News: The Game, Macca, Akon and M.I.A.

West coast hip-hop bad boy – and sore loser - ‘The Game’ has well and truly upped his own thug stakes this month. The 27-year-old rapper - and Dr. Dre protégé - has been charged not only with making a criminal threat but also with possessing a firearm in a school zone and exhibiting a firearm in the presence of a police officer. The charges stem from a basketball game in South Los Angeles where the rapper pulled a gun from his car after punching a player from the opposing team and threatening to shoot him. If convicted he faces more than five years in prison.

Paul McCartney has also run into a spot of bother - albeit a bit less serious - regarding his twenty first solo album, ‘Memory Almost Full’. The album has just been released on Starbucks’ newly launched label Hear Music but it turns out that the coffee chain’s 533 UK stores are not registered with The Official Charts Company, thus any copy purchased in a UK branch will not be eligible for the UK charts.

Controversial US R&B star Akon has managed to get in trouble for manhandling his fans for the second time in two months. Fresh after video footage of him provocatively dancing with a fourteen-year-old girl was unveiled, new footage has surfaced showing him picking up a teenage fan and throwing him into the audience at a gig near Poughkeepsie, NY, after the fan threw an object at his head. Please excuse the vertically challenged footage:



Finally, UK/Sri-Lankan rapper M.I.A. has announced a release date for the first single from her eagerly awaited forthcoming LP Kaya . Entitled ‘Boyz’ the Switch produced single will be released on 12” and USB memory stick via XL Recordings on June 11th in the UK and August 20th in the US.