Chaka Khan, Halle Berry, More Celebrated At BET Honors

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Chaka Khan and Halle Berry were among those getting the royal treatment  at the 2013 BET Honors ceremony, held Saturday in Washington DC at the Warner Theater.  The ceremony is scheduled to air Feb. 11 on BET.

The Oscar winner was praised for her charity work with domestic violence victims at Los Angeles’ Jenesse Center, and she used her acceptance speech to call on women to speak up about problems at home.

“Many women don’t speak out and they don’t seek help,” she said. “By honoring the work we’re doing at the Jenesse Center, maybe it will encourage others to stand up and be strong and face the reality of what’s happening to them – and have the courage to make a change.”

New Music: Frank Ocean ft. Big Boi & Andre 3000 – Pink Matter (Remix)

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A new version of Frank Ocean’s “Pink Matter” from his GRAMMY nominated album, “Channel Orange,” has hit the new featuring Big Boi, which makes it an unofficial Outkast reunion. Big Boi recently revealed in an interview that he had recorded a verse to the “fan favorite” jam.  It is the first time that Andre 3000 and Big Boi have appeared on a track together in six years.

Chief Keef Arrested In Chicago For Parole Violation

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Judge Carl Anthony Walker found Keith “Chief  Keef”  Cozart showed a “willful disregard” of the court. He’s being held until Thursday when the judge will hold a sentencing hearing.

Prosecutors said he violated his probation in June when he visited a gun range in New York. He was prohibited by the judge from having contact with firearms. His attorney Dennis Berkson argued Cozart fired a rifle on private property as part of a promotional video. He said that didn’t violate the spirit of the judge’s order.

But Walker said it was no different than if Cozart handled a gun in a home. In that situation, he would have violated Cozart’s parole, the judge said.

Cozart, who was sentenced to 18 months probation in January 2012 for pointing a gun at Chicago cops, was handcuffed behind his back and taken out of the court Tuesday.

Cozart, who wore camouflage pants, a black-hooded sweatshirt and Timberland boots, did not address the judge or testify during the two-hour hearing.

In December, Cozart released a new album, “Finally Rich.” He was in the news last summer after another Chicago rapper, Joseph “Lil JoJo” Coleman, was shot to death on the South Side.

Coleman and Cozart, who were affiliated with rival gangs, were engaged in a war of words on the Internet at the time.

Cozart hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Coleman’s killing.

(Sun Times)

Exercise Lengthens Your Life – Even if You’re Overweight

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Exercise lengthens your life - even if you're overweight

Add this to the list of reasons why exercise is good for you: A new study says 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity, leisure time exercise is associated with roughly 3.4 years added to a person’s life.

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and other organizations analyzed six different prospective cohort studies of more than 632,000 people ages 40 and older. The studies had a median follow-up period of 10 years, with roughly 82,000 reported deaths. Regular, moderate intensity exercise was associated with an increased life expectancy, even when the person exercising had an unhealthy Body Mass Index (BMI).

Dr. I-Min Lee, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the senior author of the study, says that not exercising but having a healthy weight was associated with 3.1 fewer years of life, compared to obese people who were active. Conversely, people who exercised 150 minutes a week and had a healthy BMI gained an extra 7.2 years of life.

While it’s best to be at a healthy weight for your body, Lee thinks her team’s analysis demonstrates that every bit of activity helps, regardless of a person’s size.

“This shows if you emphasize physical activity, you still get the benefit,” says Lee. “Overweight, obese, severely obese – if you are active, the results suggest that you … have more of a benefit than someone who is not heavy but not active.”

(CNN)

Iyanla Vanzant Will Attempt To Fix DMX’s Life In The Upcoming Season On OWN

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If you watched “Couple’s Therapy” two seasons ago, you’d recall the heartfelt breakdown DMX had as he talked about his mother not loving him as a child. The 42-year-old sobbed like a baby when he talked about the lack of a motherly influence, and that disconnect was used to explain why he’s cheated on his wife, Tashira, umpteenth times, not to mention his battle with drugs and alcohol. Though the VH1 show didn’t seem to mend much for X or his wife, who is rumored to have filed for divorce from him immediately after the series ended, I have faith Iyanla can help him get himself together.

Like Oprah, I think Iyanla can talk DMX through his emotions but also make him take responsibility for the way he’s mistreated his wife for 14 years. Oprah said in a recent press conference announcing Iyanla’s return for a second season:

“I am amazed at Iyanla Vanzant’s gift to just cut through the layers of people’s pain and their baggage and create a space in all of their hoarded junk emotionally. At the end of every show, you can see there is a crack, an opening for healing.”

Carmelo Shoots Down Divorce Rumors

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For weeks there have been rumors that Carmelo Anthony and his wife LaLa’s marriage was on the rocks.

While it may be rocky, it ain’t over…

Carmelo Anthony tells Page Six

“Just letting you know me and my wife have no problems. We’re good.’’

“We have our time, we have our down time. She works, I work, but we have our time. We make it work. Communication is the key.’’

Jada Pinkett-Smith Is Proud of Her Daughter’s “Emotional Confidence”

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Jada Pinkett-Smith gains strength from daughter Willow Smith. The actress and singer recently took to Facebook to dote on her daughter’s ability to be emotionally confident and dependent at a young age.

“I have been in special wonder of my daughter as I watch her grow amongst men (father,brothers and uncles) who love her deeply,” Smith writes. “I have been able to witness how a young lady develops from a little girl into a young woman with emotional confidence. I have never possessed emotional confidence. I was confident I could make it in this world alone which hindered…my sweetness and hindered my trust. But today, I know I am not alone.”

This is not the first time that Jada has talked about her daughter with social media fans. A little over a month ago, the ‘Madagascar 3′ star took to Facebook to defend her daughter’s decision to cut her hair saying, “This is a world where women/girls are constantly reminded that they don’t belong to themselves…I made a promise to endow my little girl with the power to always know that her body, spirit and her mind are HER domain. Willow cut her hair because her beauty, her value, her worth is not measured by the length of her hair.”

Mary J. Blige Opens Up With LA Confidential: Talks Drug Problems, Abuse and Refusing Rehab

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Mary J. Blige has been through a lot during the span of her career and now she has a testimony.  She’s featured in the newest issue of LA Confidential and left no stone unturned as she dished on her past drug use, including sniffing cocaine at the Grammy’s, and how she used alcohol to cover up the issues that she had within herself. She blames her drug addiction on being molested when she was just five years old and says she is still reminded of the incident when she smells a certain type of lotion. She also reveals how she was affected by Whitney Houston’s death and why she never sought out rehab to help her with her drug and alcohol abuse.

Check out a few key excerpts below:

On getting high after the Grammys in 1995

Back then? Shoot. When I got that Grammy (Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group) I was high. Not at the Grammys I don’t think. But I was drinking like a crazy person. Still sniffing cocaine going in…

On all the things that led to that point

That’s it. Life. You start from day one. And what we spoke about earlier—when I was 5 years old. That dark moment. That one dark moment. It only happened once, but after that there was so much else in my childhood that happened. So many dark moments—which all added up and that’s what sprung on the drug addiction, trying to numb it all with the drugs. The depression. The lack of love for myself. The lack of people loving you around you. The abandonment issues. Daddy not being there all the time. Mommy not knowing how to handle it all. Although she loves you, she abandons you at some point too. I’m not saying that to be down on my mom. She was just a cursed woman as well. There have been so many other dark moments that I can’t even talk about. I have given the world so much and even in the middle of all that stuff there has been so much ish going on. It was all those tributaries that gave me such deep soul. But it is those same things that now have taught me how to be strong. In the past those were the same things that were killing me. But I made it out. I made it out.

On how Whitney Houston’s death affected her

What I did was I chose to learn how to drink socially and it didn’t work. The test comes when you have to decide whether you’re drinking to be social or drinking to cover up something again. To cover up depression. To cover up guilt. Shame. Abandonment. All of that, man. Once I realized, “There you go again,” I had to stop. Whitney Houston’s death really affected me. Her death is another reason I stopped. I really do think I’m done. I looked at how that woman could not perform anymore.

On being molested at the age of 5

I was 5. Mmmm … yes. I was 5. I don’t want to go into the details. It’s something that hurt me really bad. I’m still the same way. When I open up to trust you, I trust you wholeheartedly. And then when you betray that trust, it closes me up.

The quiet. I always think about how quiet it all was. It was abnormally quiet. It was just quiet. And there are certain smells that… mmmm… well… someone was using this lotion on their hands an hour or so ago. I smelled this lotion and I had such a flashback about it all. It’s weird that we’d be talking about all this right now after me just having that flashback.”

On why she chose not to go to rehab

I don’t know why. But I didn’t want to go to rehab. I believe that anything man himself can do for me, God can do for me in a greater way. I decided to pray and to seek God on my own. I just stayed in The Word. And it worked.”

I loved God, but I didn’t love myself. When I would get really, really high and the daytime would come, I would feel like God was watching me. And that’s when I’d start to go into this panic thing. I remember one night I was soooooo high. And as I was trying to go to sleep there was this dream… mmmmm…. Gosh, man, I don’t know if I should be telling you all of this. But let me put it this way. I believe in God so much that I would not let the enemy win my soul. You know what I’m sayin’? God loves me no matter what. He loves me high. Sober. Gay. Straight. I can’t let the world tell me anything different. That’s how I survived, knowing He loved me no matter what. Because if I don’t believe that God loves me when I do wrong, I’m dead.

(LA Confidential)

SMH: Deaf Man Stabbed After Sign Language Mistaken for Gang Signs

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It’s already natural to have a strong heart for the disabled, and when you hear about something like this, it only makes things worse.  The growth of gangs in the black community is one of the most painful things to watch, especially when innocent people are affected.  This man didn’t deserve to die, and it’s shameful that this kind of ignorance overflows in many of our communities everywhere.

A deaf man in Burlington, North Carolina, was stabbed multiple times after his sign-language conversation with another deaf man was mistaken for gang signs.

The incident took place Wednesday afternoon on East Morehead Street, where 45-year-old Terrance Ervin Daniels was exchanging words in sign language with another man.

Police say Daniels was suddenly approached by 22-year-old Robert Jarell Neal, and stabbed multiple times with a kitchen knife.

He managed to make his way to a nearby intersection, where he collapsed on a patch of grass.

Emergency services eventually made their way to the scene and transported Daniels to Alamance Regional Medical Center in stable condition.

(Gawker)

Autopsy Showed Jovan Belcher Was Intoxicated When He Killed Girlfriend And Himself

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The death of Kansas City Chief Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend was horrible to hear about.   What’s even worse is that alcohol appears to have played a role in both of their deaths.  This might be a message to young people that messing around with this stuff can cause you to make very bad decisions that hurt you for the rest of your life.

According to a report from the Kansas City Star, former Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher was legally drunk when he killed his girlfriend before taking his own life on Dec. 1, an autopsy showed.

The autopsy showed Belcher’s blood-alcohol level was .17 when he died.

Belcher shot himself at the Chiefs practice facility about five hours after he was found sleeping in his Bentley by police while parked in front of his mistress’s apartment.

(CBS Chicago)