Their music may be the vile splurge of a disturbed brain, but in the wreckage of a chaotic show, there are signs of hip-hop greatness

Resolute in their rejection of Hollywood happy endings, the songs Willy Vlautin writes for Richmond Fontaine are downbeat narratives, related against the tints of a subtle Americana-rock which yaws between country, indie and ambient, as the action demands.

Tupac Shakur's group, The Outlawz, smoked his ashes.

HTC prides itself on being "quietly brilliant" but things may get a bit louder after the mobile phone company secured a deal with rapper Dr Dre.

Legendary Weapons, it's claimed, is not a "proper" Wu-Tang Clan album, but rather a "compilation" album featuring members of the Clan alongside various old-school fellow-travellers like Sean Price. But then, weren't all the Clan's albums to some degree compilations, patchworks of the nine principals' differing styles and infatuations?

Even the Snoop faithful were impatient at his late arrival, around 10.20pm, whistling and booing at the empty stage. When he did stroll on in his customary casual manner, the "King of the West Coast" was instantly forgiven.

It's many a year since the pigtailed rapper spat an inspired or original line, but he does at least recognise what some more articulate verbalists fail to grasp, which is that character and delivery counts as much as meaning – and few of his peers have as instantly recognisable a style as Snoop's laidback, lascivious drawl.

Gwyneth Paltrow knows every word to classic rap track 'F**k Tha Police'.

Over the last two decades, the demarcation lines between hip-hop and R&B have become blurred as the two genres have cross-pollinated through the use of samples, the proliferation of remixes and the ubiquity of guest appearances by vocalists and rappers on each other's records. Nate Dogg, the singer whose signature baritone gave dozens of "G-funk" and gangsta rap tracks a soulful dimension, played a pivotal role in that development.

Nate Dogg has died aged 41.

P Diddy has been crowned the wealthiest artist in hip-hop, with a fortune of $475 million.

Diddy is being sued for $1 trillion.

Question: how much does a rap mogul pay for his cardigans? Answer: $2,500 (£1,600). I know this fact because Sean Combs, the hip-hop hyphenate variously known as Puff Daddy, Puffy, P Diddy, and more recently, plain old Diddy, has just instructed his wardrobe man, Dave, to lend me an item of knitwear to cope with the sub-zero temperatures in the Mojave Desert, where he's making the video of the track "Yesterday", from his new album Last Train to Paris. Its price tag flutters in the breeze. "Make sure you give it back," says Dave. "And try not to get it dirty."

Young MC DELS has been hard at work in the studio collaborating with Joe Goddard from Hot Chip for his second single. He took time out to answer a few teasers for Music Magazine