(July 10th 2007) After a long battle with depression, Randy Hubbard Parker, son of Simone G. Parker was found dead in his Atlanta apartment this past weekend. The Fulton County Atlanta Medical Center lists the cause of death as a suicide. Simone G. Parker, wife of Rap legend KRS-One cites “severe depression” as the motivating cause for Randy’s sudden death. He was 23.

Randy Parker was born at Elmhurst hospital on July 18th 1983 in Queens New York. Randy, a graphic designer and fashion entrepreneur, was seeking employment in the Atlanta area of Georgia . A private memorial service will be held in Florida on July 18, 2007 (Randy’s 24th Birthday). Plans for an August memorial service in New York are underway. KRS-One and Simone Parker sends their sincere appreciation to everyone who has already responded to the tragic news.

Day of Silence

BY DANIEL MCSWAIN
Webcasters are speaking with a powerful voice today, as nearly all U.S.-based Internet radio streams have “gone silent” in a reaction to new royalty rates that threaten to decimate the majority of the webcast industry within weeks.

Webcasters of all stripes, from public broadcasters like KCRW to major webcast-only services like Yahoo! LAUNCHcast and Pandora, in addition to some of the country’s major terrestrial simulcasters (including Greater Media, Saga Communications, and B-101/Philadelphia), are participating in today’s “Day of Silence” to underscore the urgent need for Congressional intervention to keep webcasters alive.

Running up to today’s event, national media outlets have been following webcasters’ struggle against the excessive rates with growing attention and coverage. Today, that coverage, most of it highly sympathetic to webcasters’ efforts, continues to pour out, including in the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, the Associated Press, the BBC, and more.

Many webcasters have blocked access to their streams, while others are broadcasting loops of ambient sound interspersed with PSAs urging their audiences to take action today by contacting their representatives in Washington D.C.

The table below shows examples of how webcasters are presenting today’s silence to their audiences.

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Santa Monica, CA Jun 08, 2007 Multi-faceted Hip-Hop superstar Common is prepping his highly anticipated seventh album, Finding Forever, for a July 31st release on G.O.O.D Music/Geffen Records. The album is the follow up to the four times Grammy nominated, critically heralded and Kanye West produced Be, which spawned hits including “The Corner,” “Go,” and “Testify.”

Finding Forever, finds Kanye again taking the bulk of production work with help from Will.I.Am on the sultry “I Want You,” the late great J. Dilla on “So Far To Go,” featuring a surprise guest appearance by D’Angelo and G.O.O.D Music producer Devo Springsteen on “Misunderstood.”
On Finding Forever, Common, rips the mic like a hungry newcomer. The street single “The Game” produced by Kanye with scratches by the legendary DJ Premiere is a horn drenched, vintage NY rap boom- bap banger from the Chi-town emcee, no less (check video out at www.common-music.com/media). The resounding lead single “The People” finds Common lyrically asserting why and who he creates his music for over regal strings, delectable keys and hard to get vocals by Gil Scott Heron. The video for “The People” will be in shot in by Neon in NYC on Saturday, June 9th.

Since 1992 the Chicago native and Source Unsigned Hype alum has built an unparalleled catalog of progressive Hip-Hop music. From his first release of Can I Borrow a Dollar to his ground-breaking release of Resurrection to his most recent release of Be, the media has poured in the compliments: XXL magazine gave Be a rare XXL rating in there magazine, Rolling Stone said Resurrection was a “confluence of phat beats, smooth flows, and dope rhymes, and Interview magazine noted that on Like Water for Chocolate “with piercing intellect and poignant lyrics, Common may be the most skilled rapper.”

Always a Hip-Hop renaissance man of wide ranging tastes, though music remains Common’s first love, he has expanded his career beyond just beats and rhymes. He has commenced a successful acting career, landing roles in Smokin’ Aces alongside Entourage’s Jeremy Piven and in the upcoming American Gangster with Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington and Wanted with Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. Besides sharpening his acting chops, in early 2007, the always fashionable Common, launched a line of hand made Italian hats called Soji, available exclusively at La Coppola Storta stores in Palermo, Roma, Firenze, Bologna, and New York City.

Common recently graced the covers of Billboard, Uptown, and Ebony magazines and will be performing at Central Park’s Summerstage Benefit Concert alongside Joss Stone on Friday, June 8 @ 6:30PM.

Photo Credit: © columbia records

Photo Credit: © Motown records

NEW YORK, NY, June 1, 2007 – Soul music has been the soundtrack to some of the most extraordinary social, political and cultural shifts of the second half of the 20th Century. Together with the Civil Rights movement, it challenged white hegemony, helped break down segregation and encouraged the fight for racial equality. Soul music is now a billion dollar industry with R&B and hip-hop dominating the music charts. As part of their month-long celebration of Black Music Month in June, VH1 SOUL will premiere the BBC original documentary, “SOUL DEEP: The Story of Black Popular Music.” “SOUL DEEP” is the story of a musical genre that resonates all over the world because it has managed to strike that one chord that all of humanity shares . . . soul.

The six-part foot-stomping series, “SOUL DEEP” will make its U.S. premiere on Monday, June 4 through Friday, June 8 exclusively on VH1 SOUL at 9PM ET/PT, with episodes 5 and 6 premiering back-to-back on Friday, June 8. Through a combination of rare archival footage, over 100 contemporary and never-seen-before interviews, each episode of “SOUL DEEP” explores a different era of the evolution of “soul music” from the creation of R&B, via gospel, southern soul, Motown, funk and hip-hop soul through the words and performances of its greatest artists, producers, musicians and commentators.

The episode lineup for “SOUL DEEP” on VH1 SOUL is as follows (as you will see episodes five and six air back-to-back on Friday, June 8):

EPISODE 1: “The Birth of Soul” – In a never-seen-before BBC interview with Ray Charles, he reveals how his innovations first brought soul to a wider audience. The term “R&B,” which means “rhythm” and “blues,” was coined by Billboard Magazine journalist Jerry Wexler after he was asked by his editor to find an alternative for the label ‘race music.’ After many years touring on the ‘chitlin circuit’ (a network of black clubs and bars) with artists like Ruth Brown, Ray Charles finally created his own style by unifying the sexually-charged music of the dance floor with the spiritually-charged sounds of the church hall. Life was hard and sometimes dangerous for black musicians in a segregated society. This episode premieres on Monday, June 4 at 9PM*.

EPISODE 2: “The Gospel Highway” – Gospel singer Sam Cooke changed pop music forever and set the standard for every artist that followed him. This episode looks at the world of black music before and after that revolutionary moment in 1957 when Cooke went pop. Tragically, Cooke was killed in 1964 at the prime of his career. Gone, but not forgotten, Cooke bequeathed an extraordinary legacy, inspiring a myriad of black artists from Motown’s Berry Gordy to Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin. This episode premieres on Tuesday, June 5 at 9PM*.

EPISODE 3: “The Sound Of Young America” – Motown changed the landscape of music, rewrote the rule book and created the sound of young America, which appealed to whites as much as to blacks. Crossover soul was the vision of Motown’s founder – Svengali figure Berry Gordy. Reflecting the optimism of the early 60’s and the promise of integration, Gordy’s artists were coached, groomed and targeted at the lucrative white audience. This episode premieres on Wednesday, June 6 at 9PM*.

EPISODE 4: “Southern Soul” – In the summer of 1967, Otis Redding performed in front of a 200,000-strong, mainly white, crowd at the Monterey Pop Festival. Five years after walking into Stax Records studio in Memphis as an unknown singer, he was now breaking into the mass white market and seducing its counter culture without diluting his sound. This episode follows both Redding’s rise, as he became the embodiment of 60’s soul music, and that of Stax Records as it crossed the racial divide at a time of segregation. This episode premieres on Thursday, June 7 at 9PM*.

EPISODE 5: “Ain’t It Funky” – The tough, urban syncopated rhythms of funk were the soundtrack to the riots and revolutions of the late 60’s and early 70’s. This episode traces the roots of funk from James Brown’s seminal “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” to the crazy psychedelia of George Clinton. This episode premieres on Friday, June 8 at 8PM*.

EPISODE 6: “From Ghetto To Fabulous” – In a never-seen before interview, Mary J. Blige, the queen of hip-hop soul, speaks candidly about her journey from ghetto to fabulous. Her music represents the fusion of R&B and hip-hop and completes the journey that started 50 years ago with the emergence of the early soul sounds of Ray Charles and ends with black R&B artists’ domination of the charts today. The extraordinary story of the unstoppable rise of urban R&B – with its diamond-dripping darlings of the media and high profile celebrity artists is traced back to the housing projects in Yonkers in the 80’s where Mary J. Blige began. R&B, with its roots in soul music which has been evolving over the last 50 years, has moved from ghetto to ghetto-fabulous to simply fabulous. This episode premieres on Friday, June 8 at 9PM*.