BarackStar he is, and the DJs say so. If you’re still partying over the new Prez-Elect, you might want to check here for some Baracked-out cuts to jam to: Q-Tip, Nas, and Daft Punk, to name a few.

Deftones bassist is in a coma. Chi Cheng of the longtime metal band Deftones was involved in a car accident Monday and is in serious but stable condition at a hospital in San Jose, CA. Lead singer Chino Moreno blogged about it here.

Britney and the circus? Sounds about right. The pop tart has revealed her upcoming album cover and tracklist for her sixth studio release, Circus. I know album artwork is almost bust nowadays, but dang Brit, bootlegs look better than that!

Lupe Fiasco is retiring, um okay? The Chi-town emcee says he’s “tired of rapping.” Way to leave us hanging Mr. Superstar. His last album, LUPE.N.D., will be released as a three-disc finale set sometime next year.

FOB’s trying to redeem themselves? Fall Out Boy, everyone’s love-’em-hate-’em cookie-cut band, is trying to recruit a local, unsigned band to open for them for each date of their upcoming tour. The “small venue” tour started this week and will feature songs from their upcoming album, Folie A Deux.

And Lil’ Wayne died again, among other things. That not-so-funny VMA host is in trouble, Ginuwine (or should I say, Ginu-FINE) is back, and lastly, if you want to be in a world tour within the confines of your living room, choose here.

Don’t go, Mr. Fiasco. The last thing we need is another real emcee to leave us with a bunch of monotonous robots that most people call “rappers” today.

Just in case you haven’t hit these yet, if you’ve been looking, Nah Right, is playing host to three new Lupe tracks, sharing ‘em out liberally.

Which reminds… Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has been downright manly about using some of all that celebrity he put together over the years to push hard against music company hypocrisy. The latest chapter has him posting on the NIN site all about the gouging greedy madness he’s seen fans subjected to by Universal, the band’s label, all of it maddening and not the least bit surprising.

As the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more. A couple of examples that quickly come to mind:

* The ABSURD retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia. Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne’s record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US).

By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: “It’s because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out – you know, true fans. It’s the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy.”
So… I guess as a reward for being a “true fan” you get ripped off.

* The dreaded EURO Maxi-single. Nothing but a consumer rip-off that I’ve been talked into my whole career. No more.

The point is, I am trying my best to make sure the music and items NIN puts in the marketplace have value, substance and are worth you considering purchasing. I am not allowing Capital G to be repackaged into several configurations that result in you getting ripped off.

We are planning a full-length remix collection of substance that will be announced soon.

So who exactly is stealing, damaging sales, taking advantage of artists? Yo.

This approach, by no means exclusive to Zahn and CNN, creates an “us-versus-them” mentality, where hip-hop culture becomes the scapegoat for everything that’s wrong with American culture. This argument (which is really class-based) was made on CNN partly with a stream of select images of hard-core thugs and mainstream rappers contrasted with the educated suit-clad analysts and in interviews by uptight conservative reporters. But as Michael Eric Dyson points out in a segment on women in hip-hop, the objectionable messages of the music (the misogyny, the homophobia, the violence) only mirror the attitudes of American society as a whole.

Come on America, look beyond the flashing pixels, pay attention to the men and women behind the curtains! Fact is, hip-hop was created by poor, disadvantaged minority youth, but its message was intended for the world. It may have lost some of its focus when it gained mainstream success, but it has never lost its essential power to unite.

I have experienced a great sense of community through hip-hop over the past week. I saw unity at a club, at a concert, on my college campus—among people of every color and age. There was genuine positive energy in each case.

Mike Jones performed at Club 740 in downtown Los Angeles last Friday night. Mike Jones, a Houston-based rapper, got the crowd moving with music that is gritty and commercial.

My friends and I traveled to UC Riverside in Southern Cali’s Inland Empire to see Lupe Fiasco perform last Saturday night. Lupe is a more conscious rapper, a mix of underground and mainstream. We had to wait 2 hours in 40-degree weather to see him finally grace the stage at midnight. Once he came on, though, we forgot about the So-Cal cold and the constant crowd-pushing and just enjoyed the music.

Just as Ice Cube explained after he performed Tuesday night at USC’s “Race, Rap, & Redemption” program, rappers use hip-hop to reveal many of the different faces of the hood. With hip-hop “I can to do what I want, say what I want,” says Cube.

Note to Paula: three different rappers; three different kinds of hip-hop; three different messages; all of it kills, kicks ass, is totally ill!