News

Diddy’s Mother Janice Combs Sued For Fraud By Former Bad Boy Executive

HipHopWired Featured Video

2023 MTV Video Music Awards - Arrivals

Source: Dia Dipasupil / Getty

Diddy’s mother Janice Combs has been accused of fraud by a former Bad Boy Entertainment executive who says she inherited his share of the company.

As per HipHopDX, Kirk Burrowes, a founding partner in the label, has filed a legal complaint against Diddy’s mother. The talent manager says that he was forced to give up his 25% stake in the company under threats of violence when Diddy, who was accompanied by the label’s lawyer, allegedly walked into his office wielding a baseball bat. “By words and actions, Sean Combs and Kenneth Meiselas frightened and intimidated and assaulted plaintiff (Burrowes) and forced him to turn over his share certificate for 25 shares of Bad Boy Entertainment to Sean Combs,” the filing reads. According to exclusive statements made to The Daily Mail, he says Diddy then transferred that stake to his mother.

Janice Combs was not present during the alleged incident but when asked for advice on the matter she told Burrowes she had no idea the confrontation occurred. Kirk says otherwise and believes Diddy’s mother was in on it and even helped orchestrate it. Since being ousted from Bad Boy Entertainment Kirk Burrowes says he was eventually blackballed thus falling on hard times. “They blacklisted him from the music industry, blocked business opportunities, and destroyed his professional reputation, ensuring he would remain financially destitute and unable to reclaim what was rightfully his,” the lawsuit states. He also claims Janice organized “decades-long scheme of intimidation, violence, fraudulent misrepresentation and financial concealment.”

Not only did Burrowes serve as the Bad Boy Entertainment’s chief office but he is the godfather to Diddy’s first son Justin. He also claims he witnessed Diddy physically abuse his mother as well. Kirk Burrowes is seeking his original $100,000 investment into the company, his original 25% stake and additional damages.

Google Gets FDA Clearance For Loss-of-Pulse Feature For Pixel Watch 3

HipHopWired Featured Video

Pixel Watch 3 Loss-of-Pulse Feature

Source: Google / Pixel Watch 3

We truly appreciate it when a wearable has a function that could improve or save our lives. Case in point, Google’s Pixel Watch 3 has finally gotten FDA clearance for a first-of-its-kind loss-of-pulse feature.

Earlier this week, the FDA gave Google the green light to roll out the new loss-of-pulse feature on the Pixel Watch 3. As of Fall 2024, the feature is already available in the EU.

According to Google, the opt-in feature can “detect loss of pulse and prompt a call to emergency services to provide care if you are unresponsive,” turning your or your loved one’s Pixel Watch 3 into a potential lifesaving device.

Google says the feature will begin rolling out in the coming weeks.

Per the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation website, out-of-hospital-cardiac arrests account for nearly 356,000 deaths each year in the U.S., the rollout of the loss-of-pulse feature onto wearables could significantly reduce that number.

  • Loss of Pulse Detection is the latest addition to potentially lifesaving tools from Google. Here is how it all came together:
  • Powered by a multi-check, AI-based algorithm and the multipath heart rate sensor in Pixel Watch 3, the feature can identify a potential loss of pulse and prompt a call to emergency services if the user is unresponsive.
  • Google rigorously tested the algorithm over hundreds of thousands of hours of data to strike the right balance between sensitivity to an event and reducing the number of potential false notifications to emergency services.
  • They also collaborated with a diverse range of experts, from cardiologists and global resuscitation authorities to frontline EMS professionals, including dispatchers and paramedics, to ensure effectiveness and real-world applicability.

The Pixel Watch 3 is now available for $349.99 and comes in four color options. You can purchase one here.

Southern University Student Caleb Wilson Dies Due To Alleged Fraternity Hazing

HipHopWired Featured Video

Caleb Wilson

Source: Wilson Family / Courtesy of Wilson Family

A Southern University student and member of its “Human Jukebox” marching band is dead, allegedly after a fraternity ritual off-campus.

According to reports, a student at Southern University died after taking part in a fraternity-related ritual off-campus early Thursday morning (Feb. 27). The student was identified as Caleb Wilson of Kenner, Louisiana. The group had been gathered at the North Sherwood Forest Community Park, not far from the HBCU’s Baton Rouge campus, when Wilson collapsed during a ritual where participants were standing in line. He was pronounced dead at 3:15 a.m. after being brought to Baton Rouge General Hospital on Bluebonnet Boulevard, leading hospital authorities to call the police, as the death was “suspicious in nature.” Baton Rouge police are continuing to investigate the death, pending results from the autopsy.

Southern University’s Division of Student Affairs sent out a notice declaring that all new membership activities on campus including fraternities, sororities, and student clubs would be paused indefinitely until further notice. The directive specifically points to prohibiting any rushes or interest meetings, initiation processes, and any induction of new members. It has been alleged, but unconfirmed, that Wilson was pledging to the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. The fraternity, along with all the other D9 organizations, have long banned pledging or hazing as a requirement for entry.

“It is with profound sorrow that we extend our condolences on the passing of Caleb Wilson. His loss is deeply felt, and our hearts go out to his family, friends, and all who were touched by him,” said Ricky L. Lewis, Grand Basileus of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. in a statement shared on Friday, February 28. He added, “We have been informed that the local authorities have launched an investigation into this tragic incident, and we fully support their efforts to seek the truth. Currently, our foremost priority is standing in unwavering support of Caleb’s family. We have extended ourselves to them and are ready to assist in any way possible during this difficult time.”

The 20-year-old was a mechanical engineering student and trumpet player, affectionately nicknamed “Cheese” by fellow members of the Human Jukebox, the university’s famed marching band. “He was always smiling,” senior and bandmate Lonnie Robinson said of Wilson, who he first befriended at a summer band camp. “He just had the best sense of humor.”

Wilson’s father, Corey Wilson, is a high-ranking member of law enforcement who works part-time with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, having recently retired last year at the rank of sergeant. He also served as part of the security detail for New Orleans Saints and New Orleans Pelicans owner Gayle Benson.

Benson offered her condolences to the family in a statement: “This tragic loss has hit very close to my heart as his father (Sgt.) Corey Wilson has worked with our team for many years,” Benson said, adding: “I have a deep and personal connection to his family. We mourn with him today on this senseless passing, our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by this heartbreaking loss.”

James Gunn Shares 1st Image Of Upcoming HBO Series ‘Lanterns’

HipHopWired Featured Video

Lanterns x James Gunn

Source: @jamesgunn / x

While the world awaits the premier of James Gunn’s highly anticipated Superman: Legacy, the man has a few other DC projects in the works to help round out his rebooted DC Universe. Yesterday (Feb. 27), he gave fans their first look at this upcoming HBO series, Lanterns.

Starring Aaron Pierre as John Stewart aka The Green Lantern, and Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan aka The Green Lantern (they’re both Green Lanterns), the series will center around the superheroes coming down to Earth to investigate a murder that took place in rural Nebraska where Jordan shows the rookie, Stewart, the Lantern ropes. While we can only imagine the murders have some kind of ties to their world (Lanterns ain’t coming to Earth to investigate a simple homicide charge), the eight-episode series promises “darker mysteries” and “reckonings” being discovered as the show goes along.

While we don’t know if this will have any ties to Superman: Legacy (which is set to premier this Summer), the show is definitely sparking interest in comic book fans who’ve long awaited to see a proper iteration of The Green Lantern on film (Ryan Reynold’s 2011 Green Lantern flick was utter trash).

HBO’s Lanterns is set to debut sometime in 2026 and with a little luck, maybe the DCU will be in a better place than it is today for fans to really enjoy what James Gunn and his team got cooking by then.

Check out the first image for the series below and let us know if you’ll be checking for it in the comments section.

https://x.com/JamesGunn/status/1895144056612687974

Jim Jones Doesn’t Regret Promoting Gang Culture: ‘It’s Not a Crime to Be a Blood’

Jim Jones had a lot to say during his recent interview with The Breakfast Club while promoting his latest album At the Church Steps, but the most notable topic he talked about was about his gang affiliations.

Explore

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

While talking about his connection to the infamous 6ix9ine case, Charlamagne tha God asked him why he doesn’t run from his affiliation with the Bloods to which Jones compared being a member of a gang to being a member of a fraternity. “It’s not a crime to be a Blood,” quipped. “It’s not a crime to be a banger. It’s not a crime to be a fraternity member. It’s not a crime to be a sorority member. It’s all the same thing. It’s a crime if you do crime while being that and that turns into other things. If it’s more than one of y’all doing crime while being Blood, that turns into a RICO and things like that. I do business. I’m a businessman, you heard? Always music, baby!”

DJ Envy then asked him if he regretted commercializing being a gang member and to Jones’ credit, he didn’t shy away from the question and owned up to it. “Yeah, I made it cool, but I also commercialized it,” he admitted. “I made millions of dollars off the gang culture. Same thing with [what] Snoop has done and the West Coast.”

Trending on Billboard

Adding, “Do I regret anything? No, I don’t. Because I’ve done so many positive things being in this position as being a man, as being a gang member, as being a father, as being all these things, you dig? If I didn’t have this platform, people would never know how great some of these people can be, because I’ve put on a lot of people and put them in positions to feed their family.”

Elsewhere in the interview, he challenged fellow Dipset member Cam’ron to a celebrity boxing match with the winner taking home $10 million and called 50 Cent “a sucker” when discussing New York artists to do a Verzuz with.

You can watch the full convo below.

You Care Kanye West Looks To Get An Iced-Out Swastika Into Production

HipHopWired Featured Video

Celebrity Sightings In Los Angeles - February 22, 2025

Source: DUTCH/Bauer-Griffin / Getty

If you’ve been keeping up with the political landscape as of late you’d know that Nazism has seemingly made a comeback and while many are denying that the fascist ideology has any influence on their beliefs, Kanye West has no problem embracing the title and is in fact looking to profit from it.

Weeks after debuting his new line of T-shirts featuring swastikas on his website, yesterday (Feb. 27), Kanye West once again took his infatuation with Hitler’s infamous movement to another level when he took to X to showcase his latest Nazi-inspired brainchild: an diamond encrusted swastika. You read that right, Kanye debuted what he would want an iced-out swastika to look like on his page and asked potentially interested jewelers to submit their own designs writing, “For all jewelers I’m looking for swastika chain designs. Please submit to swastachain@yeezy.com.”

https://x.com/kanyewest/status/1895180246099669350

We would say “that man needs Jesus” but Nazi’s were known to be mostly “Christians” so that probably wouldn’t help in this matter.

While many people were outraged that Kanye continues to take his antisemitism views to new extremes, others mostly are chalking this up to “Ye being Ye” at this point as he continues to seemingly spiral down a hole of hate, bigotry, anger, and porn? The man is basically single-handedly out MAGAing the most faithful of MAGA cult members out there, and we just aren’t surprised anymore.

Still, he’ll continue to somehow justify his Nazism and die on that hill. He later tweeted how “NIGGAS RAP ABOUT HOW MANY PEOPLE THEY KILLED BUT THEY SCARED TO WEAR A SWASTIKA T SHIRT CAUSE THEY LABELS AND MANAGERS AND STREAMING SERVICES AND TOURING COMPANIES MOB UP TO STOP N*GGAS MONEY NOBODY BETTER NEVER SAY SH*T TO ME ABOUT MY T SHIRT,” before ended it with, “WHITE PEOPLE WHO ARE AGAINST THE SWASTIKA DON’T WANT TO HAVE A CONVO ABOUT BLACK ABORTION.”

https://x.com/kanyewest/status/1895353780276994411

Nah, we’ll just go ahead and say it, that man needs Jesus. Black Jesus. Just sayin’.

https://x.com/kanyewest/status/1895433905425219991

Lord only knows if Kanye will ever return to being the old Kanye, but from the looks of things, that’s not happening anytime soon and even if he somehow miraculously snapped out of his Nazi state of mind, would his fans and the world ever get past this MAGA version of Kanye West? We may never know.

What do y’all think about Kanye trying to get an diamond encrusted swastika out there? Let us know in the comments section below.

Black Majority Ohio Town Mounts Armed Guard Against Neo-Nazis

HipHopWired Featured Video

White Power Rally Held In Toledo

Source: Bill Pugliano / Getty

The Black residents of a town in Ohio have formed an armed watch after neo-Nazis attempted to march nearby and Ku Klux Klan flyers appeared there.

Residents in the historically Black community of Lincoln Heights, Ohio, have formed an armed watch to protect themselves after a group of neo-Nazis attempted to march nearby before being chased off, in addition to flyers from the Ku Klux Klan being found in the area. Members of the town mobilized after the neo-Nazis rallied on the border of Lincoln Heights and another Cincinnati suburb, Evandale on Feb. 7. The confrontations on the I-75 bridge, which saw residents chase the group off, were caught on video.

“An American individual protecting his homeland with a firearm — I thought that was the most American thing that we [could] do,” said Lincoln Heights Safety and Watch (SAW) Program spokesman Daronce Daniels in an interview with the Washington Post. The group has set up checkpoints around Lincoln Heights and is armed per Ohio’s open-carry firearms law. In a press conference held Monday (Feb. 24), the group shared flyers they claimed were distributed throughout Lincoln Heights and neighboring towns touting the 160th anniversary of the Klan. They also shared video footage showing members of the watch catching a man tossing the flyers from his car the previous evening at a traffic stop. The footage was shared with the Local 12 news network.

The SAW group along with the nonprofit Heights Movement also laid out a list of demands for leaders of Evandale to find a new firm to conduct a third-party investigation into the thwarted neo-Nazi rally after Lincoln Heights Mayor Ruby Kinsey Mumphrey stated she was shut out of the process. The demands also call for the firing of Evandale police officers who aided members of the group (including one who drove a member to his car to retrieve his service animal) and those who didn’t activate their body cameras as well as the surrender of all the unedited bodycam footage from that day.

The residents of Lincoln Heights, which dates back to the 1920s, state that their primary concern is for the youth of the town. “The way I found out that the Nazis were in my neighborhood was through children,” said DeRonda Calhoun, a teacher in the area. “They were afraid.” The Heights Movement did state that they secured funds for mental health services available to those children who requested it.

Mark Zuckerberg Dresses Up in Benson Boone’s Grammy Jumpsuit & Performs for Wife’s Birthday

Benson Boone wasn’t on hand to perform at a birthday celebration for Mark Zuckerberg‘s wife, philanthropist Priscilla Chan, so the Meta CEO simply decided to do it himself.

In a truly wild video posted to Zuckerberg’s Instagram Friday (Feb. 28), he jumps on stage at a black-tie party honoring his better half and spreads out his arms to let two friends tear away his tuxedo, revealing the “Slow It Down” singer’s baby blue Grammy jumpsuit underneath. The Facebook founder then dives into an energetic performance for a shocked Chan and their party guests, jumping on top of a piano and recreating Boone’s movements from the musician’s memorable set at the 2025 awards ceremony (although it doesn’t look like Zuck went as far as doing a backflip).

“Your wife only turns 40 once!” the tech billionaire captioned the clip. “Shoutout to @bensonboone for the jumpsuit and new single.”

Trending on Billboard

In the comments, Boone wrote, “I can’t believe my eyes.”

On another Instagram post about the tribute, the Washington native hilariously added, “I hope his nuts are okay. That thing is so tight.”

Boone’s sparkly one-piece was one of the most talked-about parts of this year’s Grammys, thanks in part to the fact that cameras caught the star adjusting his crotch as he sang his Billboard Hot 100 No. 2 smash “Beautiful Things” during the night’s best new artist medley. He later wrote on Instagram Stories that he was “sorry for adjusting [his] jumpsuit so aggressively on stage tonight,” adding, “that thing was extremely restricting in certain areas.”

The video comes one day after Boone dropped his new song “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else,” marking his first proper release since 2024 album Fireworks & Rollerblades. He and Zuckerberg have hung out in the past, meeting up in September for a playful sword fight filmed on Meta’s AI Ray-Ban glasses.

See Zuckerberg cosplay Boone below.

LISA Opens Up About an ‘Uncomfortable’ Moment With a Stalker

LISA is opening up about a negative side of fame.

The BLACKPINK superstar joined Thai radio talk show WOODY FM this week, where she recalled a particularly scary moment with a boundary-pushing fan. “I’ve never shared this before,” she said. “Last year, it was the first time I actually experienced [stalkers] myself. I’ve heard a lot about it from other idol friends, mostly from male idols. But it just happened to me.”

She continued, “Usually, when my flight lands in South Korea, fans will be there waiting at the airport. That’s normal, and I appreciate that they come. But when I got home, I saw them waiting. So I told that person, ‘I’m really not comfortable with this. If you want to see me, let’s meet somewhere public. Showing up like this at my house, I feel uncomfortable.’”

Explore

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

Thankfully, the superstar noted that things did not escalate further from there and that she is safe.

Trending on Billboard

Despite the scary situation, LISA has reached a lot of positive milestones in recent months. The singer has officially made her foray into the acting world, taking on the role of Mook in the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus.

She also unveiled on Friday (Feb. 28) her long awaited debut solo album, complete with 15 new tracks and collaborations from Megan Thee Stallion, Future, Tyla and more. The project features the previously released singles “Rockstar,” “New Woman” featuring Rosalía, “Moonlit Floor (Kiss Me)” and “Born Again” with Doja Cat and RAYE.

LISA will soon be reuniting with BLACKPINK, as the foursome announced a summer 2025 world tour earlier this month. It’ll mark the ladies’ first trek together since 2022-2023’s Born Pink World Tour, which supported Billboard 200-topper Born Pink.

A$AP Rocky Gives ‘Don’t Be Dumb’ Album Update: ‘I Just Want to Drop It’

Now that A$AP Rocky was found not guilty of shooting his former friend A$AP Relli, he can focus on releasing his long-awaited fourth solo album Don’t Be Dumb.

While sitting down to talk with GQ about his creative director role with eyewear maker Ray-Ban, the Harlem rapper gave fans updates on his album and his life. As far as the project goes, Rocky says he’s in the process of putting the final touches on it. “I’m in the mixing and mastering realm of it,” he told the outlet. “But I think quite frankly, people are tired of hearing about updates about the album. They’re just ready to get this sh–, you know what I’m saying? I don’t think anybody wants to hear where I’m at with it, how far is it along and all that. They just want to hear some sh– just to see where I’m at, and I promise I got some new sh– in store. I’m challenging myself. It’s like anything, I approach it with a different tactic, degree, or finesse.”

Trending on Billboard

When it comes to how he’s feeling about life after his trial, the Harlem rapper is grateful for his freedom. “I feel blessed,” he said. “I feel so lucky to even be here talking to you in Milan at a launch for my Ray-Ban creative directorship. Honestly I do, man. You know, feeling like there was a chance that your freedom would be taken away from you, and then like a week later to be launching your creative direction announcement in Milan, Italy.”

Since beating the aforementioned case, Rocky and Ray-Ban not only announced his partnership, but he’s also set to star opposite Denzel Washington in a new Spike Lee joint titled Highest to Lowest, which will be a remake of the classic 1963 Japanese film High and Low directed by Akira Kurosawa.

When he was found not guilty, Spike Lee celebrated by posting a still from the movie on his Instagram thanking the judge and jury, and just recently posted another picture on set with himself, Denzel and Rocky.