The weekend Rap and Hip hop Round-up

Fat Joe goes platinum
Ringtones are yet another avenue for artists from all genres of music to make some money. Bronx born rapper Fat Joe has gone platinum with his Make It Rain track as over one million cell phone users purchased the ring tone.The song from the rappers Me, Myself and I album which was released in 2006 on Terror Squad/Imperial Records peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Top 200.
Eve avoids prison time
Philadelphia born Eve was ordered to wear a new piece of jewelry but it wasn't of the diamond variety which you would expect to see the MC wear. The rapper born Eve Jefferies was ordered to wear a SCRAM alcohol monitoring device around her ankle for 45 days after she crashed her Maserati in Hollywood earlier this year.Similar devices have been worn by movie star Michelle Rodriguez. Eve, whose new album is set to hit shelves this Summer was also ordered to enroll in an alcoholic education program and pay $1400 in fines and penalties
Child Rebel Soldier
There is a chance that three critically acclaimed artists might give Hip-Hop fans an album to remember. Child Rebel Soldier, the trio, which includes super producers Kanye West and Pharell Williams and Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco have already given fans a tester of what they are capable of with the track Us Placers which featured on Kanyes recent mixtape Can't Tell Me Nothing. In a recent interview with American website SOHH.com Lupe said on the group "It's a little project that me, Kanye, and Skateboard P sat down and was like, 'Yo let's do a group.' 'Us Placers,' was the first record we came out with. Now we sitting down deciding if we really going to go hard or not, but we working on some surprises." Kanye West and Lupe both have albums coming out later this year.
50 clears up BET performance
What could be considered one of his worst performances to date was cleared up by the man himself yesterday. 50 Cent who performed Amusement Park at the recent BET awards in Los Angeles was ridiculed for his performance as people thought he had forgotten the words and was actually lip syncing. Turns out that the rapper has a collision 25 feet up in the air with one of the trapeze artists who nearly knocked him off the platform on which he was standing.

"You see, I was hit by the aerialist and I was wibbly-wobbling coming down. Twenty five feet in the air, man, you fall - can't nobody help me with that, you know what I mean? Then by the time you get down, you try and regroup to fight, you got the pyro going off, the music starts, we four bars into the song, you know - I just wasn't concentrating," the rapper said. His third album Curtis is set to hit shelves on September 4th.

Melanie J Cornish