On an altar-like raised platform, a French DJ is making the walls of Brixton Academy physically move. David Guetta leaps onto the decks, standing with his hands stretched towards the ceiling, so all that is seen is a silhouette of a man against glowing lava-red light as a powerful baseline makes the audience yelp with delight.

He may be on a colossal global arena tour, but as Charlotte Cripps finds out, R&B star Usher doesn't go far without a few home comforts...

Plan B made his name as a rapper, then topped the charts as a snappily dressed soul singer. Now he's making his directorial debut with a hip-hop movie. Charlotte Cripps meets an urban polymath

"Rock and roll is here to stay," sang Danny and the Juniors in 1958. If only. New statistics reveal the number of rock hits in the top 100 biggest-selling singles of 2010 to be the lowest in half a century.

Elisa Bray hears the record Michael Jackson never got to complete

Holograms have come a long way since the blurry images of the 1980s – and they're letting people appear in two places at once, discovers Holly Williams

The clues were always there. Bert and Ernie have been living together for 31 years. They like to wear flamboyant "his & his" pyjamas. And (here's the clincher) they tuck themselves up together each night in the same bed.

The Black Eyed Peas occupy an uncomfortable area of pop music, somewhere in between easily identifiable cheap schlock and irrefutable – often accidental – genius. There's no doubt that, as performers, they are top-notch, focusing all their energies on crowd satisfaction, but as artists they are either oddly flimsy under scrutiny, or woefully misconstrued. It was impossible during this gig to come down firmly on either side.

To call your album The E.N.D. can give a certain impression. But, far from it being the end for the Los Angeles-based Black Eyed Peas, the world's best-selling hip-hop group are celebrating their chart-troubling career on tour. "The E.N.D.", it turns out, stands for "The Energy Never Dies".

Most rappers want to tell you about where they are from, but few can take you there as completely as this compact performer from Brooklyn. One highlight of a rare European appearance is a zingy run through hip-hop classics and familiar samples. Talib Kweli freestyles over them all as if at a block party in a New York project.

Sometimes, a Girl Aloud would do better to stay silent

Just as Whitney Houston's comeback album follows an autobiographical subtext in which most of the material deals with her overcoming her tribulations, so does Cheryl Cole's solo debut appear to follow an equivalent subtext in which the path to romantic fulfillment is pock-marked with treachery, uncertainty and secrecy.

Gavin Hood, the director of Tsotsi, revives Marvel Comics' X-Men franchise with this handsome yet redundant prequel.

Young Logan (Hugh Jackman) claws his old man to death and goes on the run with his similarly clawed brother, Victor (Liev Schreiber – what in hell's teeth is he doing in this rot?).