Rihanna took over New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza to kick off the “Today” show’s 16th annual Toyota Concert Series, performing her hits “Only Girl (In the World),” “S&M,” “What’s My Name”  and “California King Bed,” Then gets “Loud” for the crowd.

A must watch.

More videos after the break.

If you woke up to a lot of racket this morning blame Rihanna. While at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, she took it the streets for a lil’ “S&M”. If you like what you see, go get Loud!

“Sometimes you need perspective. You’ve been right in front of greatness so often that you need to step back and see it again for the first time. This is the dressing room rehearsal for American Idol. NO MICROPHONE. No effects.” – Andy WarHOV

Before Beyonce debuted her new song “1+1″ for millions on American Idol’s season finale last night, she rehearsed it flawlessly in her dressing room. Check out this candid iPhone footage shot by Jay-Z.

Incredible! Beyonce is in it to win it! Taking over the American Idol finale to give the premiere performance of her official 2nd single “1+1″ from forthcoming album 4.

Great song, great performance. See for yourself, and follow the jump to watch her perform “Crazy In Love” with the Idol ladies.

T-Boz and Chili joined the many stars and performers to grace the stage of the American Idol finale tonight. With a hype opening to their set from Lil’ Jon, the legendary ladies performed their hits “Scrubs” and “Waterfalls, ” joined by the Idol ladies. Check it out!

Beyoncé wowed millions of viewers with her interactive performance of “Run the World (Girls)” at Sunday’s Billboard Music Awards. But soon after she was faced with accusations of copying a previous performer. The Millennium Award recipient is speaking out following the barrage of criticism.

When I first heard about the accusations, I thought well here we go again. It seems to never fall, that Bey is accused of copying another artist with each new album, video or performance. If you haven’t seen it already watch the videoabove, and hear what Bey had to say below.
The pop superstar’s projection-based set drew comparisons to a 2010 performance by Italian singer Lorella Cuccarini. But B was aware of her predecessor. “My makeup artist showed me the performance of Lorella Cuccarini a year ago, and it inspired me so much,” she told AOL Music. “I then met with the talented people who worked on it. The technology and concept were so genius.”

She was inspired after discovering Cuccarini’s performance online. “Thank God for YouTube or I would have never been exposed to something so inspiring,” she added. “I never worked so hard on anything in my life as that performance for the Billboard Awards.”

One of the men behind the show stopper was new media artist and film director Kenzo Digital. He met with Beyoncé and worked non-stop on the production for a month before bringing it to life in Las Vegas. “[The Cuccarini artists] are awesome and do incredible work as well, but there are a lot of different inspirations for where our piece came from,” he told Yahoo! Amplifier.

“If anything, it’s a great example of how great of a performer Beyoncé is. It’s just a bare white screen. It’s a technique in video art since the ’80s in terms of frontal projection and interactive things. That’s really nothing new. It’s not even a new technology. It’s just an incredibly simple, awesome storytellingdevice, and with a performer like Beyoncé it becomes incredibly powerful.”

Kenzo hopes that fans will be able to relive the performance when B tours to promote her upcoming album 4. “It would be awesome,” he said, “but I don’t know what’s in store exactly.”

via Rap-Up

It sure was similar. I really do not mind artists being inspired by a previous design or concept, and in this case she did use the same creator. It’s not much different than using a similar shot or edit in a music video. Plus, we all know the classic saying, “Good artists copy, Great artists steal,” hahaha. It’s so true…

What do you think?

“I’m a jazz musician first,” Bilal says, laughingly, of choosing the English band’s synthy 1982 track, which spent an amazing 43 weeks on the Hot 100. “So I can pretty much do a rendition of any thing I hear.”
Like Soft Cell, Bilal has been no slouch on the Billboard charts himself. Though his career took off a decade after theirs did, Bilal’s 2001 single “Soul Sista” spent 23 weeks on the R&B/Hip-Hop songschart. Still, the Philadelphia-native singer worked hard to make “Tainted Love” his own. “[My] band, we fashion ourselves as some type of blues rock R&B kind of vibe, so I was just jamming on ["Tainted Love"] at home and I brought it to the band,” He says. “We played around with the bridge, we changed the chords… We made it real straightforward, guitar-heavy.” Indeed they did.

Follow the jump for more…

Take a walk with Cee-Lo “Goodie” Green as he performs some of his most definitive tracks from his past to present on VH1 Storytellers.

This past weekend there were a few things going on: Big Sean’s show in Toronto, Fat Beats’ monthly pop-up store in Brooklyn, and Boston’s tribute to their fallen lyrical soldier Guru. Among the many acts paying homage at the sold-out showcase, Rhythmatic Eternal King Supreme was on deck and proceeded to tear the house down. Check out the footage up top and down bottom, and don’t forget to cop his latest project (via iTunes) now.