After performing, they even made it clear that they’d be open to working on a collaborative album together, but only when the time and money is right.

“eXquire’s my nigga,” Danny said with an arm draped around the Brooklyn MC outside of the venue after the event. “I think moreso than artist, as a person. That’s family. The thing about doing an album together is we have to both be stable enough financially to the point where we’re in the studio every day. I don’t want to do the email thing.”

eXquire shot the sentiment right back to the boisterous Detroit rhymeslinger.

“We’ve done three songs together,” eXquire said. “I’d be open to doing anything. Danny was one of my favorite rappers before I was rapping. Before niggas knew who I was, I was listening to [Brown’s album] The Hybrid. I remember listening to him the way people listen to me like, ‘This nigga’s crazy.’”

All this came after eXquire went shirtless with several members of his entourage for an animated performance of “Huzzah!” in front of a rather private, but solid showing of a crowd that turned out in the Beats By Dre store.

That paved the way for Brown, who rocked a black and gold T-shirt and oversized rain boots, to perform several cuts off his XXX album, including “Die Like a Rockstar,” “Radio Song,” “Lie4,” “I Will” and “Blunt After Blunt.”

Before and in between the performances, MTV2 showed clips of its highly-anticipated Yo! MTV Raps Classic Cuts, Hottest MCs in the Game VII and Sucker Free Certified, which will air back-to-back-to-back at 10 p.m., 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. EST on Sunday, Feb. 19

Sean “Diddy” Combs was hospitalized earlier this morning on account of an extreme migraine.

According to TMZ, the Bad Boy honcho hosted a post-Grammy Awards party at the Playboy Mansion last night, and came down with a severe headache when he returned home. Diddy’s crew drove him to the hospital after becoming concerned about the severity of the migraine.

He has since returned home and is currently recovering. Sources say that he’s doing better, and that the headache had nothing to do with anything that transpired at the Playboy Mansion.

In a recent interview, Freeway Rick Rosssaid that when he first filed his lawsuit against Rozay, the rapper was initially uncertain if the lawsuit would play out on the street. “[He] treated me as if I had done something to him. When he first came to me, he didn’t know what position I was going to take, if I was going to send a word out to those young cats out in L.A. or not. That put a little fear in his heart,” Freeway Rick Ross said in an interview with the Huffington Post.

According to Freeway, his rapper namesake has acquired some backbone now that he’s been convinced that the former drug dealer isn’t going to resort to pulling in his connections to the underworld in order to pressure Rozay. “Now that he knows I’m not carrying it like that, he’s a little more courageous right now,” said Freeway before adding, “[He] has my name tattooed on his hand.”

The legal battle almost came to halt in November 2010 when a Federal Court judge ruled that his past criminal acts ruined any claim he had to a trademark on his name. But Freeway soon refilled his claim in a California court and he’s still hoping to push his trademark suit through an appeal in the Federal Court, although his lawyers have acknowledged that their best chance to win $10 million from the Maybach Music CEO is at the state level.

Below you can view some photos of T-Raw shooting a commercial for Reebok in Hollywood yesterday that will air next month.

Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.

News of Houston’s death came on the eve of music’s biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It’s a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to case a heavy pall on Sunday’s ceremony. Houston’s longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it was unclear if it was going to go forward.

“I am absolutely heartbroken at the news of Whitney’s passing,” music producer Quincy Jones said in a written statement. “I always regretted not having had the opportunity to work with her. She was a true original and a talent beyond compare. I will miss her terribly.”

At her peak, Houston the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world’s best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like “The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale.”

She had the he perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

“The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy,” Houston told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.

She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.

Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.

“The time that I first saw her singing in her mother’s act in a club … it was such a stunning impact,” Davis told “Good Morning America.”

“To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine,” he added.

Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with “Whitney Houston,” which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. “Saving All My Love for You” brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. “How Will I Know,” ”You Give Good Love” and “The Greatest Love of All” also became hit singles.

Another multiplatinum album, “Whitney,” came out in 1987 and included hits like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”

The New York Times wrote that Houston “possesses one of her generation’s most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity.”

Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the “Soul Train Awards” in 1989.

“Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?” she told Katie Couric in 1996. “You’re not black enough for them. I don’t know. You’re not R&B enough. You’re very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.”

Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as pop’s pure princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had children of his own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.

But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.

“When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place,” she told Rolling Stone in 1993. “You see somebody, and you deal with their image, that’s their image. It’s part of them, it’s not the whole picture. I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody’s angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy.”

It would take several years, however, for the public to see that side of Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed her as America’s sweetheart.

In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with “The Bodyguard.” Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success.

It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy’s record of the year and best female pop vocal, and the “Bodyguard” soundtrack was named album of the year.

She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with “Waiting to Exhale” and “The Preacher’s Wife.” Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, “My Love Is Your Love,” in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay.”

But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time “The Preacher’s Wife” was released, “(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. … I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. … I wasn’t happy by that point in time. I was losing myself.”

In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.

Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and public meltdowns.

She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next day. Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown’s reality show, “Being Bobby Brown,” was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared “crack is whack,” was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.

Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album “I Look To You.” The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go platinum.

Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album on “Good Morning America” went awry as Houston’s voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for straining her voice.

A world tour launched overseas, however, only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out. Canceled concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.

Bow Wow

TMZ is reporting that the rapper failed to pay a $100,000 tour bus bill from 2009 to a Tennesseecompany. The company then filed a lawsuit in Georgia where the rapper lives to get the judgement enforced.

He was ordered to show documents regarding the lawsuit. After he failed to do so the tour bus company filed a motion to have the rapper held in contempt.

In October 2011 a Georgia judge granted the motion and ordered the rapper be arrested and held until he produces the documents. According to the report Bow Wow still hasn’t responded and will have to keep looking over his shoulder until he does.

Hazell Stoudemire was driving at a high rate of speed and collided with the rear of a tractor trailer, the Florida Highway Patrol told TMZ.com. The police told the website that the 35-year-old was not wearing a seatbelt.

The team said that Stoudemire is traveling to Florida to be with his family and will not be with the team for Monday night’s game against the Jazz in New York.

Friday February 17, 2002

8:30pm until 11:30pm

The Pyramid Scheme, 68 Commerce, Grand Rapids, MI

Tickets:
http://www.ticketweb.com/fb/4185765
18+ Doors at 8:30pm
Price: $10.00adv – $12.00dos

In a statement Friday, Godbee appealed to the members of the public who might have seen the victims or their cars before the women’s bodies were found.

The bodies of Demesha Hunt, 24, and Renisha Landers, 23, were found Dec. 19 in the turnk of Landers’ silver-gray 2009 Chrysler 300M. The bodies of Natasha Curtis, 29, and Vernithea McCrary, 28, were found Dec. 25 — Christmas Day — in the trunk of McCrary’s white 1997 Buick LaSabre. The victims were linked to Internet escort services such as Backpage.com and others, Godbee’s statement said.

Detroit police spokeswoman Sgt. Eren Stephens said patrons of the services won’t be arrested if they come forward with tips for police.

“If you’re a customer or actually working on these sites, we want to hear your information,” Stephens said Friday. Call the Detroit police homicide unit at (313) 596-2260, or Crime Stoppers at 800-773-2587). Online, go to www.1800speakup.org or Text: CSM and your tip to CRIMES (274637).