The Hip-Hop Herald News Report 04.03.08

Posted by Patrick Robinson on 04.03.2008

Remy Ma's going to jail. So are T.I. and Freck Billionaire. But Fabo from D4L gets out? Also, 50 Cent's obsession with Sand and...Air Kanye? All this and more inside!

As I mentioned yesterday, sorry for my absence last week, the flu hit me pretty hard due to my previous inactivity recovering from surgery as I can normally shake those things off in a day or so.

Anyway, there's a lot of news to be covered this week, so without further ado…

The News

Top Story

Remy Ma Off To Prison

Back in July 2007, Remy Ma was involved in a dispute with a long-time friend over $3000. Remy claims the money went missing from her purse and accused Makeda Barnes-Joseph of taking it. Upon confrontation, Remy loaded a gun, pointed it at Barnes-Joseph and fired. The result was Barnes-Joseph spending three weeks in hospital and three different surgeries to repair two gunshot wounds to the stomach.

On March 27, Remy Ma was found guilty on four of the possible nine charges she was facing. She is being charged with two counts of first-degree assault, attempted coercion and criminal possession of a weapon, whilst being found not guilty of gang assault or witness tampering.

A previous testimony from Barnes-Joseph herself suggested that the shooting was accidental which Remy's attorney in his closing statements on Monday later reiterated. Because of this, Remy is attempting to appeal the guilty verdict as she staunchly maintains that during the struggle over the purse, the gun was discharged accidentally.

However, the prosecution is dismissing this claim, as Remy Ma's decision to take "an illegal .45-caliber automatic and [load] it with hollow-point bullets and go into Ms. Joseph's car" could not have made the shooting accidental.

Remy Ma is currently being held in prison until her sentencing day sometime this month where she faces up to 25 years in prison. Meanwhile, there is no word as to whether Barnes-Joseph will be refilling a $20 million civil suit against Remy in conjunction with the shooting.

I hope that this is a wakeup call for Remy Ma and anybody really. $3000 is a lot of money, but not so much, so that you need to pull a gun out on somebody. From all accounts, it does make the shooting sound accidental, but given that Remy willingly loaded the gun herself isn't going to make any appeals go smoothly.

The real loser here though is Papoose. Poor guy, can't get a label, can't get an album, now he's going to be married to Remy whilst she's in jail.

T.I. Troubles

In other jail related news, T.I. was sentenced to a year and a day in jail, starting March 27 2009 last Thursday.

After buying enough weapons to equip a small army, T.I. was found guilty on two counts of illegally possession machine guns and silencers and one count of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. He is also being ordered to serve 1500 hours community service, with the first 1000 to be completed before his sentencing, and the remaining 500 to be done after his jail time. He will be using his time to speak to "at-risk" youth about the situations he has been facing since 1997 and encourage them to obey the law and stay out of trouble.

Personally, I think that's the best outcome he could have hoped for. We previously reported that he could have been facing a couple of year's per-weapon charge (I think it was going to be around 16 or so years) so to be let off with comparatively so little jail time should be a blessing for him.

However, T.I. was also fined $100,000 and should he fail to meet the terms of the agreement he made with the court, he faces up to 57 months further jail time AND if the judge believes he has not accepted responsibility for his actions, another 40 months on top of that.

Whilst on house arrest after posting $3 million bail bond back in October last year, T.I. has been working on his new album Paper Trail set for release sometime this year or early 2009. I think though, if he wants to avoid the judge saying he hasn't accepted responsibility for his actions, he won't want to be rapping about the ordeal, nor any other illegal activities (even whilst in his T.I.P. character) as that's the kind of thing that will come back to bite him in the ass. Hopefully though, we'll see a really good album from him since he's on house arrest and the only things he's allowed to do are go to Church and pursue "work-related activities" AND he has a curfew in effect, he doesn't really have much else to do except record music!

50 Cent And Ludacris To Sue Local Tavern

A small tavern in Spokane, WA is being targeted by management representatives for 50 Cent and Ludacris after cover bands have been performing their songs without permission. Songs cited were "Candy Shop" and "Get Back" amongst others.

The tavern, known as The Flame have been asked to pay the plaintiffs, "no more than $30,000, nor less than $750" (seems a pretty wide gap there). The suit claims that "Neither Defendants, nor any of the Defendants' agents, servants or employees, nor any performer was licensed by, or otherwise received permission from any Plaintiff or any agent, servant or employee of any Plaintiff to give such performances"

This lawsuit comes in hindsight of the fact that people representing the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) have sent numerous letters expressing their dissatisfaction with the "cover bands" performing without permission or consent. Whilst I don't really know much about copyright laws, I was under the assumption that cover bands could perform songs, so long as they didn't try and market it as an original, or try and profit from performances (such as selling CDs with the covered songs on it).

The manager of The Flame has stated that this lawsuit has come as a complete surprise to them and they will be reviewing the situation for the future.

Why's Everything Got To Be On The Sand?

So, as part of a cross-promotion (not really) for their latest mixtape, Elephant In The Sand, 50 Cent plans to release a new video game called Blood On The Sand. Whether or not this will involve hunting elephants is yet to be seen.

Ahem. Seriously though, 50 Cent IS getting a new video game where players will engage in "an all out battle to protect 50 Cent's assets and to collect payment from a crooked overlord". Sounds thrilling.

The game will also feature Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo and DJ Whoo Kid, but further fuelling rumors of dissent, not Young Buck.

Still wanting to know more? From the horse's mouth:

"We are taking this sequel to the next level with exciting combat and gunplay, new original music, great graphics and a new story"

In fairly unrelated news, here's a picture of 50 Cent and Paris Hilton.


"I got, I got, I got herpes"

Well, he had it coming really…

We're kind of critical of crack rappers because they rap about selling crack, only to have given it up long ago (so why keep rapping about it, you moved on from that life!) or never did to start with. Of course there's a very small percentage of them out there that actually DO still sell crack.

Freck Billionaire who raps about cooking and selling crack was jailed for, what else, selling it to an undercover cop. Real name Jeffrey Whitters, is currently being held at Bergen County Jail on bail for $150,000. Whitters is also currently wanted for violated parole, missing a court appearance and giving false information. According to reports, Whitters also had descriptions of selling crack for a living while growing up in Philadelphia on his MySpace page. Remember that old saying? Something along the lines of "real gangsters move in silence"? Yeah this is exactly WHY they have that saying. Honestly, who puts that kind of stuff on their MySpace page?

Freck Billionaire, an affiliate of Fabolous was recently heard on "This Is Family" (not Sparta) from Fab's album, From Nothin' To Somethin'.

Nelly Preps New Album

Nelly's fifth (FIF!) studio album, Brass Knuckles is scheduled for a release in late June this year. Expect collaborations from artists such as Ciara, Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Akon and LL Cool J. Production-wise, there will be tracks from Jermaine Dupri and Pharrell with rumoured collaborations from Polow Da Don and what Nelly is calling "a handful of new producers" which generally spells doom as very rarely do we see "new producers" making an impact these days.

Sales Figures

Diddy's Making The Band group, Day 26 released their self-titled album at Number 1 this week with over 189,000 copies sold. Danity Kane meanwhile drop to number four having sold just under 89,000 this week, bringing their total to around 325,000 sold so far.

Rick Ross looks to be on the way to a Gold certification with a further 51,000 sold this week, bringing his total to 340,000 whilst Flo Rida drops even further only managing 33,000 this week meaning Mail On Sundays has only sold 120,000 copies so far. I know he's a ringtone rapper and all, but you'd think that having the longest reign at Number 1 (with "Low") on the Billboard Charts as well as the Download Charts would actually translate into some relative sales success.

Moving up the charts on the other hand is Gnarls Barkley as their album sold just under 29,000 this week placing them at Number 12 on the Top 200 charts. Snoop Dogg's sales continue to disappoint compared to previous efforts with 28,000 copies this week bringing him in behind Gnarls Barkley with a total of 222,000 sold.

Lupe Fiasco creeps (and I mean creeps) towards a Gold certification with 10,000 sold this week making his total just under 431,000. Fat Joe continues to bomb hard with 8,800 sold meaning he sold less than ROCKO who managed 9,800. Sheek Louch also slides with only 7,900 sold in his second week on the charts. Guilty Simpson and his latest effort, Ode To The Ghetto moved 2,000 units in it's first week on the chart closing out this week's Sales Figures.

Quickies!

Kanye West is launching his own travel business called Kanye Travel Ventures in an aid for fans around the world wanting to see shows. You can purchase tickets, customize your flight details as well as other miscellaneous merchandise at www.kanyetravel.com

Fabolous is going to be joining OneRepublic on tour with shows beginning on the 10th of April and continuing through until early May.

Khia and Trina are currently engaged in a war of words as the two have been taking shots at each other for sometime now. Khia has now expressed interest in making Lil Wayne "her's". In a long and horribly misspelled blog, Khia also took shots at Nivea (who had been linked to Wayne as well) saying "go back to ya husband, ur a mother now".

Usher's new album, Here I Stand is set for release on May 27 on La Face/Zomba Records.

Fabo of D4L "fame" has been cleared of all charges stemming from a February 2006 arrest. Damn.

Before We Go…

Well, I have a test on Saturday to study for, and plenty of time to kill today so I best be off!

See you all next Wednesday!