Florida Sentinel Bulletin

Although the ongoing NBA Lockout has basketball fans nervous that they won’t be able to get their hoops fix, it seems they will, at the very least, still be able to see some of their favorite stars over the coming weeks and months. Whether it is playing at a local park or college in a summer league game or even appearing in your living room, professional basketball players have been turning up all over the place lately.

On Wednesday night, Carmelo Anthony will appear in an episode of Law & Order: SVU playing himself. Fellow All-Star Chris Bosh will also be making an appearance. In addition to his cameo on the hit crime show, Carmelo is also planning on making an appearance with the woman who played Carmela in the Sopranos when he joins Edie Falco on Nurse Jackie.

Last October, Brian Bradley, a young aspiring rapper from Brooklyn released a video revealing his frustration with men catcalling and eyeballing his mother. Days after hitting the web his song, entitled Stop Looking at My Mom, became a viral sensation, racking up over 200,000 views on YouTube.

This week on The X-Factor, the 14-year-old Bradley hit the stage with hopes of wowing the celebrity judge panel with his original song and winning a chance to compete for the record deal of a lifetime.

He started out the performance by giving Simon Cowell a lot of attitude and trying to pick a fight, but that was all part of the act leading up to his rap.

After he performed the teen rapper not only received the coveted “yes” from all four judges, but even surprised the industry veterans of the panel.

“You are arrogant, obnoxious, and argumentative but, you are one of the most talented young people I have ever heard,” Simon Cowell said following the performance.

L.A. Reid found Bradley impressive too, telling the teen he is the “luckiest guy”. “Wow. Wow. I used to run this label called def jam, all the years I was there, i was looking for you and you never walked in,’ said Reid. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world that you walked into my life today.”

Rapper Common is now officially a New York Times best seller after fans turned out in droves to buy his book.

Common released his autobiography, One Day, It’ll All Make Sense, to rave reviews this month.

The judge presiding over the Michael Jackson wrongful death case against Dr. Conrad Murray has barred some key testimony and evidence about the singer’s personal life.

Jackson’s child molestation case and his debt will not be mentioned during the case, amongst other details and testimonies by people close to Jackson, reports TheDailyBeast.com.

There will be no intensive digging into Jackson’s past financial woes, as that would be a “salacious … battle of the accountants,” according to the judge. The jury will not get to see estate documents showing the entertainer was more than $400 million in debt when he died, nor the multimillion-dollar contract Jackson signed with AEG–Concerts West for a series of up to 50 comeback concerts in London.

If Sly Stone ever decides to take his show on the road and tour again, at least he won’t have to walk far to the van.

The Sly & the Family Stone frontman, known for such hits in the late ’60s and early ’70s as Dance to the Music, Everyday People and Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), is currently homeless, and living in a van in Los Angeles’ rough-and-tumble Crenshaw district, according to a report co-written by Stone documentarian William Alkema for the New York Post.

According to the article, as little as four years ago, the 68-year-old musician — born Sylvester Stewart — lived in a lavish Napa Valley home complete with a vineyard, and had several cars.

But in recent years, a drug habit (Stone has been arrested multiple times for cocaine possession) and fiscal difficulties (last year he sued his former manager, Jerry Goldstein, for $50 million, claiming that Goldstein had defrauded him) led Stone into his current situation. Not that he appears to mind.

“I like my small camper,” Stone tells the Post. “I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I cannot stand being in one place. I must keep moving.”

And despite it all, he’s still recording music, on a laptop computer in his van — and with reportedly hundreds of songs currently in the can, the musician is hoping that today’s hit-makers will reach out and help him stage a comeback.

“I see all the guys playing those old songs,” Stone says. “Let these guys know, like Lady Gaga, let me come in, just let me come in and pay me if you like it.”

It might be a while before Stone gets another crack at the stage. His live performances have been exceedingly rare over the past two decades, and when he has taken the stage, the results have tended toward the shambolic — such as his brief, bizarre appearance at last year’s Coachella Music and Arts Festival.

The big-screen remake of the 1976 film Sparkle just got a bit, er, more sparkly. EW has confirmed that Cee Lo Green, the Grammy-winning multi-platinum R&B singer and mentor on NBC’s The Voice, has joined the cast, which includes American Idol winner Jordin Sparks in the title role of an aspiring music star, and Whitney Houston as her mother.

Carmen Ejogo (Away We Go) and Tika Sumpter (The CW’s Gossip Girl) have also signed up to play Sparks’ sisters, Sister and Dolores; together, the trio rise together in the Motown-era music business as a Supremes-like group.

After losing a bid to get his charges from a nearly two decade old murder reduced to manslaughter, former Bad Boy rapper G-Dep is expected to be facing a possible sentence of 15 years-to-life.

Dep’s attorney Anthony Ricco had been trying to convince prosecutors to lessen the former rapper’s sentence do to the fact that his client turned himself in. The prosecution wasn’t buying it, giving Dep, born Travell Coleman, a minimum of 15 years if convicted at trial.

“His decision [to confess] was made for all the right reasons,” said Ricco. “The DA should ask themselves whether they made their decision for the right reasons.”

Last December Dep walked into a NYC police station and confessed to the 1993 shooting of John Henkel.

Rapper Petey Pablo was sentenced Monday to 35 months in prison on a federal gun charge.

Pablo, 38, whose real name is Moses Barrett III, pleaded guilty in March to possession of a stolen firearm after he was discovered with one at North Carolina airport.

The rapper was arrested at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Sept. 11, 2010, when a security screener discovered a 9mm handgun in his carry-on luggage.

EL SEGUNDO, California — Big-voiced R&B diva Vesta Williams, perhaps best-known for her 1980s hits Don’t Blow A Good Thing and Congratulations, has been found dead of a possible drug overdose in a Southern California hotel room. She was 53.

Los Angeles County coroner’s Capt. John Kades says Williams was found dead at 6:15 p.m. Thursday in an El Segundo hotel room. An autopsy will determine the cause of death, but Kades says “this could be a drug overdose.”

Born Mary Vesta Williams in Coshocton, Ohio, on Dec. 1, 1957, she had hits with Once Bitten Twice Shy, ‘Sweet, Sweet Love and the torch song Congratulations, where she emotionally bids goodbye to her ex, about to marry someone else, on his wedding day.