Showing Out

With the sad news that Vibe magazine has gone under, Showing Out took some time to reflect on how much of an impact the magazine has had on hip-hop culture. An innumerable group of artists have graced the pages of Vibe since the magazine made its grand entrance into urban journalism in 1993, and an equal number of artists have paid their respect to the magazine by name-checking Vibe in their lyrics. In honor of the magazine and how much we’ve enjoyed reading the publication over the years, SO has gathered a collection of lyrics that rappers have spit that give verbal props to the magazine, forever immortalized by their words.

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Just when we though we couldn’t take any more lame VH1 reality shows, they’ve gone and done something that we’re legitimately excited about. Variety reports that the “music” network has just picked up three new reality shows: one starring Sandra “Pepa” Denton of Salt-N-Pepa, another starring TLC’s Rozanda “Chilli” Thomas and a third starring Frank “The Entertainer” Moresco, some no-name that was on a hybrid strain of I Love New York. While we could care less about the third, we’re thrilled to learn that cameras will focus on Pepa and Chilli, both of whom will be documenting their search for love. We’d much rather see reality shows where these two try to get their music careers back on track (we’re looking at you, Chilli), but we’ll settle for this for now - as long as they promise that Salt and T-Boz pop up at one point during the series, too.

Just when you had almost forgotten about the horror that was MTV’s Newlyweds with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, someone over at Viacom decided to be nice and extend Jessica’s withering career by giving her another shot at TV stardom. This summer, the blond-haired chanteuse will begin filming her second reality show The Price of Beauty, which will air on VH1 later this fall. According to Just Jared (we know, we know), the show will follow Jessica as she “travels the world to study the local fashions, dietary fads and beauty regimes and even participate in some of the extreme practices she discovers.” So basically, Jessica is firing back at those that criticized her for her weight gain by making an entire reality show about it. Lucky us. If this is anything like Newlyweds, we’ve already got our thumb on the channel changer - just in case.

If you didn’t get your share of rich housewives acting like animals on the recently wrapped season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, then get ready to bust out the bubbly to celebrate the return of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Premiering on July 30 at 10 PM on Bravo, the second season of ATL sees the return of Kim, Lisa, NeNe and Sheree, plus the addition of a new housewife: Kandi. Who knows what’s in store for these Southern belles this season? Catfights? Group charity auctions? Husbands actually appearing on camera?? All we know is, we’re looking forward to the return of these lovely ladies. And we wouldn’t say no to a guest appearance from Teresa, as long as she does an encore performance of her now legendary table flip.

Looks like Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are at it again. Years after the success of their epic HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, the pair are back in the producer’s chair for the upcoming 10-hour miniseries The Pacific. Rumored to be one of the most expensive television projects of all time (its budget was around the $150 million mark), The Pacific follows three U.S. Marines in the thick of combat during the legendary battles at World War II’s Pacific Ocean theater. Though the series won’t debut until March 2010, the above trailer has got us setting our Tivo’s already.

For the past five years or so, Family Guy has consistently kept us entertained by injecting us with completely random doses of humor. But after years of the Griffins as the focal point of the series, Cleveland is the first character from the series to get his own spin-off show (to be honest, we always thought that Quagmire would get his spin-off before Cleveland, but the world works in mysterious ways). Appropriately titled The Cleveland Show (coming to FOX this fall), the new series sees Cleveland parting ways with his fellow Quahog, Rhode Islanders and embarking on a journey across the country with his son in tow (didn’t he have an overly hyperactive son on some episode of Family Guy?).

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