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L.A. Times reporter Chuck Philips and his supervisor, deputy managing editor Marc Duvoisin, have both issued apologies over what now appears to be a completely erroneous report on the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur. Questions about the report, which implicated Diddy and Jimmy Henchmen in Pac’s ambush, started to arise yesterday after the Smoking Gun published an article questioning Philips’ source documents.
 

Philips said he sought to check the authenticity of the documents with the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, which had handled the investigation of the attack on Shakur, and with a retired FBI agent, but did not directly ask the FBI about them. The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment, while the former FBI agent said the documents appeared legitimate, Philips said.

His statement said he "approached this article the same way I’ve approached every article I’ve ever written: in pursuit of the truth. I now believe the truth here is that I got duped. For this, I take full responsibility and I apologize."

So that’s that. But riddle me this Batman: Who really set ‘Pac up? We all know it wasn’t a random robbery. ‘Pac thought it was Jimmy and Haitian Jack. Was he wrong or paranoid? Does the Hip-Hop community really want to know?

Related: Diddy, Jimmy Henchman Respond to Allegations | You Punks Didn’t Finish

The Scifen blog has ‘em. Go peep.  

The homie Peter Rosenberg sat down with eMC, Masta Ace’s new group, for an interview and some spit… certainly recorded ahead of time, as usual. Their debut record The Show dropped yesterday.

Also, on a somewhat hip hop related level, Peter also spoke to Ice-T & CoCo’s other lips.

Part 1 | Part 2 

Bonus: Click here for this week’s Juan Epstein.

MTV News has some pretty entertaining screenshots from the new Curtis video game, Blood In The Sand.

So what’s this "Blood on the Sand" stuff? Why is 50 wearing desert camo? The developers won’t say what 50 is doing in this game or where it takes place just yet. Blean will only explain that this "sequel" isn’t really a sequel. It doesn’t pick up the story of "Bulletproof," which depicted a violent adventure imagining a 50 Cent who had never gone into music.

"Blood on the Sand" is something more exotic, more Hollywood blockbuster. This game sets 50’s character against a cabal of international gangsters on a far-flung, bullet-riddled adventure.

"I would say it’s inspired by ‘Three Kings’ meets ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,’ " Blean said. "It’s definitely a crime story." The developer credited 50 with pushing the game creators to consider novel locations and said the MC played a big part in crafting the game’s still-secret story.

Click here for MTV’s full report and here for the gallery of images from the game.

The Smoking Gun website has published an extensive investigative piece that claims the report by L.A. Times writer Chuck Philips on the Tupac shooting at the Quad is based on forged documents. The article is pretty extensive, but it basically asserts that James Sabatino (pictured above), the mafia connected conman who was supposedly in on the ‘Pac hit, forged the FBI documents that Philips based much of his story on.

And while Sabatino claims to have been provided the FBI reports during the discovery phase of a 2002 criminal case, a federal law enforcement official involved in that successful prosecution told TSG that the probe was headed by Secret Service representatives and that the FBI had no role whatsoever in the case. The official added that, at the time, investigators "had no inkling" of Sabatino’s supposed role in the rap music world and never saw investigative reports detailing his purported involvement with hip-hop’s leading figures or its assorted bloody disputes.

If TSG’s claims are true, then of course it blows Philips entire investigation out of the water. According to TSG, they reached out to Times managing editor Marc Duvoisin who says that the paper is launching its own investigation into the documents. I emailed Philips for a response, which I will add to this post should he choose to reply. In the meantime, read the piece and draw your own conclusions.

Previously: L.A. Times Article on the Quad Shootings

Kanye is being sued by the guy who’s song he sampled for Good Life. TMZ has the court documents.

In a rambling lawsuit filed in Maryland District Court, Dayna Staggs (aka D’Mystro) is suing Kanye — and his record label, Roc-a-Fella — for copyright infringement. Staggs says that West "didn’t obtain a license to use ‘Volume of Good Life’" for his tune, and points out that Kanye was "only at the age of 6 or 7 years of age [sic]" when his song was written.

I find it hard to believe that neither Kanye or Def Jam did their due diligence in clearing the sample for one of the album’s biggest singles. Because I mean, Def Jam is a division of Universal and we all know how highly they value intellectual property rights. 

I should also note that the plaintiff, Dayna Staggs (a.k.a DMystro) whines in the lawsuit about Kanye’s song containing "vulgar and offensive" images that could in turn "harm his reputation." That’s funny, because not only does he have Kanye listed as one of his top friends on his Myspace page, but in the "About DMystro" section he brags that in 2002 he joined "Jay-Z, Memphis Bleek, Dame Dash, Freeway, Roc Family, Pharrel & Chad of the Neptunes/Nerds.." on the Sprite Liquid Mixer Tour. So, he didn’t seem to have a problem with Jay, Bleek or Freeway’s lyrics back then, but now the relatively tame Good Life is damaging his rep?

(By the way, I jacked that screengrab up there from nerdwithswag because Universal has made it impossible to watch the Good Life video anywhere on the internet.)

The Roots have decided to axe their initial first single from Rising Down. 

From Okayplayer:

We told you a few weeks ago that "Birthday Girl" could easily get dropped off of Rising Down. We received word over the weekend that the song is now the International Single and will be an iTunes exclusive. It will not appear on the North American release.

That’s pretty interesting. I understand the new single might be Rising Up which features two verses from Black Thought, one from Wale and a Chrisette Michele hook.

Robbie brought this untitled hidden track to my attention earlier. It follows the video version of The Hardest with Styles P on the new AZ album. Oh the new AZ album leaked by the way.

AZ - Hidden Track

The homey AC samples the song New Soul by Yael Naim as heard in the Mac Book Air commercial.

“Dudes is doing a lot of commercial tracks, but they ain’t doing tracks from commercials…”

AC - New Soul (Prod. by Mental Instruments)

via Miss Info who has some more clips of the performance.

And Uncle Russ. I wonder what this is about. OnSMASH promises more info soon. I like how on the cover, Green is rocking a jacket with no tie. There’s a guy who can look casual, but still means business.

Barack ODrama has informed MTV News that he and Curtis will be teaming up for a G-Unit Gangsta Grillz, the first ever collaboration between the two camps.

"A couple of days after G-Unit dropped their Elephant in the Sand mixtape [two weeks ago], I got the call from 50 [Cent] and he was like, ‘Drama, what up? It’s time to do this G-Unit/ Aphilliates Gangsta Grillz.’ He’s really going heavy on the ThisIs50.com Web site, and he was saying basically it’s time to get G-Unit hot in the South. What better way to do that than to do a Gangsta Grillz? Not only from a South aspect but from a quality street-music aspect…"

Hot in the South huh? You know what that means. Curtis is going to break out that faux Southern accent he was rocking back in the GRODT days. I wonder what his endgame is with this huge internet push he’s been orchestrating over the past few months.

Official remix. I’m gonna stream this low quality version for now, check back later for the CDQ download.

DJ Green Lantern backstage at Hot 97’s Winter Fest show in Long Island, NY. This final installment features Busta Rhymes.

All recycled verses, not even sure why I’m posting…

New shit from Blu and Ta’Raach.

C.R.A.C. - Pop Dem Boyz

Go see Shake for another joint called “Respect,” and go to DX for an interview with Blu.

From the listening session for Kanye’s Graduation.

Previously: