DJ CISCO

Mad Cobra, Danchehall/Reggae Artist, has been shot several times in Spanish Town, Jamaica, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, raised in the parish of St. Mary and relocated back to the place of his birth during his teenage years, he began performing under his stage name, taken from a character in the G.I. Joe comic books, while still in his teens.

Mad Cobra signed a deal with Columbia Records. He had a smash hit "Flex", a single which interpolated elements of The Temptations' "Just My Imagination". It topped the US Rap Singles chart, hitting #7 on the R&B chart, and peaking at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The artist was apparently shot three times at his house in Portmore, just outside Kingston. Cobra is currently in critical condition.

No other information has been given

Madonna adopts a black baby. Brad Pitt, Angela Jolie adopt a black baby, Sandra Bullock adopts a black baby. At face value this looks great but my conspiracy side is skeptical.

My first thought is to thank you for helping pull these kids out of foster care and adoptions services. There are so many African Americans babies and children in the system that need new parents and the fact that there are studies that show African Americans in the system are often overlooked makes these adoptions special. (Click to read article.) After all, you could have gotten a Russian or Chinese kid.

My conspiracy side however thinks, "Oh God. White folks have found a new fashion statement." Forget Jimmy Choo. Everyone has a pair. Mercedes, that's passé. No longer is the Hermès bag de rigueur. "WOW!!! Look at me. I have a black baby. You don't. Nah, Nah Na Nah Nah".

Remember the movie "Get Shorty" where John Travolta plays the character Chili Palmer. He reluctantly agrees to drive an Oldsmobile Silhouette after his rental car service mistakenly delivers it to him instead of the Cadillac he ordered. He convinces Martin Weir (Danny Devito) that it's the best sh!t since sliced bread.

"Martin Weir: "Hey Chili, is this your ride?" Chili Palmer: "Yeh Yeh, I like to sit up high, check everything out. I mean it is the Cadillac of minivans." The next day every actor on the set has an Oldsmobile Silhouette. Every time I see an actor or actress adopt an African American baby I immediately flash to this scene and hear "Yeh Yeh. I like their full lips and shiny brown skin. I mean they are the Cadillac of little babies". Are we looking at the latest fad to hit Hollywood? It's not hard to fathom.

I wonder if they get these kids because it's the only way they can legally own a black person. Remember slavery wasn't about manipulation of the adults only. Mind control starts with the BABY. What better way to own your own plantation than to do it legally by adopting black babies.

But then my rational thought process returns and I think that maybe these kids could be better off. They have new parents that love them. The parents have tons of money which means they can have the best education, health care, shelter. The odds of them going into a poverty stricken lifestyle have all but been eliminated. In theory, the new life means that the adopted children will have children that have a better life as well, and the poverty cycle for them is broken, but I am still skeptical of the adopter's motives.

I remember the TV show Diff'rent Strokes and I remember the premise of this show was a black woman who cleaned a rich white man's house dies. Her two poor orphaned black kids are then adopted by the same rich white man.

There was another show called Webster. The show

An appeals court Tuesday refused to hold Remy Ma's former record label accountable for the 2007 shooting of Makeda Barnes-Joseph, which sent the Grammy Award-nominated rapper to prison. The court noted that a Universal Music Group Inc. affiliate had severed ties with the rapper before the shooting.

The lawsuit is one of several that have tried to take record companies to task for the misdeeds of rappers who cultivate an outlaw image.

Barnes-Joseph's lawyer, Lauren Raysor, argued that the real-life violence reflected the image Remy Ma projected in songs laced with references to guns and that the record companies groomed her tough persona for profit.

"Possessing a violent disposition, advocating violence and hatred and the ability to be vulgar were all a part of (Remy Ma's) job requirements," Raysor wrote in court papers.

Universal noted that the rapper was released from her contract nine months before the shooting and said the incident had nothing to do with her work.

"This event, this assault, was clearly undertaken for personal reasons only," a lawyer for Universal, Ross P. Masler, told a panel of state Supreme Court Appellate Division judges last month.

Pointing to the contract release, the judges upheld a lower court's decision to dismiss Barnes-Joseph's case against Universal and various affiliates. She is still pursuing claims against Remy Ma and the nightclub and seeks roughly $100 million in damages.

Around 12:30, Gucci Mane walked out of the Fulton County jail on Rice and said

"I have made some mistakes in my life that have hurt a lot of people who care about me. I have worked very hard to get past them, but those mistakes have brought me to where I am today, and they will not be repeated. These past six months have been a difficult time, but fortunately I have learned a great deal from my experience. I was able to do a great deal of soul searching; I am coming out with a new attitude towards life."

After pleading guilty to assault in 2005, he was sentenced to serve time for a probation violation -- failing to fulfill his court-ordered community service.

He went to jail just as his latest album, "The State vs. Radric Davis," which features Keyshia Cole, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, Keri Hilson and Usher, was being released.

"I was forced to miss what should have been one of the proudest moments in my life. This is something that I will make sure never happens again. My time in jail was trying, but I grew from it and am now a stronger and better person. I want to continue on a positive track and truly focus on being a role model to my fans and my community."

The rapper said he has launched a new label, 1017 Brick Squad Records in affiliation with Asylum/Warner Brothers Records and that he would be recording with rapper Wacka Flocka Flame in the near future. He told the crowd that his new album, The Appeal, is scheduled for a summer release and that he would be going on a nationwide tour starting in July to promote it.

David Banner has come out and denied reports that he filed a lawsuit against QD3 Entertainment, for songs appearing in its Lil Wayne documentary.

Reportedly the copyright infringement lawsuit stemmed from songs appearing in The Carter without Banner's permission. Banner tells XXLmag.com that the media reports are all completely false.

He says that there has never been any bad blood. "Me and Quincy talked three days ago," he revealed. "Quincy's my homie, Wayne is my homie, whatever's going on between them, I don't know what that is, but they are both very close friends of mine. And that is not true, at all."

Lil Wayne was caught with "unauthorized earphones and a charger" during a search according to corrections officer at Rikers Island.

The MP3 player was discovered in the cell of another inmate in the unit. According to published reports Lil Wayne had hidden the charger and headphones in a snack bag in the garbage can of his cell.

Lil Wayne is being charged with possession of contraband. Prison authorities are now searching for the person responsible for smuggling the device to Lil Wayne

Evander Holyfield has filed a lawsuit in Texas claiming a lawyer who loaned him $560,000 foreclosed on his house seven days before the debt was due.

According to the Courthouse News Service, Holyfield also claims in the lawsuit that attorney Jeffrey Stern bought the property for himself after foreclosing.

The loan was made in January. In February, Holyfield was notified that the lender was accelerating the note and moving to foreclose because the boxer had not paid the homeowner's association assessment, had not maintained the property and had not given Stern proof of insurance.

Holyfield says in the suit that Stern had ignored a requirement in the agreement that the lawyer put in writing any request to create an escrow account to hold funds for taxes and insurance costs.

A sale was held on April 6. Stern bought the property for himself, according to the court document.

Holyfield is trying to stop the transfer of the property title and to have himself declared the lawful owner on grounds that Stern and his partner violated the contract.

Lenny Kravitz and Mos Def are two of the headliners for a benefit concert to support relief efforts for those affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Kravitz, was the first to sign up when asked by Rehage Entertainment president Steven Rehage to participate in Gulf Aid. Others participating include: Jeremy Davenport, Allen Toussaint, Zachary Richard, and The Voice of the Wetlands Allstars.

The benefit concert will take place on Sunday at Mardi Gras World River City, which overlooks the Mississippi River in New Orleans. Tickets cost $50.

Proceeds from the event will benefit fishermen and their families, who depend on the Gulf to make their living.

Lena Horne, who was the first black performer to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio and who went on to achieve international fame as a singer, died on Sunday night at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She was 92.

Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her progressive political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.

Horne was born in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, She attended Washington High School in Atlanta, where her grandmother convinced her to join the NAACP. Horne also attended Girls High School, an all-girls public high school in Brooklyn, which has since become Boys and Girls High School, on Fulton Street; she dropped out without earning a diploma.

Horne was long involved with the Civil Rights movement. In 1941, she sang at Cafe Society and worked with Paul Robeson, a singer who also combated American racial discrimination. During World War II, when entertaining the troops for the USO, she refused to perform "for segregated audiences or to groups in which German POWs were seated in front of African American servicemen", according to her Kennedy Center biography.

She was at an NAACP rally with Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi the weekend before Evers was assassinated. She also met President John F. Kennedy at the White House two days before he was assassinated. She was at the March on Washington and spoke and performed on behalf of the NAACP, SNCC and the National Council of Negro Women. She also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws.
She was a member of the prominent organization, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.

NFL Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor has been arrested for rape in New York, according to a report from WCBS-TV in New York City.

The former New York Giants linebacker was taken into custody early this morning by the Town of Ramapo police after being accused of having sex with a 15 year old girl in the Holidome Hotel in Montebello, north of New York City, WCBS said.

Ramapo Detective Lt. Brad Weidel told the AP that Taylor, 51, hadn't been formally charged. He said charges will be filed when the police investigation is completed.

The Journal News says the alleged victim is a 15-year-old girl who was beaten and then raped. The Journal News also says it has learned Taylor will be charged with third-degree rape, which involves intercourse with a minor.

The station said a new conference is expected later today, where police will give more details.