Lil Wayne

Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III is one of the few albums of 2008 to be both a critical and commercial success. The New Orleans rapper who ended up on many critics' best-of lists for the year sold more than a million copies of III in its first week of release, and went on to sell another million-plus despite the slow economy. The so-called best rapper alive has finally arrived. On Sunday night at the multi-act Power 99 HollaDay Jam, the rabid enthusiasm of the throng gathered at the Susquehanna Bank Center proved it. Kids clung to every leap in Wayne's timbre, every manipulation of mood and meter.

Anytime the Grammys get anything right, it's cause for a minor celebration. And at least three good reasons to start a party were revealed when the Recording Academy released its 110-category nomination list Wednesday night, after a first-ever one-hour telecast on CBS called Grammy Nominations Concert Live!! The first commendable headline is that the most nominated artist, with eight, is Lil Wayne. Tha Carter III, the new album from the New Orleans rapper born Dwayne Carter Jr., is the biggest seller of the year, but the deranged and dreadlocked MC's abundant talents are of more of a, shall we say, rambunctious variety than the Grammys are in the habit of rewarding.

FHM MAGAZINE'S sexiest woman, Megan Fox, used to be in love with a female stripper. How's that for "Transformers"? The 22-year-old hottie/actress, who's engaged to actor Brian Austin Green and appears on the cover of the October GQ, said the relationship occurred when she was 18 and first living in L.A. alone. "Well, that year my boyfriend broke up with me, and I decided - Oh, man, sorry, Mommy! - that I was in love with this girl that worked at the Body Shop," Megan said.

Everybody's got a personal playlist of summer songs. It might have Frank Sinatra's "Summer Wind," or Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summertime. " The Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City," or maybe Regina Spektor's song of the same name. Seals and Croft's "Summer Breeze" might make you feel fine, though I'm betting the Isley Brothers' version would make you feel finer. The 21 picks assembled here - on a playlist that can be burned onto one CD - are contenders for the songs of summer '08, tunes that may worm their way into your consciousness, if they haven't made it there already.

'Y ezzir!" Lil Wayne exults at the start of Tha Carter III, the most anticipated - and most often delayed - hip-hop album of 2008. "They can't stop me. Even if they stopped me. " The 25-year-old New Orleans rapper, whose mother named him Dwayne Carter Jr., has gone from being just another late-1990s Hot Boy in the Cash Money Millionaires posse to being an omnipresent auteur, second only to Jay-Z as a most desired guest on every marquee hip-hop and...

For someone just 25, there's so much to know about Dwayne Carter Jr. By 2007, New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne had already retired as president of Cash Money Records and had been named named Hottest MC in the Game, courtesy of MTV. Not that he hadn't declared himself such on Tha Carter when he said "I'm the best rapper alive/since the best rapper retired," a reference to gold-watch retiree Jay Z. That's no mere boast. Not only because Lil Wayne has recorded hundreds of guest appearances (Destiny's Child, Chris Brown)

GARY COLEMAN told "Inside Edition" that he's been secretly married since August to 22-year-old Shannon Price. The couple tied the knot on a mountaintop in Nevada and "Nobody was around but the minister, preacher, the videographers, the photographer, the helicopter pilot and us," Coleman said. Sounds like the photographer had an easy job, only having to shoot one table. Coleman, who has 18 years on Price, played down their age difference. "I don't have issues with age, I have issues with intelligence," he said.

ACCORDING to TMZ.com, rapper Lil' Wayne was the headliner Sunday night at a "Stop the Violence" event in gunshot-plagued Wilmington, N.C. But when only 1,000 concertgoers showed up (tickets were $30-$40 and 3,000 were expected), Wayne, who had been paid only a portion of his fee up front, waited backstage for three hours hoping to see the rest of his cash walk through the gates. Eventually, about 80 sheriffs and police officers in attendance said they'd put up the remainder of Wayne's money themselves, if he could wait until yesterday, to get the rapper to perform.

The ironically monikered New Orleans hip-hop star Lil Wayne (Dwayne Michael Carter) was arrested Monday in an Atlanta hotel room on charges of drug possession, MTV reports. He was busted with an array of pills including alprazolam (generic Xanax) and hydrocodone as well as "two small burnt joints of marijuana. " Seems a hotel employee narced on Lil when he saw the "Tha Block Is Hot" singer hanging in his room with the alleged substances. The 23-year-old Hot Boy alum's fifth album, Tha Carter II, debuted at No. 2 last year.