Spice Girls reunite for world tour

Spice GirlsFollowing 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 signs hip hop super producer Sha Money XL for Traxxpad: Portable Studio

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 lyric rap

Queen LatifahQueen 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.