He believed in her, all right, and he became a mogul overnight, thanks to her huge success. After all, this year she has taken home three Brit Awards in London (where she performed a tribute to recently deceased designer Alexander McQueen) and two Grammys (Best Dance Recording for “Poker Face” and Best Electronic/Dance Album for The Fame). “She came at the right moment”, he said. Lady Gaga was initially signed to Def Jam Records, where she was dropped several months later. Then Akon signed her as a free agent as he was finalizing his Kon Live deal with Interscope Records and label head Jimmy Iovine. “And I was like ‘Yo, I want to sign that right there. She needs to be under my umbrella,’” Akon said. “Jimmy was like ‘Yeah, whatever you want. Take her. Let’s get it done.’ And she just blossomed into a super megastar, man.”
Gaga is also one of several artists to be featured on Akon’s next album. Others include Dutch dance DJ-producer Chuckie and David Guetta, the exuberant French producer behind The Black Eyed Peas’ smash “I Gotta Feeling” who recently collaborated with Akon on “Sexy …”
“Actually that’s what excited me more about her [Gaga] because you’ve got some straight hardcore hip-hop guys actually moving into the dance realm,” Akon said. “And that’s shocking. When you’ve got someone like Dr. Dre about to do a dance record … that’s crazy.” The singer refused to say anything else about his collaboration with Dr. Dre, but he revealed that “it actually sounds great. He played it for me. I was shocked. So I was like ‘Wow, that’s dope. When the world hears this, they might go crazy.’ … When you’ve got the two worlds mixed together, clashing, it’s going to be a monster.”
However, if you got excited, you’ll have to wait a little longer, as his album is supposed to hit music stores sometime later this year, according to The Daily Herald.

Lucian Grainge, Universal Music Group International chairman and CEO, presented the duo with a plaque commemorating 375 million record sales worldwide. Then, Lyngstad expressed her delight with the ABBA WORLD show: “We’ve already been through the exhibition and I must say I’m so proud of the team that has worked here and also to be part of what is happening here tonight. We have been on a journey again, in a way.”
The exhibition presents the band’s story in 25 rooms spread over 30,000 square feet (2,800 sq. meters). Glass cases contain costumes in silk, satin and spandex. One corner holds the helicopter pictured on the cover of the 1976 album “Arrival” and visitors can see recreations of Polar Studios, where the band recorded, and the seaside cabin near Stockholm where Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson composed the band’s hits. There’s an audio guide of ABBA’s story narrated by Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard, one of the stars of the film version of “Mamma Mia!”, and a gift shop where visitors can buy Abba T-shirts, teddy bears, jigsaw puzzles, figurines and CDs.

ABBAWORLD’s Swedish organizers said that the exhibition is “a place for total interaction” with the band. The exhibition has holographic video technology that allows visitors to dance and sing alongside an animated ABBA. “It started with, ‘How do we give the visitor a big hug in each room?’” said Magnus Danielsson, president of Touring Exhibitions, the company behind ABBAWORLD. “This is going to be more like going to ‘Mamma Mia!’ than going to an exhibition. We want people to sing and dance.” And indeed, there the music satisfies even the most fervent ABBA fan, with songs from “Dancing Queen” and the melancholic “Knowing Me, Knowing You” to the tearing “The Winner Takes It All”.
The exhibition remains at London’s Earl’s Court venue until Mar. 28. The show is then expected to tour internationally although details have not been announced yet.

A couple of weeks ago 33 hints were posted all over the internet, giving clues as to which bands will be performing in May. Now it is certain which bands are scheduled to perform. The list is very long and includes Mike Posner, Angels & Airwaves, Emmure, Girl Talk, Hanson, Hey Monday, I See Stars, Mutemath, Steel Train, Matt & Kim, OK Go and Say Anything and many more. Others recently announced confirmed acts include 88 Keys, Wale, Sean Price and Wiz Khalifa, 100 Monkeys, Bobby Long, Bullet For My Valentine, Escape The Fate, Reliant K, The Bled, Motion City Soundtrack, Eye Alaska, Minus the Bear, The Pretty Reckless and Winston Audio.
According to Billboard.com, the list continues with The Aquabats, Architects, Cara Salimando, Asking Alexandria, Champagne Champagne, Far East Movement, Fun, Gabriel The Marine, Good Old War, MC Chris, MGMT, Miss May I, Moving Mountains, My Favorite Highway, Never Shout Never, Of Mice and Men, Paper Tongues, Piebald, Polar Bear Club, Protect The Hero, Roxy Cottontail, Sainthood Reps, Secret Secret Dino Club, Skeet Skeet, Steel Train, Stephen Jerzak, The Maine, The Parlor Mob, The Ready Steady, The Summer Set, The Word Alive, This Century, T-Mills, VersaEmerge and We Came As Romans.
Moreover, the fest’s organizers also announced new side show and on-site extensions: David Garibaldi, DJ Prime, Eclectic Method, Hot Dog Derby, Pass the Mic Comedy Tent, Poet Gregory Shwartz, Sailesh The Uncensored Hypnotist, Tales from the Ripper and The $10,000 B-Boy Challenge.
If you want to see these young artists performing live at the Bamboozle festival, you can buy tickets on thebamboozle.com, livenation.com, ducatking.com and all Ticketmaster outlets.

The organizer of the fundraising event, actor George Clooney, said that the aim of the telethon was “to show the people of Haiti that the whole world is paying attention”. He announced that more than 40 celebrities were expected to attend the “Hope for Haiti”, including big names such as Bono, Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys, Sting and Christina Aguilera. Clooney said that songs from participating artists would be made available on iTunes, with proceeds going to the relief effort.

Moreover, Haitian-born singer Wyclef Jean will co-host the show from New York, George Clooney will host the Los Angeles part and CNN’s Anderson Cooper will be in Haiti. The show will benefit Jean’s Yele Haiti Foundation, as well as UNICEF, Oxfam America, Partners in Health, and the Red Cross.
Wyclef’s charitable foundation, Yéle Haiti, raised rumors last week after watch groups discovered some irregularities about expenses paid to businesses owned by Jean and another member of the board. The singer replied in a Youtube video saying, “I gotta tell you, coming back in here after digging kids up . . . and finding cemeteries for them . . . this is what I come back to: an attack on my integrity and my foundation, Yele Haiti. . . . You can donate to whatever charity you want to.” Still, the organizers of the Golden Globes donated $100,000 to Jean’s Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund, while several guests raised awareness of the ongoing relief effort.

Furthermore, Lady Gaga, who will not attend the broadcasted telethon, announced that she cares of the suffering Haitians and that all proceeds from her concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on January 24th will be donated to the Haitan relief effort.

Moreover, the “Bad Romance” singer, feeling that she has disappointed her fans, tweeted: “I’ve been crying for hours, I feel like I let my fans down 2nite. An hour before the show, I was feeling dizzy and having trouble breathing… [I] can’t apologize enough for how sorry I am. I could hear my fans cheering from my dressing room, I begged everyone to let me go onstage … My stage has complicated mechanical elements, everyone was concerned I’d be in danger during the 2hr show, since I had passed out earlier. I am so devastated. I have performed with the flu, a cold, strep throat: I would never cancel a show just based on discomfort … I hope you can forgive me. I love my little monsters [fans] more than anything, you are everything to me.”
But the 23-year-old singer didn’t mention how long she’ll be out of stage or if she will cancel the next shows. She is set to play four high-profile shows at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on January 20th, 21st and 23rd and 24th. On January 26th, it’s the rescheduled Purdue show, on January 31st she is set to perform at Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, where she is nominated in five categories, including Song and Record of the Year (for “Poker Face”) and Album of the Year (for The Fame). Then, the next tour date is February 18th in England, where she launches a nearly three-month international tour. Let’s hope she will feel better soon and she will honor her shows.

The vocal track seems resolute. It’s a good song but, at the same time, it’s a sad song too. And it’s definitely very interesting especially because of the message that it carreys. But what is its message, its meaning? Some say it’s about a night out at the club, others that it’s about a rather more intimate experience, that it’s the story of a girl in an abusive relationship and that the song is about different women who were “abused”. They may be right and this it’s not surprising at all, as Lady Gaga, which some say is the next Madonna, made a career out of sensationalizing fame and sex.
However, Lady Gaga, less known by her real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, has come to stand to reveal and explain the real message of her track. She told The Los Angeles Times that the tune is about an intimate moment between two people alone in a bedroom. “The record is about a girl who likes to have sex with the lights off, because she’s embarrassed about her body,” the 23-year-old artist explained. “She doesn’t want her man to see her naked. She will be free, and she will let her inner animal out, but only when the lights are out.”
The song continues with “Around her kiss is a vampire grin/ Moonlights away while she is howling at him” expressing how people rely on external cues to cope with internal anxiety. “She doesn’t feel free without the moon,” Lady Gaga said. “These lyrics are a way for me to talk about how I believe women and some men feel innately insecure about themselves all the time. It’s not sometimes, it’s not in adolescence, it’s always.”
“[T]he song isn’t called ‘Dance in the Light,’” she said. “I’m not a gospel singer trying to cross people over. What I’m saying is, ‘I get it. I feel you, I feel the same way, and it’s OK.’” Does this mean that Gaga identifies herself with the woman from her song? Well, according to MTV, Gaga is still struggling with issues of body image and self-doubt in her own life.

The lyrics can be found right here: Lady Gaga - Dance in the Dark Lyrics.

Therefore, it seems that the 36-year-old blond protégé of Dr. Dre, Eminem, is the top male artist and the top rap artist so far in this decade. Moreover, the artist who was born 2 years after the Beatles broke up is the only artist who has sold more albums in this decade than the famous band. “Em sold more than 32.2 million albums in the 2000s, edging out the Beatles to claim the title of top-selling artist. The Beatles ended up with the decade’s best-selling album (they sold nearly 11.5 million copies of 2000’s greatest-hits comp 1,) besting the likes of ‘NSYNC’s No Strings Attached (11.1 million copies sold) and Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me, (10.5 million). Eminem was the only artist to place two albums on the list; his The Marshall Mathers LP and Eminem Show records landed at #4 and 5, selling 10.2 million and 9.8 million copies, respectively” reports MTV.com.

“When you get toward 11 million units, it has to be more than early momentum,” says Eric Weinberg, president of Nielsen Entertainment. “It needs to be good. What’s amazing about this industry is that we really never know what the numbers are going to be.” That’s all so very true and these artists deserve our applauds. But let’s not forget that there’s a lot of very good music out there not getting the ‘push’ it deserves, because the last ten years has produced a lot of great music that doesn’t always equal great sales.

The top-selling albums of the decade, according to Nielsen SoundScan are:

1. The Beatles, 1,11,499,000 units sold
2. ‘NSYNC, No Strings Attached, 11,112,000 units sold
3. Norah Jones, Come Away With Me, 10, 546,000 units sold
4. Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP, 10,204,000 units sold
5. Eminem, The Eminem Show, 9,799,000 units sold
6. Usher, Confessions, 9,712,000 units sold
7. Linkin Park, Hybrid Theory, 9,663,000 units sold
8. Creed, Human Clay, 9,491,000 units sold
9. Britney Spears, Oops! … I Did It Again, 9,185,000 units sold
10. Nelly, Country Grammar, 8,461,000 units sold
The top-selling digital songs of the decade, according to Nielsen SoundScan are:
1. Flo Rida feat. T-Pain, “Low” 5,214,000 units sold
2. Lady Gaga feat. Colby O’Donis, “Just Dance,” 4,690,000 units sold
3. Jason Mraz, “I’m Yours,” 4,619,000 units sold
4. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, “Apologize,” 4,439,000 units sold
5. The Black Eyed Peas, “Boom Boom Pow,” 4,349,000 units sold
6. Soulja Boy Tell’em, “Crank That,” 4,315,000 units sold
7. Lady Gaga, “Poker Face,” 4,200,000 units sold
8. Coldplay, “Viva la Vida,” 4,140,000 units sold
9. Taylor Swift, “Love Story,” 4,005,000 units sold
10. Katy Perry, “Hot N Cold,” 3,945,000 units sold

“I’m hoping for March now. It’s just pulling everybody together: I had a wish list for my managers of everybody I wanted involved that stem beyond hip-hop. I’m trying to pull it all together.” Rolling Stone magazine confirms the release date: “My album is slated to come out in March. I’m still working on the album, but they might try to move it up.” At least this is what the rapper told the magazine backstage at Wednesday’s Grammy Nominations Concert.
“I’m really trying to work with Sade,” he revealed. “Lil Wayne will be on it. Young Jeezy, Jay-Z, Kanye will be doing work on it. It’s in the family.” Plus, there was one more mystery guest that Drake was tight-lipped about: “It’s this other one I’m excited about that’s kinda left [field]. It’s gonna be a great project - well-rounded,” Drake told MTV.
Moreover, Drake is preparing his fans for the release of his debut album. In another interview, he said he has a great story to tell now: “it’s been a crazy year. I just want to make it a little bigger, a little more energy. Sonically, I want to advance. I think I’ve gotten better at rapping since the last one so I’m excited to share it with the world. That’s how I come up with songs, I’ll sit there and rap to myself. There are people who are phenomenal at freestyling, but I’m a writer.”
Fortunately, even if Drake hasn’t released the album this year, he has been still nominated for a pair of Grammys, locking up nods in both the Best Rap Song and Best Rap Solo Performance categories for Best I Ever Had, sharing the nomination with Eminem. “Every other category, they were like, ‘Well, here is who had good songs this year.’ I was like, ‘OK, I put out a song so they put my song on the screen,’ ” he told MTV News after the event. “Then my road manager C.J. tapped me and said, ‘No, you’re nominated.’ My phone started vibrating, it was surreal!”

“This year’s Grammy Hall Of Fame inductees highlight a diverse array of masterpiece recordings that have had a profound impact on our musical history,” Recording Academy President/CEO Neil Portnow said in a statement, according to Rolling Stone magazine. “The selections are timeless staples that span six decades and represent a wide range of genres from comedy to rock, reggae, jazz and R&B. They all greatly deserve to be memorialized.”

Amongst the inductees, there’s a jazz classic by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, and Dippermouth Blues, a 1923 recording featuring a young Armstrong on cornet, Birdland by Weather Report, from 1977, The Doors’ L.A. Woman Joplin’s final album Pearl and the Beach Boys’ classic California Girls, Bob Marley and the Wailers’ album Catch A Fire, along with The Isley Brothers’ Twist and Shout. Other songs from the golden era of film and jazz are in the list, including Judy Garland and Gene Kelly’s For Me and My Gal, and Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah by Johnny Mercer, recorded in 1946. The comedy is not at all neglected, as George Carlin’s Class Clown - the 1972 album, which featured his infamous “seven words you can never say on television” routine has been included on the list.

A full list of the 25 inducted songs is available on the Grammy official website. The recordings will be displayed in the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles, reports BeatCrave.com.

Here is the complete list of the 25 recordings:
- As Time Goes By - Dooley Wilson (1944)
- Birdland - Weather Report (1977)
- California Girls - The Beach Boys (1965)
- Catch A Fire - Bob Marley & The Wailers (1973)
- Class Clown - George Carlin (1972)
- Crazy He Calls Me - Billie Holiday (1949)
- Dippermouth Blues - King Oliver & His Jazz Band (1923)
- Don’t Get Around Much Anymore - Duke Ellington (1940)
- Ella and Basie - Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie (1963)
- Feliz Navidad - Jose Feliciano (1970)
- For Me And My Gal - Judy Garland & Gene Kelly (1942)
- His Eye Is On The Sparrow - Mahalia Jackson
- I Feel Like Going Home - Muddy Waters
- It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World - James Brown (1966)
- Jazz Samba - Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd (1962)
- Kansas City Stomps - Jelly Roll Morton (1928)
- Lazy River - Louis Armstrong (1931)
- Plays WC Handy - Louis Armstrong & His All-Stars (1954)
- Mr Bojangles - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (1970)
- Pearl - Janis Joplin (1971)
- Riders On The Storm - The Doors (1971)
- Twist And Shout - The Isley Brothers (1962)
- Who Do You Love - Bo Diddley (1956)
- You Made Me Love You - Harry James & His Orchestra (1941)
- Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah - Johnny Mercer

Furthermore, as Rolling Stone previously reported, Wayne is also facing a trial for felony drug possession and weapons charges in Arizona as the result of another tour bus search in 2008. In that case, Wayne’s bus was reportedly holding 105 grams of marijuana, 29 grams of cocaine, 41 grams of ecstasy, drug paraphernalia and a handgun.
But Lil Wayne is the second major rapper this year to be found guilty on weapons charges. His past collaborator TI is currently serving a 366-day sentence for attempting to buy unlicensed machine guns and silencers in 2007. Moreover, MTV reports that Ja Rule was also pulled over that same night by New York Police Department officers and faces similar charges to Lil Wayne. His case, however, is still pending. Wayne’s attorney, Stacey Richman, has also been retained by the Queens rapper. A different judge, though, is presiding in Ja Rule’s case.
So, what happens next with the Cash Money Records lyricist’s career? It seems his fans are still waiting for his much-delayed “rock” album, Rebirth, as well as Tha Carter IV, his next hip-hop LP. Both are expected before Christmas on Universal/Motown. Meanwhile, a new mixtape, No Ceiling, is due online soon.