Blog Posts by Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Rihanna says she resented Chris Brown for a time, but has put that behind her and is happy that her former boyfriend has found success in music again.

Rihanna tells Esquire magazine that disliking Brown "was taking up too much of my time" and that she has moved on from that.

"It was too much anger," the 23-year-old said. "I'm really excited to see the breakthrough he's had in his career."

Brown, 21, is serving five years of probation after pleading guilty to felony assault for the attack on Rihanna in the early morning hours before the 2009 Grammys. "Graffiti," the album he released 10 months after the attack, was a commercial disappointment. But his latest release, "F.A.M.E. (Forgiving All My Enemies)," debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in March; it reached gold status and has multiple pop and R&B hits with songs like "Look at Me Now" and "Deuces," among other tracks.

"It's incredible to see how he pulled out the way he did. Even when the world seemed

CHICAGO (AP) - Former Weezer bass player Mikey Welsh, who also found success in his second career as an artist, died in a Chicago hotel room, police said Sunday. Chicago police spokeswoman Laura Kubiak said Welsh was supposed to check out of the Raffaello Hotel at 1 p.m. Saturday. When he didn't, hotel staff went to his room, entered it and found him unconscious and not breathing, Kubiak said.

The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office said autopsy results will be available Sunday afternoon. Kubiak said there's nothing to indicate foul play.

Welsh, 40, of Burlington, Vermont, performed with Weezer from 1998 to 2001, leaving after suffering a nervous breakdown, according to the band's website. He eventually established himself in a second career as a painter.

"I'm taking a break from music," he told MetroWest Daily News in 2002. "I really feel the need to reinvent myself and move on, and I couldn't be happier painting. Music is still an important part of my life, but I really have no

The 34-year-old rapper known for his outbursts was the headline act at the Big Chill music festival Saturday night, where he ranted in the middle of his set about being misunderstood and underappreciated. "I walk through the hotel and I walk down the street, and people look at me like I'm (expletive) insane, like I'm Hitler," he said. "One day the light will shine through and one day people will understand everything I ever did."

West received light boos from the crowd as a result.

The performer also defended the music video for his song "Monster," which features cannibalism and girls hanging from their necks.

"Who saw the video before it got banned, before they took it down and before women's groups starting saying that a person that lost the most important woman in his life is now against women in some way?" asked West, referring to the 2007 death of his mother Donda West.

West, who started his set roughly 30-minutes late, apologized to the crowd for his tardiness, saying he

LONDON (AP) - Amy Winehouse's mother said the singer was not well when they met a day before she died, a British newspaper reported Sunday, while her family mourned the loss of "a wonderful daughter, sister, niece."

The Sunday Mirror quoted Janis Winehouse as saying she believed it was "only a matter of time" before her daughter died. The 27-year-old singer was found dead at her London home on Saturday.

"She seemed out of it. But her passing so suddenly still hasn't hit me," Janis told the tabloid.

Ambulance crews called to her home in north London's Camden area Saturday afternoon found the singer dead before they arrived. Police said the cause of her death is being treated as "unexplained," rejecting speculation that she died from a drug overdose as "inappropriate." A post-mortem is expected Monday or Tuesday.

The Winehouse family said in a statement it was remembering her, and request for privacy.

"Our family has been left bereft by the loss of Amy, a wonderful daughter, sister,

LONDON (AP) - Amy Winehouse, the beehived soul-jazz diva whose self-destructive habits overshadowed a distinctive musical talent, was found dead Saturday in her London home, police said. She was 27.

Winehouse shot to fame in 2006 with the album "Back to Black," whose blend of jazz, soul, rock and classic pop was a global hit. It won five Grammys and made Winehouse - with her black beehive hairdoand old-fashioned sailor tattoos - one of music's most recognizable stars. But her personal life, with its drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders and destructive relationships, soon took over her career.

Police confirmed that a 27-year-old female was pronounced dead at the home in Camden Square northern London; the cause of death was not immediately known. London Ambulance Services said Winehouse had died before the two ambulance crews it sent arrived at the scene.

Singer and actress Kelly Osbourne, who helped Winehouse check into a drug addiction treatment facility in 2008, was one of many

SAN FRANCISCO - Much like the caller in the Lady Gaga hit song "Telephone," some visitors to Amazon's site received a busy signal Monday when they tried to download the digital version of the artist's latest album, "Born This Way," which the online retailer was selling for 99 cents on its release date.

Spokeswoman Sally Fouts said Amazon experienced a high volume of traffic that caused delays for those downloading the album - echoing a posting on the album's product page on Amazon.com. Customers who ordered the MP3 version of "Born This Way" on Monday will get it for 99 cents, she said.

An early evening attempt to buy the album on Amazon and use its new server-based storage system went seamlessly. The album appeared instantly on Amazon Cloud Drive and could be streamed online right away. The album downloaded in a few minutes to a computer. The user's storage space also registered the promotional 20 gigabytes of cloud storage that came with the album.

Lady Gaga, whose real name is

Trace Adkins summed up his role in the new film "The Lincoln Lawyer" in his own succinct way when he gathered friends and media for a screening of it recently.

"I'm in it at the beginning and the end and there's a buncha crap in the middle," Adkins said with a smile of the movie, which opened Friday.

He's on screen about 3 minutes, but it's another solid step in the country singer's second career with a handful of parts slated for later this year.

While short, Adkins' scenes are humorous, memorable and key character development moments for star Matthew McConaughey's character, a defense attorney who operates his practice out of a Lincoln. Adkins plays a biker in the film who has engaged McConaughey to represent a member of his gang.

McConaughey, a country music fan, invited him to try out for the role, but it wasn't given to him.

"I had to go read for it," Adkins said last week. "And I really appreciate the fact that the director Brad Furman told me, `I didn't know who you were. You

Garrison Keillor plans to keep spinning tales of Lake Wobegon's Norwegian bachelor farmers for at least a couple more years, but the host and creator of public radio's "A Prairie Home Companion" is dropping more hints that his retirement may be on the horizon.

In an interview posted Wednesday on the AARP Bulletin's website, the 68-year-old Keillor said he plans to retire in the spring of 2013. But Keillor said he first has to find his replacement.

"I'm pushing forward, and also I'm in denial. It's an interesting time of life," Keillor told the publication.

Keillor told The Associated Press in a follow-up e-mail Wednesday that he'll be 70 in the spring of 2013, "and that seems like a nice round number."

"The reason to retire is to try to avoid embarrassment; you ought to do it before people are dropping big hints. You want to be the first to come up with the idea. You don't want to wait until you trip and fall off the stage," Keillor told the AP.

For the first time this season, "A