This Week’s Top Stories:

The 4th Quarter

With the fiscal year coming to a close at the major labels, an influx of titles have been announced for 4th Quarter releases. As of now we’re looking at possible albums from Kanye West, Jay-Z, Dr.Dre and Beyonce.

For those with short memories, we’ve seen this 4th Quarter bluff before by the majors, attempting to excite retailers heading into the holidays and give the consumers a false sense of hope that some of those albums they thought would never come out…may actually see the light of day.

I’m not buying. I’m pretty sure Dre has been listed with a 4th Quarter release date every year since 2002. My prediction is Jay will drop Blueprint 3 around Christmas and inadvertently force the Beyonce release, as a Soundscan showdown between Mister and Misses Carter will make Kanye vs. 50 seem like an under card. Kanye will be a first quarter 09 release and if Dre actually drops Detox period, the world has stopped spinning.

Jeezy All About Obama, Not Drama

Young Jeezy is an artist that’s really grown on me since entering the game. I felt that he was carried too much by his producers and anyone would have made hit records with the arsenal of beats he obtained. While I still don’t feel as though he’s saying a whole lot on most of his songs, I can’t deny that he makes some of the catchiest records out and in an industry that’s currently priding itself on not saying much, somehow Jeezy is starting to distance himself from the pack.

I called out the hip-hop community during the democratic primaries for being too passive and Jeezy got the message loud and clear. It’s nearly impossible to get a photograph of the rapper these days not sporting an Obama T-Shirt and while his latest album, The Recession, just debuted at the top of the charts- most of Jeezy’s recent publicity has been focused on get out the vote campaigns and his own first-time voter registration. Now if only we can get the mainstream press to cover things of this nature, maybe we’ll see less videos about Diddy’s alleged ownership of private jets.

For some reason Jeezy hit the headlines this week for calling out Atlanta’s DJ Drama during a live performance (video link). We can only speculate on what’s led to a falling out between the two ATL heavyweights, but hopefully any issues won’t prevent Jeezy from collaborating with DJ Don Cannon, a member of Drama’s Aphilliates Crew.

Kanye and His Love Get Locked Down

Kanye West ruled every discussion in the hip-hop community this week for doing what he does best, acting crazy mentally unstable.

First, he took a page from the Jay-Z playbook and leaked a brand new single during a live performance at MTV’s Video Music Awards.

We came to learn that this track, Love Lockdown, is the first release from his new album 808’s and Heartbreak and has been given a street date of December 16, 2008 (right…).

Kanye leaked the “official version” of Love Lockdown to the masses through his blog on Wednesday, immediately fueling a debate within hip-hop circles as to whether the track was another stroke of brilliance on Kanye’s part or if this new auto-tuned direction for ‘Ye may not be what fans expected for the new project (song link).

I’ll go on record now as saying I’ve been a long-time fan of almost everything Kanye has done and I hate this song. I read somewhere someone had referred to this track as Kanye’s “Hey Ya”, referencing Outkast’s surprise smash from a few years back and felt nauseous. I’m not going to condemn this entire project…yet, but if Ye’s seriously going to do the auto-tune thing with this entire album- hopefully he’s doing it as a martyr to show people how bad they really sound and putting an end to this epidemic.

If the new sound didn’t give us enough to talk about, Kanye made sure to seal the deal at LAX on Thursday when he was caught on tape smashing the camera of a paparazzi accused of taking Kanye’s picture without permission (video link).

The paparazzi really need to reconsider what seems to be an increasing frequency of chasing down rappers for pictures. These guys love getting a reaction like this from a high-powered celebrity for obvious reasons, but they’re opening up a whole new can of worms here. I’ve been around enough rappers to know that in every circle, entourage or crew; there’s at least one guy in there that doesn’t have a whole lot of sense. We’re not talking no sense like a bunch of surfers beating you down to protect their homie Matthew McConaughey, we’re talking cats that really ain’t got no sense. I’ll leave it at that. Stop chasing rappers! They do enough stupid things on their own to keep the tabloids busy, please don’t fuel the fire.