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Nas turned 49 years old Wednesday, and on Tuesday, he celebrated onstage in Newark, New Jersey, with Busta Rhymes and Wu-Tang Clan.

As they performed on the NY State of Mind Tour at the Prudential Center, the crowd wished the Illmatic rapper a happy birthday as he was hugged by Busta and Ghostface Killah, according to Hip Hop DX.

Nas thanked all the artists who were onstage with him, including RZA, Method Man, Raekwon, GZA, Inspectah Deck and Masta Killa, before performing his 2002 hit “One Mic.”

The Grammy-winning rapper began his birthday celebration on Monday with a party at Cote Steakhouse in New York City. Nas posted a series of Instagram photos from the event, and several stars gave him birthday love in the comments, including Swizz Beatz, Fat Joe and Nia Long.

The NY State of Mind Tour continues Friday in Bristow, Virginia, and runs through October 4 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

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Alicia Keys made husband Swizz Beatz’s 44th birthday on Tuesday very special with an indoor party and a nighttime beach celebration.

“Happy born day my KING!!!!@therealswizzz. The most incredible mind, man, and soul,” the 15-time Grammy winner captioned a series of Instagram photos from the festivities.

“I celebrate your life!! I can’t get enough of you!! I just want to kiss u forever! Here’s to the best years ahead of us,” Alicia added.

Swizz also posted several pics, including a childhood photo with the comment, “44 years of the Zone and I didn’t even start yet. Blessings and love to everyone.” He added a highlight video showing him enjoying champagne while flying on a private jet. Beatz wrote, “Thank you my love and friends.” The clip ended with the caption, “The sky is not the limit. it’s just the view.”

The couple celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary on July 31. Alicia and Swizz have two sons together, Egypt Daoud, 11, and Genesis Ali Dean, 7.

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Mariah Carey celebrates the 25th anniversary of Butterfly on Friday and is releasing a special anniversary edition of the album to mark the milestone.

Mariah told Variety what the album symbolizes. “I didn’t have a thing with butterflies when I was a kid … It is just something that happened,” she said. “When I made that album, I was leaving a point in my life that was extremely stifling and I had to go through an actual metamorphosis to become a grown woman who was strong enough to get out of that situation. It was me breaking through, to become free enough to fly.”

The Grammy winner divorced Columbia Records executive Tommy Mattola during that time of “metamorphosis.” She hinted he was a key player in making her continually churn out pop music. Mariah also said she kept seeing butterflies at the time and adopted them as her symbol of power.

“It was then and there I was able to gain my freedom. There’s no price you can put on that. There is nothing more valuable than freedom,” she expressed.

Butterfly was Mariah’s entry into R&B and hip-hop and — as she says — proof of her liberation. “You can hear a sense of emancipation there before I ever did The Emancipation of Mimi,” she dished in reference to her 2005 studio album. “This album, Butterfly, consists of slivers of my life back then.”

Butterfly 25 arrives Friday and includes a cover of Prince‘s “The Beautiful Ones.” Mariah said Prince was instrumental in releasing Butterfly because her label wanted her to stay pop.

“He defended me to record executives who didn’t understand my decision to make an album like that. The execs didn’t understand me veering from a successful formula. But Prince understood,” she said.

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After years of drug addiction, Eminem has been sober since 2009 and is enjoying one of the best years of his career, being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, performing during the Super Bowl halftime show, and on September 3, winning his first Emmy Award.

But on Wednesday, the Grammy winner, born Marshall Mathers, took some time to reflect on the joy and pain of his life, including his addiction, in an essay he wrote for XXL.

“You went on tour and people were just giving you free drugs,” Slim Shady commented. “I managed it for a little while. And then, it just became, I like this s*** too much and I don’t know how to stop.”

“I’m coming off The Marshall Mathers LP and going into Encore when my addiction started to get bad,” he recalled. “I was taking Vicodin, Valium and alcohol. I kinda fell off the map a little bit and didn’t explain why I went away.”

Mathers remembered in 2006, “My drug use f***in’ skyrocketed. I had f***in’ 10 drug dealers at one time… Seventy-five to 80 Valiums a night, which is a lot. I don’t know how the f*** I’m still here.”

Now, Eminem’s goal is to “always try to be the best rapper.” He named four MCs that he admires.

“What I hyper-focus on is people like Kendrick Lamar, Joyner Lucas, J. Cole and Big Sean,” Eminem said, “because they’re also focused on being the best rappers.”

Mathers concluded by advising artists to study the competition.

“The minute you sleep, someone’s coming to take your head off. That’s what I’ve always loved about rap,” he said. “It’s always evolving, and to succeed you need to be constantly aware of that and keep up with it.”

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Taye Diggs will host an upcoming Hulu dating reality show called Back in the Groove, according to the streaming service. 

The show will see a trio of women in their 40s checking into the Groove Hotel in the Dominican Republic on a quest to “rediscover their youth, joy, and desire.”

The streamer adds, “The object of that desire? Men half their age.”

Diggs is a most appropriate host for the series, as he helped Angela Bassett‘s Stella get her titular groove back in the 1998 romantic comedy How Stella Got Her Groove Back, about a more mature woman’s attempt to get back in the game. 

Hulu’s announcement notes, “As the saying goes, you can’t fall in love with someone else until you fall in love with yourself!”

To that end, 41-year-old Steph from Miami, 42-year-old Brooke from Los Angeles and 43-year-old Sparkle from Atlanta will “break through the double standards older women face every day” in finding a possible connection with a younger love. 

A debut date is still unknown.

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Cardi B accepted a plea agreement on Thursday from the Queens County district attorney’s office in New York City after being charged with assault in a 2018 strip club incident.

The original indictment included 12 charges, including two felonies. She has pled guilty to two misdemeanor charges and has agreed to perform community service. The remaining 10 charges were all dismissed.

In 2018, Cardi was involved in a brawl, during which she and nine members of her entourage were accused of throwing bottles, chairs and a hookah pipe inside the Angels Strip Club, injuring two of the bartenders. It is rumored that the Hustlers star suspected one of the bartenders was intimately involved with her husband, Offset.

“Part of growing up and maturing is being accountable for your actions. As a mother, it’s a practice that I am trying to instill in my children, but the example starts with me,” the 29-year-old entertainer said in a statement after accepting the plea agreement.

“I’ve made some bad decisions in my past that I am not afraid to face and own up to. These moments don’t define me and they are not reflective of who I am now,” Cardi continued. “I’m looking forward to moving past this situation with my family and friends and getting back to the things I love the most–the music and my fans.“

The “WAP” originally rejected an offer to plead guilty to a third-degree assault in exchange for a conditional discharge.

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The first trailer for the long-awaited Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, is finally here.

The teaser arrived Thursday and shows how British actress Naomi Ackie channels the late powerhouse singer.  The trailer begins with how Whitney got her start, when Arista Records’ Clive Davis discovered her singing at a nightclub at the tender age of 19.

“My dream? Sing what I wanna sing. Be how I wanna be,” Ackie narrates as scenes of Whitney’s rising star status flash across the screen.

The trailer includes one of the most defining moments of Whitney’s career — the 1991 Super Bowl where the Grammy winner belted out the “Star Spangled Banner.”

The sneak peek also shows the dark undercurrents Whitney faced throughout her career, such as facing criticism that her music wasn’t “Black enough.”  

“Look, I don’t know how to sing Black and I don’t know how to sing white, either,” Ackie’s voice continues to narrate as the camera pans to a sold-out stadium of fans excited to see Whitney perform. “I know how to sing.”

I Wanna Dance with Somebody is directed by Stella Meghie and written by Anthony McCarten, who penned the Oscar-winning Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. The movie arrives in theaters on December 21.

“The greatest voice of our time has an even greater story,” the movie’s official synopsis reads. “Discover the Whitney Houston you never knew.”

Whitney accidentally drowned in a hotel bathtub in 2012; drugs were found in her system. She was 48.

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