Attention!

Ciara is back and poised to smash with her first album in two years, ‘One Woman Army’.

Our friends over at MTV caught up with the ‘Ride’ singer at the premiere of her new movie ‘That’s My Boy’ yesterday, where she talked about the LP, its lead single ‘Sweat’, and the hitmakers she’s enlisted to craft her chart comeback.

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It was set to be her biggest US appearance this summer.

However,following remarks made by Hip Hop annoyance Peter Rosenberg, Nicki Minaj has refused to perform at SummerJam 2012, hours before she was due to hit the stage.

Details below…

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The current season of BET’s The Game has brought with it many a change, from cast additions to cast omissions, it certainly has been an eventful year for the hit show.

Newest recruit Brandy revealed in a new interview with our friends over at Kempire Radio that the fun is set to continue (for her), after producers asked her to reprise her role as Chardonnay in the show’s next season. Regular viewers would have seen Chardonnay’s tumultuous relationship with Jason Pitts (played by Coby Bell) serve as the primary storyline in the show’s current fifth season.

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With business picking up for Ms. Norwood on the music end, it’s great to see her really wetting her feet on the acting tip.

Are you excited to see Brandy return to The Game?

Your thoughts?

The year 2005 was a busy one to say the least. Indeed, Amerie was ruling the airwaves with her ‘1 Thing’, the Pussycat Dolls released the now-classic ‘Don’t Cha’ and Bow Wow served up one of the biggest hit of his career in ‘Let Me Hold You’

Still, in retrospect, that year’s biggest “contribution” was the launch of TGJ favorite, Rihanna! Alas, this week’s From The Vault is dedicated to the model’s debut single, ‘Pon De Replay’.

The infectious Dancehall/R&B/Pop fusion was produced by Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers and served as Rih’s lucky first strike. For, the cut reached the second position on both the American and British charts and peaked inside the Top 20 of every country it was released in.

‘Replay’s club-themed visual was a music channel regular and arguably showcases the upper echelon of Ms. Fenty’s limited showmanship (see: “come run run run run”).

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Dismissed as a one-hit wonder, few at that time would have deemed the stunner as one who’d go on to be one the biggest artists on the planet. A fact which re-affirms that, with the right backing, any-and-everything is possible. For, as much as we can appreciate the track, it doesn’t scream “Superstar Alert”, nor does the “singer” in the video.

After experimenting with her image and sound a plenty with varying results (see: rock chick, femme fatale, dance queen…), Team Rih have finally realized that what makes their “product” so palatable is its Island-bravado. Hence, there’s no coincidence that theres been a reversion to cooking up songs in the vein of ‘Replay’, and in doing so they’ve scored some of their biggest hits (see: ‘Rude Boy’, ‘What’s My Name’).

For all her vocal crimes, Rihanna remains a compelling concept as both a “brand” and “musical movement”. So much so that even when the going is tough (see: ‘Rated R’), all that was needed to remedy the predicament, was a referral to this her “genesis” for the map forward.  As the saying goeth, “if it ain’t broke, why fix it”? Of course, her voice is an entirely different story.

Randomness: Are we the only one side-eyeing the fact that this specific track has been relegated to a mere video interlude while on tour? It would have been ‘interesting’ to witness its evolution through the years. You know, kinda like Beyonce and ‘Crazy In Love’.

Your thoughts?

The chart relevancy of Coldplay and Rihanna‘s duet ‘Princess of China’ may have sailed to a land long and far way, yet that hasn’t stopped the talented quad (and Rih) from finally releasing the track’s official video.

Check out the matrix-meets-kung fu clip after the jump…

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Get into these snap of Rita Ora, meeting a trio of fans alongside reality TV star Rob Kardashian.

Taken in London earlier today, the shot sees Ora pose it up with supporters in what is reported to be Westfields Shopping Mall-located west of the city.

Fans can catch Rita in action at this year’s Wireless Fest in July, and on X Factor 2012 when it hits British screens this August.

Your thoughts?

As well as serving up that fierce realness in the latest issue of Vegas magazine, Kelly Rowland also opened up to the publication about her hotly anticipated follow-up to last year’s ‘Here I Am’.

Details after the jump…

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Peep X Factor 2010 star Rebecca Ferguson, performing live on ‘The Today Show’ this morning.

In support of her debut LP ‘Heaven’, the Liverpudlian graced the show with a performance of the project’s lead cut ‘Nothing’s Real But Love‘.

Watch below…

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Fans of hit show Basketball Wives were in for a shock this season when the ‘spat between long time friends, Evelyn Lozada and Jennifer Williams, turned into a horrific feud.So horrific, Evelyn’s treatment of Williams’ is one of the reasons used to defend efforts to boycott the series.

However, it what spells good news for Lozada’s publicists but bad news for her producers, she has apologized to Williams by way of Vibe Magazine.

Her heartfelt message below:

On whether she felt she could have handled her beef with Jennifer a lot differently
I think so. A lot was happening during that time. I’m one of those people, I said some things and I was just like, that was not cool. I live by loyalty and I feel like, at that point, I broke the friend code.

I should have never broken that code and I should have never stooped down to that level. Like, if she wants to do interviews and slick comments, it is what it is. I don’t hate her. People just get caught up in this industry; you do interviews and say certain things.

I truly don’t wish her anything negative, we’ve gone through a lot together as friends from moving out, men drama, all types of stuff. It’s just tough having to relive it then talk about it. You never have that time for healing. But now that the show is done and things are calming down, I’m not angry anymore about it and I don’t hate her at all. I don’t really hate anybody, I was just upset how things were handled.

On whether she misses Jennifer :
I miss her. We were friends for 10 years. I was in her wedding, so you know yeah, and your thinking you guys are going to do this show together, your BFF, and then your kind of like what happened?

And we are mutual friends with a lot of people, so everything else became weird energy. It was tough.

Peep the pair in action above…

Your thoughts?

As many a Madonna fan and Little Monster know, the Queen of Pop is set to use her ‘MDNA’ tour set to tribute pop diva Lady Gaga by performing a mashed-up version of the latter’s ‘Born This Way’ with her own ‘Express Yourself’.  Immediately coming under fire after its early 2011 release for sounding nearly identical to Madge’s 1989 hit, Gaga dismissed the claim of copying while her pop predecessor labeled it ‘reductive’.

Now, as audio has surfaced of Madonna’s intent to fuse the twin pop tunes on her latest live trek, we who thought the flame had cooled see it may be readying to reach higher heights.  Is this another case of Kim Vs. Nicki?

Take a listen below and you tell us:

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Big-budget videos, a Superbowl Half-time performance, and a giant snowball of hype. All of the aforementioned preceded the release of Madonna‘s latest album ‘MDNA’. And yet the LP has gone on to become one of the star’s worst performing yet.

Indeed, after shifting an impressive 359,000 copies in its first week on sale in the US (a figure boosted by a tour ticket/album combo), the following seven days would see the set make history for all the wrong reasons – after sales dropped a whopping 86%. Since then, the ‘Give Me All Your Luvin” led collection hasn’t fared any better – disappearing from the upper, middle, and bottom echelons of the charts in many a country.

Naturally, then, the blame game begins and it seems first up on the podium is the album’s primary producer William Orbit. The 55 year old Pop maestro, who couldn’t stop professing the greatness of the LP before its arrival, has been rather vocal about why he thinks the album flopped into the fiery pits.

Check out his “interesting” rationale after the jump…

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For one reason or another, music videos- or at least their impact on Pop culture- just aren’t the same.

Perhaps down to the scarcity of cash in the industry, it’s fair to say that the music video has felt the full force of the business’ switch from shifting albums to selling singles.

Economically it makes sense with most of today’s act hardly bringing in enough to warrant budgets the likes of Michael Janet were afforded, but can you really put a price on creativity?

Are lack of finances to blame for videos which- quite frankly- are as generic as the singles they are in aid of?

How many of these will stand the test of time?

Peep a few memorable videos and weigh in after the jump…

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