By Sherri L. Smith, BlackWeb20.com

Former Roc-A-Fella Records and Rocawear partner Dame Dash, has announced that he’s making a return to music with the launch of his internet radio station, Magnet Radio. While details are few and far between the Hip-Hop mogul has said that it should be launching in “a couple of weeks.” Read the rest of this entry »

 A soon-to-be-released documentary could shed light on what was the beginning of the end of a hip hop dynasty. Filmmaker Choke No Choke tells Hip Hop Weekly that his movie about the rise and fall of Roc-A-Fella records, co-founded by Jay-Z and Damon Dash, will raise eyebrows: “Both Jay and Dame was involved with a certain R&B singer, who I’m not gonna say her name out of respect ’cause she ain’t around to defend herself, but I believe that was a part of the initial friction. I was seeing Jay with her back around 2000, then Dame was with her after. All you have to do is look at the movie they did, Death of a Dynasty. In the movie they were fighting over a model. In real life, she was a model, but singing is what she was known for first.” Photos have surfaced on the Web, showing the late singer Aaliyah in poses with both Jay and Dame. The singer’s body language suggests that she’s comfortable with a shirtless Dash, but Jigga is shown with an arm wrapped rather intimately around her waist in a pre-Beyonce’ pose or two. Aaliyah died in a 2001 plane crash.

Rapper is “super-devastated” by mom’s death. Could the frustration of grief over his mom’s death be behind Kanye West’s recent clashes with photographers? Maybe it’s a coincidence, but just days after People magazine published West’s first public comments on losing his parent, the rapper is explaining his second arrest in three months. Kanye was questioned by police in England, but not charged this past weekend after a cameraman claimed the rapper shoved his camera into his face, causing a cut. West took to his blog to write about the incident outside Newcastle’s Tup Tup Club: “I put my hand up to the camera in self-defense! …My security yelled, ‘Get the camera off him!’ I guess, in all the commotion, the camera scraped his nose.” West barely escaped felony charges in September when he and an assistant were caught on video destroying another photographer’s equipment at an airport. Instead, West was issued a misdemeanor. He further blogs, “When will there be a law passed that simply enforces that someone has to ask to take a photograph of you?” People quoted West as saying that his mother’s death, due to cosmetic surgery complications last year, left him “super-devastated. I didn’t do any interviews after my mom passed,” he tells the mag. “I wasn’t ready to speak about [it]. Now I’d rather talk it through than commit suicide. …I feel like I moved to California, then my mom moved to California, and she did stuff she wouldn’t have done if we’d stayed in Chicago. If I’d never made it in the music business, it never would’ve happened.”

Ex-millionaire label head’s financial woes continue. Former Roc-a-Fella Records boss Damon Dash doesn’t have “a pot to p–s in,” says a lawyer who recently sued him. “They’re broke,” Jason Gabbard says of Dash and his wife, following a suit over $148,505 in unpaid fees. The lawyer tells The New York Daily News that Dash owed a fashion firm the cash before the suit was settled. Earlier this year, the entertainment entrepreneur’s New York home was reported in foreclosure, and just this month his Chevy Tahoe was seized after he reportedly stopped paying the $714.99 monthly lease. If that’s not enough, Dash faces an outstanding debt of $2.1 million in New York state taxes and at least three other pending suits and unpaid tabs.

A Motown songwriting legend dies at age 65.The man who wrote such timeless hit songs as “Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “War” and “Just My Imagination” has died. Norman Whitfield, who helped Motown acts achieve star status through his moving, poetic lyrics, suffered from complications due to diabetes. Whitfield had come out of a coma before his death on Tuesday. His Temptations-performed hit “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” won a Grammy Award. Whitfield was 65.

Damon Dash hasn’t seen teenage son in weeks. The mother of rap label founder and entrepreneur Damon Dash’s 16-year-old has a warrant for her arrest. Linda Williams, son of Damon Jr., has allegedly refused to return the child to his dad for several weeks. Dash has full legal custody of the teen. An attorney for Damon Jr. and Williams has said that Damon Jr. wants to remain with his mother.