Team Obama can breathe a sigh of relief, they officially got the Russell Simmons endorsement. From a letter sent out this weekend, Simmons declared:Today I am announcing my personal endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States. During the last nine months, I have closely observed the presidential campaigns, analyzed the issues and platforms of the major candidates, and have had substantive discussions with Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. From the sidelines......

Joseph Jirovec and Kimberly Babajko are two of ten people arrested in an attack that was initiated by a friendly greeting of "Happy Channukah!" aboard a Q train in Brooklyn last week. Both Jirovec and Babajko have criminal records for assaulting minorities and could face hate crime charges in their latest brush with justice. Both are scheduled to appear in Brooklyn Criminal Court today for the vicious beating they allegedly administered to Walter Adler, who......

Hundreds gathered for the funeral of Linda Stein, who once managed musicians like the Ramones and later became a real estate broker "to the stars." Stein was found bludgeoned in her Fifth Avenue apartment on Tuesday, and her daughter Samantha Stein-Wells made tearfully shared a promise she and sister Mandy Stein made, "I had to see her one last time. One last time to see what this bastard had done to her. And we stood......

Last night Top Chef began with a Quickfire Challenge consisting of everyone cooking Padma breakfast...we swear she thinks of the challenges when she's stoned (see: the onion cutting relay. C'mon!). After the "food awakening" they were in for a rude awakening. Sent to New York City, the contestants seemed genuinely happy when they saw the Manhattan skyline...but their dreams were dashed when they were held in New Jersey for a day at Newark Airport. Cooking......

A judge sentenced Foxy Brown to a year in jail yesterday for violating the terms of her three-year probation. Officials asked that her probation be revoked following an incident in August when Brown (neé Inga Marchand) allegedly assaulted a neighbor with her BlackBerry wireless device. Brown was contrite and promised to adhere to whatever probation conditions the judge would set forth, but apparently the BlackBerry incident was the last of a long string of probation......

Did you know New York is #4 of America's Best Vegetarian-Friendly Large Cities? It's no surprise there are so many famous and not-so-famous veggies living here. Focusing on the former, PETA is holding another poll asking who the Sexiest Vegetarian worldwide is. This is their sixth annual sexy veggie contest, and has a list of 233 celebs competing for the title, including our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man Tobey McGuire. While the poll only includes Hollywood herbivores,......

Al Sharpton continues his effort to clean up rap lyrics. After Russell Simmons held some meetings on the topic, Sharpton took it to the streets by marching in midtown, and now he's brought his campaign to Motown. Cleaning up rap lyrics is as easy as following the old adage of washing ones mouth out with soap. At least that's a theme Sharpton is using, as he plans to collect thousands of bars of soap as......

The firing of Don Imus has caused many to take a look at language in not only media, but music. As previously mentioned, Al Sharpton is one looking to clean up what we hear, and yesterday he led a march against racist and sexist lyrics, targeting the major labels. Around 400 others joined him in a march around midtown, outside companies like Universal Music Group. The topic reportedly carried over to a private gathering at......

After previews of the segment last week, The Rap Up shares video of Anderson Cooper's chat with Cam'ron on 60 Minutes to discuss the "no snitching" rule prevalent in the rap community. Tupac, Notorious B.I.G. and Jam Master Jay are all examples of murders that have gone unsolved. More recently, Busta Rhymes bodyguard, Israel Ramirez, was shot and killed at a video shoot; out of the 25 people believed to be present during the crime......

READINGS: Russell Simmons has written a self-help book and will be at Border's today promoting it (okay, now all of this recent noise he's making makes more sense)! It's called "Do You! 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success." None of the laws include any of these three words. 1pm // Border’s [100 Broadway] // Free As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Tim Gunn will be reading from......

Last week after his appearance on Oprah, Russell Simmons and other music industry execs met to discuss the state of rap lyrics. Following this secret meeting, a rep for Simmons made the following statement (in lieu of the press conference that was going to take place) saying this is a: "complex issue that involves gender, race, culture and artistic expression. Everyone assembled today takes this issue very seriously." Yesterday, Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Chavis (on......

On Tuesday "The Oprah Winfrey Show" became a platform for the Hip-Hop community to respond to the Don Imus controversy with a panel discussion featuring Russell Simmons, Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Kevin Liles, Common and more. Should musicians lose their jobs or their contracts for using words that are considered racist and sexist? As seen in the video clip below, the former EIC of Essence Magazine thinks so. She is met with many who disagree, however,......

April 5: Italian Festa to celebrate the paperback publication of George deStefano's An Offer We Can't Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America. A reading and signing, followed by a Sicilian wine tasting, with antipasti served. Free. Hunters Point Wines and Spirits, 47-07 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, Queens. April 7: Russell Simmons & Jivamukti Yoga School hold a benefit for Farm Sanctuary, which provides a refuge for farm animals and works to end......

The Reverend Al Sharpton held a press conference criticizing violence in the hip-hop community. The press conference was prompted by the alleged assault on the 14-year-old child of a rap music management company headed by G-Unit rapper Tony Yayo; apparently seeing the child wear a Czar Entertainment shirt on 25th Street sent him over the edge. While Russell Simmons dropped out of the press conference, Sharpton was joined by the boy's mother Cynthia Reed, the......

The Reverend Al Sharpton, who has been representing the family of police shooting victim Sean Bell, weighed in about the taxi driver who Bell shooting cop Michael Oliver allegedly assaulted 12 years ago. Sharpton held a press conference, where he said that revelations about Oliver show that's he's "inappropriate at best, and biased and racist at worst." Oliver allegedly told immigrant Moussa Ndiyae "I don't know what you're doing here. I'm going to send you......

High profile chef Wolfgang Puck has taken foie gras off his menus. Farm Sanctuary, a organization dedicated to the protection of farm animals, had targetted Puck for an aggressive campaign beginning in 2004, and engaged him and his companies in conversation last summer along with the Humane Society of the United States. Puck's changes aren't limited to foie, but extend to more animal-friendly food practices across the board. According to the New York Times: He......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a car driving south on the northbound West Side Highway, a school bus accident on the Williamsburg Bridge, and an "escaped prisoner" in Queens. Hypocrites! Streetsblog spotted two NYC traffic cops double-parked for an entire lunch break. The average price of a condo in Dumbo is $1,116,541. Perfectly reasonable! Here's a stack of pretty NYC night pictures Dirty, but accurate: Grand Army Plaza from the air. [Via Curbed.] What......

Gothamist is very grateful that we didn't have to witness Bloomberg's Hip Hop Press conference yesterday. OK, well, actually we kinda do wish that we'd been there, if only to see Bloomie chatting it up with Ice-T and Russell Simmons, but considering some of the soundbites that made it into today's papers we suspect that even that charm would have quickly worn off ("Welcome to City Hall, or my crib, as I like to......

- A man tried to kidnap a five year old from her school's cafeteria! - Gawker points out the mistakes in the Post's photograph of the Conde Nast holiday lunch, which is good copy editing/research department fun - The Murder Inc. drug money laundering case closes, with Jay-Z, Damon Dash, Russell Simmons, Ja Rule, and Ashanti watching - Neighborhoodies is offering customized stockings - no coal, please! - Heroin ring busted - and the cops......

After yesterday's sub-scintillating mayoral debate, the first to include both Mayor Michael "I got money" Bloomberg and former Bronx Borough President Fernando "Bloomberg's got too much money" Ferrer," the poltiical analysts weigh in. The NY Times called it Ferrer's best day of the race ever in that he was able to position himself simply as "an alternative to the Bloomberg juggernaut." However, the Daily News thinks that Ferrer's debate effort was "too little, too late"......

Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai,
Def Poet & Spoken Word Artist...

After years and years of attempts asking NY State to do so, the State has voted to reduce the harsh sentences from the Rockefeller drug laws. The laws won't be totally repealed, but the sentences for drug crimes will drop from 15 years-life to 8-20 years. A lot of the criticism towards NY's drug laws stems from the fact that many of the people sentenced were non-violent offenders, with their crimes being a first-offense (many......

Ben Lyons, MTV Co-host...

The Post reports that the New York City Marketing Development Corporation is recruiting different celebrities and NYC notables to explain why they love the city in order to develop ways to drum up tourism. A recent poll that the NYC MDC conducted says that "crime is still the No. 1 reason why tourists stay away," prompting the MDC to go to people like Russell Simmons (Phat), Sofia Coppola, Mark Messier, Dick Wolf, and Ric......

Urban Outfitters, your cheekiness would be clever if it weren't so stupid. But the "Everybody Loves..." line of shirts, including "Asian Girl," Jewish Girl," "Latin Girl," "Catholic Girl," and "Italian Girl," just wants us to make one that says, "Fuck Urban Outfitters, I'll Just Go To The Salvation Army While We Leave These to the Suburban Kids," 'cause the only semi-racist t-shirt that really floats anyone's boat is "Italians Do It Better" or anything in......

P.Diddy and Russell Simmons are trying to stage a protest in Foley Square downtown. No, it's not to protest the smoking ban or not allowing people to carry concealed weapons in clubs, it's to protest the unfairness of Rockefeller drug laws. The Post says "organizers have already passed out 300,000 fliers and run radio ads publicizing Wednesday's extravaganza, which will feature numerous hip-hop bigwigs including Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs, Jay-Z, the Beastie Boys and Eve."......

According to the Times, 60 Thom is stirring up beef with its neighbors on Thompson Street between Spring and Broome. I live one block up, and often pass by while various black limos are disgourging the rich and famous (and their scurrying assistants) in front of the hotel. The neighbors are saying that the hotel is destroying the quality of life in the neighborhood, which, defying all the laws of physics, had until now......