Georgia rapper Pastor Troy ignited a firestorm of controversy after announcing plans to title his newest album Saddam Hussein. While he’s since reconsidered, opting for the less controversial title Tool Muziq, Troy says the music hasn’t cooled down a bit.

Asked about his decision to change the album title, Pastor Troy says ultimately the shift hasn’t affected much.

“I ain’t disappointed. It’ll work out, the album still has that Saddam element so they still gonna feel it good,” Troy told SOHH. “It wasn’t any disrespect or nothing like that. I don’t want to take over the world, it’s just the mood of the album. Everybody know Saddam don’t play, and I don’t play on the album.”

Troy takes his music seriously, making a conscious effort to identify with listeners and talk about situations common in life’s everyday struggle.

“I try to put myself into everybody’s shoes. That’s how you gotta rap. Everybody’s not rich, everybody’s not straight; You gotta put yourself in everybody’s shoes or you’re speaking to a small select few.”

Tool Muziq hits stores this Tuesday (July 3) and features appearances from Gangsta Boo, Fabo of D4L and Hitman Sammy Sam. Frequent Young Jeezy collaborators Shawty Redd and Drumma Boy contributed tracks to the set, as did Zaytoven, a producer known for his work with Gucci Mane.

“With this one I really just had a lot of control with the producers that I wanted to use. I used the dudes that I really wanted to work with, and that’s a plus,” Pastor Troy said. “With a major, they try to encourage the big names, but it’s not necessarily the names that’s doing it. Like Scott Storch or whoever, I don’t want no tracks from him. I’m just different, it’s a different kind of music that I like. I like that hard stuff and we gonna give it to them.”

Tool Muziq is being released independently through Troy’s label Money and the Power Records and SMC Records, an arrangement that Pastor Troy is extremely pleased with.

“We make about 5 or 6 dollars a CD,” Troy revealed, “With a major, they might want to make you promote an album for a year. As an independent, I can put this album out, sell it and then be ready to drop another album in four months. It’s all about what you want, if you want the fame and glory, television and that stuff, you can have it, but I like my position.”

Pastor Troy’s Tool Muziq hits stores on July 3.

Following a calculated publicity buildup, the original Girl Power group of the 1990s announced Thursday they had agreed to get together for 11 concerts around the world in December and January.

The shows will be their first concerts since breaking up in 2001, and the first with all five of the original group since Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell quit to pursue a solo career in 1998.

“Imagine you got divorced and you’ve got back together with your ex-husband,” Halliwell said, explaining how she felt about the reunion. “She just appreciates the fact we’ve let her back in,” joked Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham.

The group said the shows would be in Los Angeles on Dec. 7; Las Vegas on Dec. 8; New York on Dec. 11; London on Dec. 15; Cologne, Germany, on Dec. 20; Madrid, Spain, on Dec. 23; Beijing on Jan. 10; Hong Kong on Jan. 12; Sydney, Australia, on Jan. 17; Cape Town, South Africa, on Jan. 20; and Buenos Aires, Argentina on Jan. 24.

Halliwell and Beckham joined with Melanie “Sporty Spice” Chisholm, Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton and Melanie “Scary Spice” Brown to pose for photos and announce tour plans.

“We wanted to say thank you to our fans. It just feels very right for us,” Chisholm said. “Obviously it’s nostalgic. But equally, if new fans want to come along, that’s fantastic,” Halliwell said. “I like to think our songs are universal and they are timeless.”

The Spice Girls’ first single, “Wannabe,” was released in 1996 and topped charts in 31 countries. They went on to sell more than 55 million records. But their last album, “Forever,” released in 2000 and without Halliwell, fared poorly.

You could now call them the Spice Mums. Beckham said the tour would be designed to accommodate the band members’ seven children. And Bunton is now pregnant with her first child. “Our priority is going to be our families. We want to have fun,” said Beckham, who has three sons with her husband, soccer star David Beckham. “That’s one of the many reasons for this, for our children to see what we used to do. And I may be the cool one in the family for once.”

EMI said it plans to release the first Spice Girls greatest-hits album in November. The group also plans to make their first official documentary for TV broadcast. “It’s going to be the most honest story that you’ve ever heard,” Halliwell said. “You get to see the dark side of the Spice Girls, the gritty side, the tears.”

According to Contactmusic.com, the group won’t be singing live, instead they will be using state-of-the-art sound technology that will ‘fix’ the girls’ voices. A computer program uses pre-recorded songs as the standard, and then digitally compares them against the “live” versions, correcting any vocal inconsistencies.

Word also has it that the group may be performing at Diana’s memorial concert at Wembley Stadium on July 1st.

Eidos Interactive Ltd. today announced that Traxxpad: Portable Studio has arrived on store shelves throughout North America. Traxxpad: Portable Studio allows musicians to harness the power of drum machines, samplers, sequencers and even a mini keyboard and transform them into a powerful pocket studio on the go.

“Traxxpad is not a game, but a way of life,” says Troy San Jose, studio director for Definitive Studios. “Music is a powerful form of self expression. Traxxpad and the PSP system will take it to the next level.”

Eidos’ newly signed collaboration with hip hop super producer Sha Money XL has opened the door for artistic creativity and generated huge hip-hop celebrity backing for Traxxpad: Portable Studio. From the studio to the PSP (PlayStation Portable) system to the hottest clubs, it’s going down with sick sound banks from D1, DJ Amplive, Insane Clown Posse, Sean T, and Traxxamillion.

Do more then just drop beats with big names. Traxxpad: Portable Studio gives gamers the ability to stylize the PSP system with dope in-game skins from Sha Money XL, 17 Hertz Studios, Beautiful Music Baby, Beretta Music, Cartier Entertainment, Clyde Carson, Commonwealth, Connoisseur 533, Crooks and Castles, D1 Beatz, DJ Amplive, DJ Replay, Fingerbangerz, Get Gone Records, Good Life, Psychopathic Records, Manik Skateboards, Orisue, Rick Lee the Dragon, Riottt, Simms Custom Cycles, Traxxamillion and Urb Magazine.

“Traxxpad: Portable Studio is an amazing music production innovation that is surrounded by great musical minds,” says senior marketing manager for Eidos North America, Kevin Gill. “That’s what makes Traxxpad so remarkable – it’s a powerful, portable music application that enables both gamers and professional musicians to express musical talent anywhere.”

The key to Traxxpad: Portable Studio’s intuitive design is the utilization of a range of high-end, music making components which focus on different characteristics of music construction. The result is a music application accessible enough for first time users to pick up and build an insane, yet in-depth beat, while giving industry pros access to never-before-available tools on a handheld. The end result is an intuitive, portable music studio sketch pad.

Developed by Definitive Studios, Traxxpad: Portable Studio is available in stores now exclusively on the PSP system. Check out www.traxxpad.com for more information about new downloadable content, social networking profiles of aspiring producers, rappers, lyricists and MCs and more.

Queen Latifah has become the latest hip-hop artist to urge her peers to tone down their language, insisting black rappers should show off their vocabulary instead of rhyming expletives. The rapper-turned-actress has called for hip-hop to start policing itself – to make sure the uneducated, thuggish gangster stereotype disappears.

She says, “We should start encouraging people to clean certain songs up because it’s just not necessary. When you get used to hearing the clean version of a song in the clubs or on the radio all the time and then you hear the explicit version, it’s shocking and it’s not very creative.

“If you could clean up this record and make it sound this good, why did you ever need to make it like that in the first place? Sometimes cursing is an excuse not to use more vocabulary.”

This comes on the back of a billboard campaign launched by Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church on Chicago’s South Side has urged people to shun specific hip-hop artists because of their lyrics. The billboards which read “Stop Listening To Trash” target artists including 50 Cent, Ludacris, Fat Joe, Nelly, Lil’ Wayne and Chi-Town favorite, Twista.

Some time ago, Lupe Fiasco mentioned in interviews about a “secret project with another superstar rapper and producer”. With the release of Kanye West’s new “Can’t Tell Me Nothin” mixtape, the secret was revealed in the form of a group consisting of Pharell, Kanye, and Lupe called “CRS”.

Originally thought to be including Common, the threesome introduced their first track on West’s new Can’t Tell Me Nothing mixtape, titled “Us Placers”. More work from them is expected in the future.

While in Los Angeles for the 2007 BET awards, Lupe Fiasco opened up to SOHH about his upcoming album, as well as a possible collaborative album.

Lupe revealed that he is hard at work on his second album, which will follow his Grammy nominated debut Food & Liquor, and that he’s looking forward to touring in support of the project.

“Right now I’m working on my next album, called The Cool. It comes out [on] Halloween,” Lupe told SOHH. “I’m excited to get back on the road. We had a real good road experience the past year and a half. I can’t wait to get back out there.”

In addition to his own album, Lupe also confirmed that fans of “Us Placers,” a recent track included on Kanye West’s Can’t Tell Me Nothing mixtape, which features West and Pharrell Williams plus a Thom Yorke sample, may have more music from the trio to look forward to.”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.”

Whether or not the trio, who have been referred to in media reports as Child Rebel Soldier, will record a full album is still up in the air.

“It depends what it sounds like,” Lupe said. “We gotta make some more records. Everybody is mad busy, Kanye is doing his record, Pharrell’s in the studio, I’m working on my record, so we gonna wait til everything settles down some.”

Chat, news, views about Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West and Pharrell Williams collectively or individually. Follow the link to have your say on CRS!

Comment news, views on Amy Winehouse. Have your say and discuss! Follow the link to Amy Winehouse forum.

Amy Winehouse shocked a reporter at U.S. rock magazine Spin by self-harming herself with a broken mirror during a recent interview.

The Rehab star etched “I Love Blake” – a reference to new husband Blake Fielder-Civil – into her stomach with a shard of broken mirror left over from a photoshoot, an episode reminiscent of Richey James of the Manic Street Preachers cutting “4 REAL” into his arm during an interview with the now defunct music paper NME’s Steve Lamaq back in 1991.

The outspoken singer told the magazine her rough-and-ready attitude to life and success allows her to be as dangerous and controversial as she wants to be.

Winehouse, who recently confessed she was considering quitting the music industry to become a full-time wife and mum, explained, “I’m not in this to be a f**king role model.

“I don’t care about any of this and I don’t have much of an opinion of myself. I don’t think people care about me. I made an album I’m very proud of and that’s it.”

Meanwhile, the odd, controversial magazine interview almost became a report on a bar brawl when Winehouse’s partner threatened a bystander who joked about his resemblence to actor Ethan Embry.

The interviewer writes, “Fielder-Civil whispers into my ear cheerily, ‘Tell the guy who looks like he has leukaemia I’m going to slit his throat.’”

Comment news, vews, comment on Amy Winehouse. Have your say and discuss! Follow the link to Amy Winehouse forum.

Justin Timberlake has disappointed fans in Sweden by verbally attacking locals and spitting on them, according to reports.

The star and his entourage, including girlfriend Jessica Biel, visited the Hard Rock Cafe in Gothenberg, and was called “f**k face” by a teenage fan after he refused to sign autographs.

Timberlake is alleged to have retorted, “Are you calling me f**k face? Go f**k yourself.”

The youngster and his friends then followed the star back to the Elite Plaza hotel in the city, where the SexyBack star continued a bizarre tirade of abuse.

An onlooker tells the Daily Mirror, “First a load of ping-pong balls came raining down (from his balcony). Then came a plastic bottle of water. After that, there was strawberries and fruit. And them came the phlegm!”

Fan Nino Antonio El-Khoury was photographed by paparazzi with spit on the back of his clothing, which he claims was expelled from the mouth of Timberlake: “Justin spat on me”.

Local newspaper Aftonbladet also claims the singer was not on top form on his visit to the country, writing, “Justin was in a foul mood. Jessica wanted to take a picture of him and he was angry. He snapped, `Do you want me to juggle for you as well?’”

Before the Beatles were The Beatles, four lads named John, Paul, George and Pete (yes, even before Ringo) were the house band at a hot, sweaty basement coffeehouse called the Casbah Club on a residential street in Liverpool.

The first act to play the Casbah Club in 1959 was the Quarrymen, with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ken Brown.

“Hi, everyone, welcome to the Casbah, we are the Quarrymen, and we are going to play you some rock ‘n’ roll,” said Lennon.

The last act to play on closing night in 1962 was the Beatles. In between, with Pete Best on drums, the Beatles played the Casbah Club more than 90 times. This small club in the basement, where no beer was sold — only coffee and Cokes — would be packed with 1,300 soaking-wet, perspiring fans literally crammed into restrooms, hanging from the rafters and spilling into the big backyard to hear the Beatles.

When the Casbah closed, the Beatles were only weeks from signing a record contract that would launch worldwide hysteria known as Beatlemania. Best, whose family owned the Casbah Club and lived upstairs, would not be along for the ride. He was asked to leave the Beatles the same month the Casbah closed.

Friday (June 29th) night, the Pete Best Band will re-create the early, hard-rocking sound of the pre-mania Beatles at Dan’s Electro Guitar Bar, 1031 E. 24th St., Houston, Texas.

Doors open at 7 p.m. Showtime is 9:30 p.m., and you can hang out until 2 a.m. Tickets are $25 at the door.

“I’ve had this band for the past six years. They’re guys from Liverpool, and we’re going to play very much the music I was associated with in the early ’60s — stuff I played with the Beatles at the Casbah and in Hamburg and during our auditions with Polydor and Decca,” Best said via phone from Liverpool, where he runs the Casbah as a tourist attraction now. The building was recently named a national historic monument.

“We are not a Beatles cover band, but we do bring back the energetic savage band the Beatles were when they played the Casbah. We want you to experience what a night at the Casbah was like in 1961, when the music was so great, and great memories were being formed. We do a wide range of songs that we did then, but there are some Beatles songs in the set, songs I played, like P.S. I Love You and I Saw Her Standing There. We do Twist and Shout, too. I must warn the audience to come prepared to sing along with us, too.”

After the show, Best will mingle with the audience, autograph merchandise for sale at the show and answer every question you can fire his way about the early days of the Beatles.