Is there anything Barack Obama can't do? Not according to rapper Common, who credits the President with sending hip-hop off into a more cuddly, less bling-centric direction. And now peace reigns for all.

Rap music: Will it ever stop inspiring America's youth to commit multiple homicides? Not likely, if the sad case of Richard "Syko Sam" McCroskey is any indication. Because he's charged with killing four people.

Indie-rock progenitors Pavement are getting the band back together for a tour—but no record—next year. Rumors were floated by Brooklyn Vegan a few days ago, but now it's official. Their last show was in 1999. We feel old.

An anti-war voice has fallen silent, for Mary Travers, a founding member of Peter, Paul and Mary, was felled by cancer today. The singer, whose sullen folksy sound many of you will remember from "Blowin' in the Wind," was 72.

Once upon a time the John Varvatos store reeked of rat poison, sweaty skinheads and Iggy Pop's low-hanging balls. But last night, the scent was decidedly sweeter for me, because I totally partied on a tour bus with Perry Farrell.

Ellen DeGeneres was floating on cloud nine this week, when American Idol producers finalized a deal that made her the show's fourth judge. Sadly, that cloud has popped. Her talk show's being sued!

Autotune, the technology giving guys like T-Pain, Akon, and Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak their trademark sounds, was supposedly murdered by Jay-Z. Not so much: the I AM T-PAIN iPhone app enables ordinary folk to sound just like him.

Courtney Love and Dave Grohl love money more than their dead husband and bandmate, so Love let Activision include his image and Grohl let them use his music in Guitar Hero, where people make him sing Bon Jovi songs.

Don't blame the Good Morning America producers for Whitney Houston's creaky voice this morning. A tipster says they went to extreme measures, including digital "sweetening," to rescue what was supposed to be the singer's comeback performance in Central Park.

Some have questioned whether Drake, perhaps best known for playing Jimmy on excellent Canadian soap Degrassi: The Next Generation, is for real. Well, he is. And he may be the best thing to come out of that show ever.

It must pain Jann Wenner to see his other properties start succeeding where flagship Rolling Stone squandered possibilities and descended into irrelevancy: online. Now that US Weekly's site has heat, Wenner's finally starting to line up RS's strategy of "whatever."

Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein, the nightclub disk jockey who not one year ago narrowly escaped death in a jet crash, was found dead in his New York apartment. He was 36.

Here's the cover to Bob Dylan's forthcoming Christmas album. Proceeds go to charity; as Vulture notes, this lends hope the project won't be commercially corrupted and critically panned. We still wish the sleigh driver had a harmonica holder or something.

Michael Jackson's death has obviously helped thrust his record sales, memorabilia and hangers-on into the celebrity stratosphere. No group, however, benefited more than his family, who are all of a sudden relatively relevant again. The ultimate sign: a reality show...

Remember music videos being important, and good? Neither does anybody I know, because our memory's been wiped by MTV and VH1's current slate of programming. And then there's this beautiful, fan-made music video of indie band Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks."

Spotify is everything iTunes should be: Simple, free and completely ubiquitous. The internet positively overflows with shared Spotify playlists. But the damned Europeans have the online music service all to themselves. Well, almost all of it.

Two years ago, music service iLike appeared to be set: Its CEO said it was "made," its investor mused it could be a "billion-dollar winner," and the press was enthralled. Now the poster child is a cautionary tale.

Justine Bennett performs last night at the Open A.I.R. Concert Series on the roof of the Atlas building on West 38th St. [Rob Loud/Getty]

The internet killed hip hop regionalism, explains R.M. Schneiderman. Which made the shit fun!