Hard work has certainly paid off for Beyonce and Jay-Z, who seem to have attracted the limelight with virtual ease this past year. According to Forbes, the super couple earned the most money last year, raking in $122 million combined. In addition to the success of their respective

Soulja Boy released a video yesterday (January 20) giving his fans an update on his upcoming third studio album, The DeAndre Way, and thanking them for supporting him throughout the past three years.

According to Soulja Boy, the project is nearly complete and the first single will be hitting the radio soon. He also has plans to headline his own tour this year.

Kelly Rowland is in the process of switching record labels from Columbia Records/ Music World Entertainment to rumored Universal Motown but that hasn't stopped her and producer Jim Jonsin who have been in the studio heavily working on her third solo album in which the title hasn't yet been released.



"I've been working on her album with songwriter Rico Love, we've done four songs. She's doing a pop-house and R&B sound, like a mixture, it's really cool, some up-tempo stuff, some ballads, all around really nice - more like a Donna Summer sound."

Submitted by Shiva Suntoo -



Jay-Z is going to bat against Boston Red Sox player David Ortiz for naming a club in the Dominican Republic after the rapper’s 40/40 Club.



According to Reuters, Ortiz is illegally operating a Forty/Forty club on the island, in addition to running the domain namewww.fortyforty.net.



Ortiz' club opened in October of this year, while Jay-Z's first 40/40 location in New York opened in June of 2003.

While rapper DMX has been in and out of jail on multiple occasions, up until now he’s failed to realize that a company that was hired to collect his royalties has been holding out on him for years now.



According to Yahoo News, a lawsuit

was filed against New Jersey-based company Rich Kids Entertainment claiming that the company has withheld money from DMX for a decade.

Patricia Elam says the family of Keith “Guru” Elam found out about his death the day after he died, through the media.

"[My son] Justin found out on the Internet and called me. I had to call my dad," Patricia Elam told MTV News in an exclusive interview. "[Keith's 9-year-old son] KC found out riding in the car, hearing it on the radio. That's not right if you care about someone. That's not how you treat them. My brother would never have wanted us to find out that way. Never in a million years. Especially his son. Come on, now."

Lil Wayne’s larger than life persona continues to keep fans intrigued even while the rapper is behind bars. The MC is set to grace the cover of Ozone magazine for its sixth annual “Sex Issue,” even though he’s currently serving his year-long jail sentence on weapons charges.

 Former Bad Boy rap star Black Rob has been released from prison, after seven years of incarceration on a grand larceny charge. 

After gaining the attention of fans earlier this week with a heart felt letter from behind bars, incarcerated New Orleans rapper Lil' Wayne is making headlines in a less favorable way.



Apparently the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is after Lil' Wayne’s fortunes, seeking over $1.13 million dollars in back taxes for the years 2004, 2005 and 2007.



The IRS filed and a lien against his One Family Foundation this past June in Dade County Florida courts, as the lien maintains the same address as his charitable organization.

Also in this month's issue of XXL, Former Bad Boy Records artist, Shyne finally breaks his silence about his ex-boss Diddy and also discusses his 10 years in prison and deportation to Belize. 

XXL reports:

Tons of Soulja Boy Tell 'Em's fans and more than a few of his musical counterparts all came out to celebrate the youngster's birthday in Hollywood, Calif., on Wednesday (July 28). The Atlanta native turned the big 2-0, and came another year closer to the legal drinking age.

The 2010 MTV Video Music Awards  will feature yet another epic battle: Lady Gaga leading the nominations, with 13, followed close behind by Eminem, who has eight nods. And on September 12 at 9:00 p.m ET, the pop diva and the Detroit MC will go head to head for the coveted Video of the Year Moonman.

Black Wall Street associate DJ Skee recently revealed that Game's "Street Runners" Nas collaboration, which send a subtle diss 50 Cent's way, was recorded over four years ago.

According to Skee, the Brake Lights track had been kept under wraps.

We're not sure why Nelly is so dead-set on playing Branson, seeing how the town is an oasis for the dead-end acts of yesteryear. (Then again, Country Grammar did just celebrate its 10-year anniversary.) 

When Rick Ross proclaimed himself Big Meech, a famed criminal who is an actual friend of Young Jeezy, it was only a matter of time before Jeezy decided to take some shots at the larger than life rapper. His first salvo was entitled 'The Real B.M.F.' and contained an actual recorded take from the prison-ridden Meech over a new beat. Unfortunately, it didn't hold a candle to Ross' original, so now Jeezy has jumped on the Teflon Don's beat and thrown some pretty pointed disses towards Ross. 

Yet another con man has been arrested for impersonating Drake's manager, and attempting to rip off unsuspecting promoters looking to book the rap star.



According to a complaint filed by Milwaukee, Wisconsin promotions company, Eagles Entertainment, Joey Turner Jr. (aka Jo Flowroshus) posed as Drake's manager, Cortez Bryant recently, and bilked the promotions company out of a $9,000 deposit for a show scheduled to take place Sept. 1 in Milwaukee.

 Game's issues with his family just went viral. The Compton native, who has been known to have problems with his relatives, got into a heated exchange with his older brother, Big Fase 100, via Twitter. Fase, who held nothing back on the social networking site, lashed out at Game, accusing him of forgetting about his family once he made it big.

MTV has announced that teenage crooner Justin Bieber and genre-bending rapper B.o.B will be joining Kanye West and Drake as performers at the 2010 Video Music Awards.



Both B.o.B and Bieber have enjoyed fairytale years. In addition to releasing a No.1 album and starring in his own Adidas sneaker commercial, Bobby Ray is up for five VMA nominations including Video of the Year and Best Male Video, while Bieber scored a platinum-selling No.1 album and is nominated for Best New Artist.

 Yung Joc has found himself at the center of yet another dog attack controversy, when two of his pit bull terriers attacked a neighbor's dog in Fayette County, Georgia. 

Drake had a busy yesterday. In addition to premiering his new video for the Lil Wayne collaboration 'Miss Me,' Drizzy took to UStream, chatting with his fans, celebrating a million albums sold and a million Twitter followers and revealing an interesting piece of news for Wayne fans all over the world. On November 5, upon Weezy's departure from a reduced one-year prison sentence on weapons charges, the Young Money head honcho will throw a welcome back concert at an undisclosed location. 

Swizz Beatz has been a monster super producer for years now and his recent turn on Kanye West's 'Power' remix just served to cement his reputation as one of the best hype men in hip-hop. Need a little refresher? On his personal blog, music journalist Sean Fennessey prepared a three-disc trip through Swizzy's history behind the boards. 

 Ever since 50 Cent dropped 'Before I Self Destruct' last year and experienced his first true bomb, he's been relatively silent on the rap front. Of course, he's still been acting, pulling publicity stunts and ruthlessly taunting some of the biggest artists in the game, but there haven't been any new verses from the vicious Queens native lately. That all changed over the weekend when 50 heard the new Cee-Lo jam entitled 'F--- You.' 

Kim Kardashian is firing back against Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly's criticism of her Elle photo shoot withJustin Bieber. "I thought the shoot was all in good fun - we had a good time," Kim said on Lopez Tonight of The Graduate-themed pictorial, which features the 29-year-old starlet in romantic scenarios with the 16-year-old "Baby" singer and appears in the magazine's September issue.

Over the past 24 hours, 50 Cent  has been sending loose tweets to his almost 3 million followers, complaining about his grandmother, threatening to fire his manager and attacking gossip and news sites from Necole Bitchie and Gawker to AllHipHop. When the rapper posted a twitpic under the guise 'Yall like my Kim K burger?' -- a non-discrete shout out at the ample-bottomed Kim Kardashian that linked to an offensive (yet hilarious) photo -- the folks over at the social networking site had had enough.

Eminem's 'Recovery' hit the double platinum mark in mid-August, becoming the best-selling rap album of the year, after a successful eight-week run on the charts.



The album's second single 'Love the Way You Lie' featuring Rihanna, settled atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart for five consecutive weeks following its debut and now Em is gearing up to release the album's third single. Shady confirmed to Billboard that the Lil Wayne-featured track 'No Love' is set to debut next.

 If 30's the new 20, as Jay-Z claims in his '30 Something' lyrics, then his new 9-year-old signee, Willow Smith, has yet to be born. Just two days after her first song 'Whip My Hair' appeared online, Will Smith's tween daughter has been confirmed as the newest addition to Jay's Roc Nation lineup.

G-Unit leader 50 Cent has explained his recent vouching for Soulja Boy Tell Em weeks after footage hit the Internet suggesting he may be a cocaine user.

Click here to find out more!



Calling into New York radio station Hot 97 Thursday (September 9) night, 50 blamed celebrity groupie Kat Stacks for setting him up and said the 20 year-old rapper does not do cocaine.

Petey Pablo ran into some legal trouble this past weekend after he was arrested  at North Carolina's Raleigh Durham Airport for carrying a Smith & Wesson pistol in his carry-on luggage. Pablo was arrested with the handgun on Saturday, Sept. 11, nine years after the terrorist attacks on America. But after posting $50,000 bond, Pablo, born Moses Barrett III, claims that the gun wasn't actually his, nor that it was a publicity stunt to promote his new music. Pablo says he was simply protecting a friend from doing something stupid.

While Drake's R&B mixtape, It's Never Enough, might not drop in October, he does plan to put it out before the end of the year.



"I don't know if it'll be next month," he told MTV News on Saturday during his VMA rehearsal. "I'm hoping for Christmastime. I'd really love to get it out for Christmastime. Next month, I'll be on tour. I'm gonna really get to put the finishing touches on it in November and December. Because it's a mixtape, I don't have to wait for the production of it."

He'll miss a little over a month, but if things go according to schedule, Lil Wayne will be out of prison in time to catch most of the NFL season. Last week, the season kicked off with Wayne's home team, Super Bowl champions the New Orleans Saints, beating Weezy's favorite player, Brett Favre, and the Minnesota Vikings.



As Young Money President Mack Maine told MTV News recently, Weezy is elated that Favre didn't hang up his shoulder pads and go into retirement.

 Controversial entertainer Kanye West has finally spoken about President Barack Obama informally labeling him a "jacka**" after his 2009 televised Video Music Awards fiasco last year.

 Rihanna's found a rather comfortable spot heating up the Billboard charts  this week. The Bajan beatuy's latest single 'Only Girl in the World,' tops the Digital Songs charts with 249,000 first week downloads marking her eight single to debut on Digital Songs, and her sixth to debut at No. 1, the most reached in each category by an artists since 2005, the year the chart launched. The song jumped 72 spots on the Billboard's Hot 100 chart, and currently sits at No. 3 on the singles chart after premiering three weeks ago.

Southern rapper Soulja Boy Tell Em has accused celebrity groupie Kat Stacks of framing him and accusing the 20 year-old of being a cocaine addict in a recently released video.

Nicki Minaj made an undeniable splash on the Billboard charts this year, becoming the first female to top the Rap Songs list with her hit 'Your Love' since Missy Elliott  held the same position in November 2002. But that was only the tip of the iceberg for the Young Money raptress breaking records on the Billboard charts.

After inking a deal with Def Jam earlier this year, Shyne has hit up SOHH to reveal his issues with the renowned record label and hint at plans to possibly join Lil Wayne and Baby at Cash Money Records.



Shyne blames Def Jam's lack of interest in promoting and pushing hip-hop acts as a reason for him to seek another label home.

"If I was your best friend, I'd want you around all the time," rapped 50 Cent last week at New Orleans' Blue Nile jazz bar while Chelsea Handler was sitting in the crowd. And after the duo were also caught sitting awfully close to each other at a table, the questions began. Are these two celebs dating?



Handler denied those rumors on Twitter, writing, "Everyone, calm down. I met with Mr. Cent about a potential project. There's nothing to report yet, I'll let you know if there is."

Soulja Boy has more telling to do. Well over a year after admitting that his Atlanta home was robbed, SB revealed shocking details he ommitted in his original story.

While this might have been a bit too heady for our holiday gift guide, Yale University has recently announced that it will publish 'The Anthology of Rap.' The book is billed a 1000-page collegiate text that studies the impact of hip-hop within the African-American community, as well as the current role of rap lyrics as a strand of modern poetry. Yale Publishing mainly focuses on academic texts, so this is yet another indication that hip-hop as gone all the way from the streets to the academy since its birth in the late '70s.

With his debut project, Crash Landing dropping Exclusively on HotNewHipHop on November 15th - 23 year old Los Angeles Rapper Kid Ink is here with HNHH for an exclusive interview.

 

SD: It’s almost showtime, Ink. Are you nervous in any sense?

Lil Wayne may have spent the past eight months doing a bid at Rikers Island, but his personal life chased him to the clink. While serving his bid, Weezy was slapped with paternity papers by a Missouri woman claiming that they conceived an illegitimate child back in 2002, and now, the 8-year-old child's grandmother has obtained a court order that forces the rapper to submit to a paternity test.

Tensions between Rick Ross and Young Jeezy may be heating up once again as the "Boss" has responded to footage showing his Def Jam labelmate taunting him in Miami.

Click here to find out more!



Speaking with radio personality Tim Westwood, Ross responded to Jeezy's video.

Rapper DMX has been arrested yet again.



The troubled rapper, 39, was taken into custody Thursday in Maricopa County in Arizona for probation violation, according to RadarOnline.com.



DMX, whose real name is Earl Simmons, was reportedly cited for use of Oxycontin without a prescription, failing to submit to drug testing, failing to participate in counseling programs, failure to make payments and driving on a suspended license. He was also allegedly in possession of cocaine at the time of his arrest.

Kanye West took over New York City's Bowery Ballroom for a surprise show to commemorate the release of his fifth album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," dazzling audience members including Lyor Cohen and Questlove with reconfigured renditions of his tracks.



But the highlight of the gig wasn't just guest appearances from Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Ryan Leslie, Pusha T and more. 'Ye finished up with a heated nine-minute speech, doting on everything from Taylor Swift and President Bush to his first-week album sales.

Not only is rapper Drake one of the most successful members of Young Money, but he lives by his group's moniker. The 24-year-old emcee is among one of the highest paid hip-hop acts on the concert circuit, with recently released documents revealing that it costs a hefty $155,000 to book the Toronto native for a gig.

Atlanta-based trio Travis Porter spent the past few years on the independent grind, releasing heralded mixtapes that put them on the unsigned map. But after climbing the ladder near the top of the underground food chain, Strap, Quez and Ali are ready to take their career to the next level with the announcement that they have signed to Jive Records to release their official debut.

Business partners fight, but brothers unite. That's the case between DJ Drama and Don Cannon. The two unceremoniously parted ways a few years ago and went their separate ways, signaling the end to the Aphilliates crew that dominated the mixtape game with their jointly hosted "Gangsta Grillz" project.



Drama continued to do his thing with the "GG" brand, helming projects by Gucci Mane, among others.



And Cannon made a name for himself on the underground scene, championing acts such as The Cool Kids.

Nicki Minaj received a "shocking" welcome from talk show host Regis Philbin earlier this week, when the Young Money phenom made an appearance on 'LIVE! With Regis and Kelly' on Monday.

Following Minaj's performance of her hit single 'Right Thru Me,' the Queens, NY, rapper/singer joined Regis and co-host Kelly Ripa to discuss her #2 charting album 'Pink Friday,' and was summarily pawed by the show's 79-year-old host.

The 2011 Grammy nominees were announced at a Los Angeles concert Wednesday night that was broadcast live on CBS. Two-time Grammy winner LL Cool J hosted the hour-long program that included performances from Bruno Mars, B.O.B., Justin Bieber and Train.



This year, artists must have released a project between Sept. 1, 2009, through Sept. 30, 2010, to be eligible for an award. While that leaves out albums from Kanye West, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, many others are in the running. The main event takes place on Feb. 13, 2011 in Los Angeles and will air live on CBS at 8PM ET/PT.

Although he's been passed over by the Grammys for the second consecutive year, Rick Ross is taking his latest snub in stride.



The Miami lyricist was shut out of this year's nominations, despite the success of the certified-gold release Teflon Don and street smashes like "(B.M.F.) Blowin' Money Fast" and "MC Hammer." When MTV News caught up with the MC at Power 106 's Cali Christmas Friday night, the boss maintained he doesn't have any beef with the Recording Academy, and gave props to his peers who received nods.