Busta Rhymes, Blessed
Old date: July 1.
New date: Unknown.
Official reason: None given, although an “official statement” is expected from Interscope soon.
Real reason: Was he dropped over the weekend after a heated discussion with Jimmy Iovine? Is he waiting for another Ne-Yo “A Milli” freestyle to drop before he makes another move? Developing…

Girlicious
Old date: July 1.
New date: Unknown.
Official reason: It probably has something to do with the soft response to these Pussycat Dolls-sponsored reality-show winners’ first single, “Like Me,” which peaked at No. 102… on the Hot 100.
Real reason: They really are trying to follow in Nicole Scherzinger’s footsteps.

LL Cool J, Exit 13
Old date: July 8.
New date: Aug. 26.
Official reason: None given, but this is the third push-back for the album since the end of May.
Real reason: What better way for LL Cool J to claim he’s the “G.O.A.T.” than to beat the Game in a not-quite-Kanye/50 sales battle?

The cover for the coming-too-soon album by the Pussycat Dolls spinoff quartet Girlicious–who, I found out while flipping around JetBlue last night, became a quartet at the last minute because the remaining finalists were just that hot–makes me wonder if Britney Spears’ Spirographic cover just made every art director out there decide that female-fronted pop acts should have CRAZY STARBURST BACKGROUNDS lurking behind them, so as to suggest fun, sexy ear candy. Wake me when everyone gets bored with that screen-saver-inspired art and starts putting flying toasters on their CD sleeves.

Girlicious [Official Album Cover] [Music Is The Heart Of Our Soul]

Eleven female contestants — all about age 20 and competing for places in Girlicious, the Pussycat Dolls spinoff group the show will found — were to perform to an audience of tween girls, the age group that made Miley Cyrus so popular that she was an Oscar presenter this year.

“This is part of the key demographic you want buying your CDs,” intoned Antin. “They’re the ones that dictate the future of music.”

And the music industry needs them, if only because the tweens are largely believed to still purchase CDs. If junior high kids weren’t entirely responsible for what Nielsen SoundScan estimates as 2.8 million copies sold of “PCD,” the debut album from the Pussycat Dolls that contained the (still) inescapable single “Don’t Cha,” Antin knows they accounted for a sizable percentage.

“If you go to a Pussycat Dolls concert, it’s all these little girls, and they all have on their hoodies,” Antin said recently in the family room of her modest one-story West Hollywood home. “When I first started the Pussycat Dolls, I never would have imagined that would become our target audience. But it makes so much sense. My idea, from the very beginning, was to have sort of live dolls, dancing and singing. That’s what these girls relate to.”

The thing that makes this “marketing women who are merely ‘living dolls’ and don’t have much interesting to say or offer except the flaunting of their bodies, which are pretty obviously temporary attractions based on the way that the group is completely interchangeable with the possible, but not probable exception of Nicole Scherzinger” ethos even more depressing? Antin’s brother Steve, who had the idea to transform the PCD burlesque show into the music/reality-TV juggernaut that it is now, was in The Goonies. Talk about your stark, depressing differences between the aimed-at-kids pop culture of then and now–just try and imagine La Scherzinger singing something like “The Goonies R Good Enough.” The lack of superobvious lyrical references to her vagina would probably make her choke.

Pussycat Dolls run hurdles in high heels [LAT]
[Photo: AP]