Soul
Train Music Awards Ashanti and Musiq the big winners
On
saturday night, The 17th Annual
Soul Train Awards took place
in Pasadena, CA and on the night saw Ashanti
and Musiq the big winners
on the night. Ashanti took
home Best Female R&B/Soul Single
for 'Foolish' and Best
Album for 'Ashanti,
beating out the likes of fellow Grammy winners Erykah
Badu and India.Arie.
On the male side of things,
Musiq, for the second year
in a row took the honors for Best Male
R&B/Soul Single with 'Dontchange'.
He also won for Best Album
with 'Juslisen', beating Maxwell,
Justin Timberlake and even
last year's winner Usher.
Said Musiq 'I feel
very, very very good, I feel honored and I feel grateful'.
Other winners on the night
include Dru Hill with 'I
Should Be' winning the Best
Single by a Group or Duo category, and newcomers B2K
won for their self-titled album in the Best
Album by a Group or Duo category
Mariah
Carey and
LL Cool J
were both honors the
Quincy Jones Award for Outstanding Career
Achievement and
Rapper Nelly won the Sammy
Davis Jr. Entertainer of the Year Award who said on
the night - 'We've only being doing this a short amount of time,
and you don't think you'll be receiving awards like that so early
on in your career'
Queen
Latifah and Arsenio Hall
were the co-hosted of the event, which featured award presenters
Chris Rock, Baby
Face and Jennifer Lopez.
The Soul Train Music
Awards celebrates artists in R&B, hip-hop, rap and gospel
music. The awards are chosen by a group of radio station professionals,
talent managers and performers.
Source: ap.com
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New
Brian McKnight set 'U-Turns' to stores this month
The
current King of R&B Brian McKnight
has his sites on releasing his 3rd album in as many years. The
smooth soul crooner has set his sites on March 24th to deliver
his latest album U-Turn
The set finds the artist collaborating with such guest vocalists
as Nelly, Carl
Thomas, Fabolous,
Tyrese, and Kirk
Franklin. The first single will be
'Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda'
which has been steadily climbing Billboard's Bubbling Under
R&B/Hip-Hop Singles chart. Other tracks that will appear
on 'U-Turn' will be All
Night Long" featuring
Nelly, 'Good Enough'
with Joe,
Carl Thomas, Tyrese,
and Tank and not forgetting
the title song featuring Fabolous.
'U-Turn'
is the follow-up to last year's greatest hits album, '1989-2002:
From There to Here' and 2001's 'Superhero'
-
-
Seattle's
own Darrius aka Darrius
Willrich follows up his debut self-titled release with
his sophomore set 'Love will visit'
(Cridical Sun Recordings). The singer who gave us that critically
acclaimed debut album in 1999 really didn't get his due (where
record sales are concerned) but still he found an audience among
the underground masses.
His sophomore set promises
to deliver more of the same with tracks that are wonderfully produced
horned by intelligently well written lyrics. Darrius carries himself
as a seasoned veteran and it's hard to believe that this is his
sophomore set. He has been compared to the likes of the legendary
Stevie Wonder, Donny
Hathaway and Lionel Richie
- high praise for a young man fresh out the gates.
The lead off single is the
delightful 'Search for the Day'
a beautiful ballad that is high class, top quality soul at it's
best. Darrius's baritone breezes through the song with effortless
ease and finds him (to me) scoring a winner here. The album is
in stores now so do go and get a copy (it's a must have).
Though they have had successful solo careers, Joe
Sample, Wilton Felder
and Stix Hooper the original
members of The Crusaders
are gracing our presence once again with their 1st new studio
album in nearly 10 yrs in 'Rural
Renewal' hitting stores tororrow (March 4th)