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Here’s a few things that popped up over the weekend. Wale and DJ Semtex got into a little bit of a tiff over a Twitter post. Really? We knew that social networking was wielding new power in the 21st century, but being new to Twitter ourselves, we didn’t know that these things were happening. Call it the chronicle of a beef foretold. In other news, Lil Wayne made a song called Prom Queen, which is different, to say the least. Listen for yourself and make your own decisions. It’s sure to appear on the 600 new Lil Wayne mixtapes due out this week. Need something to listen to instead? Mick Boogie and DJ Unexpected made their Director’s Cut mixtape from 2005 available for free download.

Royce and Busta dropped this freestyle track, which is at least 16 times better than most shit most rappers have been doing. Most everyone had the video from the Slaughterhouse show up at some point, use this if you can’t find it. We were in the building, and it was packed as shit. Turns out the show was a clusterfuck.

Supposed to be all exclusives. Tracklist and links inside. Tracks from Lil Wayne, TI, Gucci Mane, OJ Da Juiceman, Plies, Shawty Lo, Yo Gotti, the usual cast of characters.

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According to singersroom.com, Jada had a listening party recently where most of the new tracks off The Last Kiss were played for a small group of listeners. Release date for the album is supposed to be March 10.

Billboard.com reported that Pharell, Black Keys and others are providing production for the album. Everyone has heard the “By My Side” track that features Ne-Yo, but other features are supposed include Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy.

We’re wondering if there is any chance of another monstrous mixtape in the next few weeks, a la The Champ is Here. Lets hope so.

The newest installment of Evil Empire’s The Leak series dropped recently. Its available at your favorite mixtape spot, or go look for it on the internet.  I never saw The Ring, but I’m guessing this cover is a play on the film. The official release, for those of you who buy mixtapes, comes with a DVD. Even after having his life threatened, Evil Empire is still dropping Wayne tapes. Thats dedication, or the money is just really right. Are you fucking with this? Leave a comment and let us know. 

R&B crooners made Auto-Tune into a major modern musical phenomenon over the past few years. It is now an almost ubiquitous feature for a successful pop hit, but what exactly is it and where did it come from? First, it is important to understand that Auto-Tune is a product made by a company called Antares. Antares developed Auto-Tune as a proprietary vocoder that could be used in studios and in live applications to correct the pitch of vocalists and instruments. 

This is a short and simple explanation of how it works as a pitch-correction tool. Let’s say you are an engineer or a producer and a client comes to do a vocal record in any genre. The problem is that your client sings a little bit sharp or flat in some places. As long as you capture a relatively good signal at proper levels, you can correct the errors with relative ease. Auto-Tune is a plugin that is excels at just that. You determine the key that the song is in, or the key(s) that your singer should be in, select the notes that they should be hitting, and Auto-Tune will force the pitches into place. It is almost undetecteable in situations where the performer is a few (or more than a few) hertz off.  Even more drastic errors can be corrected with ease.

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Here’s the beginning of Wayne’s appearance on 1st and 10, an ESPN program featuring sports columnists discussing and debating the top stories in the world of sports. While I don’t think Weezy should quit his day job to be a sports analyst, it was quite entertaining to see him square off with the always outspoken Skip Bayless (asshole). It was also pretty funny seeing Skip trying to validate himself as a Wayne fan. He said, “Wayne, I am a huge fan of your music, your art, and I am also a Prince fan. I believe that your album, Carter III, is your Purple Rain. It is your masterpiece.” Ha, I have a hard time believing this middle aged, ultra conservative, white man bumps C3.  Nonetheless, much respect goes to Wayne as I have never seen a rapper on sports talk show in my life. This guy really is everywhere.

For our 7th issue, Mike Cohen spent some quality time with 50 Cent, Tony Yayo and Lloyd Banks. The resulting story, The Unit, is a must-read for 50 fans. Mike also got up with G-Unit’s legendary DJ Whookid to talk about the life of an international jetset DJ. Chris Malo’s controversial interview with Lil Wayne, where Wayne dis-misses mixtape DJs with a big “fuck you!” stirred up the hip-hop world. Mikey Fresh and Clinton Sparks talked about having a plan for success and Spark’s own experiences in the industry. Nu Jerzey Devil talks with Phillip Mlynar about coming up in the game alongside Game, and his style of crafting hit records.