Following the news earlier this month that the legendary Jackson 5 would possibly be reforming for a tour, Jermaine Jackson has gone on record to confirm that the brothers are set to hit the road in 2008 – with Michael. Check out the report via Yahoo Music:

The Jackson 5 will tour in 2008 with Michael Jackson, according to his brother Jermaine.

Rumours about a possible reunion of the pop legends has been rife for some time, culminating in claims from promoter Leonard Rowe recently that live dates were being planned.

Jermaine Jackson has now given the clearest indication yet that the comeback is on and will take place next year, featuring their most famous member.

“Michael will be involved. We want to tour. We want to touch the lives of everybody who’s bought our records and supported us.

“It will probably start here first, but it will be sometime in 2008. That’s our plan”, he told the BBC in a new interview.

Discussing Michael’s acquittal on child sex offences in 2005, Jermaine said the five-piece are now “stronger than ever” and “owe” the fans who have supported them through thick and thin.

I’m really looking forward to this. Here’s hoping something eventually comes from all the ‘talking about a reunion’.

In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald soulful singer Jill Scott detailed a recent incident where she was called a ‘n*gger’ and how she dealt with it:

A new Mya track has surfaced from her ill-fated (unreleased) 2005 album ‘Control Freak’. The interestingly titled track ‘Shake It (Like A Dog), features rapper Jim Jones. I’m feeling the song a lot; Mya’s ‘in your face delivery’ as well as the production are on-point. However, it’s the song’s lyrics that let it down IMO. There’s something not quite right about her likening herself to a dog?? Still, lyrics aside, it’s a good track (better than much of ‘Liberation’) and it makes me wonder what other hidden gems were shelved when the album was scrapped.

After much uncertainty, Kelly Rowland has embarked on a North American tour in support of her ‘Ms. Kelly’ album. That Grape Juice reader Brice attended the Philadelphia show at the House of Blues; check out their review of the show:

Kelly Killed it…………It was a little short but Kelly worked it out. She did a mix of songs from Work, Stole, Cant Nobody, Comeback, This Is Love, Like This, Bad Habit, and DC3 stuff like Say My Name, Survivor, Bug A Boo, Soldier and Bootylicious. The show was wonderful (and) during the song This Is Love Kelly broke down a little and told us that she was thankful for having a loving crowd like us and that for a while recently she didn’t know if she wanted to sing anymore and that her love for the music was burning again.

It’s good to know that Kelly is pressing on and isn’t letting the negativity force her out of the limelight. Saying that, it’s times like this that make me wonder how genuine talent like Kelly can be so overlooked in favour of some of the mediocre artists that populate the music scene at the moment. Hopefully things look up for Kelly soon….

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The 2007 World Music Awards were held earlier this month in Monte Carlo. R&B stars Ciara and Rihanna performed at the event. Check out their performances below:

In a recent interview with popular UK urban magazine RWD, Amerie spoke candidly on her current label situation/frustrations. Check out the extract below {Thanks Adrian}:

How has your label treated you?
Er, you probably don’t even want to ask me that right now. That’s how I feel abut it. I personally love some of the people that work here in the UK; my publicist Shoshanna and Simon… but I really don’t want to talk about it cos I want to keep it all positive, you feel me?

Well, it seems the album didn’t really perform as well as it should have?
Cos they’re not pushing it like they should.

Why aren’t they?
We want to release Crush, but they feel there’s a lot going on. This is my thing; I’m an artist and this is not rocket science. Take Control was going good, so we knew we had to schedule the video for Gotta Work. But you need money to do a video, and by the time we got it cleared, it was late. They didn’t feel like that, but anybody with half a brain could see it was late. So then Gotta Work was going up, but it peaked and rapidly started coming down, so we knew we needed to do Crush. They said ‘Wait.’ I love the business and I studied the business and I told them we needed to do the other video, because you need to have another single when your other track is peaking. They’re talking about doing it next year, but I’m not doing it next year! So I don’t know what to tell you. I get that everyone’s filled with good intentions, but the road to perdition is filled with good intentions. There should have been no gaps.

I’m kinda surprised (yet pleased) she was so open about the whole thing. I guess, one can only be dragged through the dirt for so long. It’s a shame too as ‘Because I Love It’ is a really solid record – one of my favourites from this year.