• Michelle Obama: mother, future first lady, …and blogger? [BH]

• First dunking then brawling — are WNBA games turning into NBA games? [HP]

• Bow Wow and Jermaine Dupri love each other again. Awww? [MTV]

• Ashanti is now the tourism ambassador for Nassau County in Long Island. Uh, good luck with that. [SP]

• Wax Amy Winehouse looks so much better than real Amy Winehouse. [People]

• Jay-Z can't imagine why Amy Winehouse would want to call Kanye West a "c**t." I'm sure there are many people who could fill him in on some reasons. [EUR]

• And this is only one of the many reasons why watermelon is so great — stereotypes be damned! [Jezebel]

• Are the kids who are doing the Wu-Tang old enough to even know what Wu-Tang is? [C&D]

• Solange does her own thing. Best of luck. [SR]

• NBA players, patriotic sports fashions, etc. [NB]

• Erykah Badu's rolling papers, coming soon to a corner store near you. [C&D]

• What's a soundtrack song if it doesn't have the name of the movie in it? [MTV]

• Chiman Rai, the Indian-born entrepreneur who was accused of having his daughter-in-law killed because she was black, got life in prison for his crime. [BV]

• It's really hard for crackheads to not act like crackheads. [TGJ]

• Little Paris Bennett of American Idol isn't so little anymore. [JM]

• Amy Winehouse doesn't actually have emphysema, she just has scarring in her lungs that could lead to emphysema. That's why it was okay for her to smoke a cigarette upon exiting the hospital. [MG]

• Diamonds are for never? [Jezebel]

• Jill Scott's engaged! To a drummer named Lil John Roberts! Thank goodness its not a different Lil Jon. [BV]

• Does this look and sound like a straight-to-DVD production or what? [NB]

• Rick Ross and Foxy Brown plan to reveal their engagement at the BET Awards. Made for each other, those two are. [NR]

• Anna Wintour couldn't let that all-black Vogue Italia issue come out without a response, however weak, from American Vogue. [FB]

• Amy Winehouse is as healthy as a 92-year-old woman. [MG]

• Kanye West defends Soulja Boy in his beef with Ice-T, then loses a bit of ground when he applauds the young rappers skills a lyricist and compares him to Nas. [Bossip]

• Is Angela Simmons channeling Nicole Richie/Mary-Kate Olsen? [NB]

• Funny lunch. [CL]

• Just in case you were still worrying about the possibility that there really is a video of Michelle Obama referring to "whitey" floating around. [AN]

• Janet Jackson's label has ceased all promotion for her newest album, so don't expect another single. [SP]

• Snoop delivers marital advice to Beyonce and Jay-Z. Okay. [People]

• Does Bobby Brown still have delusions of grandeur? Yep? Just checking. [C&D]

• In addition to smoking copious amounts of crack, Amy Winehouse knows racist versions of childrens' songs as well. [GW]

What a difference a Grammy makes. The presence of Amy Winehouse's Herbie Hancock's albums in the top 10 of the Billboard Top 200 is a direct result of their huge Grammy wins last week. Selling 115,000 copies, Winehouse's Back to Black jumped from the No. 24 spot last week to the No. 2 spot this week. And Hancock's River: The Joni Letters, which won album of the year, made the crazy leap from No. 159 to No. 5.

There's a notable new release missing from the Billboard 200 — Michael Jackson's much-anticipated re-release of Thriller that hit stores last week. With 116,000 copies sold, it would have stolen the No. 2 spot from Amy Winehouse. Instead, it was relegated to Billboard's catologue chart, where re-releases go to die, apparently. Sony is very displeased, arguing that the new tracks on the Thriller album make it eligible for the main chart. Billboard says MJ gets no special treatment!

Billboard chart guru Geoff Mayfield tells us: "We were approached by Sony and Sony BMG to consider 'Thriller 25' as a current album. But we had to be consistent with hundreds, if not thousands, of reissues that have come to the market. There have actually been new issues of classic albums that include even more new material. We didn't just make the decision on our own. We contacted major retailers [like Wal-Mart and Best Buy], and that was the consensus."

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STRICT NATALIE Natalie Cole has battled various drug and alcohol addictions in the past, and perhaps it's because she's been there that she feels Amy Winehouse's Grammy wins Sunday night were undeserved.

"I don't think she should have won," Cole told People magazine at Sunday's Warner Music Group post-Grammy party. "I think it sends a bad message to our young people who are trying to get into this business, the ones who are trying to do it right and really trying to keep themselves together. We have to stop rewarding bad behavior."

"I'm sorry. I think the girl is talented, gifted, but it's not right for her to be able to have her cake and eat it too," Cole continued. "She needs to get herself together."

Winehouse might be an extreme example, but if you took away all the Grammys won by people who were abusing drugs and alcohol, how many artists would still have their awards? [EUR]

The Grammys. Nine times out of ten, one of the major category award winners leaves me scratching my head — as in Herbie Hancock's Album of the Year win over Kanye and Amy Winehouse, but whatever. They still won big, those two. And as for the Grammys, at least a few of the performances are usually pretty good. Beyonce and Tina! Loved it, and not just because I'm biased. It was really good, and Tina Turner's energy was endlessly impressive. Kanye's tribute to his mother was a tearjerker — I think I saw Carrie Underwood looking a little misty-eyed in the audience — and the aforementioned Morris Day/Rihanna collaboration entertaining. There were a lot of other good performances, but those were the standouts to me. Oh, and Amy Winehouse's satellite performance from London? She wasn't all there, in more ways than one.

After the jump, more pictures and a list of winners.

CONTINUED »

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• Amy Winehouse has hair from the '60s and drug habits from the '80s. And she also just checked herself into a mental health facility. [MG]

• Proving that it ain't just the white females celebs with the major problems, Heath Ledger was found dead in a NYC apartment owned by Mary-Kate Olsen. Pills were found in the vicinity of the bed. R.I.P. [Jossip]

• Americans are more ready for a black president than a female one blah blah blah Bradley Effect blah blah blah. [LAT]

• For the presidential candidates, "black" equals "poor." [NPR]

• Two reasons why Lil Jon should always keep his sunglasses on. [C&D]

Anyone who has read a gossip blog or picked up a music magazine or flipped through a tabloid in 2007 knows that Amy Winehouse is super talented, hopelessly addicted to drugs, vehemently opposed to rehab, and frequently looks like she's teetering on the edge of death. In other words, she's a complete mess, a train wreck most of us have a hard time looking away from, and, according to Salon, seems to be simulating a "familiar black stereotype." Say what?

[As] Shel Silverstein once asked of an aspiring bluesman, "What do you do if you're young and white and Jewish … and the only levee you know is the Levy who lives on the block?"

Winehouse answers that question by digging deep for scraps of authenticity. In addition to foregrounding her knowledge of R&B history in her lyrics, she mines her personal experiences for material, naming names, keeping those names in the news, and in the process, all but eliminates the barrier between biography and artistic expression, tabloid and Billboard. Only a complete novice could wonder what her songs mean, to which events they refer, or about whom they are written. Meanwhile, she acts out and "keeps it real" by defending her drug and alcohol addictions, and by standing by her jailed ne'er-do-well husband. The whole package smells like a bizarre simulation of a familiar black stereotype.

CONTINUED »

Donda would be proud. Surely, Kanye West would trade in a million awards for a chance to have his mother by his side again, but the fact that he leads the Grammy pack with eight nominations, including album of the year, should definitely brighten his spirits. With six nominations, Amy Winehouse comes in second. One can only hope that she can actually make it to the awards.

Jay-Z and T-Pain (and his voice-altering software?) are close behind with five nominations each. And the Record of the Year battle will be between Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Beyonce's "Irreplacable," (among others). Check out the full list of nominations after the jump.

CONTINUED »

• Amy Winehouse terrifies Snoop, along with the rest of us. [2Snap]

• Rappers are so enterprising. Rick Ross is set to open a chain of hip hop "Grub Spots." [AHH]

• I don't care what supporters say, Guiliani doesn't care about black people. Kanye West should speak at his inauguration if he wins. [MH]

• Awww, Duke. That's so sweet. [WRAL]

• Whites and blacks in DC straddle two totally different ends of the obesity spectrum. [WP]

In the most shocking celebrity arrest of 2007, Amy Winehouse was nabbed by police in Norway for marijuana possession. Marijuana? That's embarrassingly tame. She must have already used up all the crack and heroin by the time the cops came.

[MG]