City of Champions Cereal!  And a contest, with a chance to get autographs and meet athletes and stuff.

From the “this isn’t surprising file” Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum was found with weed on his person.

There was a  U2 concert in Berlin. It was free.  some people were blocked from seeing it though…because of a wall. In Berlin.

Dwight Howard…wants you to come read the Bible with him.  And apparently that’s code for something completely different.

Lil Wayne compares himself to Biggie and Pac. I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.

Good Morning Forbes.

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What is striking to me about this interview is how small Jigga seems.  When he’s Shawn Carter, he’s practically ordinary.

I say this with the utmost respect.  Jay in his natural state is funny, incredibly thoughtful, and soft-spoken.

Seriously though, it’s interesting to hear him talk about his process.  His rhymes aren’t freestyles, he does spend time developing in his head before he hits the booth, which pretty much means he’s gotta explain Volume 3, Dynasty, and most of The Blueprint and The Black Album.  When I thought he freestyled everything, I gave him some leeway.  That he thought out mess like  Girls Girls Girls, Hola Hovito, and Justify My Thug is disappointing in the extreme?

Boo.  Just. Boo.

Also – Bill Maher kinda has a crush, don’t he?  “The B is for Brooklyn”, Bill?  Awwww.

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The feud between the two began earlier this year after Eminem namedropped Carey in the track “Bagpipes From Baghdad” from his latest album Relapse. “Mariah whatever happened to us / Why did we ever have to break-up?” he rapped. “Nick Cannon, you better back the f— up. I’m not playing, I want her back, you punk.”

Cannon later shot back on his blog, calling the rapper (who goes by the name “Slim Shady”) “Slim Lamey.” He added that Eminem is “still obsessed with my wife, the same female that wouldn’t let him get to second base from 8 years ago.” A month or so later, Carey got the last laugh by mocking Eminem in “Obsessed.”

And here’s the latest round– Em’s new song, “The Warning,” where he threatens to release sexually explicit photos and voice mails from the days when he and Mariah were messing around.  Apparently, he’s not embarrassed about the fact that they dated for six months and he hit once.  And busted early.  Where I come from, that’s an L.

I remember back when rappers used to battle other rappers.  I remember when they used to call out politicians and other powerful figures on record– think of Pac’s beef with C. Delores Tucker or Kanye going off script at that Katrina telethon to call out Bush.  Eminem is one of the most technically gifted rappers in history, yet he has decided instead to build his reputation by going after Christina Aguilera and Kim Kardashian.  Maybe he needs to stop browsing the magazines at the supermarket checkout line so hard and getting his feelings hurt.  He definitely needs to stop dropping diss records on every female in Hollywood who he can’t get to sex him.

In 1995, Biggie released a track called “Warning” as a B-side to his “Big Poppa” single.  It went something like this:

Call the coroner
There’s gonna be a lot of slow singin’, and flower bringin’
If my burglar alarm starts ringin’

Whatcha think all the guns is for?
All purpose war, got the Rottweilers by the door
And I feed ‘em gunpowder, so they can devour
The criminals, tryin’ to drop my decimals

Damn, niggas wanna stick my for my cream
And it ain’t a dream, things ain’t always what it seem
It’s the ones that smoke blunts witcha, see your picture
Now they wanna grab the guns and come and getcha

In 2009, this is the new “Warning,” courtesy of TMZ Us Weekly Eminem:

Yeah, what you gonna say? I’m lucky?
Tell the public that I was so ugly that you f***ing had to be drunk to f*** me?
Second base? What the f*** you tell Nick, punk?
In the second week we was dry humping. It’s gotta count for something.

Dry humping?  Yeah.  Hip-hop is deader than Michael Jackson.

UPDATE: I’ve been thinking about whether or not Nick Cannon should respond to this.  On the one hand, he’s a grown man with a family and a 9-5 now (don’t sleep, America’s Got Talent is serious money).  I assure you, he has better things to do than deal with this playground nonsense.  On the other hand, he’s got some dude calling his wife out her name.  It’s not easy to let something like that ride.

But at the end of the day, this is the bottom line: Nick is sexing Mariah Carey and Eminem isn’t.  And Em mad about it.  That’s game, set, match right there, no matter how this all plays out.  I don’t care if Eminem got pictures of Mariah’s fallopian tubes, he lost already.

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