#MsLMstatus: Alicia Keys To Direct A Movie On Lifetime Network (March 27th-April 2nd)

Alicia Keys is about to add to her resume by getting behind the camera for the Lifetime network. The R&B songstress has signed-on as one of four directors in a new omnibus film about breast cancer. Entitled ‘Project Five,’ it will also feature segments helmed by Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore and ‘Monster’ director Patty Jenkins.

According to the network, the short films will each present a different comedic or dramatic story surrounding breast cancer. All sections will then be mixed together for a final movie that has at least one interconnected story arc. One more director will be announced during filming to make five total segments directed by major female artists and celebrities.

“I’m a big fan of this amazing group of powerful and creative women,” said Nancy Dubuc, president and general manager at Lifetime. “It’s an awesome feeling to be able to give them such a strong platform to do what they do best — entertain and tell great stories — so that we educate viewers about breast cancer through these films of courage, love and hope.”

The film’s script is also a group effort. Writers so far include Stephen Godchaux (‘Dead Like Me’), Jill Gordon (‘My So-Called Life’), Howard Morris, Deirdre O’Connor and Wendy West (‘Dexter’). As filming has yet to take place, there is no set date for the effort to hit TV screens, but many are anticipating a release for October’s breast cancer awareness month in 2012.

-The Boombox

#MsLMstatus: Shakira Helps Rebuild School In Haiti (March 27th-April 2nd)

Shakira’s Pies Descalzos Foundation, along with the Interamerican Development Bank, will help in rebuilding one of Haiti’s historic public schools, The Elie Dubois school, by contributing $800,000 for reconstruction and new supplies. After the school was destroyed in last year’s earthquake, the Haiti government was in desperate need for financial assistance to rebuild the public school. Both Shakira and the IDB believe that reconstructing the school will help transform Haiti’s entire educational system. “I am convinced that the only thing that will change the fate of Latin America and the Caribbean will be governments placing themselves at the center of the investment towards a quality education for all boys and girls, from birth and thereon in,” said Shakira.

#MsLMstatus: Samantha Brea & Boston School Students Demand To Be Taught Sex Education! (March 27th-April 2nd)

#MYOL News: UCONN Wins 14 Straight; Big East Champs & National Champions! (March 27th-April 2nd)

The run the the UConn Huskies have made this post-season is the greatest run in NCAA basketball history. Coming into the 2011 Big East Championships, UConn was ranked 9th in the conference and had to do what was almost impossible to win the Big East Championship which was win 5 games in 5 days. No problem, the Huskies geared up and got it done behind their leader and Big East Championships MVP Kemba Walker! The Huskies carried that momentum into the NCAA Championships and won 4 games in a row putting them in the National Championship game. As I write this blog there is 5:49 in the game, Oriahki just got an And 1 dunk and UConn is up 44-30. To many people it may be a shock that UConn is in the national championship game and even though I did not predict that they would win the Big East Championship as a #9 seed and possibly a National Championship, I'm not surprised. 

The first reason is because of the heart of their leader Kemba Walker who has been the best player in college basketball all year next to Jimmer Fredette. Secondly, is the 3 Massachusetts ballers (Oriahki, Napier and Coombs) along w/ the freshman phenom and next great UConn SF, Jeremy Lamb.

Alex Oriahki

I've see Alex play since he was in 4th grade as he played with my little brother and we are from Lowell, MA. The same passion and intensity that he plays with today on national TV and in this National Championship game is the same since he was a little kid. It was just way more out of control as he use to get heated whenever fouls were called on him (I got video footage). Alex has always been a great kid, humble and he deserves everything he has coming to him in the future. He controlled the paint with blocks, rebounds and garbage buckets tonight. He has done the little things for UConn all season and it has become the most important factor in UConn's victory tonight.

Shabazz Napier

I'va also seen Shabazz since he was young as he use to always been on the sidelines dribbling with his little afro and glasses back in the day while us other guys use to play when I'd go ball in the Bean. Everyone always new that Shabazz would be the next great point from Boston and Mission Hill after Will Blalock (Iowa State, Detroit Pistons, NBDL and currently Greece). This year he has come in as a freshman and allowed Kemba to move to the SG position at times and ran the squad. Big shoutout to Shabazz who is also a humble kid, its well deserved.

Jamaal Coombs

Yeah, I've seen Jamaal play since young too! He also played with my brother on AAU teams. Even though he was not as big of a part in tonight's win he played well during the season and had a couple big games. Next year he will be playing a bigger role on the route to trying to repeat as National Champions! One place that I absolutely know Jamaal has really helped the team is in the locker room as he also a great kid and a comedian.

Congratulations to UConn, especially Kemba and the 3 boys from MA$$ and a big shout out to their families who have been their to support them through years and years of basketball. I've never seen Shabazz, Jamaal or Alex's mothers miss a game and I know they're in Houston wildin' out right now. This past year was extremely difficult as basketball has been my life since I was young but to see these guys win a Division 1 National Championship definitely makes it easier and gives me motivation to make this lane in my new focus, music and entertainment! Congrats again and Alex that "Harlem Shake" had me rolling, Bazz got his own dance and Mal you definitely need to come up with one! But seriously enjoy this time fellas and don't settle, work hard to get better and win it again next year!

MA$$ Ballers and #BABC Alumni!!!

#MYOL News: Division 3 5'10" White Kid Wins NCAA Slam Dunk Contest (March 27th-April 2nd)

#MYOL News: Rocksmith x New York Flagship Store Grand Opening (March 27th-April 2nd)

Rocksmith Tokyo is Japanese street couture blended with New York City swagger. The ultimate Mixtape of classic and futuristic cuts, fabrics, music styles and attitudes. After the birth of the brand in 2002 on the Tokyo club circuit, The Life Entertainment partnered up with NYC based Kilo International to take the goods worldwide. Today you can find Rocksmith at select retailers around the globe. 

First and foremost I want to give a shout out to the big homie Joshua Johnson (@hiphopbook), Director of Marketing for Rocksmith Tokyo in NYC who extended an invite to the event. Unfortunately, I couldn't not make it to NYC on Friday but I'm sure the even was a success. As a fashion line, Rocksmith is the hottest new brand on the Hip Hop scene. With endorsement and promotion from new artists like Wiz Khalifa, Big K.R.I.T., Mac Miller, Cyhi The Prynce and others, Rocksmith is truly the clothing line that is representative of this new era in Hip Hop. Not only are the clothes hot but the marketing and strategic execution of the brand is truly genius. 

Happy Birthday and Rest In Peace Marvin Gaye (April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984)

Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a four-octave vocal range. Starting as a member of the doo-wop group The Moonglows in the late fifties, he ventured into a solo career after the group disbanded in 1960 signing with the Tamla Records subsidiary of Motown Records. After starting off as a session drummer, Gaye ranked as the label's top-selling solo artist during the sixties. Because of solo hits such as "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)", "Ain't That Peculiar", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and his duet singles with singers such as Mary Wells and Tammi Terrell, he was crowned "The Prince of Motown" and "The Prince of Soul". His work in the early and mid-1970s, including the albums What's Going On, Let's Get It On, and I Want You, helped influencing thequiet storm, urban adult contemporary, and slow jam genres. After a self-imposed European exile in the early eighties, Gaye returned on the 1982 Grammy-Award winning hit, "Sexual Healing" and the Midnight Love album before his death. Gaye was shot dead by his father on April 1, 1984. He was posthumously inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. In 2008, the American music magazine Rolling Stone ranked Gaye at number 6 on its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time, and ranked at number 18 on 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

New Book "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” Author & Historian Manning Marable Dies At 60 (March 27th-April 2nd)

Manning Marable, an influential historian whose forthcoming Malcolm X biography could revise perceptions of the slain civil rights leader, died Friday, just days before the book described as his life’s work was to be released. He was 60.

His wife, Leith Mullings, said Marable died from complications of pneumonia at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. She said he had suffered for 24 years from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease, and had undergone a double lung transplant in July.

“I think his legacy is that he was both a scholar and an activist,” she said. “He believed that history could be used to inform the present and the future.”

She said Marable’s latest book, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” will be released Monday.

Two decades in the making, the nearly 600-page biography is described as a re-evaluation of Malcolm X’s life, bringing fresh insight to subjects including his autobiography, which is still assigned in many college courses, to his assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan on Feb. 21, 1965.

The book is based on exhaustive research, including thousands of pages of FBI files and records from the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department. Marable also conducted interviews with the slain civil rights leader’s confidants and security team, as well as witnesses to his assassination.

Blair Kelley, a history professor at North Carolina State University, called Marable’s death a “devastating” loss for black historians.

“I can’t believe he died before the book came out. He really deserved the opportunity to be celebrated for his groundbreaking scholarship,” Kelley wrote on Twitter. “He touched so many of us as an activist, scholar, historian, political scientist, publisher, mentor. Truly a great man.”

Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement that Marable’s “contributions to the struggle for freedom of African Americans will never be forgotten.”

“Dr. Marable brought one of the keenest intellects of our age to the contemporary conversation on race in America,” he said.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, on May 13, 1950, Marable wrote in his book, “Speaking Truth to Power,” that he was born into the era that witnessed the emergence of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as nonviolent movements in the South struggling to break the back of white supremacy.

But he was the child of middle-class black Americans, he wrote, his father a teacher and businessman, his mother an educator and college professor.

He watched from afar as blacks in the South rebelled against segregation and racial inequality, and as a teenager found his emergent political voice writing columns for a neighborhood newspaper.

-ABC News

Hip Hop History: “Everything Must Go” Starring Will Ferrell & Biggie’s Son (March 27th-April 2nd)

Hip Hop History: Rest In Peace DJ Megatron (March 27th-April 2nd)

Hip Hop #MYOL EXCLUSIVE: ENORMOUS -P&V (March 27th-April 2nd)

"This one's for my Beasts all around the world/#Swankin' hard, feeling like you look/my get money bottle to the face n*****/success for my no need to hate n*****"

"If you can't dig it, then it aint for you/pardon the #Swank,

this is what we do/I'm blowing up like you thought I would/I'm blowing up like you though I would"

"Pockets heavy and they deep, so we do it big/ENORMOUS, BIG/ENORMOUS, BIG/ENORMOUS, BIG/to Infinity and Beyond, #Swankin/to Infinity and Beyond, so we do it BIG, ENORMOUS"

"We Winning, Charlie Sheen/Mo' Money, Mo' Mo' Money, 

Haaaahhh/Join The Nation, I Love My Team"

"Shorty do it BIG, gigantor/stepping in them heels she leave the footprint of a dinosaur/Jurassic, #Swank mastered/we movin' mountains while these n***** movin' backwards"

  

Hip Hop CLASSIC MIXTAPE: #Returnof4eva - Big K.R.I.T. (March 27th-April 2nd)

Download "Returnof4eva" Mixtape Here...

#Pointgod Watch: Derrick Rose Another MVP Performance w/ 30 pts and 17 asts (March 27th-April 2nd)

I don't mean to take anything away from the teams that made the Final Four or National Champions in the last 3 years but this is just a reminder that Derrick Rose who's the lead MVP candidate would only be a senior in college in this 2010-11 season. Kemba Walker and Jimmer Fredette are great college players but they can't even compare to Derrick Rose. Not only when it comes to natural talent and ability to play the game but Rose just has that "it" factor that has allowed him to carry the former franchise of Michael Jordan to #1 for the first time since the greatest player of all-time retired. He has also beat out the recent 2-time league MVP Lebron James and dominates games offensively. Once Rose really becomes a seasoned veteran and learns to dominate on the defensive end as well he has the potential to become one of the greatest point guards of all-time. Next year would've been his true rookie year and putting up 30 points, 17 assists as well as getting W's is purely dominate.

NBA: Lamar Odom Reaches 12,000pts For His Career (March 27th-April 2nd)