Diddy and girlfriend Kim Porter are splitting up, just months after she gave birth to twin girls, the couple announced Tuesday (July 10), according to The Associated Press. In a recent cover story in Essence, the two declared love for each other, although he admitted he was an "ex-player" and wasn't ready to marry Porter. "Do you really think that God meant for a man to have just one wife?" he said in the magazine. Diddy and Porter already had a son when he was seeing Jennifer Lopez, but Diddy eventually reunited with his former girlfriend, even after she took him to court seeking increased child-support payments. ...

More artists have been added to the bill for this year's Bumbershoot festival, which will be held September 1-3 in Seattle. Fergie, John Legend, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, (+44) and the Apples in Stereo are the latest acts to join the bill, with Head Automatica, Menomena, the Bouncing Souls and others climbing onboard as well. This festival is being anchored by the Shins, Wu-Tang Clan, Crowded House and Panic! at the Disco. ...

Justin Timberlake, T.I. and Usher made Stuff magazine's "30 Power Guys Under 30" list, which also includes actors Seth Rogen and Jake Gyllenhaal; athletes LeBron James, Reggie Bush, Tom Brady and Roger Federer; and blogger Perez Hilton. T.I. shares his secret to staying on top in the magazine's August issue, which hits newsstands Tuesday. "You must create a demand and then supply it," he explained. "You make so the market can't function at its best without you." ...

A Springfield has been chosen to host the premiere of "The Simpsons Movie" -- but is it big enough to handle the hype? Vermont's Springfield -- a small town of 9,300 people that has a 100-seat movie theater -- will host the movie on July 27, thanks to an online poll it wasn't even invited to take part in at first, AP reports. A local Chamber of Commerce executive appealed for the town to be included, after which a video shot by a 17-year-old cameraman was submitted for consideration. The clip -- which features a talk-show host dressed as Homer chasing a pink doughnut through the town -- drew 15,367 votes, earning the town the premiere. ...

Alicia Keys is targeting October 23 as the release date for her next album, As I Am, according to Billboard. Keys debuted "The Thing About Love," one of the songs featured on the effort, at the Live Earth concert in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Saturday. ... Raekwon is polishing off his next solo LP, Ice Water: Polluted Water, for an August 28 release. Method Man will pay a visit on the disc, but Wu-Tang Clan members aren't the only ones getting involved: Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross, Three 6 Mafia, Remy Ma and Jagged Edge are also on the VIP list. ...

Next time you strap on your "Guitar Hero" ax, you might want to have a top hat handy too -- Slash will appear as an avatar in "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock." The Velvet Revolver guitarist, who is chipping in an original song for the game, will appear as a boss battle character. Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" will also be featured in the game. ... Nicole Richie can breathe a little easier, at least for now -- her lawyer has forced another delay in her DUI trail, People reports. "The trial will not happen [Wednesday]," Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Jane Robison told the outlet. "Richie's attorney filed a motion ... stating that their key witness, a drug expert, was unavailable for trial." Both sides have been called to court Wednesday to discuss the motion -- but either way, the trial will be delayed for at least another day. ...

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is printed, so there's no going back on the ending, but fans are calling on author J.K. Rowling to "Save Harry" -- even if he's already destined to die. In an online petition launched by British book retailer Waterstone's, Rowling is being asked to keep the series going past this seventh installment, whether Harry survives the finale or not. "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously killed off Sherlock Holmes, yet brought him back after years of demand from his fans and publishers," Waterstone's Wayne Winstone said. "Couldn't the same happen for Harry Potter?" ...

Avril Lavigne's alleged plagiarism ordeal has been grabbing headlines left and right, but fellow Canadian artist Chantal Kreviazuk isn't about to keep piling on the singer. On Tuesday, the singer/songwriter issued a statement retracting statements she made to Performing Songwriter Magazine in which she doubted Lavigne's writing abilities. "When I saw the track listing to Avril's new record, it caught my attention that she had the same title as a song I had sent her a while back. When I heard it, I immediately realized that it was a coincidence. The songs have nothing in common. I have always maintained that the song on Avril's album is completely different, having no similarity in melody or lyric, and Avril has in no way stolen my song. I simply never said that or thought it. My statements and any inference from my statements, which call into question Avril's ethics or ability as a respected and acclaimed songwriter, should be disregarded and are retracted. Avril is an accomplished songwriter, and it has been my privilege to work with her." Curiously, Kreviazuk issued the statement through Nettwerk Music Group -- Lavigne is managed by Nettwerk Management. ...

Arcade Fire's Neon Bible and Feist's The Reminder are among the 10 finalists up for this year's Polaris Music Prize, which salutes the year's best Canadian LP. The prize -- which comes with a $20,000 bonus -- will be announced September 24. ... Against Me! have been added to this year's Saints & Sinners Festival. The band will headline the November 3 date, while Glassjaw are all set to close out the event's final night, November 4. Tickets go on sale July 20 for the festival, which will take over the Convention Hall Complex in Asbury Park, New Jersey. ... Megadeth will be touring the U.S. this fall with Ozzfest 2007 performers In This Moment, as well as the Confession. The trek is set to launch September 4 in Anchorage, Alaska, and is booked through October 6 in Norfolk, Virginia. ...

PJ Harvey -- uh huh, her -- has pegged September 25 as the release date for her eighth studio opus, White Chalk. Flood and John Parish, who previously collaborated with the singer/songwriter for To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire?, produced the effort, which also features contributions from Eric Drew Feldman and Dirty Three drummer Jim White. She debuted some of the new material at the Manchester International Festival over the weekend. ... Watch out, CNN -- Michael Moore has you in his sights. The controversial director appeared on "The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer" on Monday to discuss his new movie "Sicko," only to find his interview prefaced by an unsavory segment on the flick by CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who attempted to dispel some of the film's points about the U.S. health care system. Moore erupted after that, refuting the segment and bashing the network for its news coverage in the lead-up to the Iraq war. The director's Web site quickly posted an extensive point/counterpoint response to Gupta's segment following the Monday interview. On Tuesday, Blitzter's program aired the more subdued second part of the interview. ...

The Cure, who are in the midst of recording their 13th studio LP, have decided to make it a double: A two-CD set will hit stores in October. While not much is known about the yet-untitled offering, the disc's new melodies will deal with relationships, politics, religion and materialism. A fall North American tour will follow. ... Moby has some fresh beef with the organizers of the Live Earth concerts -- he's chiding them for selling meat at the shows. In a post on the vegan musician's blog, he says livestock breeding and the gases the animals emit is a huge contributor to greenhouse gases, according to a United Nations statistic. "The one thing that still stuns me ... is that almost no one in the 'stop global warming' camp talks about the environmental ramifications of animal production," he said. ...

Pogues guitarist Philip Chevron has been diagnosed with throat cancer, according to a post on the band's Web site. He will not join the Pogues on their North American tour this fall. A statement on the group's site read: "This decision to suspend his live work has the complete support of the other Pogues who wish him a good and complete recovery. Though it is not yet known when Chevron will return to live work, it is hoped that he will again be available towards the end of this year." ... A Beatles monument will be constructed in Hamburg, Germany, where the band launched its international career, BBC News reports. ... Want an iPhone? You might want to hold off on eBay for the moment -- ABC News reports that Apple may be coming out with a cheaper Nano version of the device by the end of the year. "Our channel check suggests Apple is coming out with a second phone, a much cheaper one, in 4Q07," JPMorgan analyst Kevin Chan wrote in a note that was released Tuesday (July 10). He added that the new iPhone would be sold for about $300 and that as many as 40 million of them could be sold by the company next year.

07.09.2007

Beyoncé made a surprise visit in an emergency room Sunday after her St. Louis show -- two people were injured at the concert when pyrotechnics reportedly spilled into the front row, according to The Associated Press. Darryl Williams, head nurse at the hospital, told AP that Beyoncé, who met with the victims for 45 minutes, "was just very concerned about the people injured in the audience. [Her visit] was unannounced and we kept it very low-key so that she could spend time with them." A spokesperson for Barnes-Jewish Hospital told the news service that the injuries were minor and both victims were expected to make full recoveries. A spokesperson for Music World entertainment, which represents the singer, did not comment to the news service. ...

Taking a page out of Kanye West's book, the equally dapper T.I. hosted an album-release party over the weekend for T.I. vs. T.I.P. at the Louis Vuitton store in Atlanta's posh Buckhead district. (West struck first with LV, recently holding his 30th birthday bash at the store's New York branch.) Big Boi, Jazze Pha, Jermaine Dupri, Polow Da Don, Mya and Young Jeezy attended the festivities. ...

If Maroon 5's red-hot "Makes Me Wonder" song has you wondering when the band will be hitting a city near you, you're in luck. Adam Levine and his cohorts -- with Swedish punks the Hives in tow, weirdly -- will swing through 28 North American cities in support of their recently released It Won't Be Soon Before Long album. The jaunt begins September 29 in Detroit and ends November 10 in Las Vegas. ...

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Chairman Julian Bond took a swipe at Jay-Z over the weekend during the group's annual convention in Detroit, according to the Detroit Free Press. "There are certain words that ought not to be spoken, and the N-word is just one of them," he said in regards to the symbolic "burial" of the term to be staged with Kurtis Blow and others at the city's Hart Plaza on Monday (July 9). "I heard somebody say that when Jay-Z talks about ho's, he gets a gold record. When Don Imus talks about ho's, he gets fired," he later remarked. "We believe in equal justice and equal justice for everyone." ...

The Virgin Festival is ratcheting up the theatrics — Panic! at the Disco have been added to the fest's second day, set for August 5 at Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course. Explosions in the Sky and Dan Deacon have also climbed onboard. ... Finally, Bloc Party are scheduled to headline a real block party -- Chicago's Hideout Block Party, that is, on September 7. The band has lined up a slew of September and October dates, taking the indie-rockers from Montreal on September 9 through the States, down to Mexico City for a gig on the 19th, then back up through the States and into Canada again -- and then finally to the Theatre at Madison Square Garden for a closing gig on October 3. Might want to bring a TripTik for that one, guys. ...

Jurors will be able to hear from a security guard who testified controversially in 1993 that he heard Phil Spector say all women should be shot in the head, AP reports. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler had previously chosen not to allow the testimony but reconsidered when prosecutors raised the issue again. Fidler said he thought before that the testimony wouldn't be admissible because the remark was made too long ago and wasn't specific to the shooting death of Lana Clarkson -- who died after a bullet was fired through her mouth. But he changed his mind upon further research. "In this case, you have a woman who is shot in the head. It is highly particularized," he said. ... Almost 19 million people watched Live Earth on NBC and its affiliates, AP reports -- far short of the 2 billion event organizers had hoped for. On the other hand, the organizers' estimate was also supposed to include online viewers, whereas the 19 million figure only includes viewers who watched at least six minutes of the telecasts. ...

Amid all the Live Earth happenings over the past week, Axl Rose found time to vent about why Guns N' Roses wouldn't be performing at the event's Rio de Janeiro installment. "We were not asked until the last couple weeks while we were on tour in Australia and have upcoming sold-out dates already rescheduled in Japan," he said in a press release issued Friday. "I was asked to perform individually with Lenny Kravitz by the promoters and Mr. Gore. As we were working this out, Lenny unfortunately became injured and temporarily canceled his involvement from the event." Rose claims he wasn't made aware that Kravitz's performance was reconfirmed until it was too late. "Guns N' Roses or I were not asked to play anywhere else, such as Japan or Australia (as we are already in the regions on tour), and in which we have formally offered to perform, but the offer of our involvement was declined." ...

Did Madonna's onstage hookup with gypsy punks Gogol Bordello at Live Earth London over the weekend leave you scratching your head? This might shed some light: Frontman Eugene Hutz, who starred alongside Elijah Wood in "Everything Is Illuminated," has been working with Madge on her directorial debut, "Fifth & Wisdom." "It was super-fun and perfectly respectable, and it ended up being quite a collaborative project," he told Billboard.com about the flick. ...

J.K. Rowling is taking Harry Potter on the road. The author will launch the Open Book Tour in October, answering fan questions and signing copies of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" during three events for schoolchildren and one special evening gathering for a lucky group of Harry Potter fans. Students from select schools will be randomly chosen at the start of the new school year for the Los Angeles (October 15), New Orleans (October 18) and New York (October 19) student events, while readers of all ages can enter at Scholastic's Harry Potter site beginning July 30 for a chance to score one of 1,000 tickets to Rowling's evening tour stop at New York's Carnegie Hall on October 19. ...

Diana Ross performed at Tao Restaurant in New York on Sunday night as part of a charity auction hosted by the New York Giants' Michael Strahan. Ja Rule, Nicole Murphy, and Dawn Richards of Danity Kane also made appearances at the event, which raised over $300,000 for the Supportive Children's Advocacy Network and was sponsored by the Dreier LLP law firm. ... Prince played three shows over 12 hours in his hometown of Minneapolis from Saturday into early Sunday, ending his live streak when police shut down his early morning homecoming show at the legendary First Avenue club -- featured in "Purple Rain" -- 70 minutes into a 24-song set, AP reports. After playing 15 songs, Prince pulled the plug on the show -- which didn't start until nearly 2:45 a.m. -- announcing, "The authorities say we gotta go. We always listen to the authorities. I promise I'll be back." Prince played a 45-minute set at Macy's for his fragrance launch early Saturday, followed by a full concert at the Target Center. ...

Nicole Richie is due in court on Wednesday to answer a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence, but dad Lionel Richie isn't coming down hard on his daughter, who he said is "just in an unfortunate situation." The singer, who spoke to the AP at the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans, said Nicole is sorry for her mistakes. "She keeps apologizing to me," he said. "I told her, 'You're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing to your father at this age.' " Because Richie's case contains an allegation of a prior DUI conviction, she faces 90 days in jail and a suspension of driving privileges if found guilty. ... As for the Nicole Richie pregnancy reports, Lionel told People that he's a little out of touch ("Nicole, baby, call me!") and isn't sure whether he has a grandchild on the way. "I don't know if I'm going to be grandpa," he said. "I don't know if I'm ready to be called grandpa." ...

Foo Fighters will strike back on September 25 with Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace, their sixth studio album. Aside from rocking a totally grammatically correct title (Dave Grohl hates stodgy commas) the album will feature 12 tracks, with titles such as "The Pretender," "Long Road to Ruin," the emo-baiting "Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)" and "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners," no doubt a tribute to the two Tasmanian miners who, while trapped in a collapsed mine, listened to songs by the band until they were rescued -- and later met, and shared a beer with, Grohl and company. ...

Clay Aiken tangled with a fellow passenger on a flight to Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday morning, AP reports, leading to an FBI investigation but no arrests. The FBI told Tulsa World that there was a dispute on the aircraft between a male former "American Idol" contestant and a woman on the plane, but would not confirm Aiken's identity. The argument allegedly began over the male passenger's putting his foot on the woman's armrest, and the female passenger reportedly gave the man "a minor shove." There were no injuries reported, though Aiken did joke onstage Saturday night that he'd been beaten up by a girl earlier in the day. ...

Afeni Shakur -- Tupac's mother -- lost a North Carolina guest home in a fire late Friday night, according to local outlet News 14 Carolina. The blaze completely destroyed the property, which is part of a larger estate owned by Shakur, but according to the report, no one was injured. In a statement, Shakur thanked authorities and community members for responding to calls for help. "I would sincerely like to thank the professional and volunteer firefighters and our neighbors who quickly came to our rescue and helped extinguish the fire," she said. "We are truly blessed to have their vigilant and neighborly care. We were fortunate that no one was at the home at the time." ...

Drowning Pool have teamed up with the organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and 15-year-old YouTube video producer Lizzie Palmer for the This Is for the Soldiers campaign, encouraging young people to support the Lane Evans Mental Health Care Reform bill, legislation extending health-care benefits for veterans. ... Snow Patrol keyboardist Tom Simpson was arrested Saturday in London following the band's performance at Live Earth, on charges of failing to appear in court on drugs charges, U.K.'s ITV News reported. Simpson was released from custody on Sunday, in time to headline the T in the Park festival in Scotland after agreeing to appear in court in Glasgow, Scotland, on Tuesday. The keyboardist missed the band's Saturday night performance at Ireland's Oxegen fest.