Atlanta-based rapper T.I. was released Wednesday one month early from a federal prison in Arkansas where he was serving time for a probation violation, and he already has a new book deal and TV reality show waiting for him.

The artist, whose real name is Clifford Harris, was released Wednesday morning from the Forrest City low-security prison, said Bureau of Prisons spokesman Chris Burke. Attorney Jonathan Leonard confirmed T.I. was released but did not immediately say where his client was going.

“The storm is over & da sun back out. IT’S OUR TIME TO SHINE SHAWTY!!!!!” the rapper posted on Twitter shortly after his release. “Welcome to the beginning of our Happy Ending!!!!”

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The rapper known as DMX has been arrested for speeding in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Carrick Cook told The Associated Press that the 40-year-old rapper was arrested Wednesday night and bonded out of jail Thursday morning. His real name is Earl Simmons.

The highway patrol pulled Simmons on a highway in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa after he was clocked on radar driving at 102 mph.

Simmons was cited for criminal speed, driving on a suspended and revoked license and reckless driving.

He was released from an Arizona state prison last month after his probation was revoked for failing to submit to drug testing and driving on a suspended license.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Motley Crue singer Vince Neil is getting an emergency postponement in his Las Vegas trial on misdemeanor charges stemming from a confrontation with an ex-girlfriend at a casino comedy club.

A Las Vegas judge granted the request Monday during a brief hearing. The trial was rescheduled for Nov. 7.

A lawyer for the 50-year-old rocker did not explain why he was requesting the continuance. Neil did not appear in court for the hearing.

Neil has pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor battery and disorderly conduct charges.

He’s accused of poking the chest of Las Vegas entertainment reporter Alicia Jacobs in a casino comedy club March 24, and cursing and pointing at Jacobs and two friends sitting with her.

Police tape blocks off part of Hollywood following a disturbance at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. (Reuters)

Police fired anti-riot bean bags into an unruly crowd in Hollywood that surged out of control at the premiere of the “Electric Daisy Carnival Experience” on Wednesday night.

Police told local media they were forced to respond to several hundred people who threw bottles and other objects outside the film version of a rave at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

“We are thankful that the LAPD were able to quickly restore order,” Erika Raney, spokeswoman for Insomniac, the group that produced the event, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times.

The Electric Daisy rave, the subject of the movie, raised controversy after a teenaged girl died of a drug overdose at the event held in June 2010 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Exposition Park.
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Police have arrested a suspected stalker at the home of Halle Berry.

Sgt. Enrique Mendoza says off-duty Los Angeles police officers hired by Berry saw the man climbing over a locked security gate at Berry’s Hollywood Hills home shortly before 11:30 p.m. Monday.

On-duty officers were called and arrested 27-year-old Richard Franco on suspicion of stalking. He remained jailed on Tuesday.

Sgt. George Hoops tells City News Service that Berry identified Franco as the man who also showed up in her backyard on Saturday and Sunday.

Berry was not injured. Calls to her representatives seeking comment were not immediately returned Tuesday.

Image by Brooklyn's Don Diva via Flickr

Rapper Foxy Brown is due in court again — this time on charges she violated a court order by mooning her neighbor.

Brown’s real name is Inga Marchand. She’s pleaded not guilty to criminal contempt and her trial is scheduled to start Tuesday.

Prosecutors say Brown violated the order in July 2010 by screaming at neighbor Arlene Raymond before bending over, baring her buttocks and showing her underwear while shouting an obscenity.

The 31-year-old Brown was issued the order of protection after pleading guilty in 2008 to menacing Raymond with her cell phone.

The two had been in a dispute over Brown blasting her car stereo outside their Brooklyn building.

By ANTHONY McCARTNEY

A reality television show producer will make his case Tuesday for why he should not be returned to Mexico to stand trial on a charge that he killed his wife at an upscale Cancun resort 15 months ago.

After months of attempting to discredit Mexican authorities and attacking the case, Bruce Beresford-Redman will make another attempt at convincing a U.S. magistrate judge that he should be freed. Federal prosecutors will try to show that there is probable cause that the former “Survivor” producer killed his wife and that he should be sent to Cancun to stand trial on an aggravated homicide charge.

Tuesday’s hearing comes 15 months after the naked body of Monica Beresford-Redman was found in a sewer cistern at the resort where she and her family were staying. The couple went on the trip to try to repair their marriage, which had been damaged by an affair Bruce Beresford-Redman had with a co-worker.

His attorneys claim Mexican authorities “rushed to judgment” and built a case accusing Bruce Beresford-Redman based on motive rather than physical evidence.

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Reality TV star Richard Hatch has filed notice he’ll appeal a federal court decision upholding his nine-month prison sentence for failing to pay taxes on his $1 million “Survivor” winnings.

Hatch filed the hand-written appeal notice June 29 in U.S. District Court in Providence, R.I. He is representing himself.

Federal Judge William E. Smith on May 9 rejected Hatch’s request to vacate his prison sentence.

Hatch spent more than three years in prison for not paying taxes on the $1 million he won on the first season of “Survivor.” He was released in 2009 and ordered to refile his 2000 and 2001 taxes and pay what he owed. A judge in March ruled he never did and returned him to prison.

Grammy-winning reggae star Buju Banton has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, followed by 5 years of probation, for his role in a cocaine deal.

The 37-year-old Jamaican recording artist was sentenced in Tampa federal court Thursday morning. A jury convicted him in February of conspiring to set up a cocaine deal in 2009.

His attorney, David Markus, had asked U.S. District Judge James S. Moody for leniency. He contended that Banton’s limited participation in the drug buy, his charitable work in Jamaica and otherwise clean record were worth a reduced sentence.

Just before his conviction, Banton — whose legal name is Mark Myrie — won a Grammy for best reggae album for his work entitled “Before the Dawn.”

Related articles

• Reggae star Banton asks for shorter jail sentence (pbpulse.com)
• Buju Banton fans asked to write letters (repeatingislands.com)

A fugitive hip-hop mogul recently linked by an inmate to a shooting that wounded Tupac Shakur has been arrested in a drug case.

Federal authorities said Tuesday that Drug Enforcement Administration agents had arrested James Rosemond on cocaine-dealing charges.

The arrest follows accusations last week that Rosemond, owner of Czar Entertainment, was involved in a mid-1990s ambush of Shakur outside a Manhattan recording studio. The allegations were attributed to Dexter Isaac, who is serving a life sentence in an unrelated murder-for-hire plot.

Rosemond’s lawyer has denied his client had any involvement in the shooting.

Shakur was gunned down two years later in Las Vegas in a slaying that remains unsolved.