While house arrest might seem like a dream come true for a blogger, in reality, this is the stiffest punishment anyone has ever received for leaking music (not to be confused with downloading music, which the R.I.A.A. loves to punish). But that’s not to say there haven’t been consequences for being the first to put unreleased music out there. So before you publish that next blog post with an exclusive track, check out these 5 Notable Consequences For Leaking Music, and realize that what you gain in hits might cost you elsewhere…

LEAKER: Radio stations KBBT in L.A., KMEL in San Francisco, WUSL and WIOQ in Philadelphia
WHAT THEY LEAKED: Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson’s single “Scream”
• The radio stations were playing “Scream” on the hour almost two weeks before its official release. They were eventually served cease-and-desist orders and faced legal action, but one station’s program director made it clear that “on a release as big as Michael Jackson’s, there’s no way we’re going to wait if we receive a leak.” Ballsy.

LEAKER: Intern Adam of Nashville’s 107.5 The River
WHAT THEY LEAKED: Britney Spears’ single “Womanizer”
• The radio personality recorded and posted a 40-second preview of the song that Jive played for the station during a conference call. He was promptly fired and slapped with a $250,000 fine. FIRST! FAIL!

LEAKER: Unidentified music journalist
WHAT THEY LEAKED: Three songs from Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam album
• When the first batch of records from the album leaked, watermarking technology allowed Domino Records to trace the files back to the leaker immediately. AC’s publicist wrote a threatening letter to other journalists, letting them know that the person responsible “got in more trouble than you care to hear about and was almost fired.” We’re not sure if the scare tactics worked, or not.

LEAKER: English retail worker
WHAT THEY LEAKED: Mastodon’s Blood Mountain album
• The underground metal band’s record label traced the leak back to a retail employee and had him fired. Mastodon was “not concerned with record sales,” but was more upset that “such a shitty copy” was leaked.

LEAKER: DJ Chuck T & DJ Empire
WHAT THEY LEAKED: Lil’ Wayne’s Tha Carter III album
• In the years leading up to Wayne’s album release, DJ Empire released a steady stream of mixtapes featuring exclusive songs from Tha Carter III sessions. Despite the fact that all these songs were given directly to Empire by someone within Wayne’s inner-circle, Weezy finally snapped, going off on a bizarre, “fuck mixtape DJs” tirade in an interview that left some spinners in the community pissed off. DJ Chuck T retaliated by leaking the final version of TC3. The leak turned out to not hurt Wayne’s sales at all, and the martian moved more than A-Milli the first week. We’re guessing Chuck T was probably taken off Universal’s promo mailing list.

Want to know what’s up with Britney Spears’s vagina? Well, she’ll tell you. Not on purpose, mind you. At a concert in Tampa last week on her her Circus Tour, Brit did the paparazzi’s job for them by accidentally announced a wardrobe malfunction and the state of her blossoming flower to the audience when she thought her mic was off in between songs.

Her latest encounter with a hot mic is embarrassing, but she’s not the first celebrity to get caught out there (and at least this time when “it just slipped” she didn’t further K-Fed’s gene line). As Spears hangs her head and wonders if loose lips really do sink ships, check out 10 of the most memorable celebrity slip-ups.


• Britney Spears’s pussy is hangin’ out. Someone in her entourage should really tell her they’ve got surgeries for that.

• Kathy Griffin doesn’t knock the dicks out of her hecklers’ mouths. But she will make them deep throat hers.

• Now that Barack Obama is president, Jesse Jackson would like to clarify: He would like to cut off Barack Obama’s nuts…if they ever get infected and threaten the life of such a great and noble man.

• Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan are objective journalists, and their objective is to completely humiliate Sarah Palin on MSNBC.

• Apparently Yao Ming’s English teacher was a truck driver with Tourette’s syndrome.

• When he was owner of the Texas Rangers, George Bush hung around the locker room a lot'hence his ability to spot a major league asshole.

• Sue Simmons curses in a fit of baffled rage. In her defense, she’d just noticed Chuck Scarborough was filming the teaser with his “news anchor” pulled out.

• When it comes to putting his foot in his mouth, Shaq goes hard to the hole and doesn’t give a shit if it’s during a live broadcast.

• Christian Bale explodes on the set of Terminator Salvation because, while he can act like any character, he can’t act like people aren’t walking around on set during takes. FUCK’S SAKE, MAN, HE’S AMATEUR!

• Andrew Bynum gets excited by the way Lamar “L.O.” Odom gets his hands on so many loose balls…

5. AL REYNOLDS

• Target: View host, gastric-bypass denier and self-delusional blowhard Star Jones
Despite a pre-nuptial agreement, this fool proposed at the NBA All-Star Game, then spent the three years of their horridly publicized marriage on the DL (no Hughley). Also continues to deny that he’s super, thanks for asking.
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4. MARK HARRIS

• Target: Martha Raye, denture wearer
Who? Oh, you know, just another example of the age-old story: boy meets boy, boy spends life as a gay man, then boy marries a 75-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s who’s 35 years older than him (a month after meeting her), boy fights the woman’s daughter to block her from the estate, boy eventually inherits $4 million when the woman dies a double amputee. It’s the stuff dreams are made of!
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3. STEDMAN GRAHAM

• Target: Jizzillionaire Oprah Winfrey (seriously, we’d nut if we had that much money)
Thought you were about to cake off, huh? Oprah’s too smart for that, Stedman! No marriage for you! Now go change your name, you sound like an Austrian dessert.
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2. KEVIN FEDERLINE

• Target: Hot teen, not-so-hot twentysomething, and nonshaver Britney Spears
If you can actually convince a senseless multimillionaire to marry your unemployed ass, and then let you wear a sweatsuit that says “PIMP DADDY” to the wedding party, then we can’t even hate. Popozao, baby.
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1. GUY RITCHIE

• Target: Human-tarantula hybrid, scourge of insular cultures, and soy-latte drinker Madonna
She shit on your movies and stepped out with the most annoying baseball player since Crash Davis. We’ve got your back, homie; now go get that a milli a milli a mlli (repeat 61 more times).

Related: The Shotcaller: Guy Ritchie

One of our most anticipated movies of the year, Cadillac Records'a musical biopic about the epochal music label Chess Records'hits theaters today. And we haven’t been anticipating it just because it’s written and directed by Darnell Martin (if you didn’t know, she was the first African American female director to have a major movie studio back her film), that’s just an added bonus. We’re also amped because the cast is ridiculous'Adrian Brody as Leonard Chess, Beyonce as Etta James, Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, Mos Def as Chuck Berry and relative newcomer Columbus Short as Little Walter. Smells like a banger to us.

We profiled Columbus Short in our December/January issue’s “Upstarts” column because we think out of all the young dudes coming up in the game, there’s a good chance he’ll do some damage. Unlike most young gunners, he’s shying away from the easy money and meticulously picking his roles (hey, Stomp The Yard > You Got Served). In this uncut version of the interview, Short gives his thoughts on Tyler Perry movies, his future projects and why he’s not trying to wind up like Brandon Routh. Who? Exactly!

Interview By Damien Scott

Complex: Many people don’t know this, but you were in Stomp. How did that come about?

Columbus Short: Well basically, when I was a kid, my mom took me to a McDonald’s commercial and I just froze up, man. I got shy. I wasn't ready for it at the time. So she waited till I got a little older and when I was 10, I started auditioning again and it was just a passion. But then I moved to Orange County and then when I went to high school, I started getting into musicals and Broadway and that became a passion. So I joined the cast of Stomp.

Complex: What’s been your favorite movie to be in so far?

CS: Cadillac Records by far. I did that with Beyoncé, Jeffrey Wright, Adrian Brody, and it was the most artistic fulfilling experience ever. It’s why I signed up to be an actor. And it isn't a huge movie. It’s very much a critically acclaimed movie and that's what its about. It’s not always about the money. It was a fantastic, wonderful experience.

Complex: I don’t know, any movie with Beyoncé, Jeffrey Wright and Adrian Brody is pretty huge. Let’s talk about it'you play Little Walter. How did you prepare for that role?

CS: Lawrence Fishburne got me his dialect coach and I started going to a dialect coach, ’cause Little Walter was Cajun. He spoke French from the Bayou and I started learning how to play the harmonica. So I was doing that, I lost 25 pounds and immersed myself in blues.

Complex: I’ve read that you want to bring back the films that portray classy, well-to-do black families. There’s no doubt that there needs to be more of them. Are those the types of films you want to do the most?

CS: I see them as viable in the market place. Not necessarily that I want to do those films. Whatever genre of film it is there should be an expectation of classiness and artistic merit to every project. When you say you like Cloverfield, it’s a high end Godzilla movie, but there was something artistic about it and interesting and different. When you think about movies like This Christmas, it could’ve been more of a Tyler Perry, Madea movie, like how we always see black people represented. But it was a little classier, even in the way it was shot, a little more artistic. A higher level of writing.

Complex: You have your own production company, so I’m guessing those are the type of films you’ll be cranking out. What are y’all working on?

CS: Well we have a couple of projects coming out. One of them is called 40 Thieves, which is about the first black crime syndicate in Harlem in the 1970s. Another film is a City of God-type of film. Other thought provoking, fresh films.

Complex: What role do you play in the company? Do you do any writing, or do you just oversee the projects?

CS: I do a lot of writing. I wrote one script like 3 years ago. It's been trying to get made for a while and its basically about a bunch of kids who take their high school hostage, but our production kind of got shut down when the Virginia Tech thing happened. It was just bad timing. So that was the last script I wrote and I've been working so much that I haven't gotten a lot of chance to write too much so I've been producing, acting and developing.

Complex: There was that rumor going around that you turned down the role of Green Lantern. Superhero movies are money in the bank, why not do it?

CS: Yeah, well I feel like there's a lot of other good looks without doing the superhero movie. Like Shia Labeouf, as big as he is, he got the opportunity coming from a movie like Distrubia. After the success of Transformers, he gained a huge audience, but I feel like his success is a slow gradual build. Like look at Brandon Routh, who played Superman. Where's Brandon Routh? You know what I mean? I’d rather take the slow route with building a fan base as opposed to a billion people seeing your movie and being like, “That movie sucked, but it made $200 million dollars.” Great. I'd rather be in a $10 million dollar movie that makes 90 and have more success. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to be doing these big $100 million box office movies, I just want to build a stronger foundation as a credible actor so that people will trust my decision making when I do take those risks.

Complex: There was also a rumor that you were getting it in with Britney Spears while you were choreographing for her. You were all over the gossip mags.

CS: Yeah, that was a learning experience right there.

Complex: Is that why you’re not all over Hollywood now, partying with starlets?

CS: It put things into perspective. You don't want to be chased by people with a camera for no reason. Well, some people do, but I didn't like how my friend Kate Beckinsale had people waiting for her at the bottom of the hill for her to leave. She can't even go to the grocery store and do regular business without people following her. It's kind of obnoxious. But we singed up for it. I know I want to keep anonymity as long as I can.

Complex: It seems, with the ability to dance and act, that you could be more of an old fashioned entertainer.

CS: Absolutely, that's what I'm bred for. At the school I went to they were breeding a bunch of beasts. All over at Julliard schools and performing art schools they breed that. It’s hard to find that in the Hollywood business. But I want to bring that level of expertise to Hollywood. Because there’s a difference between a quality actor and a movie star. Gene Kelly was an anomaly. Hopefully we can find some more guys out there like that

Complex: What does the future hold for you?

CS: I feel like there's nobody after Will Smith and nobody after Denzel Washington and I've had two wonderful blueprints to witness and to admire and to aspire for. So I'd love to be the perfect combination of the two.

A year ago, when she was stumbling around lip synching to the voices in her head at the MTV Video Music Awards, we wouldn’t touch her toxic waste with a ten-foot pole wearing a Hazmat suit. Now? We’re considering going pop. Read on and cast your vote to determine if Britney Spears is wifey or trifey.

Click here to see the evidence and cast your vote!

That’s the theory behind last night’s episode of South Park, entitled “Britney’s New Look” (Watch the full episode here). When Ms. Spears comes to remote South Park to hide from the parapazzi, the boys’ attempts at photographing her pushes her over the edge, driving her to shoot her head off with a shotgun.

That’s where most shows would end, but no…Britney'with the top of her head completely gone'attempts to stage a comeback, only to become the subject of more ridicule and incessant press coverage. In the end, we learn that all the adults secretly have a human sacrifice pact, and they chose Britney to die long ago. Death by flashbulb deals the final blow.

Check out a clip and a gallery of Brit’s bloody demise after the jump…

Watch this clip to see how Britney’s problems in South Park began:

Rather than subjecting us to another 3 minutes of bloated insecurity, the pop princess recruited British director Robert Hales (the man behind Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” ink-spot video) to create some Japanese-style animation. The result'created by a studio in South Korea'shows Brit as a superhero navigating the seedy big-city underworld. She’s no Aeon Flux, but we’ll take this Britney over the real thing any day. Watch the full video after the jump…

There are many different versions of the American dream. There's your rags-to-riches stories (P.Diddy, Nas) and then you have Kevin Federline. Call knocking up wifey, Britney Spears, promoting his burgeoning rap career, taking a body slam from pro-wrestler John Cena and modeling for Five Star Vintage clothing hard work, or key photo opps. Recently, the overnight celebrity teamed up with Complex, Bacardi Limon, and Budweiser Select to host a launch party for the fledging brand at Kitson Men in Los Angeles. Federline snapped a few photos for the swarm of paparazzi and plugged his new album Playing with Fire, set for a Halloween release. This is surely no trick, maybe a treat.