Jacob “The Jeweler” Arabov who has made custom jewelry for pretty much every major hip-hop artist, Rudy Giuliani, and Bono has been sentenced to 30 months in Detroit today for lying to investigators about a multistate drug ring.

According to The Associated Press, Arabov was given seven months off his potential three-year-plus sentence for his extensive charity work. He was also ordered to pay a $50,000 fine and forfeit $2 million to the government.

He was originally arrested in June 2006 in his Upper East Side store for conspiring to launder about $270 million in drug profits for a Detroit-based drug ring called the Black Mafia Family. But the charges were later dropped as part of a plea deal.

Mr. Arabov told reporters: “I feel ashamed that I broke the laws of this country, a country that has been so good for me. I will carry this shame for the rest of my life.”

He was among 40 people indicted in the scheme orchestrated by the Black Mafia Family, which ran drugs out of Detroit beginning in the 1990s.

Sources have reported that DMX has been arrested on a warrant for not having a valid driver’s license in Miami, Dade police say.

Earl Simmons aka DMX, 37, was being held at Miami’s Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Monday afternoon. His bond is set at $500.

Rap music industry veteran Neil Levine will head up BMG Label Group’s Battery Records, a new Hip-Hop imprint.

According to The New York Post, Battery Records will sign and develop upcoming rap artists, grooming them for mainstream success.

The most promising of these artists would then graduate to be distributed through BMG’s RCA and Zomba divisions.

According to The New York Post, Battery Records will allow BMG to be

flexible when it comes to signing new artists.
Levine, who founded Penalty Records, recently experienced success reactivating EMI’s Imperial imprint.

Under his watch, Imperial which released a successful album by Fat Joe, Me, Myself and I, which spawned the hit single “Make It Rain,” which features Lil Wayne, and Fat Joe’s most recent offering, The Elephant in the Room.

At Penalty, Levine broke artists like The Beatnutz, Crooked Lettaz (featuring David Banner), Lord Finesse, Nelly and others.

Rapper Young Jeezy was arrested early Wednesday morning (June 18), after being pulled over by the Atlanta Police Department.

According to Public Affairs officer Ronald Campbell, Jeezy, born Jay Jenkins, was pulled over on Buford Highway around 2:20am, driving a white Chevrolet Corvette with temporary tags.

The Def Jam artist was hit with seven charges, including driving without a tag, no proof of insurance, speeding, reckless driving, and two counts of driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs.

Jeezy was processed at the Atlanta City Jail, and was released around 6:15am after paying a $4,100 fine. His management has declined to issue a statement at this time.

Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter III, has toppled the competition to become No. 1 on The Billboard 200.”Tha Carter III.” sold just over 1 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which made it the first album to past this threshold since 50 Cent’s “The Massacre” in March 2005.

No album in 2006 sold as many as 800,000 copies in a single frame, and the largest sales week since “The Massacre” belonged to Kanye West’s “Graduation,” which netted an opener of 957,000 copies last year when it hit stores on Sept. 11.

This should solidify his status as the rap games best rapper.

Terrence Howard prepping his forthcoming debut album, Shine Through It.

The 11-song Columbia Records release, which was written, arranged and produced by Howard, features the entertainer on vocals and lead guitar.

Although he is best known for his roles in various movies, Howard admits that “music has always been the road that leads to where I’m headed.”

“Film is my vocation, my 9 to 5. In the movies, I’m doing what somebody else is asking me to do; music is my own personal form of expression. My responsibility, like the sun, is to shine. Even if the planet is covered with clouds, I must say what I have to say.”

Shine Through It features songs like “Love Makes You Beautiful,” “No. 1 Fan,” “Mr. Johnson’s Lawn,” “Plenty,” “Spanish Love Affair” and the title track.

Terrence Howard’s “Shine Through It” is slated to hit stores on Sept. 2.

T.I. announced the veteran group was signing with his Grand Hustle label during his Hot 107.9 Birthday Bash on Saturday. While 8Ball & MJG have always enjoyed critical acclaim, the group only saw moderate commercial success after leaving Suave House for Bad Boy in 2004. Their Bad Boy debut, Living Legends spawned the single “You Don’t Want Drama,” which eventually reached number 22 on Billboard Magazine’s list of Hot Rap Tracks. Ridin High followed in 2007 to little fanfare, and talks of the duo leaving Bad Boy began. In addition to their own independent works, the group also had a greatest hits album released through Koch.

Reportedly, a video has hit the net showing Young Buck dissing G-Unit and discrediting 50 Cent at a small club performance in Tampa, Florida over the weekend.

Performing alone on stage to his previous hits like “Shorty Wanna Ride,” the former G-Unit rapper appeared to surprise fans after an audience member screamed “G-Unit, n*gga!” as he quickly responded to the shout-out.

“F*ck G-Unit, n*gga, I’m gonna give you what you really wanna hear, ’cause Florida n*ggas wanna really know what the f*ck really be going on with Buck,” Buck replied.
Rather than going in to his next song, Buck decided to speak for nearly two minutes explaining the controversy that began immediately following his royalty check statements he made against 50 Cent earlier this year.

“When I made the statement, ‘I ain’t ever seen no royalty check,’ I didn’t say that sh*t saying that the n*gga 50 done took money from me or none of that whole sh*t. Or that the n*gga owe - I said it ’cause it’s real,” he affirmed. “And when I say sh*t, I mean the sh*t. He took it in a different way. I guess the n*gga felt like I’m airing out family business or whatever.”

Instead of stopping there, Buck continued to air out the head of G-Unit by comparing his street credibility to his own.

“He feel like he got a whole lot ’til the n*gga hit rock bottom and he got to crawl his a** back up,” he said. “The difference between me and a motherf*cking 50 Cent is that I could hit the gutter-[and] I can get back in the streets. He couldn’t go back-[or] do the same.”

Before preparing to perform “Stay Fly,” Buck promised the crowd that he was only going to focus on himself and if anyone does business with the Cashville star, it better be sincere and not just a handshake.

Despite a recent leak of his latest album, Cash Money Records rapper Lil Wayne is expected to sell one million copies of Tha Carter III.

Billboard reports that the Cash Money/Universal release could reach the milestone by the time SoundScan closes out its tracking week on Sunday (June 15) night.

The last album to sell one million copies in a week was G-Unit frontman 50 Cent’s sophomore project The Massacre, which sold 1.1 million units upon its March 2005 release.

Jurors deliberated for less than a day in the R. Kelly child pornography trial, and when they returned with a verdict, Kelly was acquitted of all charges, the AP has reported.

Kelly wiped away tears and hugged his lawyers after being acquitted on all fourteen counts he was charged with. Had Kelly been convicted he would have faced 15 years in prison.

The prosecutions star witness, Lisa Van Allen had testified that she had engaged in 3-way sex with Kelly and the minor on the tape, and that Kelly often travelled with a duffel bag of homemade porn.

Defense attorneys argued that the man on the tape, which was sent to the Chicago Sun Times in 2002, did not have a large mole on his back, and that Kelly had such a mole.

Three relatives of the alleged victim also testified that they could not identify the girl on the tape as their relative.

Kelly left the courthouse with no comment. Fans cheered him on as he boarded an SUV.