Jay Z

Pearl Jam, Skrillex and D'Angelo are among the performers scheduled to take the stage at the Made In America music festival Jay-Z is curating in Philadelphia in September. Jay-Z will also perform, as will Janelle Monae, Passion Pit, Odd Future, Santigold, Afrojack, Calvin Harris and Rick Ross and his Maybach Music group. The festival will feature 28 acts over Labor Day weekend. Tickets for the two-day festival are to go on sale Wednesday. Jay-Z announced plans for the event last week atop the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Proceeds will benefit the United Way of...

It's a family affair at the upcoming BET Awards: Kanye West has the most nominations with seven, while his mentor, Jay-Z, earned five, and Jay-Z's wife, Beyoncé, received six. Jay-Z and West collaborated last year on the album "Watch the Throne. " Their songs — "In Paris" and "Otis" — are up for video of the year. Beyoncé has two nominations in that category with "Love on Top" and "Countdown. " The fifth nominee is Usher's "Climax. " The nominations were announced Tuesday in New York.

JAY-Z & KANYE WEST At: TD Garden, last night There were rumors of a deejay slated to serve as an opening act; none appeared. The headliners didn't show up until 25 minutes after their scheduled start time. And so, almost half an hour late and with no warm-up, Jay-Z and Kanye West took the stage at the sold-out TD Garden last night. They fired the crowd up instantly. That's because, with all of the publicity given to Jay-Z for being an entrepreneur of cool and for being half of pop music's reigning power couple and to West for being a loose cannon with a habit of shoving his foot in...

Pearl Jam, Skrillex and D'Angelo are among the performers scheduled to take the stage at the Made In America music festival Jay-Z is curating in Philadelphia in September. Jay-Z will also perform, as will Janelle Monae, Passion Pit, Odd Future, Santigold, Afrojack, Calvin Harris and Rick Ross and his Maybach Music group. The festival will feature 28 acts over Labor Day weekend. Tickets for the two-day festival are to go on sale Wednesday. Jay-Z announced plans for the event last week atop the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Proceeds will benefit the United Way of...

If Jay-Z hadn't "retired" in 2003, his new album, "Kingdom Come," in stores today, would sound like a perfectly serviceable follow-up to his acclaimed "The Black Album. " But because he has made such a multimedia spectacle of his "comeback," it's hard not to be a little disappointed in the mere mortal nature of "Kingdom Come. " Fascinating but uneven, the 14-track, hourlong effort reveals that Shawn Carter has been contemplating more than quarterly reports as president of Def Jam. He's been thinking about himself and his skills, of course -- he is a rapper -- but also about love, fame,...

Jay-Z may have 99 problems, but getting to the venue isn't one. The rapper brought the beat to South By Southwest, but not before he needed a police escort to make it from the airport to the show, which started 40 minutes late. Jay-Z played a hits-filled set for a standing room-only crowd after flying in late Monday afternoon. He was on the town with his wife, Beyonce, in New York City the night before to see fellow SXSW participant The-Dream, perhaps explaining his late arrival in Texas.

When Jay-Z appeared, without introduction, near the end of Kanye West's set at last week's Monster Jam, the place went berserk. And the sold-out crowd was already pretty frantic, thanks to West. But something about Shawn Carter brings out the frenzy in hip-hop fans, who greeted the sneak peek at his new album, "American Gangster," with unwavering loyalty. That allegiance is amply rewarded on the musically wealthy but only lyrically rich "Gangster," out today. The disc takes its inspiration from, but is not an official soundtrack for, the Denzel...

MIAMI -- The MTV Video Music Awards are all about scene-stealing stunts, so it was fitting that the network announced yesterday that stars will approach this year's red carpet on luxury yachts. Jay-Z's jarring video for "99 Problems," which depicts his own murder as a metaphor for his retirement from rapping, had a leading six nominations, the cable network said. Beyonce, No Doubt, and OutKast had five nods each. Hip-hop stars Missy Elliott and Usher braved the heat and humidity to announce the nominations at the luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel.

A dream team by virtue of their legendary stature, Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige brought two very different sides of the hip-hop/soul coin to the Garden last night. She was transparent, emotional, and inward-looking - a victim-turned-survivor eager to empower her peers. He was cool and collected, the hustler-turned-mogul, personable but imperious. Performing together, they made a thrilling whole for a few too-brief moments during the monumental "Heart of the City" tour, which was triumphant not just for its marquee names but for nearly 2 1/2 hours of top-flight music.

Jay-Z is in a Philadelphia State of Mind: The rapper announced a two-day music festival Monday in the City of Brotherly Love. The "Budweiser Made in America" festival will feature nearly 30 acts "that embody the American spirit" across three stages at Fairmount Park on Sept 1. and Sept. 2, which is Labor Day weekend. "It's such an iconic place, so it felt like a natural fit," Jay-Z said of Philadelphia in an interview after the news conference. "You'll get to come out and have two great days, listen to some amazing music (and)

Jay-Z is in a Philadelphia State of Mind: The rapper announced a two-day music festival Monday in the City of Brotherly Love. The "Budweiser Made in America" festival will feature nearly 30 acts "that embody the American spirit" across three stages at Fairmount Park on Sept 1. and Sept. 2, which is Labor Day weekend. "It's such an iconic place, so it felt like a natural fit," Jay-Z said of Philadelphia in an interview after the news conference. "You'll get to come out and have two great days, listen to some amazing music (and)

Entertainer Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, right, shook hands with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on May 14. The rapper announced plans for a two-day music festival at Fairmount Park, featuring nearly 30 acts "that embody the American spirit. " AP Photo/Matt Rourke Hip-hop veteran Jay-Z will headline and curate the Budweiser Made in America festival in Philadelphia on Sept. 1 and 2, Rolling Stone reports . The rap star will perform during the event, alongside roughly 30 other acts representing a range of musical...

While he waits for his band's summer tour to start, Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton isn't sitting on his hands. As usual, Hamilton had a speaking role in the Urban Improv fund-raiser Banned in Boston, and the next night cochaired the YouthCare Spring Gala at the Four Seasons. The event raised $1.1 million for the Mass General Hospital for Children program for children and young adults with Asperger's syndrome. Also at the party were Lyle Howland and Jack Manning, Kim and Eric Karofsky, Patti Kraft, Curt and Shonda Schilling, and Tim Sweeney.

In "The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness" Kevin Young zigzags his way through the cultural firmament, connecting dots to form curious constellations: De La Soul to Eddie Murphy to Johnny Cash; Langston Hughes to John Coltrane to Jimi Hendrix; Notorious B.I.G. to Charlie Parker; "Rapper's Delight" to "Another One Bites the Dust. " Young, the author of seven collections of poetry, takes the title of his latest work, a collection of critical essays, from producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton's mash-up between Jay-Z's 2003 "The Black Album" and the...

Jay-Z may have 99 problems, but getting to the venue isn't one. The rapper brought the beat to South By Southwest, but not before he needed a police escort to make it from the airport to the show, which started 40 minutes late. Jay-Z played a hits-filled set for a standing room-only crowd after flying in late Monday afternoon. He was on the town with his wife, Beyonce, in New York City the night before to see fellow SXSW participant The-Dream, perhaps explaining his late arrival in Texas.

Just before Veronica Alexandra fell asleep on Saturday night, she saw on TV that pop superstar Beyoncé had given birth to a baby girl. "I was like, I wonder what the name is," she told us. When Alexandra (inset) woke up on Sunday, she found out that Beyoncé and Jay-Z had named their daughter Blue Ivy, which also happens to be the name of Alexandra's Boston events-planning company. Alexandra's first thought? "When I woke up, I was like, you know what? I'm doing Beyoncé's [daughter's]

An album in which Kanye West and Jay-Z come together, call themselves "The Throne," and tell everybody to watch them? Hyperbole is practically its birthmark. Is Jay-Z the greatest rapper of all time? Is Kanye West the best rapper right now? Are they the two most influential rappers of the past 10 years? Um… "Watch the Throne" came with a release strategy that was remarkable in itself. It dropped yesterday digitally on iTunes, four days before the physical albums will go on sale, initially in a Best Buy exclusive.

If you could take all the hype around “The Blueprint 3’’ - Jay-Z’s predetermined classic that is supposed to either end or stoke the civil war between the young rappers stretching (or soiling) the idea of hip-hop and the purists who want to re-establish what hip-hop should sound like - and distill it into four minutes, you’d get “A Star Is Born.’’ This is what the album’s really about. On its face, the song is a roll call over an innocuous Kanye West beat: Ma$e.

Through a rap verse, Jay-Z has confirmed the birth of "the most beautiful" girl in the world — his newborn daughter. The song "Glory" made its debut on his social website Life and Times on Monday — two days after he and wife Beyonce gave birth to daughter Blue Ivy. An official statement from the couple came Monday afternoon, as both said: "We are happy to announce the arrival of our beautiful daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. " The couple said the baby was delivered naturally and weighed seven pounds.

Young Jeezy, ‘Thug Motivation 103: Hustlerz Ambition' HIP-HOP Motivation doesn't have to be put into words, which isn't an entirely bad thing for Young Jeezy. The Atlanta rapper is hardly a stellar lyricist - not a Lil Wayne dazzling with wordplay or a Scarface channeling unfiltered emotions - but with his gruff voice and delivery that bulldozes any beat it comes across, he's arguably the most effective of any Southern artist at getting his point across. Too good, perhaps; his long-delayed fourth album (the third entry in his "Thug...