Blog Posts by Daniel Kreps

After Rick Ross suffered a pair of seizures last month, doctors tested the rapper for a variety of diseases like HIV, cancer, and diabetes. The results all showed that Ross was "perfectly healthy," but he was suffering from an ailment where the only medicine is a comfy pillow. Rozay told BET's 160 & Park last night that his seizures were the result of his perpetual insomnia. "It was a case of me not getting enough rest, enough sleep," Ross said. "Being the fastest growing label in the game, wanting to be the number one label in the game, it comes with a lot of sacrifices and in my case it was sleep. I would get two hours of sleep and keep moving. Me being a hustler."

Who's Number One: Coldplay overcame the fact that even their own fans can't properly pronounce Mylo Xyloto as the band's fifth album marched straight to Number One on the Billboard 200. Mylo sold 447,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan, good for the third highest debut of 2011 after Lady Gaga's asterisk-earning Born This Way and Lil Wayne's near-platinum Tha Carter IV. Xyloto gave Coldplay their third Number One album, but don't start popping champagne just yet: MX's 447,000 copies were way less than what X&Y (737,000) and Viva la Vida (721,000) moved in their first weeks.

Not too long ago, the Kaiser Chiefs were anointed the title of "Next Big British Band," a distinction that gets handed out on an annual basis to those rockers whose huge success in the U.K. could potentially cross the Atlantic. However -- like Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, and Bloc Party before and after them -- the Chiefs briefly flirted with mainstream American fame before settling for a small but devoted U.S. following. The band has figured out a surefire way to get themselves back into the good graces of the American music press, though: Put Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Beyonce all in the same video. How could music bloggers not write about that?

Justin Bieber has had it pretty easy in his young career. Other than outrunning packs of screaming teenage girls and deciding when is too early to release a Christmas album, the 17-year-old singer hasn't faced many challenges in his rise to the top of the music world. That could be about to change: A woman named Mariah Yeater is claiming that Bieber is the father of her 3-month-old baby boy. Yeater filed legal paperwork demanding that Justin take a paternity test to "scientifically confirm" that he is the father, Radar Online reports, and that she's seeking "adequate support for my baby." It's about to get all Maury Povich up in here.

Yeater said in a signed affidavit that she met the singer backstage after Bieber's October 25th, 2010 concert at Los Angeles' Staples Center. A security guard allegedly saw Yeater in the crowd and asked if she'd like to meet Justin. "Immediately, it was obvious that we were mutually attracted to one another, and we began to kiss," Yeater told Star

It's been a brutal month for indie rock's most famous couples. After Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon announced last month that they were separating, She & Him singer Zooey Deschanel and Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard have revealed that they are splitting just over two years after they were married. (Or, roughly 748 days longer than Kim Kardashian's marriage lasted.) "It was mutual and amicable. There was no third party involved," a source told Us Weekly.

It's unclear why the couple decided to call it a day on their union, but their differing schedules probably made it impossible to see one another: Deschanel was anchored to Los Angeles for her TV show New Girl, and She & Him just released their Christmas album last week, while Gibbard and Death Cab have spent the better part of the year touring in support of their album Codes and Keys. Neither Gibbard nor Deschanel have commented on the separation yet. (Incidentally, Zooey's most recent tweet says "@usweekly -

The father of 19-year-old Charice Pempengco -- who has a recurring role on Glee as Sunshine Corazon -- was stabbed to death in her Philippines hometown according to the AP.

Although she's been estranged from her father since childhood, Charice cancelled several upcoming shows in Singapore, explaining via Twitter, "I have to go back to the Philippines as soon as possible to be with my family."

The defense rested today in the involuntary manslaughter trial of Michael Jackson's physician Dr. Conrad Murray without calling their most important witness to the stand: Dr. Murray himself. The physician could have lent some credence to his claims that Jackson injected himself with a deadly dose of Propofol by testifying about his experiences the night of June 25, 2009, but he instead opted, as is his right, to not take the stand. Murray's lawyers opened up the possibility of their client testifying yesterday, but today they informed the judge that they would rest their case with Propofol expert Dr. Paul White.

If this was a Hollywood courtroom drama, Murray would have taken the witness stand for what no doubt would have been the climax of the trial. Here in reality though, the doctor's two lawyers, Ed Chernoff and J. Michael Flanagan, argued over whether the defendant should testify. According to TMZ, Chernoff was adamant that Murray not testify, since the doc risked getting annihilated on cross-examination by the prosecution, who would love nothing more than to question Murray.

Need some new music today but don't want to open the wallet? There's a trio of must-hear releases out this All Saints' Day that you can listen to for free. First up is ASAP Rocky's much-anticipated mixtape LiveLoveA$AP. Who is A$AP Rocky? Up until last month, he was just another 23-year-old rapper in Harlem and a member of the A$AP Crew collective. But then Rocky was signed to an insane $3 million deal by Sony/RCA without even releasing a street album. By comparison, Drake, the most hyped rapper in years, only scored $2 million when he signed with Young Money, and he only earned that much because he already had a chart topper ("Best I Ever Had") on his resume. "They say I sound like Andre [3000] mixed with Kanye," Rocky raps in "Leaf." If that's the case, he's potentially worth the investment.