavors, he just won't sing. Although suspicion lingers that he might be pulling a Michael Jordan, Adams said his last show will be July 4 in New York. ...

In his near 20-year-long career as bassist for Flotsam and Jetsam, Metallica, Echobrain, Voivod and most recently Ozzy Osbourne, Jason Newsted had never let anything prevent him from taking the stage -- that is until he encountered a bad batch of grapefruit juice. Newsted was forced to pull out of a Voivod gig in Anaheim, California, on Monday after being sidelined by a bout of food poisoning. He has since made a full recovery, and the band will resume the tour Friday in Newsted's former hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. ... Keith Flint has remixed Marilyn Manson's new single, "mOBSCENE," complete with his own vocals. Manson discussed meeting the Prodigy star on a recent posting on his Web site: "We discussed illegal behavior, participated in illegal behavior and became the best of friends over a bottle of Absinthe." ...

Master P and Lil' Romeo are busy filming episodes for their Nickelodeon sitcom "Pieces of the Puzzle," premiering this summer. "Hip-hop is going in a direction where everyone is talking about the bad stuff, so for me and Romeo to be able to be the first father and son of hip-hop to be able to do something positive and have fun with what we're doing is taking it to a whole new level," Master P said recently of the project. ... Kelly Rowland, who was scheduled to tour the U.S. this summer with Luther Vandross before his stroke last week, has booked a European headlining trek for September. "Thank the Lord I'm having a huge amount of success over there," she said last week. Vandross is listed in critical but stable condition in a New York hospital. ...

Hypercharged and newly reunited cult Norwegian rock band Turbonegro recently enlisted the joint talents of directors Spike Jonze ("Adaptation") and Jeff Tremaine ("Jackass: The Movie") to helm the clip for "Sell Your Body to the Night," the first single from their forthcoming comeback album, Scandinavian Leather. The video includes appearances by several members of the "Jackass" crew, including Johnny Knoxville, as well as a large grizzly bear. ...

Five songs Norah Jones recorded with New York singer/songwriter Peter Malick long before her debut swept this year's Grammys are being released June 10 on an EP. Titled New York City, the collection will include three of Malick's songs, along with covers of Bob Dylan's "Heart of Mine" and Magic Sam's "All Your Love." ... Public Enemy are releasing a CD/DVD single May 6 of "Son of a Bush," a track from last year's Revolverlution that attacks President Bush and his father. "Have you forgotten/ I been through the first term of rotten," Chuck D raps in the song. ... Björk is planning to re-release Debut, Post, Homogenic and Vespertine with live versions of each of the songs. The limited-edition Live Box Set is due this summer. ...

Seal, the crooner responsible for the 1991 hit "Crazy" and the Grammy Award-winning "Batman Forever" soundtrack song "Kiss From a Rose," will return with a new album this summer. The self-titled set, his first since 1998's Human Being and fourth overall, will be preceded by the single "Get It Together." ... Ric Ocasek, the former leader of '80s hitmakers the Cars, has added "senior VP of A&R for Elektra Records" to an impressive résumeé that already included "record producer" for bands like Weezer, No Doubt, Bad Brains and Guided by Voices. Workaholic Ocasek is also finishing a new solo album, Nexterday, and working with a film crew on a documentary about his former band. ...

Felice Bryant, who wrote "Wake Up Little Susie," "Bye Bye Love" and other songs for the Everly Brothers, died of cancer on Monday. She was 77. Bryant and her late husband, Bodleaux Bryant, wrote over 800 songs recorded by more than 500 different vocalists. ... The Eagles, poised for a three-month tour that kicks off on May 9, are planning to release their forthcoming album on their own label, not a major. The as-yet-untitled LP, prefaced by the single "Hole in the World," will be available through Amazon.com, Yahoo and Best Buy. ...

04.22.03

Justin Timberlake and Seann William Scott will co-host the 2003 MTV Movie Awards, which will be taped at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles May 31 and airs June 5. Jack Black and Sarah Michelle Gellar handled emcee duties last year. ...

If you began salivating a few weeks ago when 50 Cent's plans to release a tell-all book came to light (see [article id="1470811"]"50 Cent Looking To Tell His Life Story"[/article]), you might want to close your mouth now. According to a source close to the project, hip-hop's hottest rapper, afraid that fans would soon experience a 50 overdose, has shelved the project indefinitely. He was also said to have been crabby that details about the project had already leaked to the press. ... Jay-Z, Beanie Sigel, Trick Daddy and Donell Jones are among the guests slated for Memphis Bleek's new record, M.A.D.E., due June 24. Producers on the album include Kanye West and Just Blaze, who did the first single, "Everything's a Go." ...

The debut from Eminem protégé Obie Trice will be titled Cheers. Em, Dr. Dre, Rockwilder and Timbaland are producing tracks for the record, due in the summer. ... Vishiss, who plays rapper Versis on the UPN's new hip-hop drama series, "Platinum," is recording an album of his own for DreamWorks Records. A release date has not been set, but it will drop before year's end. ...

Rarely one to keep his opinions to himself, Washington, D.C., punk icon and Dischord Records co-founder Ian MacKaye will give a spoken-word performance and take audience questions at this weekend's Coachella Festival in Southern California. Meanwhile, MacKaye's band Fugazi is reportedly enjoying an indefinite hiatus. ... On a related note, Dischord is releasing the first demo ever recorded by Minor Threat -- the seminal punk group MacKaye fronted before forming the bands Embrace and Fugazi and which coined the term "straight edge" -- on CD and 7-inch single. Recorded in a basement just four months after the band formed, the demo includes the songs "Minor Threat," "Stand Up," "Seeing Red," "Bottled Violence," "Small Man, Big Mouth," "Straight Edge," "Guilty of Being White" and "I Don't Want to Hear It." There is also a Minor Threat live DVD in the works, which could surface as soon as the fall. ...

Go-Go's guitarist Charlotte Caffey and singer/guitarist Anna Waronker are penning songs for a musical about former porn star Linda Lovelace, who starred in "Deep Throat" and died last year in a car accident. Former Red Kross member Steven McDonald (Waronker's husband) is co-musical director. The production will star Tina Yothers, who played Jennifer on "Family Ties." The show will premiere June 20 at Hollywood's Theatre of NOTE. ... Lots of siblings in the music biz fight all the time. Just look at Oasis, the Black Crowes or the Kinks for proof. But Backstreet Boy Nick Carter and his little brother Aaron want you to know that's not always the case -- they'll be appearing on "Sesame Street" on May 12 to sing about brotherly love. ...

Sure, Tommy could play a mean pinball, but could the deaf, dumb and blind kid vault Snake River Canyon in a rocket-bike? So it's only right that stuntman extraordinaire Evel Knievel get his very own rock opera. Jef Bek (not to be confused with former Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck), a Los Angeles musical director and composer, secured the rights to the story of the frequently fractured Knievel's life, during which he accrued 37 broken bones. The show will be called, what else, "Evel Knievel: The Rock Opera." ... The Dixie Chicks have been targeted as anti-American and boycotted ever since they took a few potshots at President Bush. Well, icon of Americana Bruce Springsteen has had enough, so he's posted a message on his Web site defending his favorite Chicks. "To me, they're terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American." ...

Gorillaz mastermind Dan "The Automator" Nakamura is producing the next record from New Orleans funk ensemble Galactic. The follow-up to 2000's Late for the Future is due in the fall. ... The Suicide Machines, who will head out on their sixth Vans Warped Tour this summer, will release their fifth album, A Match and Some Gasoline, on June 17. ...

Chimaira, who escaped injury recently when their video set for "Down Again" caught on fire, missed Monday's show in West Springfield, Virginia, after their tour bus slid out of control and crashed into construction barricades on the way to the gig. No one was hurt in the accident and the band will make Tuesday's show in West Columbia, South Carolina. ... In support of their third album, Blackout, (Hed) Planet Earth have lined up six weeks of tour dates, beginning with a headlining show Tuesday (April 22) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. On several of the dates, which run though June 14 in Baltimore, they are opening for Godsmack or playing radio-station festivals. ...

The Bouncing Souls will drop Anchor's Away, the follow-up to 2001's How I Spent My Summer Vacation, on August 26. The long-running punk band recently released the double DVD set "Do You Remember? Fifteen Years of the Bouncing Souls" through Chunksaah Records. ... With his brother Chris now gone solo, the Black Crowes' Rich Robinson has resurfaced in a new outfit called Hookah Brown. The band plans to enter the studio in May to begin work on its full-length debut. ...