Check out the latest happenings around the music world…
- Forbes counted up the millions and crowned Dr. Dre the “Highest-Paid Musician of 2012″ after pocketing a cool $110 million from May 2011 to May 2012. From cashing in on booming headphone sales and headlining the Coachella fest with Snoop Dogg, the 47-year-old rapper/producer/entrepreneur beat out No. 2 Roger Waters ($88 million) by more than $20 million. Rihanna ($53 million), Diddy ($45 million), Beyonce ($40 million), Jay-Z ($38 million), Kanye West ($35 million), Sade ($33 million) and others round out the annual list of filthy rich artists. Cha-ching!
- Don’t call it a comeback. Soul singer Amel Larrieux is preparing her return to the music scene with her fifth studio album, Ice Cream Everyday. The “For Real” singer recently told the Huffington Post that while she doesn’t have a release date for fans, she is in the process of editing and re-working the album. “Well, we almost regret when we give a release date, because one of the nice things about being independent is having the luxury of not really having deadlines,” Larrieux said. “We make our own deadlines and then we break them all the time, because in the end, the finished product has to be something that we can really get behind. This time around, it’s just been a lot of editing and changing our minds and things like that. We didn’t want to have a disjointed product. So I won’t give a date anymore. I won’t ever do that again.” Larrieux added that a Groove Theory album might not be too far off, if she and Bryce Wilson are presented with the right offer.
- Swizz Beatz proved to be Alicia Keys’ biggest fan this week by purchasing 150 copies of her fifth studio album Girl On Fire to pass out to fans. “I swear I love this man with all of me!” Keys tweeted to fans after her husband’s good deed. The album is on track to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, if Rod Stewart‘s Merry Christmas, Baby doesn’t creep in to take the top spot.
- And finally, Aerosmith frontman and former American Idol judge Steven Tyler has apologized for his “racist” comments toward Nicki Minaj earlier this week. After upsetting the “Freedom” rapper, Tyler took to Canada’s eTalk to say, “It was a moment, I’m sorry if it was taken wrong. But I’m the furthest from a racist. I’m not sure how she got that from me saying ‘I’m not sure she would have judged Bob Dylan’,” he explained. “I was just saying if Bob Dylan came on the show he would have been thrown off. Maybe I spoke out of turn but a racist I’m not.” Nicki, if you could explain to us what exactly offended you…
The post Music Tidbits: Dr. Dre Tops Forbes, Amel Larrieux Returns, Swizz ‘Stans’ For Alicia & More appeared first on UPTOWN Magazine.