After the overwhelming success of "Jesus Walks," Kanye West's The College Dropout has received a Stellar Awards nomination for Best Gospel Rap Album to the chagrin of gospel music veterans.

A committee for the Stellar Awards Gospel Music Academy has put West's debut on the ballot from which nominees for Best Gospel Rap Album will be selected.

"It just seems that it shouldn't have gotten through," Jadda Gunn, a member of the music academy told the Associated Press. "For this to be the Stellar Awards they should have known Kanye West, Roc-A-Fella records -- that's not (a) gospel album."

Other candidates on the ballot include Christian groups like God's Little Soldiers, Natalie Wilson & The SOP Chorale with Rodney Jerkins, Percy Bady and Papa San, Tonex and Ziklag. Academy officials said that mistakes were made on the ballot and that an additional ballot will soon be sent to the members. No word on whether Kanye was removed or not.

"Some entries have been added and one has been removed because it didn't fit the criteria," Erma Davis, president of the awards producer, Central City Productions, told the AP.

According to Davis, the Louis Vutton Don was selected because the committee often picks artists that have top selling albums on the charts. General Counsel of the Gospel Music Workshop of America, Ron Magnus said West's inclusion shows that secular artists can "minister to youth."

Nominees for the Stellar Awards will be picked on October 26th and the show will take place in Houston on January 15th.

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A month after being ordered to pay increased child support, P. Diddy is responding that he is a good provider and will appeal the increase.

The mogul is reportedly hurt that Misa Hilton-Brim, the mother of his 10-year-old son Justin, took him to court to increase child support.

"It's ridiculous to think any of my kids would want for anything," Puffy told the Associated Press. "We've had a great relationship, and then all of a sudden I got hit with a lawsuit for more money."

Last month, a Westchester County magistrate ordered Diddy to increase his monthly child support payments from a reported $5,000 to $35,000. The increased sum is the same amount that Diddy pays Kim Porter, the mother of his second child, Christian. The two are presently together. According to the AP, Combs said that he routinely paid Brim more than $5,000, an amount that the former couple agreed to years ago. Combs also said he paid for Justin's clothing, medical care, schooling and anything else he wanted.

"My son goes to the best schools, he has full-time tutors," boasts Diddy. "I wouldn't know what else to do to give my son."

Puff is appealing the decision and claims that Brim only wants an increase because she's undergoing a divorce with her husband.

"It's not about child support, it's about adult support," Puff revealed. "I love the mother of my first child. I would never want to do anything to hurt her, but I have to defend the kind of father that I am."

In related Diddy news, he is returning to MTV for another installment of his "Making The Band" series. This time, Diddy will be forming a girl group.

"We watched P. Diddy work magic with his last group Da Band, who despite their issues working together, still managed to take their very first album gold," MTV Series Entertainment Executive Vice President Lois Curren told the AP. "We can't wait to see what he has in store for us as he forms a girl group in a whole new music genre."

Auditions for singers will begin in New York, Miami and Los Angeles in October and the series will premiere next year
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After a two-year hiatus, Snoop Dogg is teaming up with The Neptunes and returning with a new LP, R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta).

The LP is scheduled to drop on a joint venture label between Snoop's Doggystyle Records and The Neptunes' Star Trak through Geffen Records. The album's first single, "Drop It Like It's Hot" featuring Pharrell Williams recently hit the airwaves. In addition to superstar guest appearances, R&G will feature collaborations with Gap Band leader Charlie Wilson. Snoop previously collaborated with Wilson on his 2002 smash hit, "Beautiful."

Snoop Dogg's R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta) hits stores on November 23.

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Hip-Hop heavyweights like Nas, Tony Yayo, Scarface, Snoop and countless others have listed Al Pacino's "Tony Montana" character as an influence and soon, they will have the opportunity to step into the gangster’s seedy world in the upcoming video game "Scarface."

Players take the role of Tony Montana, one of the most ruthless gangsters ever depicted in film and navigate through the streets of Miami, the Florida Keys, the Bahamas & other locations negotiating deals with unsavory characters, avoiding rivals and the DEA, in a quest to rebuild a fallen empire.

"The treacherous world of Scarface is a natural property to translate into a cinematic game play experience," said Michael Pole, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Studios for Vivendi Universal Games. "The game will feature cutting-edge technology, a compelling storyline and the unprecedented experience of playing as one of Hollywood’s most notorious gangsters, Tony Montana."

The gameplay environment will authentically recreate the historical time period of the film, touching on politics, news items and events of the day.

Acclaimed screenwriter David McKenna has written an original, event-driven storyline for the interactive game that will lead the player through the underworld.

The movie Scarface has had an influence on many rappers, who make references to the film, sample it and name themselves after characters in the flick.

"Scarface" hits stores in the Fall 2005. For more information on the game visit http://www.scarfacegame.com.

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Foxy Brown was the victim of an attack over the weekend that left her earlobe torn, after a woman snatched her purse and a diamond earring worth $250,000.

According to reports, Brown was in the bathroom of Club Show after she attended the Baby Phat fashion show.

The suspect, Tanya Manderson, 35, followed Brown into the bathroom and ripped the pricey jewel from her right ear. She then fled with the earring and a Louis Vuitton bag.

Brown alerted security, who chased Manderson into a subway. They lost her in the ensuing chase, but recovered the purse.

Manderson later turned herself in after detectives tracked her down based on eyewitness reports.

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Fans seeking the final installment of De La Soul’s Artificial Intelligence series, shouldn’t look towards their next release, The Grind Date.

Since leaving Tommy Boy Records, and going independent for their first time ever, the group decided that they had experienced too much and changed to follow the concept. The third Artificial Intelligence record, which is supposed to be dedicated to the art of DJ’ing, is yet to be recorded.

Group DJ Maseo told AllHipHop.com, “We do still plan on doing [The AOI Volume 3] record, [but with The Grind Date,] we just had to focus on putting a record together that was gonna kind of put us back in today’s Hip-Hop. [Volume 3] was a record would kind of just involve me and my fellow DJ’s, which is more of just a novelty De La record. I think going after the MTV and BET viewers, is not the record.”

Previously, Maseo said that De La Soul's third installment of the Artificial Intelligence series will be released independently through his own Bear Mountain Entertainment label.

As for The Grind Date, it will drop within the next month. Maseo said.

“The album is just the existence of what we been dealing with since breakin’ off that relationship with Tommy Boy, being 30 plus years old.”

This album, like the last, uses outside production from Dave West, Jake One, Madlib, and collaborations with Ghostface Killah and others.

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Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are semifinalists in nominations to be inducted into the world renowned Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The top 15 artists that tally the most votes will be this year’s nominees for consideration. Artists become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first record.

The nominating committee is made up of Rock and Roll historians. After the committee has chosen their semi-finalists, ballots are sent to an international voting body comprising of almost 1000 authorities on the history of Rock and Roll.

The artists who receive the highest number of votes are inducted. Usually that equates to about five to seven groups being inducted each year.

This year’s list is one of the most diverse in the history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were nominated along side ABBA, Jeff Beck, seminal Doo-Wop group The Harptones, The O’Jays, Kraftwerk, Ringo Starr and others.

The group recorded first as the Younger Generation and released a single, “We Rap More Mellow” in 1979. After a name change, the group signed with the Enjoy record label owned by Bobby Robinson.

The group recorded Superappin’” in 1979 as well. Once they switched to the Sugar Hill record label, they recorded a series of legendary Hip-Hop songs, including "Freedom," "Birthday Party," "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel," "The Message," and "White Lines."

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In the last two years, Immortal Technique’s voice has steadily gotten louder outside of his normal underground surroundings. The Harlem-bred lyricist is weighing his options before he releases another album, he said, but he spoke at length about where he’s headed.

“I’m coming back to the roots, what made me Immortal Technique - real raw. [I’m bringing} the brutal lyrics and at the same time a lot of conceptual substantive in the next album,” he told AllHipHop.com. “If I make something and it doesn’t feel like an original idea from me, then I can’t put it out. It’s formula man [and] that’s limiting. Put that with the others.”

On Revolutionary Vol. 2, which was released last year on his Viper Records, Technique spoken brazenly about the state of political affairs in America and his Harlem hometown. The buzz, which has been increasing for years, has gotten the attention of the majors.

Having shunned a major label deal, Technique said such a move would be highly unlikely, because of the type of artist that he is.

“They call a couple of times sometimes during the week asking me what I’m doing, what I want to do. It’s not just the major labels it’s the under major label [large independents],” he said, taking the interest with a grain of salt.

“It’s not what you rhyme about though because you could rhymes about being a revolutionary or you could rhyme about streets, your ice, your 24’s. The labels are going to look at you the same way, they don’t care what you rhyme about. You can talk about anything you want to. At the end of they are going to look at you the same.”

The rapper, whose rhymes are drenched in commentary, said he is more interested in applying his income and business savvy to more practical things.

“I think economical power equal political power, if you don’t have economical sovernty, you won’t have political sovernty. You don’t the control the economics of your neighbor hood you don’t control the political side,” he clarified. “If everybody in Harlem owns those brimstones - they own all those businesses.”

Advising, he rationalized, “Invest in things that people can’t take away. Get someone in your family to invest in a college education scholarship program. Can’t nobody come back saying you’re an idiot give me back your college education. It’s something that you are going to have for the rest of your life. I’m invested in that and I chose carefully what I invest in.”

While he was a college student at Penn State University, Technique was incarcerated and eventually incarcerated on aggravated assault charges after a group racially harassed him and others. He intends to pick up where he left off one day, he stated.

“I got like a semester left to do in school. I feel that I definitely will go to school to get my degree. It’s just that it’s so much drama right now music,” he explained. “I might have to do some online course or something to get my degree I don’t have the time to go to a regular class room.”

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Songwriting legend Burt Bacharach and Dr. Dre continue to work together on an untitled project, which was first announced in February of 2003.

Bacharach, who is 76-years-old, said that working with Dr. Dre on the untitled project was comparable to his relationship with his famous songwriting partner, Hal David.

"Three of the four things I've already cut have Dr. Dre drum loops that he gave me," Bacharach told the Denver Post. "It's a challenging, freeing feeling, to take an existing format - like these rigid, four-bar loops - and to see what you can write on top of it. It's hard and challenging too because it does have some restrictions. It's kinda like Hal giving me the whole lyric on'Alfie' and then having to set that up around it."

Bacharach’s foray into Hip-Hop is not surprising to critics. David has survived through several era’s of music, working with artists from every genre, amassing over 70 hits in his 50-year-career.

Bacharach said Sony gave him complete creative control over the album.

“They didn't want me to write another hit song, and I had got together with Dre about a year and a half ago and talked about doing something for the album that we never did,” he said. “Then he gave me the loops, and when I decided to do this album for Sony England, it seemed a natural fit.”

Bacharach has penned some of the most memorable pop songs in history, including "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head," "Walk On By," "A House Is Not A Home," and many others.

His music was introduced to a new, younger audience after he and his music were featured in the Austin Power's franchise of films.

The album will be finished next fall

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A federal appeals court in Cincinnati, Ohio ruled yesterday (Sept. 7) that artists should pay for every sample included in their work, a ruling that could have an effect on Hip-Hop music, which often utilizes pieces of other copyrighted works.

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said that federal laws passed to curb piracy of digital recordings applies to digital sampling.

“If you cannot pirate the whole sound recording, can you ‘lift’ or ‘sample’ something less than the whole? Our answer to that question is in the negative,” the court said in a statement.

It has been legal to use short musical snippets as long as the work sampled was not identifiable.

“Get a license or do not sample,” the court continued. “We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way.”

The case is one of 800 lawsuits filed by Bridgeport Music and Westbound Records in 2001

Bridgeport and Westbound own the rights to many recordings, including those of George Clinton and the influential groups Funkadelic and Parliament. A two second sample of a Funkadelic record in NWA's "100 Miles and Runnin" is at the heart of the ruling made by the judges Tuesday.

The song was used in the movie "I Got the Hookup," produced by Master P.'s No Limit Films.

As a result, Bridgeport took No Limit Films to court, saying that using the NWA song in the film without clearing the sample violated copyright laws.

Clinton himself was not opposed to sampling. He produced two albums, Sample Some of Dis and Sample Some of Dat, which allowed artists to use Clinton’s music without legal scrutiny.

Well, first of all, I suspect that the industry again is trying to do to rap what they tried to do to funk, and that's kill it because it's got to much information, and spreading of information,” Clinton told the Houston Press in 1992. “So what we've done to keep them from all this stupidity, like trying to sue, or saying that I'm suing people, is to put out a record called "Sample Some of Disc and Sample Some of Dat" - just samples from alot of the old songs, because I have some of the demos of those songs, which is not what the record company owns, so I can license those to be sampled. We have a pay schedule that's really easy to deal with - if they sell records, they pay, if they don't they can try again. We got to make sure that rap survives, because it's our only means of communication that gets past the gatekeepers.”

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