Allison Samuels

Songstress Alicia Keys likes nothing more than to mix a little Beethoven with a dash of Biggie when she sits down to compose. The influence both artists have had on her is instantly evident in her debut release "songs in A minor,'' which sent the music world spinning when it premiered at No. 1 on the Billboard charts two weeks ago.

Ten-year-old Lashawn Bailey is screaming so loud that tears are streaming down her caramel-colored face. On this Saturday night, she and about 1,000 other little brown girls have packed into the Wiltern Theatre, in Los Angeles, dressed in their flyest gear.

Two years ago Shawn and Marlon Wayans cooked up an idea they just knew their brother Keenen would love. They wanted to do a spoof of teen slasher films like "Scream''--and they wanted him to direct.

Richard Williams watched as the crowd turned on his youngest daughter. This was supposed to have been a glorious victory for Serena, who'd long trailed her sister Venus in the rankings and hadn't won a major tournament of her own in months.

The young man had come to the United Center in Chicago because he needed help. At the age of 21, Tiger Woods had just won the '97 Masters--by an amazing 12 strokes--and the rush of fame was overwhelming.

Kobe Bryant never imagined that watching his Los Angeles Lakers win could be so humbling. But confined to the bench with an ankle injury for a couple of weeks in March, Kobe couldn't kid himself: the defending NBA champion Lakers were clearly playing better without him.

Growing up as an only child in Augusta, Ga., I regularly spent time with my grandmother, the daughter of a share cropper who put eight daughters through college during the 1950's and 1960's.

For nearly five years, Marion (Suge) Knight, the multimillionaire impresario of gangsta rap, has been sitting behind bars in a California prison, dreaming of Death Row.

Tupac Shakur was a huge basketball fan--he even portrayed a wanna-be ''baller'' in the 1993 film "Above the Rim." But the rapper had never been to a professional basketball game before Suge Knight took him to one in 1996, shortly after Shakur signed with Knight's Death Row Records. "It was the Lakers versus the Bulls, with Michael Jordan playing,'' recalls Knight. "Pac was jumping up and down in his chair, cheering like a little kid.

It was like watching Ricky Martin emerge from the backstage door and head for the limo--except this was the usually sedate environs of spring-training baseball.

When her debut album, "Who Is Jill Scott?" hit the music racks last July, the soul artist decided she didn't want to shout the answer from the rooftops. There'd be no full-spread ad in Rolling Stone, no "Live With Regis," no cardboard cutouts in Virgin Megastores--even though the man with the money behind her record label, NBA legend Michael Jordan, could have guaranteed that and more.

L.A. vs. New York figures to be a showcase for NBA excitement. But by the time the Lakers arrived for their once-a-year showdown against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden last month, the dysfunctional L.A.

Erykah Badu has been accused of it all. Accused of being way too righteous, accused of getting too carried away with her religious philosophies (just get her going) and accused of being way too weird.

The Los Angeles Clippers, the NBA's perennial doormat, may not be ready to compete against the stellar Los Angeles Lakers on the floor. But the Clippers, who play in the Staples Center, just like the NBA champs do, are aiming to take on Shaq, Kobe et al.

One by one, they've left the field. First John Elway in a blaze of Super Bowl glory, then Steve Young in a haze of concussions and, finally, Dan Marino with every passing record but no ring.

It's 1:30 a.m. in a small recording studio in a seedy South Philly neighborhood where NBA superstar Allen Iverson and his boys are laying down tracks for his debut album, "Non Fiction." After 30-minutes of nonstop rap, Iverson, dressed in oversize jeans, a black T shirt and matching do-rag, orders a break to talk with a reporter about his musical venture.

After 15 years in the rap game, LL Cool J knew he'd have to keep it real in a hip-hop market overrun with new faces. So he holed up in his grandmother's basement in Queens, N.Y., just like he used to do when he was a fresh-faced kid in a Kangol hat, and began writing the slickest, most arrogant raps he could think of.

To get a sense of the issues facing black professional women, NEWSWEEK invited a handful of prominent "sisters" to talk about life: Cheryl Mills, the former deputy White House counsel and current vice president at Oxygen Media; Mae Jemison, former astronaut and current director of the Jemison Institute at Dartmouth; Debbie Allen, director, producer, actress, dancer; Lisa Sullivan, founder and president of LISTEN Inc.; Ananda Lewis, MTV host; Amy Holmes, political commentator, and Tracey Kemble,...

After the premiere, there is a party. But it's only after the party that anybody really parties. Welcome to the after-after party. It's a Monday night in Los Angeles--actually, it must be Tuesday morning by now--and Eddie Murphy, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Prince, Arsenio Hall and an army of Cristal bottles are holed up in an extravagant hotel suite high above Universal Studios.

Have you ever seen Michael Jordan dance?" Jill Scott asks. Scott knows what it takes to get The Jumper moving. Her album "Who Is Jill Scott?" is the first one released by Hidden Beach, Jordan's new record company. "Who Is Jill Scott?" is a shimmering collection partial to songs--"Long Walk," "Love Rain"--that celebrate new love.

What rapper Juvenile needed was a little extra spending money. What he got was a major hassle. He was in San Diego last Wednesday, taping a segment of "SoCal Summer," MTV's beach-house show.

How do you know when you're truly the man? How about when the your the mayor of Los Angeles buys your mansion? That's what happened to Grammy-winning rapper-producer Dr.

BEING A HIP-HOP DIVA HAS some non-negotiable requirements. You gotta rock the ice (i.e., sport diamonds), you gotta wear the designers (Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci) and, most important, you gotta have the hair.

Our Opinionated Guide from One to Five StarsMUSIC Whitney Houston, 'The Greatest Hits' (Arista, 2 CDs) After all the tabloid stories, here's what counts: that voice.

As he turned 25 years old last week in an Atlanta courtroom at his own murder trial, football star Ray Lewis wasn't looking much like a hero. Wearing a sober suit, he scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad and talked to his defense team, barely glancing at his two codefendants just 10 feet away.

Being cheeky hasn't hurt Sisqo's career. Propelled by his ode to the female posterior, "Thong Song," his debut album has sold more than 2 million copies. MTV declared the tune--in which telling a woman she "got dumps like a truck" is high praise--its official spring-break anthem.

Why the quickie marriage last week between Joan Lunden, 49, and her beau of three years, Jeff Konigsberg, 39? The summer-camp owner presented Lunden with a ring--literally on a silver platter--over dinner on April 8, and they were married just 10 days later.

Rapping may be the only thing puffy can't do. Rumor has it that after the dismal sales of his last album, Sean (Puffy) Combs might quit performing altogether.

Last season Shaquille O'Neal kept to a well-established routine. In the evening, after recovering from the rigors of practice, he would head over to a local high-school gym and work on free-throw shooting, his Achilles' heel.

Getting hurt may be a lucky break for artists. Just days after 'N Sync-er Lance Bass twisted his ankle during a "Saturday Night Live" performance, the group rocked the music industry by selling 1.1 million copies of "No Strings Attached" its first day in stores--and went on to sell a record 2.42 million for the week.