The Game shoots a music video for “Let’s Ride”

-Young Buck sums up The Game’s beef/no beef gimmicks real nice.

-DMX’s ex baby mama gets pissed at X for calling her a rap

-Battle of the “Broken Wings”: Joe Budden vs. Clay Aiken Guess who’s winning?

-The G-Unit promo whoring continues. This time, it’s Lil Jon’s weed carrier Lil Scrappy.

-Primo + Whitney? This might be worth checking for as long Preme remembers to stay away from Tony Yayo samples.

The similarities between Game and 50 is chilling. First 50 gets his ass whooped by Eedris Abdulkareem in Nigeria, then Game and his crew of 15 Black Wall Street weed carriers get run off the streets by 3 Slash TV folks. Also, notice how Game’s gimmicks–popping shit right before his album drops–are xeroxed from 50’s PS techniques?

As he proceeds, to give you what you…someone needs to snatch this guy’s du-rag with the quickness. (Word to Rodney and Dallas Penn.)

Why all the promo frenzy for his new album? YouTube, Diddy TV, MySpace, Burger King, etc. Am I the only in utter confusion here? Do the south really have that much of chokehold on hip-hop that everyone feels like they need to over-promote their album to actually shift units? Or is Diddy trying to recover all the lettuce he lost by giving Jadakiss & co their publishing?

By the way, after several foiled attempts I was finally able to peep the watermarked copy of Press Stop that landed on my desk last week. Simply put, if you’re looking up to anyone’s album to bring New York (?) back, you wound up in the wrong lane. Side A is a bowl of cherries, but Side B will keep your forward button fully employed.

And just for kicks, here’s the alleged ghostwriters’ credits for Press Stop

Track 2. We Gon’ Make It featuring Jack Knight
Written by Diddy & The Game

Track 4. The Future
Written by Diddy & Pharoahe Monch

Track 5. Hold Up featuring Angela Hunte
Written by Diddy & Pharoahe Monch

Track 7. Tell Me featuring Christina Aguilera
Written by Diddy & Royce Da 5′9

Track 8. Wanna Move featuring Big Boi, Ciara and Scar
Written by Diddy & T.I.

Track 19. Partners For Life featuring Jamie Foxx
Written by Diddy & Rick Ross

Video: Diddy in the studio with Nas and others. Nas says he pioneered bling or some shit. Is he back on the weed or what?

With all the talk about labels getting ready to unleash their big guns in the 4th quarter, I decided to embark on a quest to find out what you hip-hop geeks have been googling, yahooing, MSNing, etc. For each search, I combined artist name + album title, and picked the top results based on how often that phrase was querried in September. Keep in mind: these stats only represent the search frequencies (number of times the phrases were querried) for the month of September, not search results (otherwise the numbers would be much higher).

Peep game.

• 2Pac - Pac’s Life: 35 / 2Pac’s Life: 75
• Pharoahe Monch - Desire: 46
• Jim Jones - Hustler’s P.O.M.E.: 81
• Fat Joe - Me, Myself & I: 116
• Lil Scrappy - Bred 2 Die Born 2 Live: 155
• Talib Kweli - Ear Drum: 179
• Mos Def - Tru3 Magic: 298 / True Magic: 184
• AZ - The Format: 302
• Young Jeezy - The Inspiration: Thug Motivation 102 : 432
• Xzibit - Full Circle : 453
• Styles P - Time Is Money : 520
• Birdman & Lil’ Wayne - Like Father Like Son : 541
• Lil’ Flip - I Need Mine : 599
• Snoop Dogg - The Blue Carpet Treatment: 653
• Mike Jones - The American Dream: 698
• Akon - Konvicted: 720
• Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury: 911
• Young Buck - Buck the World: 1048
• Eminem Presents The Re-Up: 1175
• Diddy Press Play: 1976
• Nas - Hip-Hop Is Dead: 2010
• Jay-Z - Kingdom Come: 4359
• The Game - Doctor’s Advocate: 6389

Any surprises?

Awkward Search Terms
And just for kicks, here are some strange search strings that led users to my About Rap site in the last couple of months or so:

• Canadian idiot
• Jibbs
• lil boosie
• wendy williams
• conscience rappers
• Lucky Luciano
• who your set
• Walk it out
• chain hang low
• ?
• unk
• Crips
• coco
• peanut butter jelly
• sing breath England
• big booty hoes
• free ringtones and pictures
• ludicris
• rapper can bus
• 25 hottest bodies

Keep in mind that none of those terms has ever appeared on my site.

[Psst: I don't think I left out anyone but if you think of a prominent fourth quarter release that's not mentioned, feel free to hit up the comment section and I'll add it.]

For a change, an album cover that’s not completely incongruous with the title.

On a related note, check out Rodney “Mr. Prolific” Dugue’s take on “Make it Rain,” the album’s second (?) single. Me, Myself & I is slated to drop on November 14.

(Props to Langston of Think Tank Marketing)

The official cover for the premiere issue of May-Zino’s (that’s Dave Mays & Benzino) new rag, Hip-Hop Weekly. I like the spoof better.

-Time to snatch a du-rag. Rodney “Youngest in Charge” D and Dallas Penn join forces to “liberate us from the slavery of ignorance and mis-education.” Classic.

-This is why I need to relocate to NY: Fader previews Nas’ Hip-Hop Is Dead.

-YN presentsThe Making of “Kingdom Come.”

-Big Boi to design jerseys for Historically Black Colleges. Too bad they don’t make press copies for jerseys.

-I don’t see why this should surprise anyone.

-Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come LP was leaked by “West African thieves” and is being sold for cheap in Brooklyn. (This is coming from Media Takeout, so take it with a huge grain of salt.)

-NYPD ordered to racially profile black folks. (Time for another “What’s Beef?” post)

-New album cover for The Game’s Doctor’s Advocate.

-Lil’ E can’t do an interview without mentioning taking cheap shots at Lil’ Dre…er…The Game.

-As expected, T.I. leads nominations for the first annual BET Hip-Hop Awards. Maybe I should also make it known that I’ve canceled my plans to attend this event, since I mentioned it to a couple of peeps earlier. No, it has nothing to do with not being able to afford a bulletproof vest. More like, ‘you can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the weather.’

-Bun B has had enough of MySpace spammers.

-Alleged tracklist for Snoop Dogg’s Blue Carpet Treatment, due out November 21.

-Allhiphop interviews Nas. I can’t believe this guy just described his reconciliation with Jay as “God’s plan.” I guess it was also God’s plan for them to beef over Carmen in the first place.

-DJ Whookid becomes the first rap act to perform in India. Oh wow.

-Update on Cassidy’s accident.

-It takes a nation of billions to hold Hov back. But, he insists on going to China by all means necessary.

-“50 Cent will never make a dime out of me,” The Game.

-Nas puts a political spin on Hip-Hop Is Dead

-First they tried it mathematics , now they’re using -hip-hop and boxing to communicate with kids. Because straightforward communication is played out.

-According to Kim Osorio, The Source was more like Sodom and Gomorrah, replete with racy pictures and porn videos.

Jimmy “Smack the kufi off Nasir’s head” Jones - Alarm (Jay-Z diss)
I hesitated before posting this for obvious reasons: Capo can’t kick a rhyme to save his life, and should really stick to smack talk and hypeman status. But I guess punks jump up to get beat down.

Download at your own risk.