Celebrity Dish, Part III

[CrimsonTide4]

5.Chante got a new man : CHANTE MOORE’S biggest hit was her 1999 single “Chante’s Got A Man,” and now she’s a got a new man: KENNY LATTIMORE. They just announced that they were married New Year’s Day during a private ceremony at the Grand Lido San Souci Resort Hotel in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Chante was married from 1996-2000 to actor KADEEM HARDISON from the TV series “A Different World” and they have a five year daughter named Sophia. This is Kenny’s first marriage. This is Chante's 3rd marriage.

[kiml122]

I just heard on the radio today that Sisqo is stating that he has that same skin problem that Michael Jackson has....oh brother.

Let's be real....can you say that he is having a bad skin rash because his 2nd solo project was a bust!!

[vanda]

Noelle Bush, daughter of Jeb Bush, was arrested for impersonating a doctor and trying to fill a fake prescription for Xanax.

[IU Intelligence]

(Jan. 30, 2002)

Courtesy of the EUR:

*Brandy seems like the picture of health when she's out and about. Who would've thought she was suffering from an eating disorder and a nervous breakdown not long ago.
During an interview with Britain's BBC 1 Miss Norwood let the truth be known.

"With the whole eating disorder thing, honestly, I wasn't taking care of myself and that's my fault. But I can talk about it freely because now I'm healthy."

It seems that maybe Ms. Mariah paved the way for other artists to speak out about their health issues. This could only be a good thing. Hats off to you Ms. Brandy, and the we like the new look sans braids too.

[Steeltrap]

Bro: diesel could end up being a team owner.

Shaq intrigued by Magic's sale
By Tim Povtak
Sentinel Staff Writer

January 30, 2002

Shaquille O'Neal never will return to the Orlando Magic as a player, but he will consider coming back.

An ownership role could be part of his future.

Still basketball's most dominating player --the biggest reason the Los Angeles Lakers are two-time defending NBA champions --O'Neal has had his interest in ownership piqued by the news that Rich DeVos is selling the franchise after 11 years.

As a player, he is prohibited by NBA rules from also being part of any ownership group.

But when his 10-year, $209.5 million contract ends after the 2005-2006 season -- and he likely retires -- don't be surprised to see him emerge again with the Magic, depending upon who the next owner is.

"No comment. You know I can't comment on that [ownership] stuff now,'' he said Tuesday before the Lakers played the Hawks in Atlanta. "But I'd be really upset if the league lets that team move -- really upset.''

O'Neal, 29, started his NBA career with the Magic in 1992, but he left for Los Angeles as a free agent in 1996, believing he needed the big-city exposure to maximize his marketing opportunities.

He has said many times that he will return to Orlando full time when he retires.

He continues to spend his summers in Central Florida, in the home he built when he played here.

He even returned for a couple of days this month when he was serving his three-game suspension for fighting -- cruising around town on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

"No, that wasn't me. That must have been someone else,'' he joked.

The idea of playing for the Magic again intrigues him, but his contract with the Lakers makes it almost impossible.

"Hopefully, the new owners there will get a new arena in Central Florida, something like they have here [in Atlanta],'' he said.

"They should be able to work out some kind of deal with the city. At least I hope so. It's too bad; the NBA is losing one of its best owners. I've always had the highest regard for Mr. DeVos."

Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel

[AKAtude]

***From E!online***

Murphy and his wife, Nicole, announced the birth of their fifth child Wednesday. The baby, a girl named Bella Zahra, was born Tuesday night in Los Angeles, weighing 7 pounds, 6 ounces, according to publicist Arnold Robinson.

Mom and kid are said to be healthy. In a statement, the happy couple said, "We are overjoyed about this newest addition to our family."

And what a family it is. Little Bella will be competing for toys with her four siblings: Bria, 12; Myles, 10; Shayne, 7; and Zola, 2. (Murphy also has a son, Christian, from another relationship.)

[CrimsonTide4]

Maya Angelou Launches Hallmark Line

By KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press Writer
Author Maya Angelou
AP/Richard Drew [20K]
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NEW YORK (AP) — Hallmark: Birthday cards and wedding cards, friendship, graduation and get well messages, too.

Maya Angelou: friend of Billie Holiday and Martin Luther King, celebrated poet who read at President Clinton's first inauguration, author of the classic memoir ``I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.''

And now Hallmark's in-house poet.
Maya Angelou
AP/Richard Drew [24K]
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In a once-unthinkable collaboration, Angelou has teamed up with the greeting card giant. Overcoming initial reservations that she was trivializing herself, she has agreed to develop a line of greeting cards and gifts.

At least one of Angelou's colleagues is appalled at the idea.

``I think it's preposterous,'' said Billy Collins, the poet laureate of the United States and a fellow Random House author.

``It lowers the understanding of what poetry actually can do,'' Collins said. ``Hallmark cards has always been a common phrase to describe verse that is really less than poetry because it is sentimental and unoriginal. ... I just think it's surprising that she would market herself in that direction.''

At first, Angelou was cool to the idea. But after meeting with executives of the Kansas City, Mo.-based company, she warmed.

``They were white and black, and they were women and Spanish speaking. That pleased me, obviously. ... So I listened,'' Angelou said in an interview at her flower-filled upper West Side pied-a-terre. The 73-year-old poet-writer-professor-actress-director-singer lives mostly in North Carolina and also has a home in Atlanta.

Then she went to her editor at Random House with the proposal.

``I said, 'I'm thinking about doing something with Hallmark.' And he said, 'You're the people's poet. You don't want to trivialize yourself.' So I said OK and I hung up. And then I thought about it. And I thought, if I'm the people's poet then I ought to be in the people's hands — and I hope in their hearts. So I thought, 'Hmm, I'll do it.'''

The Maya Angelou Life Mosaic Collection has been in stores since just after Christmas. It includes 104 greeting cards and assorted bookends, photo frames, coffee mugs and other gift items. The cards start at $2.49 and the gift items range in price from $19.99 to $49.99.

Many of the messages inscribed in the cards and other products are condensed versions of essays from Angelou's books. They treat themes such as love and friendship.

A typical sentiment is, ``We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.'' A ceramic ``thankful vase'' is captioned, ``Be present in all things and thankful for all things.''

A wedding card reads: ``Batten down the hatches, secure the rigging. You and your beloved are about to sail on the river of dreams. You are wished fair weather and fresh wind ... and always love. Congratulations on your marriage.''

Hallmark would not divulge what it had paid Angelou. However, Paul Barker, senior vice president for creative development at Hallmark, said, ``Retailers are very positive about how well it is moving.''

To develop the line, Hallmark staff met with Angelou in her home.

``Sometimes they stayed overnight,'' she said. ``And I cooked for people, and we sat and talked. And that's how the line has really been developed. By talk. Telling stories. Anecdotes.''

Barker said additional products including Christmas and Mother's Day cards are planned for the future.

Angelou, meanwhile, is busy with other projects. She is on the faculty at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., where this spring she will teach a master class on ``World Poetry in Dramatic Performance.'' She'll also direct her second film, an adaptation for Showtime of Bebe Moore Campbell's ``Singing in the Comeback Choir.''

And she has a new book coming out in April, ``A Song Flung Up to Heaven,'' the sixth and, she insists, the last of her autobiographical works. The first appeared in 1970.

``It takes me exactly to the beginning of writing 'Caged Bird,''' she said. ``And I refuse to write about writing. It would be the biggest bore in life.''

[Virtual Violet]

February 1, 2002

BY BILL ZWECKER SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST


WEDDING BELLS: We don't know the lucky guy's name yet, but R&B star Mary J. Blige has announced she's getting hitched. The singer says she won't unveil her beau's identity now, but she confirms the couple became engaged over the holidays. A small wedding is being planned because Blige says it's just for ''real friends and family. The industry is not going to know about it, the press is not going to know about it,'' she told AP.

This week the artist released her latest platinum-selling CD, ''No More Drama,'' containing the Sean ''P. Diddy'' Combs-produced remix of the title song. It was the first reunion of Blige and Combs since he produced her first two discs in 1992 and 1994.

[Steeltrap]

From the New York Times about Sean Combs' former greatest asset. Interesting stuff, particularly about celibacy.



February 3, 2002
A Bad Boy of Hip-Hop Turns the Other Cheek
By JOHN LELAND
ATLANTA -- In a half-filled elementary school auditorium, the Rev. Mason Betha was talking about sex and money.

The first is a scourge, he told the congregation of about 100, mostly African-Americans in their 20's and 30's. "I'm talking about some silly women, fornicating, can't control themselves," he said. The group murmured in approval.

On the second topic, money, the pastor took a more liberal line. It was Wednesday night Bible study, and Pastor Betha, 26, wore a powder-blue pinstripe suit, alligator shoes and new silk handkerchief. He had spent much of the afternoon at his weekly haircut.The devil, he said, "don't want you to prosper."

A woman answered, "Come on, pastor, just get it out."

Pastor Betha continued, "Let me tell you something: being broke ain't going to make nobody come to the Gospel."

It was a stern, assured performance. For Pastor Betha, it marked the latest step in a circuitous and improbable life journey.

Three years ago, he was known as the rapper Ma$e (or Ma$e Murder), the flashiest and most pleasure-driven performer on Sean Combs's Bad Boy record label. To hear him rhyme, flaunting enough jewelry to break your heart, was to enter a bracingly inverse moral sphere. He rapped about the "four pimp rules" and described his ethos in a March 1999 interview with The Source, a rap magazine: "Every time you hear Ma$e rhyme, what is it about? Money, some bitches and good living."

Then at the height of his success, after selling four million copies of his debut album, "Harlem World," and filling videos with outrageous cars and barely dressed women, he announced in April 1999 that he was giving it all up to pursue a higher calling. Last month he celebrated his first anniversary as pastor of Saving a Nation Endangered Ministries, a nondenominational Christian church he started in a Days Inn meeting room.

The other day, in an Italian restaurant in Buckhead, Atlanta's hub of night life and million-dollar condos, Pastor Betha described his transformation. "I was just sitting in a hotel and decided I can't do this no more," he said. "People be looking for this big explanation. But when it's God's time, it's God's time."

Celebrated for his slow offhand flow as a rapper, Pastor Betha speaks in unrushed conversational tones, a shifting mix of righteous humility and residual celebrity brio. If he has any reservations about moving from pop stardom to the humbling task of building a ministry from scratch, he does not show them. "Have you accepted Jesus?," he asked directly. In his strict theology, he casts unforgiving judgment on his musical past.

"I was leading kids to hell," he said, with the headlong zeal of the newly converted. "I was actually being a prophet, because people was going out and trying to live what I was speaking."

The worlds of popular music and the church, for all their polarities, have long rubbed close enough for volatile exchange. Wilson Pickett, Sam Cooke and others drew the wrath of gospel audiences in the 1950's and 1960's when they turned their church- trained voices to secular passions, creating the template for soul music. Al Green and the rapper Run, among others, made the journey the other way, moving from the pop world to the pulpit and making largely religious music.

Pastor Betha's transition, however, was particularly abrupt. Instead of turning to gospel music or even gospel rap, he left the music business altogether, breaking with his friends and colleagues and giving away many of the baubles that shaped his persona: a Range Rover, a BMW, a Mercedes convertible and a diamond-encrusted Rolex worth more than the average American home. He also left a lucrative contract with Bad Boy Entertainment and Arista Records.

In interviews before his retirement, he said he was earning up to $100,000 just to appear as a guest on someone's record. Through publicists, Mr. Combs and Clive Davis, who ran Arista at the time, declined to comment for this article, but in 2000 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted Mr. Combs as saying he made no effort to prevent him from leaving the label. "People didn't know what to make of it," said Elliott Wilson, 31, editor in chief of the hip- hop magazine XXL. "He and Puffy were wearing the shiny suits, taking the music higher. But if you listen to his second album" — "Double Up," recorded just before his retirement — "it made sense that he was off to God. Second albums in hip-hop are about dealing with success, and he really had a struggle to deal with the celebrity. He put a lot of blame on the women. You can hear the sadness in the music."

For the crowd at Bible study, Pastor Betha's journey is a large part of his appeal. John Maikke, 31, who was there with a friend, said he had never been moved by religion. "I like my life, and don't want to mess it up," Mr. Maikke said. "But I can respect him because he gave up so much to pursue God. Nobody that age is going to do that for no reason. Every time he speaks, he's moving me little by little. That's scary to me."

The Betha journey began on Aug. 27, 1975, in Jacksonville, Fla., with four older siblings and a twin sister, Stason. He barely knew his father. Before he entered kindergarten, his mother moved the family to Harlem, where Mason had a childhood of petty fights, hip-hop and basketball, with only passing contact with the church. "We used to rhyme in a park on 139th and Lenox — me, Cam, Big L," he recalled. Cam is Cameron Giles, who now has a modest career as the rapper Cam'ron. Big L is Lamont Coleman, an underground rapper who was murdered not far from the park in 1999.

When Mr. Betha earned a contract with Mr. Combs in 1996, hip-hop was dominated by the darkly compelling figures of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., whose gangster image defined the Bad Boy label. As Ma$e began to hone his identity, the rap world was rent by sudden violence. In September 1996, Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas; the Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was murdered the following March. Ma$e, a model of jovial hedonism, became the signature Bad Boy.

The deaths introduced Mr. Betha to the cold cloister of the music business. "It didn't really affect me, because I was a young dude just trying to make money," he said. "Just like everybody else. You heard of anybody who stopped doing music because it happened? So it didn't affect them."

Instead of recoiling, he dug himself deeper into the Bad Boy fold, forging a relationship with Mr. Combs that he describes, in his book, "Revelations: There's a Light After the Lime" (Pocket Books, 2001), as one of Batman and Robin. Mr. Betha told lurid tales of the bedroom in his songs, and lived them in his life. He and Mr. Combs turned others' envy into big business: cultivating it with their dress and manner, complaining about it in their rhymes.

Cheo Hodari Coker, a screenwriter who spent several weeks with the Bad Boy clique in early 1999, remembers a family atmosphere of lavish parties and platinum jewelry.

"The whole scene was over the top," Mr. Coker said. "Anywhere Ma$e was, there were at least two women. He was very much trying to live up to his image as the shy, cute ladies' man."

Yet even then, Pastor Betha says, he was restless. He left the fishbowl of New York for Atlanta, and his new lyrics dwelled on betrayal and false friendships. In his book, he writes of visiting old Harlem haunts, and now seeing "the hatred in the eyes of the people who were smiling."

On a warm afternoon in Buckhead, Pastor Betha wandered the Lenox Mall with Jasper Littlejohn, the first member of his church. The stroll was an idle one. Pastor Betha has not yet figured out what to do with his ministry, and so his time. Describing his plans, he alternates between a desire to minister to poor young people and the more glamorous prospect of tending the souls of entertainers and rich athletes.

The young athletes, he said, "need someone who knows their situation, from their financial to their social, from fans to the lobby." He added: "There's some folks now that cannot make it past the lobby. Five hundred girls are in the lobby, all your favorite type of women, saying: `Can you sign an autograph? What room you all in?' They need someone to speak who knows that." He said a National Football League team had asked him about becoming its chaplain.

In the mall, teenagers who recognized him from his rap days approached for autographs or offered him tapes of their own music. Some asked about Sunday services, some about Puffy. Three years after leaving the music business, Pastor Betha seems ambivalent about his public image, enjoying the attention while chiding people that he is Mason, not Ma$e. If they lingered, Pastor Betha bore down. "I'm asking you about Jesus," he told one man. "If you don't want to know about Jesus, I don't have anything for you."

When he needed shoelaces, he dispatched Mr. Littlejohn, who was happy to run the errand.

The two met in a gym at Clark Atlanta University, where Mr. Betha had enrolled in 1999 in retreat from the rap world. He remained a year, studying for a math degree. "I was a big fan of his music," Mr. Littlejohn said. "I wanted the money, the women, the cars, just like them. I figured if someone had all the money and girls, if he walked away, it must be for something real."

In the early days of his new life, Mr. Betha attended Siloam Baptist Church in East Point, an Atlanta suburb of single-story brick houses. He came in his hip-hop clothes, and struggled mightily with celibacy, keeping rocks in his pockets to remind him of his course. For a while he chose not to count oral sex as sex, but this too fell.

When he got to Siloam, "he was broken," said Jonathan Carter, the pastor. "He didn't know anything about the Christian world. The first way to come to humility is through brokenness. He was broken, empty; he was ostracized by the people who used to be there with him."

As Mr. Betha took beginner's classes, planning his own ministry, Mr. Littlejohn was his first subject. "He would learn from Pastor Carter, then he would put it in terms I could understand," Mr. Littlejohn said. He moved into the Betha home, on an exclusive stretch of Buckhead — one of the possessions he kept from his rap days — and stayed for two years. In December 2000, Mr. Carter ordained Mr. Betha, who married another Siloam church member, Twyla McInnis, last August.

As a preacher with a single small congregation meeting in an elementary school (he says membership has grown to 200), the former rapper has nothing like his old following, but he has used his renown to attract attention. He speaks at churches around the country in a kind of anti- Ma$e tour, delivering a sermon called "Hell Is Not Full."

Pastor Betha said he did not draw a salary from the church, but relied on speaking fees, donations and his royalties. He said he did not miss rap. "My life right now, people in the industry would pay all the money to have it. A lot of people have money, but they don't have peace with it. They can't sleep. They need bodyguards every day."

Pastor Betha now listens only to gospel music. Instead of the sportswear with logos of his rap days, he wears custom suits, donated by tailors mindful of the promotional value. In the next few years, with the help of private donors — largely from sports and entertainment, he said, though he would not name them — he hopes to build a church and open a private school.

Such bounty, he said, is proof of his mission. "God called me to be rich," he said. "I didn't have to do music to do it. There used to be a time that I didn't care about how I looked once I got saved. I felt like, `Why does it matter?' And God had to show me why it matters. Because people are still watching me that want to see, was his God able?"

Pastor Betha walked the mall, at ease with his surroundings. "Yes," he said, "my Jesus Christ is able."



Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information

[CrimsonTide4]

I found this to be an interesting article. There are some things that he said in t his article that disturbed me but I must believe that God does have a purpose for him.

[#1 Leading Lady]

Brandy Jumped The Broom!

Pop star/actress Brandy Norwood got married last June to music producer Robert Smith. Robert happens to be a cousin of Darkchild CEO Rodnie Jerkins. The 23-year-old Brandy, who will turn 24 on February 11, kept the married a secret for seven months. "I've fallen in love with a very warm, gentle, understanding, and focused person," Brandy
Norwood said in a statement through her music company, Atlantic Records. "This summer we married quietly. A new experience, a new day for me—I couldn’t be happier!" Now I ran into Brandy back in January at a listening party in New York ! and she said to me, “I’m mad at you. You announced I was engaged and I didn’t get a chance to announce it myself.” Low and behold, she was married all along. The CoverGirl spokemodel’s new album “Full Moon” will be released on March 5th.

Tyson Leaves Polo

Supermodel Tyson Beckford has abandoned his post as a Ralph Lauren model and is now a model for FUBU. Tyson will began appearing in advertisements for FUBU staring in February.

Quickie!

In my next column I will have all of the dish from the Super Bowl in New Orleans. I still wish my two black quarterbacks could have made it to the Big Easy!

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Sisqo Got MJ’s Disease

Seems as though the rumors saying Sisqo may be suffering from Vitiligo are true. Vitiligo is the same skin disease that Michael Jackson has. Vitiligo causes a loss of color in the skin, hair, and retina in the eye. Sisqo, whose “Return Of Dragon” album flopped, has been wearing gloves at junkets promoting his new movie "Snow Dogs," with Cuba
Gooding, Jr. The Dru Hill member said he was initially misdiagnosed with eczema, but doctors now believe he may have vitiligo. He is currently taking antibiotics due to a! "rash" he's acquired "from the stress," he said.




Ginuwine In Demand

After a successful run on tour with Janet Jackson, Ginuwine will now hit the road with boy band N’Sync. Ginuwine will open for N’Sync during the west coast leg of the tour, performing in cities like Oakland, Portland, Phoenix, Dallas, among
others. The tour begins March 3 through March 15. Anyone who knows me knows I think he is one of the most talented young performers out now! Ginuwine has a new single out now called “Tribute To A Woman” off of his platinum album “The Life.”




Veterans Still Working

R&B diva Regina Belle is featured in the February issue of Black Elegance magazine. The singer was also recently nominated for a Grammy for her latest album “This Is Regina” on Peak Records. In addition to her recent performance on Soul Train, Belle will be
featured on CNN's Headline News. Before heading to the west coast for the Grammy's, Regina will be making special appearances at Macy's stores as a joint promotion with the fragrance Romance by Ralph Lauren and her single "Oooh Boy" for Valentine's Day.




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[prayerfull]

You know, I say "Praise God" if "the artist formerly known as Ma$e" has found Jesus in his life and has humbled himself to a calling to preach the Gospel. I truly hope that he is very sincere. I do believe that it does say alot that he gave up his previously lavish lifestyle to follow the Word. Did I read it right that he is married?

[stillwater15]

Originally posted by prayerfull
You know, I say "Praise God" if "the artist formerly known as Ma$e" has found Jesus in his life and has humbled himself to a calling to preach the Gospel. I truly hope that he is very sincere. I do believe that it does say alot that he gave up his previously lavish lifestyle to follow the Word. Did I read it right that he is married?

i listened a few weeks ago to an interview between rev. mason and wendy williams (107.5 wbls). he is married, but doesn't have any children. he seems pretty sincere about his ministry and gave some very frank and candid answers to her questions. according to him, he still gets about $80k every 3 months from the music industry, which he gives directly to the church. i wish him the best.

[#1 Leading Lady]

Shemar Moore’s last day on the popular daytime soap “Young & The Restless” is February 14th. Moore will exit the show on Valentine’s Day and will probably break some hearts by doing so.

[CrimsonTide4]

Originally posted by #1 Leading Lady
Shemar Moore’s last day on the popular daytime soap “Young & The Restless” is February 14th. Moore will exit the show on Valentine’s Day and will probably break some hearts by doing so.

Maybe he will check out a dentist in the interim.