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New Michael Jackson single debuts online

View Akon interview Here http://bit.ly/91QbYD

A duet recorded in 2007 by Michael Jackson and rapper Akon has been released on his website - the first single from an album of new music from the King of Pop after his death last year, Sky News reports.
Legendary Pop Star Michael Jackson

Hold My Hand was first recorded in 2007 and was leaked in an unfinished state on the internet in 2008.

Jackson's Sony/Epic record label said Akon recently completed production on the track.

It has been released globally as the first official single from the album, Michael, which goes on sale on December 14.

Sony and the executors of Jackson's estate said they had a hand-written note from the Thriller singer, indicating his desire that Hold My Hand be the first single on his next project.

"The world was not ready to hear Hold My Hand when it leaked a couple years ago. We were devastated about it,' said Akon, who was known to be working with Jackson before his sudden death in June 2009 at the age of 50.

"But its time has definitely come. Now in its final state, it has become an incredible, beautiful, anthemic song. I'm so proud to have had the chance to work with Michael, one of my all time idols," the music producer said in a statement.

Sony also released details of all the tracks on Michael - the first album of new material from the singer since Invincible in 2001.

Two of the tracks feature rapper 50 Cent and rocker Lenny Kravitz. Sony said the songs are the work of "an esteemed group of producers along with Michael Jackson."

"While primarily focused on songs that Michael worked on recently, there are also earlier compelling tracks," said Sony...

The release of Hold My Hand for digital sale follows the streaming on the web last week of another new track Breaking News from the upcoming album, which met with initial scepticism.

Some music critics, along with a few of Jackson's family members, have said they do not believe the vocals on Breaking News really belong to the entertainer.

And Jackson's estranged father Joe has said his perfectionist son would not have wanted his unfinished material released.

But last week Sony insisted it had conducted extensive research and is confident the vocals are Jackson's own.

Michael has the backing of Jackson's official estate and is the latest commercial venture to capitalise on the singer's renewed popularity in death.

A Cirque du Soleil show, dance videogame and a DVD set of all his pop music videos are also on their way.
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Ex Plantashun Boiz member, Faze has featured his former band mates 2face and Blackface on a track Best of the Best.The song which was produced by Spankie will be included in his forthcoming album titled Relate due for release next month.

A few months back Faze had dropped singles Relate and Gear one as a build up to his album release. The Plantashun Boiz was one of Nigeria’s foremost boy band who held sway in the 1990’s.They have been dubbed as the foundation of modern-day Nigerian music; serving as the bridge between the older and newer generations..

Provabs drops new single

Provabs follows up his previous single - Hope. Aina Olasubomi Anthony a.k.a PROVABS is a song writer and rapper who has infused rap into different genres of music, ranging from classical to hardcore, hiphop and jazz. Having collaborated with several artists like Jedi, Ige, Dekunle Fuji, Contemporary urban Gospel artist, Provabs is set to launch out on his own and he does that with a brand new single titled Bless Me (Dey Go). The single is a follow up to his previous single Ko Si and Swagger.

Tyler Perry tests box office draw with ‘Colored Girls’

Filmmaker Tyler Perry has had no trouble claiming financial success when audiences flock to his comedies, but this week his box office pull will be tested with the dark drama, ‘For Colored Girls’. Currently America’s most successful African American film director who often attaches his name to movies adapted from his own stage plays, Perry has raked in more than $450 million at box offices, mostly in the United States. But his new movie, ‘For Colored Girls’, opening on Friday, is far removed from the comedic fare for which he first gained fame, including ‘Diary of a Mad Black Woman’ and ‘Madea’s Family Reunion’. ‘For Colored Girls’ tackles issues such as abuse and abortion, and is adapted from poet and playwright Ntozake Shange’s,

‘For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf’. “This was the most intimidating work I have ever taken on,” Perry told reporters in a recent news conference. “I walked away from it many times.” Yet the intertwining stories of nine women facing trials in their everyday lives kept pulling him back, and for his adaptation, Perry has updated the 1970s-era play with a film presentation of modern black women living in New York City who face troubling dilemmas and decisions.

Helping the movie’s box office potential is its long roster of high-profile female actors and performers, including Janet Jackson,

Whoopi Goldberg, Phylicia Rashad, Kerry Washington, Thandie Newton and Macy Gray. But Carl DiOrio, a box office analyst for The Hollywood Reporter, said while pre-release interest was “high”, the actresses alone were not enough to guarantee popularity. “It’s a solid cast but the cast itself won’t necessarily drive the opening. If there is a star in the mix it’s Tyler Perry,” he said. “There is no doubt that he delivers a fan base. (But) because of the turn into much grittier fare that he takes with this film, it remains to be seen how it plays over subsequent weekends.”

The film is projected to make Perry’s usual opening haul of around $20 million based on tracking surveys, said DiOrio, but the long-term box office was unclear as “it’s hard to market this like a typical Tyler Perry movie.” Adding to that are questions over whether Perry can handle translating Shange’s poetic monologues and capture her feminist sensibilities. Early critical reaction has been mixed.

“While Perry’s craft has slowly but surely improved with each successive film, this latest project seems to fall beyond his reach,” said Variety in its review. Shange, who met with Perry several times to discuss his script, has said she is “75 percent” happy with the screen adaptation, after becoming used to various adaptations.

“This is an opportunity for her work to be presented to a much wider audience,” her associate Claude Sloan told Reuters. “She looks at that as a benefit, but she has trepidation as any artist would at being at the hands of another artist.” Perry, who produced, directed and wrote the film told reporters he was satisfied with the end result: “I did the best work I could do at this time in my life.”

Taylor Swift pays tribute to fans for record sales Country-pop singer

Taylor Swift thanked her fans on Wednesday for buying more than one million copies of her new album ‘Speak Now’, making it the biggest first week seller in five years. “I... Can’t... Believe... This... You guys have absolutely lit up my world. Thank you,” Swift said in Twitter message. Official Nielsen SoundScan figures showed that ‘Speak Now’ sold 1,047,000 copies in the United States during the week ended October 31.

It was the biggest sales week for an album since rapper 50 Cent’s 2005 album ‘The Massacre’ sold 1,141,000. The critically well-praised album --the third from the 20 year-old singer-songwriter --also notched up the second-largest sales week of any country album since 1991.

The bumper numbers, helped by a massive promotional push including TV appearances, advance digital releases of some of the new songs and free concerts by Swift, came after years of music industry gloom over declining album sales and piracy. Swift, who won four Grammys earlier this year, has carved out a distinctive niche over the past two years for songs that address adolescent heart-break and the social perils of high-school. Her album ‘Fearless’ was the biggest selling record of 2009.

In ‘Speak Now’, she delivers a forthright commentary on several men who have broken or messed with her heart. The album includes songs widely believed to refer to singer John Mayer, pop star Joe Jonas, rapper Kanye West, ‘Twilight’ actor Taylor Lautner, and music industry critics who slammed her shaky vocal performance at the 2010 Grammy Awards.

Nashville music industry writer David Ross, editor of MusicRow, said Swift’s success flies in the face of conventional wisdom about the dire state of the recording industry. “Unlike many of the top-charting female artists of today, Ms Swift eschews tabloid behaviour and asks fans to focus on her music,” Ross said on Wednesday. “In some universal way, her life contests connect with similar moments that have brushed the fabric of others as well,” Ross added.

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watch video here I wear my hair back & forth ! Willow Pinkett Smith !http://bit.ly/cgX3jQ

Watch out Rihanna, there’s a 9-year-old looking to steal your thunder.

And judging by the barrage of tweets and online buzz that followed after Willow Smith -- the youngest offspring of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith -- leaked her debut single, Rihanna and every other pop starlet should have Willow on their radar..

Titled “Whip My Hair,” the radio-, club- and recess-friendly track sounds like something that Rihanna, Keri Hilson or Ciara might have cooked up for their latest albums.

And don't let her age fool you; the song packs serious punch.

Already a red carpet veteran, the littlest Smith has made a splash with her eye-catching outfits and hair -- her asymmetric bob looks perfect to whip back and forth like a helicopter (as she instructs in the single).

No stranger to entertainment, Willow appears to have her sights set on music after racking up some acting credits. She costarred with her father in 2007's "I Am Legend" and later alongside Mom -- who also dabbled in music when she fronted her own metal band -- in the animated feature “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.”

Big brother Jaden had a big summer with the surprise success of “The Karate Kid,” in which he starred. Like Dad, he also added rapper to his resume after the Justin Bieber-assisted “Never Say Never,” from the film’s soundtrack, became a hit.

Rumors are swirling that Willow will be snatched up by Jay-Z's Roc Nation music label for her debut, and she already has a few famous fans in her corner.



Bieber video director Alfredo Flores tweeted, "WHAT!!??! Willow Smith just KILLED "Whip My Hair"... Rihanna, Keri, Ciara, Ashanti -- please be warned." Solange Knowles, meanwhile, raved, "Willow Smith make me wanna whip some haiiirrr in this house. Ummm kill em girl. Kill em!"

Give a listen to the track below and tell us what you think.


watch video here I wear my hair back & forth ! Willow Pinkett Smith !http://bit.ly/cgX3jQ

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Weekend Trivia:KAITA(Noun/Verb): A man who single handedly hinder the hope of his country for reason best known to him. "Kaita" can be use in place of words like Jeopardy, Hinder, Sabotage, Disrupt, Antagonist, fool etc.
Example

Noun: IBB is a kaita, so is Ota boy. Verb: Don't kaita what we have been building for 11 yrs in one day." I like that girl, please don't be a Kaita" Or In a Foolish Person's Thought: We are winning 1 - 0, let me kaita this game, so that I can get a red card and my opponent can win.



BODO, Nigeria — Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless.


Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.

Not far away, there is still black crude on Gio Creek from an April spill, and just across the state line in Akwa Ibom the fishermen curse their oil-blackened nets, doubly useless in a barren sea buffeted by a spill from an offshore Exxon Mobil pipe in May that lasted for weeks.

The oil spews from rusted and aging pipes, unchecked by what analysts say is ineffectual or collusive regulation, and abetted by deficient maintenance and sabotage. In the face of this black tide is an infrequent protest — soldiers guarding an Exxon Mobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month, according to witnesses — but mostly resentful resignation.

Small children swim in the polluted estuary here, fishermen take their skiffs out ever farther — “There’s nothing we can catch here,” said Pius Doron, perched anxiously over his boat — and market women trudge through oily streams. “There is Shell oil on my body,” said Hannah Baage, emerging from Gio Creek with a machete to cut the cassava stalks balanced on her head.

That the Gulf of Mexico disaster has transfixed a country and president they so admire is a matter of wonder for people here, living among the palm-fringed estuaries in conditions as abject as any in Nigeria, according to the United Nations. Though their region contributes nearly 80 percent of the government’s revenue, they have hardly benefited from it; life expectancy is the lowest in Nigeria.

“President Obama is worried about that one,” Claytus Kanyie, a local official, said of the gulf spill, standing among dead mangroves in the soft oily muck outside Bodo. “Nobody is worried about this one. The aquatic life of our people is dying off. There used be shrimp. There are no longer any shrimp.”

In the distance, smoke rose from what Mr. Kanyie and environmental activists said was an illegal refining business run by local oil thieves and protected, they said, by Nigerian security forces. The swamp was deserted and quiet, without even bird song; before the spills, Mr. Kanyie said, women from Bodo earned a living gathering mollusks and shellfish among the mangroves.

With new estimates that as many as 2.5 million gallons of oil could be spilling into the Gulf of Mexico each day, the Niger Delta has suddenly become a cautionary tale for the United States.

As many as 546 million gallons of oil spilled into the Niger Delta over the last five decades, or nearly 11 million gallons a year, a team of experts for the Nigerian government and international and local environmental groups concluded in a 2006 report. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 dumped an estimated 10.8 million gallons of oil into the waters off Alaska.

So the people here cast a jaundiced, if sympathetic, eye at the spill in the gulf. “We’re sorry for them, but it’s what’s been happening to us for 50 years,” said Emman Mbong, an official in Eket.

The spills here are all the more devastating because this ecologically sensitive wetlands region, the source of 10 percent of American oil imports, has most of Africa’s mangroves and, like the Louisiana coast, has fed the interior for generations with its abundance of fish, shellfish, wildlife and crops.

Local environmentalists have been denouncing the spoliation for years, with little effect. “It’s a dead environment,” said Patrick Naagbanton of the Center for Environment, Human Rights and Development in Port Harcourt, the leading city of the oil region.

Though much here has been destroyed, much remains, with large expanses of vibrant green. Environmentalists say that with intensive restoration, the Niger Delta could again be what it once was.

Nigeria produced more than two million barrels of oil a day last year, and in over 50 years thousands of miles of pipes have been laid through the swamps. Shell, the major player, has operations on thousands of square miles of territory, according to Amnesty International. Aging columns of oil-well valves, known as Christmas trees, pop up improbably in clearings among the palm trees. Oil sometimes shoots out of them, even if the wells are defunct.

“The oil was just shooting up in the air, and it goes up in the sky,” said Amstel M. Gbarakpor, youth president in Kegbara Dere, recalling the spill in April at Gio Creek. “It took them three weeks to secure this well.”

How much of the spillage is due to oil thieves or to sabotage linked to the militant movement active in the Niger Delta, and how much stems from poorly maintained and aging pipes, is a matter of fierce dispute among communities, environmentalists and the oil companies.

Caroline Wittgen, a spokeswoman for Shell in Lagos, said, “We don’t discuss individual spills,” but argued that the “vast majority” were caused by sabotage or theft, with only 2 percent due to equipment failure or human error.

“We do not believe that we behave irresponsibly, but we do operate in a unique environment where security and lawlessness are major problems,” Ms. Wittgen said.

Oil companies also contend that they clean up much of what is lost. A spokesman for Exxon Mobil in Lagos, Nigel A. Cookey-Gam, said that the company’s recent offshore spill leaked only about 8,400 gallons and that “this was effectively cleaned up.”

But many experts and local officials say the companies attribute too much to sabotage, to lessen their culpability. Richard Steiner, a consultant on oil spills, concluded in a 2008 report that historically “the pipeline failure rate in Nigeria is many times that found elsewhere in the world,” and he noted that even Shell acknowledged “almost every year” a spill due to a corroded pipeline.

On the beach at Ibeno, the few fishermen were glum. Far out to sea oil had spilled for weeks from the Exxon Mobil pipe. “We can’t see where to fish; oil is in the sea,” Patrick Okoni said.

“We don’t have an international media to cover us, so nobody cares about it,” said Mr. Mbong, in nearby Eket. “Whatever cry we cry is not heard outside of here.”
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