If you saw the BET awards this weekend, you’ll have noticed that they were a tribute to Michael Jackson.

Or, more accurately, a tribute to how brilliant Jamie Foxx wrongly thinks he is. But anyway, if the BET awards were a tribute to Michael Jackson, then surely one performer who’d be itching to perform would be Chris Brown. After all, people call Chris Brown the new Michael Jackson. Or the new Ike Turner. Or the new Sara The Saxophone-Playing Walrus. Whatever.

But anyway, Chris Brown didn’t show up at the BET awards. Did Jay-Z ban him? Chris Brown says no.

Now that he’s pleaded guilty to beating Rihanna’s face inside out – or one count of felony assault, which is more or less the same thing – it’s time for Chris Brown to start rebuilding his career. It looked set to be an uphill struggle for him, too, since – aside from a violently incomprehensible set of internet fangirls who still don’t believe that he attacked Rihanna despite him admitting to it in court – nobody really wanted that much to do with him any more.

But, just as Chris Brown was starting to run out of options, he was gifted an extraordinary piece of luck from the heavens – Michael Jackson died right before this year’s BET awards. It literally couldn’t have worked out better – Chris Brown could show up at the awards, look remorseful about the Rihanna thing, express grief about the Michael Jackson thing and bust out some of the crazy dance moves that caused people to call Chris Brown the new Michael Jackson before they realised that at best he was the new Bobby Brown and everyone would love him again.

But when the BET awards actually arrived, Chris Brown was nowhere to be seen. What happened?

Well, one scenario is that Chris Brown’s new pre-award ritual involves beating up a woman in his car until he gets arrested which is, after all, exactly what happened at the Grammys. But that theory should probably be discounted on the basis that we just made it up.

So here’s the other scenario – that Chris Brown was scheduled to appear at the BET awards but Jay-Z threw a strop and banned him. The San Francisco Chronicle thinks that might be closer to the truth:

A source tells the New York Daily News, “Jay is a big name in the BET community, and he was very vocal about his displeasure with Chris attending the ceremony. He didn’t want Chris anywhere near the awards so close to the court’s ruling.” But a spokesman for Brown has denied he was ever booked to play at the glitzy show.

So what’s the truth here? Is Jay-Z really trampling on Chris Brown’s comeback attempts? If it’s true, then Jay-Z should be ashamed of himself. Not that we’re particularly keen for Chris Brown to be famous again any time soon, but at least an appearance by him would have cut Jamie Foxx’s allotted time onstage down by a couple of minutes. Because, really, is there a bigger cock on the planet than Jamie Foxx? No. No there definitely isn’t.

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That is, unless a cosmetics company decide to make you white. Then you kind of fall down on part of that description.

It would seem that the make-up behemoths at L’Oreal may just be the types to force this kind of change on the young diva, with claims being made that Beyonce’s skin tone has been lightened for a magazine ad. The company dispute these allegations.

You know – ‘whitening’ things up to make them more palatable to the masses. They did it with every other element of black culture – the music, the clothing, the lingo – why not start trying to make black celebrities white too?

Okay, so maybe we’re going a bit overboard with it – but it’s Friday, and hecklerspray has some drinkin’ to get done. It’s maybe not as bad as that.

No, it doesn’t appear to be L’Oreal’s version of ‘ethnic cleansing’, more the result of a dodgy photo editing job.

The advert in question shows Beyonce after she’s done one of those hair dying things that girls seem to like so much – 100 per cent grey cover and all that. When the advert image of Bouncy is placed next to any other picture of her, it’s clear to see there’s something not quite right

She looks a bit Michael Jacksoned, frankly, with lighter skin and fairer hair. And it’s a bit frightening.

The claims – which began on everyone’s favourite website TMZ – were quick to be refuted by L’Oreal Paris. They said:

“We highly value our relationship with Ms. Knowles. It is categorically untrue that L’Oreal Paris altered Ms. Knowles’ features or skin tone in the campaign for Feria hair color.”

Which is all well and good, and it’s not like us to be disbelieving of a multi-national corporation like this, but… well – just look at the pictures. While it may well be true that the company had no idea they had ‘whitened’ Beyonce, it cannot be denied that she looks a lot more like a white chick than she normally does.

Which conjures up awful, awful, awful imagery of a possible Wayans Brothers sequel. Something surely not out of the question with the re-makery on show in Hollywood today.

They say love will last forever between couples who are destined to be soulmates, or in the case of many UK women, until a footballer’s money runs out. Jay-Z and Beyoncé have a problem based on their career choice of being musicians. While they’re not locked away in a studio, they are off around the globe touring at various gigs and festivals.

It appears that poor Jay-Z is missing his darling wife so much, he’s turned into a love-struck puppy. At a recent gig in Nigeria, he asked on his rider for a melon to be split in half and transformed in to a replica of his wife’s boobies. We just have one question: Are Beyoncé’s boobs green, sweet and edible?

At the Africa Rising concert in Abuja, Jay-Z made his strange request. Now, we’re not ones to criticise and point out the obvious, but if he missed the sight of his wife’s boobs so much, why did he not whip out his diamond encrusted blinged-up phone and look at a mucky photo? Or failing that, get her to send one? Mobile technology is a wonderful thing.

Maybe Jay-Z is just incorporating two of his favorite things together, fruit and ladies’ naked bits. If we had it our way, we’d incorporate pancakes and bowling together, but sadly we aren’t totally sure how that would work. Back to the drawing board for that one.

Even still, how long did it take Jay-Z to find the perfect melon that was a spitting image of his wife’s boobs? Did he get one hundred melons cut in half and simply pick the two that most resembled them? Or did he fly in a specially-trained melon carver to slowly and delicately hack away under his instruction until the job was done?

Because Jay-Z has no time at all, he opted to get someone else to carve the image. But the best thing about this story, to make it even weirder, is that the carver was given a mould to work from.

A bloody mould! We realise that some people may miss their partner dearly, but using some sort of body cast to replicate a piece of them is considered stalking in some countries.

What’s next? Is Beyoncé going to get a mould cast of Jay-Z’s winky so when’s she bored and alone at night she can replicate his todger in broccoli?

There are all sorts of festivals to cater for all sorts of musical tastes in all four corners of the world. The main ones kick off at this time of year and hecklerspray is here to tell you all you need to know about each festival, who the essential people are to see and which act to avoid so you can queue up for the overflowing poo-filled portaloos.

Here it comes again, the daddy of the UK festival and the creation of one mad farmer that has spawned hundreds of crap clones – Glastonbury. Known to typically piss it down whenever it's held, this doesn’t stop thousands of people gathering in fields fill of cowshit to enjoy music from all over the world.

Unlike other festivals like T in the Park, V, Oxygen and Leeds/Reading, Glastonbury tends to have a more unique bill. Most bands who have albums to promote will be playing at all of the above in the attempt to get you to buy a copy and not nick off it the web.

For the first time in years, you can still reportedly buy tickets for this coming weekend. It’s a first for Glastonbury as most of the time, the tickets fly quicker then one of Naomi Campbell’s punches. A whole host of reasons have been blamed. People are reportedly sick of the weather and don’t want to spend their weekend covered in mud and having unplanned wrestling fights with people who are off their tits on ketamine. But the more popular excuse is the choice of headliner!

Apparently, everyone believes Glastonbury is a rock festival and anyone who doesn’t have a guitar isn’t allowed to come and play. The brains of Oasis, Noel Gallagher, believes that because Jay-Z is a hip-hop artist, he shouldn’t be allowed to headline. Maybe his band of no-hopers would have been asked if they’d made a decent album since Definitely Maybe and hadn’t ballsed up their previous appearances over petty arguments.

Noel probably forgets that the rock vibe of the festival transferred over from a folk festival from when it was initially started out. Maybe the future of hip-hop scares him. But as we’ve mentioned, there is plenty of talent for people to watch this weekend. Be it an established band or something new and a bit unique.

Friday – Go go go!

Foals – Because they hail from Brighton, this apparently makes them 10% trendier then us, which isn’t hard. Soon to be massive, they’ve done well to make it on to the Other Stage.

Glasvegas –They will be your new favorite band by the end of the year.

Friday – Avoid Like The Plague:

Pete Doherty – We’ll be amazed if he either a) turns up as scheduled or b) does his set without some sort of narcotic in his system.

The Hoosiers – When they come on, it may be time to go to the toilet. However, don’t go and queue at the bog, piss in your empty bottle and throw it at this poor excuse for a band.

Saturday – Go go go!

Massive Attack – Groundbreaking band who created an entire genre. Expect them to showcase new material from an overdue album. Bootlegs on Youtube sound promising.

Jay-Z – Tons of people have slagged him off, but no-one knows what he’s going to bring to the festival. At least give him a chance. And his wife is hot.

Saturday – Avoid Like The Plague:

Black Kids – One of those bands who are meant to be cutting edge but are just a bit of a let down. Why they need two synth players is beyond us. They're not producing the sounds of Glastonbury legends Orbital on them that’s for sure.

Cerys Matthews – She was that jungle women whose career in Catatonia bombed after that song about two characters from the X-Files. Has she released anything since all the Australian insects?

Sunday – Go go go!

UNKLE – Live sets are rare and always an experience. Because it’s a festival gig, expect a lot of possible guests to collaborate.

Martina Topley Bird – Amazing voice, but hasn’t been noticed because she doesn’t fall out of London clubs with her tits hanging out. An undiscovered talent.

Sunday – Avoid Like The Plague:

Mark Ronson – Learn to play your own fucking songs and stop being such a smug twat.

The Verve – Headlining ten years later than expected, it’s a gig for balding men to go all Britpop on everyone’s ass. New song Love Is Noise is gash.

There’s so much more we’d recommend without bleating on, but we’re sure you’ll encounter Ethiopian free style Jazz on your own. Or with a drunk hippie.

Whether you like Usher’s music or not, it must be said that the boy can dance; predominantly he dances like a spaz, but he sure can throw some crazy moves together. And it’s perhaps these slinky footsteps that have gotten his erect penis into trouble before. His reputation for banging broads like a horny puppy is well known in celebrity land.

Horny Usher also has a perfume out that bears his name stencilled in big bold letters using what can only be described as ‘tattoo script’. It smells a bit like turps and takes his personal fortune up into the trillions – thus confirming his status as ‘richest man to be named after the job you give someone who isn’t good enough to be Best Man at your wedding’.

As for his own nuptials, Usher isn’t confident about staying faithful, which must be either music to his wife’s ears if she is looking for a cut of his diamond factory, or pretty miserable if she, like, you know, loves him and stuff.

Usher told Cosmopolitan magazine:

“I’m good at making love, but I’m not good at being in love. It’s a conscious decision every day to love the person you’re with“.

The man who would be Chris Eubank with a signet ring married then-pregnant fiancée Tameka Foster in August 2007 after abruptly calling off the ceremony just a month before.

This might not be the best omen in the world and, coupled with Usher’s utter disregard for why people get married in the first place, gives us the gall to pencil in his divorce for, say, February 2009.

If he has issue with this statement, Usher is welcome to drop by our offices in London and put us straight. Now that’s London, not Manchester when it should be Kent, just as the bling king so memorably muddled up during a recent gig in the sleepy southeast county.

Married life might not be the worst thing in the world for Usher though; he should give it a chance. It’s fun to put on more weight than Oprah and then slouch about in your own filth while your better half nags you about drain hair and the toilet seat. So Jay-Z says anyway.

Admittedly Mary J Blige said that Jay-Z and Beyonce were married, plus they both applied for a marriage license right before the alleged wedding, plus the woman who did the flowers for the wedding said that Jay-Z and Beyonce were married and they’ve both been seen wearing giant wedding rings, but nobody can really say for sure if they’re actually married or not.

And, yes, admittedly Jay-Z and Beyonce have also just filed their marriage license and a town clerk has confirmed that they are definitely married, but look inside your heart, people. Is it telling you that Jay-Z and Beyonce are really married? It is? It is? Oh, well in that case they probably are married, then. Carry on.

There’s nothing like a good old mystery to get the public’s juices going, even if it’s a rubbish mystery about whether or not two people who live together have signed a bit of paper that says they’re very slightly more of a couple than they were before because God says they are. And that’s exactly what we had with Jay-Z and Beyonce, bless ‘em.

Although they’ve been a couple for several years and can’t seem to go more than three or four seconds without appearing on the other one’s songs, there’s been a constant fascination with Jay-Z and Beyonce’s marital status. Most wedding reports turned out to be fake, but then last month Jay-Z and Beyonce took out a marriage license in New York. Did this mean that Jay-Z and Beyonce were really getting married? Nobody knew.

OK, that’s a lie. Everybody knew. Everybody knew because Mary J Blige confirmed it onstage during a concert and then the wedding florist wouldn’t shut up about it either. Plus Beyonce’s wedding ring is the size of a baby’s skull. Plus, you know, everybody knew. Just because Jay-Z and Beyonce didn’t confirmed it doesn’t mean that it was as obvious as the warts on your mother’s face.

And now it’s just got obviouser, because the marriage license has been filed and the woman who does the filing is all like blah blah blah, as E! Online reports:

While the newlyweds have yet to confirm or deny—or make any comment whatsoever on—their marital status, E! News has confirmed the superstar duo quietly filed their signed wedding license in Scarsdale, N.Y., Friday afternoon. “Yes, we did receive it back,” Scarsdale Town Clerk Donna Conkling said. “We do have public information on our marriage applicants, and that’s one of the things we can confirm.” The license, which arrived at Scarsdale Town Hall in the mail, confirms what we reported on the happy day: namely, that Shawn Carter made Beyoncé Knowles his missus.

So the mystery has been well and truly solved – Jay-Z and Beyonce are totally married. Does this mean that we can all hang up our deerstalkers and magnifying glasses now? Of course not – the celebrity world is always full of mysteries that need to be solved. Next mystery on the list: What’s up with Katie Holmes‘ hair? It’s all, like, totally retarded and shit.

Read more:

Beyonc̩ & Jay-Z: Licensed and Wed РE! Online

According to Actress Archives, Beyonce was recently spotted in NYC with her belly seemingly being pushed out from the inside – a phenomenon synonymous with pregnant women. And fat people. And people with hernias. And people with pillows under their shirt.

But, what with the recent out-of-the-blue wedding reports, pregnancy is the most realistic choice and, according to OK! Magazine, a source close to the couple told them:

“I’ve heard from at least two people that Beyonce is pregnant.”

It is also supposed that a “big magazine” will report the news this coming week on their front cover.

Word is that Beyonce’s devout Christian father, Matthew Knowles, got a whiff of the pregnancy rumours and demanded that they get married, or else our all-loving, all-powerful lord God will make Jay, B, and little baby Knowles-Z burn in eternal hell fire. And with that as the alternative, who can blame ‘em?

Even her little sister, Solange, has been speculating about Beyonce becoming a mother. She told People.com:

“Whenever Beyonce decides to have a child, I definitely think she’ll be banging on my door. She’s kept my son over the weekend. She’ll call me like, ‘How do you get this stroller out? And what about the car seat? I don’t know how you do this!’ And I’m like, ‘People do it every day’.”

So, are the rumours true? What’s it to you; how about you mind your own bloody business and keep out of theirs?

Unless of course they do make the news public to a “big magazine”, in which case they’ll be set up for the same insulting invasions of privacy that Christina Aguilera’s leprechaun-faced baby-freak got – the ugly fucking idiot.

Read More – Is Newly Wed Beyonce With Baby Bump? – Actress Archives

Read More – Beyonce Takes Lessons In Motherhood From Sister – SFGate

So, in retrospect, maybe Jay-Z and Beyonce shouldn’t have hired the world’s gobbiest florist to decorate their apartment, because that florist – Amy Vongpitaka – has pretty much blabbed off about every single little aspect of their wedding in excruciating detail to a magazine. On and on and on she went, yapping away to nobody in particular about garlands and blooms and blah blah blah.

Warning: the following scenes contain endless talk about floristry that some readers might find a bit tedious.

Neither Jay-Z or Beyonce seem to be particularly keen on officially confirming whether or not they actually got married last weekend, but the clues are there. Notice, for example, the easy, carefree swagger of a newlywed in Jay-Z’s gait this week, and the barely-contained glee that has very slightly altered Beyonce’s complexion in certain lights.

What’s more, there’s the fact that Jay-Z and Beyonce took out a marriage license a few days before the wedding, the fact that Beyonce’s been walking around wearing a dirty great diamond wedding ring that’s the size of a sodding watermelon and the fact that Mary J Blige has publically congratulated Jay-Z and Beyonce for getting married. Yes, the clues are there alright, but you have to look.

However, perhaps you’re too stupid for clues. Perhaps you need Jay-Z and Beyonce’s wedding day florist Amy Vongpitaka to spell out that they got married to you very simply as if you were a child or an idiot. Is that what you want? Is it? Good, because that’s exactly what Amy Vongpitaka told US Weekly:

“It made the apartment like a heaven, like a palace. You walked in, and it was all flowers — everything white and creamy… Beyonce requested the specific look of the bloom… I heard Beyoncé was thrilled. I know she’s so happy with this wedding.”

What’s more, Vongpitaka told US Weekly that she had 100,000 orchids shipped over from Thailand especially for the Jay-Z/Beyonce wedding, and that they all made Beyonce look ’special’. A shame, since Jay-Z specifically requested that the flowers were to make Beyonce look like a trampy old ho-skank.

Still, at least we know now that Jay-Z and Beyonce definitely got married, because a woman whose name you’ve been trying and failing to pronounce in your head since the second paragraph in said so. Your lives are now enriched and you’ll probably want to memorise all the details immediately so that you can pass them on to your grandchildren in years to come.

Either that or you’ll forget them all instantly. We’re not too fussed which.

Read more:

Wedding Looked Like “Heaven” – US

So with that in mind it's safe to assume that Jay-Z and Beyonce really did get married on Friday, because Mary J Blige kicked off a co-headlining concert with Jay-Z on Saturday by shouting "Congratulations to my man Jay-Z and my girl B!"

Which makes it indisputable that Jay-Z and Beyonce are really married, unless Mary J Blige was congratulating them on something else, of course – like finding buried treasure on a beach with a metal detector, for example, or for making a tiny hat that's the perfect size for a duck's head, or for stringing the world on for so long about whether they're married or not that most people would rather swallow broken glass than think about Jay-Z or Beyonce for another second. Who knows?

Jay-Z and Beyonce are notoriously private about their relationship. So private, in fact, that we don't think we've ever read a single news story about either of them. Ever. Oh no, wait, our mistake – we were thinking about every other couple on the face of the planet.

Jay-Z and Beyonce, you see, are all over the sodding place. If they're not doing guest vocals on each other's songs then they're watching basketball matches or fashion shows together. They're everywhere all the time together. It's just that neither Jay-Z or Beyonce want to tell anyone whether they got married or not.

There have been rumours of Jay-Z/ Beyonce weddings in the past, but last week when they got a marriage license things started to look a little more serious. And they were – on Friday Jay-Z and Beyonce finally got married. Unless they didn't. But they probably did. Maybe. Although they might not've. Oh, who knows?

Alleged steroid-addled superbeing Mary J Blige knows, actually. Taking a rare moment off from endlessly carping on about how difficult her life used to be, Mary J Blige told the crowd at a concert on Saturday that the Jay-Z/ Beyonce wedding was completely genuine. Unless she didn't. But she probably did. People reports:

"Mum was the wedding word from Jay-Z as he hit the stage in North Carolina on Saturday – a day after a friend says he married Beyonce Knowles – revealing nothing about a ceremony and wearing no ring. But co-headliner Mary J. Blige on the Heart of the City tour couldn't maintain the same level of silence, shouting to the sold-out Greensboro audience: 'Congratulations to my man, Jay-Z, and my girl B,' before starting her set with You're All I Need." 

See? And if Mary J Blige says that Jay-Z got married to Beyonce, then it really happened. Even though, you know, she didn't say exactly that. But it was heavily implied, and that's enough for us. Unless it turns out later that Jay-Z didn't really get married to Beyonce, in which case we knew all along that Mary J Blige was talking rubbish.

In fact, the more we think about it, the more unlikely it seems that Mary J Blige is telling the truth. A simple congratulations? That's not like her at all. Now, if Mary J Blige had congratulated Jay-Z and Beyonce and then used it to launch into a tedious 20-minute ramble about herself, like she did with Amy Winehouse and Jamie Lynn Spears then perhaps we'd have taken the bait a bit quicker.

So there it is – indisputable proof that Jay-Z and Beyonce didn't get married on Friday. Unless they did get married on Friday. Which they probably did. Unless they didn't.

We hope this helps.

Read more:

Mary J. Blige's Concert Shout-Out to Jay-Z & Beyoncé – People 

According to People.Com, the couple held a private wedding ceremony at Jay-Z's New York apartment yesterday evening, to which only close friends and family were invited.

They didn’t even have the common decency to invite the press. How are we to trust them? What are they so afraid of us seeing? Would we have found out the service was being funded by Jay-Z’s links to nineteenth century slave trade profiteering?

We’ll never know, because they want to keep it ‘private’. Good luck to the both of you, but any fool can see the seeking of privacy these days is as futile a task as teaching a Frenchman to suck croissant.

An insider told the magazine:

"It happened earlier this evening. Jay wanted it to be a really private affair — close friends and family."

The ceremony was proceeded by a most happening crib party, attended by some fellow named DJ Cassidy – one of Mr Z’s favorites, apparently.

The wedding comes just days after Jay and Beyonce were reported to have secured themselves a marriage license in Scarsdale on April 1. Lots of people thought it was an April fool. Turns out it wasn’t.

So hurrah! And three cheers for the happy couple!

Hip-Hop Ho-way Ho!

Story by Rupert Prickhard-Pamplin

Read More – Jay-Z And Beyonce Got Married On Friday – MTV 

Following similar deals with Madonna and The Rollings Stones, Live Nation has signed up Jay-Z. And if you were wondering what price you'd get a past-his-best, commercially-stagnating rapper for these days, the answer is clear $150 million.

$150 million might sound like a lot for Live Nation to pay for Jay-Z, but don't forget that these Live Nation contracts don't just involve recordings – it'll have a slice of everything from Jay-Z's concert tickets to merchandise sales to 'entrepreneurial concepts' as well. Plus on Christmas Eve and the Queen's birthday one lucky Live Nation executive gets to briefly look at Beyonce's knickers. Money well spent, we're sure.

With the music industry falling to pieces, crumbling under a tidal wave of illegal downloads and videogames and people not wanting to pay £20 for a CD just because it's got a folded-up poster inside it, it seems like everyone's flailing around looking for new business models. Acts are hawking their music at coffee shops or doing confusing internet price-reduction systems or, worse, being Nine Inch Nails – and nobody really has a clue about the future.

Nobody, that is, except for Live Nation. Live Nation knows that the only way to make any money from the music business any more is to forget about CDs and just charge everyone £25 million for a concert ticket instead. It's a system that Live Nation seems confident with, because it's already signed Madonna up for a decade and inflicted U2 on us for another 12 years – and now it's doing the same with Jay-Z.

Jay-Z has signed over more or less everything he'll ever do in the future to Live Nation in return for $150 million or, as he prefers to call it, one pair of quite nice shoes. Time reports:

In a $150 million deal certain to rock what remains of the record industry, Jay-Z has announced plans to depart Def Jam records and give the totality of his creative output — from songs to touring revenue to un-hatched entrepreneurial ideas — to concert promotion behemoth Live Nation… Live Nation is expected to furnish Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter, with $5 million in seed money annually for his own label, publishing arm and management company, with significantly more funds available for future acquisitions and expansion. He will also receive a $25 million upfront payment and $10 million per album for a minimum of three albums over the next decade.

Looking at those figures, it's no surprise that Jay-Z accepted Live Nation's offer. But as amazing as this deal looks, there are also some downsides. For instance, in the event of Jay-Z fathering a child, his contract states that the baby must be called I Love Live Nation and be fitted with a microchip that plays up-to-the-minute audio commercials for Live Nation concerts at three billion decibels every second that it's awake. Plus, you know, it means Jay-Z shares a label with U2. Yeurgh.

Of course, the importance of the deal is far greater than Madonna's or U2's because, up until recently, Jay-Z was in charge of a traditional record label. For him to jump ship to Live Nation so readily must mean that he fully believes in the Live Nation business model.

And, who knows, once word gets out that Live Nation is the way forward, maybe it'll even be able to sign an act that isn't at least a decade past its best work.

Read more:

Jay-Z: Music's $150 Million Dollar Man – Time 

Every couple of months there'll be a story about how Jay-Z and Beyonce secretly got married in a far-off country, only for it to be shot down later by people bored enough to actually check up on these things.

But now? Now Jay-Z and Beyonce are definitely going to get married because they've just taken out a marriage license. That's right – at some point over the next 60 days there's definitely going to be a Jay-Z wedding. We'd suggest it takes place on May 14th – because there's nothing more romantic than a wedding that takes place on the 212th anniversary of the smallpox vaccination being first administered.

Now that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's recent wedding has been dismissed as hooey, we can all safely turn out attention to our next-favourite never-quite-married unmarried couple, Jay-Z and Beyonce – aka the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of the 'music that makes white people bite their bottom lip when they dance to it' world. 

Jay-Z and Beyonce have long teased us with their refusal to get married like a proper couple. Nobody knows why Jay-Z and Beyonce haven't got married – perhaps Beyonce is worried that Jay-Z won't be so quick to do little 30-second raps in the middle of her songs once he's married her, or perhaps it's because Jay-Z doesn't want to give up hope of being able to give Rihanna a good seeing to just yet – but still the rumours keep surfacing.

In 2006 there were reports that Jay-Z and Beyonce were getting married on a boat in the Caribbean, and then in 2007 there were reports that Jay-Z and Beyonce had got married in France while a grubby man tattooed their fingers. Both reports turned out to be false, but now Jay-Z and Beyonce are definitely, definitely, 100%, honestly getting married. Perhaps. MTV reports:

Beyoncé Knowles and Jay-Z have taken out a marriage license in Scarsdale, New York, a source reportedly told People.com. The pair obtained the license, which is valid for 60 days in New
York State, on Tuesday morning (April 1), according to the report. A source reportedly told UsMagazine.com on Tuesday that the couple have told friends they would like to marry in May after Jay-Z's tour with Mary J Blige ends. "Jay is trying to pull it together quickly and on the fly to
keep it private," the source told the site. "They really wanted it to
be private."

Ha, private schmivate! Now the secret's out and everyone knows that Jay-Z will get married to Beyonce at some point over the next 60 days. Unless, of course, the whole report was an April Fool's prank by Jay-Z and Beyonce to trick the public, in which case it's probably the biggest April Fool's prank that nobody really cares one way or the other about ever.

But if Beyonce really is marrying Jay-Z, then let's all pray that she gets a decently worded pre-nup. After all, if they ever divorce we'd hate to see her starve on the streets because she didn't get her share of the money that Jay-Z earnt hawking all that hokey crap of his.

Read more:

Jay-Z And Beyonce Take Out Marriage License: Reports - MTV 

They have filed a $5 billion dollar lawsuit against Jay-Z, along with Barclay’s Bank and Forest City Ratner, a real estate developer, because they have:

“…profited from the African Slave Trade and continue to profit from these gains, through a conspiracy dating back hundreds of years and continue to date to oppress Black people, enslave them, unlawfully deport them to all corners of the Earth."

The bastard! Stop it, Jay-Z! Stop oppressing black people! What’s the matter with you? You’re black as well, you maniac! What kind of masochistic act is this? Behave yourself; it’s bang out of order.

It’s obvious, though, when you think about it; who better than Jay-Z to face a campaign of global African-oppression? He’s spent his career singing about the disfranchisement of black people; he’s the head of Roca-a-Fella Records and Rocawear, among other Roca-industries which, combined, have created employment for thousands of African Americans. Who then would believe that this was all an elaborate sideshow to his real hustle; the herding together thousands of native Africans and forcing them to work for rich people in nineteenth century Britain? How did we fall for it?

You see, according to recent findings from studies released on the 200th anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade by The Restitution Study Group, Barclay’s Bank (then Heywood’s Bank) was involved in over 120 slave trading missions and allegedly enslaved more than 38,000 Africans, with Jay-Z and Ratner apparently connected through their ties with Barclay’s Bank in a $4 billion Atlantic Yards project taking place in Brooklyn, which plans to build a basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets (partially owned by Jay-Z), over 6,000 new apartments, offices and a hotel.

So he isn’t really directly linked, but you have to ask yourself, dear reader, is there really any difference between forcefully removing an African family from it’s home, chaining them to a floor of a boat, leaving them to potentially starve on the long journey to back to Britain, raping a few of them for a laugh on the way before selling the survivors to do menial tasks and sexual favours for toffs, and trying to build a housing project in Brooklyn?

The answer is yes. Quite a lot of difference there.

Barclays has denied the allegations. It was, after all, legal back then. And Ratner has said it has no legal merit, whilst Da Black Defense League has called for a boycott of the New Jersey Nets.

Read more:

Jay-Z Accused Of Profiting From Slavery – Guardian 

Reports are surfacing that Jay-Z and Beyonce properly went and got married during a trip to Paris last week. They're completely unconfirmed rumours, of course, but we'll soon see how true they are because apparently Jay-Z and Beyonce both got their fingers tattooed instead of swapping wedding rings. That doesn't necessarily mean we should all strain our eyes trying to look for infinitesimal markings on Jay-Z and Beyonce's fingers, though – the signs will be much more obvious than that. On the basis that they both let a Frenchman tattoo their fingers last week, we just need to look out for the 'Beyonce Has One Giant Septic Hand Covered In Pus' headlines to confirm everything we need to know.

Beyonce and Jay-Z make a lovely couple, they really do. Whether they're popping up in each other's music videos, relentlessly hawking a variety of products in commercials or just sneaking around pretending to get married every couple of days, Beyonce and Jay-Z never look anything other than contented. Well, occasionally badly bruised too, but mostly contented. 

But despite looking happy enough as a couple, Jay-Z and Beyonce have never got round to getting married. Sure, they both say that they want to get married, and every time they go on holiday people start shrieking that it's because they're getting married, but it never happens.

But it's happened now. Possibly. We think.

It has been suggested that Jay-Z and Beyonce used a trip to Paris last week to get married in secret, and that they received special little finger tattoos to make sure they stay true to one another. According to a source, Jay-Z and Beyonce:

"Didn't want all the attention that usually follows them around, they just wanted it to be intimate and romantic. It was lovely and they are both blissfully happy. They thought the tattoos would be a lovely personal touch."

Uh-oh, a marriage in Paris. That means that, by the time you wake up tomorrow morning, a French model is going to be talking about how Beyonce thinks that sperm makes her spotty.

Anyway, we hear that the Jay-Z/ Beyonce wedding was just adorable to watch. For the vows, for instance, Beyonce sang and stretched out the words "to have and to hold" alone to last more than 15 minutes, with Jay-Z interrupting two-thirds of the way through to do a 25-second rap about how rich he is. Beautiful.

That's if Beyonce and Jay-Z really did get married – nobody knows for sure. One thing's for certain, though – all this mystique surrounding the wedding has turned something we absolutely don't give a badger's chuff about into something we still don't give a badger's chuff about but could use as an excuse to crack out some lazy jokes about stereotypical French uncleanliness.

Read more:

Has Beyonce Married Jay-Z? – Metro