The 19th annual ASCAP awards were held Monday night at the Beverly Hilton in LA, a star-studded affair hosted by Ciara. LL Cool J received a Golden Note Award, and Bill Withers, author of hits like “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lean on Me,” took home the Heritage Award.

Accepting his Golden Note, LL free-styled, calling on members of the “fraternity” of music to resist the siren song of celebrity meaninglessness. “Don’t forget to be an artist. Don’t forget to say what you want to say and not what they want you to say.” He called on the industry to “create instead of compete” to “leave a legacy of music for the next generation” and a “new renaissance of people.”

And what better venue for the message than a music award show– a place where hierarchy is as tangible as hair extensions and makeup, where you’re either one of the somebodies pressed by paparazzi or… well, you ain’t.

Withers broke comical for his acceptance: “I would say something profound but LL already said it all.” Thunderous laughter and applause.

The event was spectacular but also in parts informal. Some came in jeans. Others, like Destiny’s Child singer Michelle Williams, came in full evening attire. Rapper/Producer Missy Elliot kept it unique with a bright orange and sky-blue silky headrap and shirt that matched. Other celeb attendees included: Jagged Edge, Jermaine Dupri, who won Songwriter of the Year, Mary Mary, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Webbie, David Banner, Tank, Chingy, Lil’ Mo, New Edition, and Xcape.

Reported by staff whizkid Vanessa Mizell.

Images: (1) LL; (2) and (3) Destiny’s Child’s Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams; (4) Terry Lewis; (5) Jagged Edge.

Rappers need beef for a healthy rap career. They beef with just about anyone. Most are publicity stunts and others are ridiculous, like rappers Ludacris, 50 Cent, Ice Cube, and others beefing with Oprah claiming she doesn’t support the hip hop community and only caters to her large white audience.

Yet when Bill O’ Reily forced Pepsi to drop Ludacris as a spokesperson, all he got was a few one-line disses on a few tracks.

But is it Harpo who’s catering to a white audience, or these gangsta artists who are putting on the show and wouldn’t dare do anything upset The (White) Man who signs their checks?

Here’s an article titled We Still Wear The Mask By Dr.William Jelani Cobb that examines just that, offering great analysis on why black rappers perpetuate misogyny and violence towards their own people and community.

Who gave U.S. Marine Corporal Joshua Belile permission to (1) compose music (2) play the guitar (3) sing in public (4) do any of those things in front of a digital camera and (5) even sort of resemble mega-cool Pixie’s dude Frank Black? Ugh. Yet another case of bad decision-making on the part of the officer class in Iraq!

So now this guy’s lousy folk song “Hadji Girl”– a crude thought-dream of cultural incomprehension– is flying around the internet all over the world. The image of Belile above was pulled from a Russian website. I can’t read any of the words around the photo but I don’t think any of it is good.

The only course of action is a court-martialing and then a showering of the offender with nonstop high-volume recordings of his own bunk singing and strumming– a no doubt cruel and unusual punishment but as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld would justify it: “Hey, this isn’t some nice guy we’re talking about here.”

June has been a bad month for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as well as for the people who use them to broadcast their debauchery or to stealthily stalk the innocent. First MySpace was sued by a 14-year-old who says she was assaulted by a guy she met there. Then Weight Watchers announced it was pulling its ads on MySpace because it objects to appearing on pages belonging to porn stars. (Porn stars love MySpace.) Then BusinessWeek ran a worried Q & A with new MySpace security czar Hemanshu Niga. And now Kent State University has announced that student athletes have until August to take down their Facebook profiles, citing concern for both the safety of the athletes and the reputation of the school. A story about the ban in the Columbia Dispatch leads with these oddly mild examples:

“One student chose a picture of himself shirtless holding a Miller Lite can for his profile photo. He’s on the baseball team. Another belongs to the ‘My cell phone is my best friend when I’m drunk in Kent’ group and lists skinny-dipping as an interest. She competes in track and field.”

Miller Lite and skinny dipping? Is the university really ready to take on the First Amendment over this? Kent and other universities would save themselves a lot of time, money and effort if they just launched a campaigned to inform college students that grownups– including parents, cops, teachers, and coaches– have discovered the Facebook. Surely self-censorship would soon follow.

I don’t know how this went relatively unnoticed but it was reported on June 15 that the Supreme Court ruled that police no longer have to knock on alleged suspects’ doors when issued a search warrant.

The article on CNN.com claims this new ruling to be a “huge government victory.” Really? Who does this benefit?

The difference between knocking before kicking your door down and just storming into your house unannouced may not be that big but it raises concerns about privacy, intrusion and excessive force.

Yesterday cops had to knock, today they’re just barging in, tomorrow they’re throwing grenades through your window.

And if I was a cop, I’d be pretty concerned about my safety going into a suspected criminal’s house unannounced. You think he’s gonna offer tea and crackers? Or grab a gun and shoot at the intruders, like anyone who had their front door kicked in by a group of armed men would do? Someone’s getting shot and killed, like these unfortunate victims of police screw-ups. (WARNING: viewing this list of innocent men, women, and children may cause you to dig up your Ice-T “Cop Killer” cassete and drive to the nearest police station with a baseball bat and molotov cocktails.)

What’s worse is that with Justices Alito and Roberts sitting on the Supreme Court, this is just a taste of what’s to come.