Just a year ago, a 65-space jump to No. 3 would have been enough to make our eyes pop. When Britney Spears did it in early October 2007 with “Gimme More,” it was considered something of a triumph—especially as she was at the height of her meltdown phase and coming off a tragic performance at the 2007 Video Music Awards.

Now, we’re a little harder to impress. In its third week on the charts, “Boy” makes the exact same move from No. 68 to No. 3—and chart geeks yawn. That’s because the last two months have brought three straight leaps all the way to No. 1 from below No. 70. (The most recent was by Spears herself, whose “Womanizer” bested “Gimme More” by shooting from No. 96 to the penthouse.)

Still, Beyoncé’s got nothing to be ashamed of: her gender-flip of Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend” (well, I like to think of it that way) is her ninth career Top 10 single and sold almost 190,000 digital downloads. And it brings her one hit away from matching the career chart record of the group she ditched four years ago.

Destiny’s Child, B’s erstwhile group, scored a total of 10 U.S. Top 10 hits. (That actually understates their global popularity a bit: in Britain, Australia, and Canada, they scored 12.) Those 10 U.S. hits are out of 14 Top 40 hits, which is itself an impressive track record; in a little over six years, all of their singles either made the top 40 of the Hot 100 or didn’t chart here at all (usually because they weren’t promoted here). Among their hits were four No. 1s: “Bills, Bills, Bills” (1999), “Say My Name” (2000), “Independent Women, Part I” (2000) and “Bootylicious” (2001).

With “Boy,” Beyoncé scores her ninth Top 10 hit, just one hit away from Destiny’s total. A couple of her hits have missed the Top 40, but that’s not too shameful (especially in the iTunes era, when some songs chart based on brief spurts of digital sales; DC missed that phenomenon entirely). B also has four career No. 1 hits: “Crazy in Love” (2003), still her all-time best as far as I’m concerned; “Baby Boy” with Sean Paul (2003); “Check on It” with Slim Thug and Bun-B (2006); and “Irreplaceable” (2006, and the top Billboard pop hit for all of 2007). At least for now, “Boy” isn’t going to give her bragging rights to a fifth.

It took Destiny’s Child a little over six years to amass their 10 Top 10s, and that’s pretty much exactly where B is in her career, if we start her “solo” career (which overlaps with the last Destiny’s album and a greatest-hits collection) in 2002. That’s when she made an appearance on “’03 Bonnie and Clyde,” a duet with then-future husband Jay-Z. (Think I’m making up that Prince comparison? B actually sings a couple of lines from “If I Was Your Girlfriend” on that hit.)

It’s quite likely that Beyoncé will tie her former group's Top 10 track record soon, maybe even in the next few weeks. “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” the other single leading off I Am… Sasha Fierce, is already a fast-breaking Top 10 R&B hit. It will presumably be available for individual download when the album drops in two weeks, and a sales rush would make “Single Ladies” an easy Top 10 hit on the Hot 100.

Just to address one elephant in the room, which Beyoncé’s casting in the movie Dreamgirls hinted at: B seems to be doing better as a solo act when compared with Diana Ross after she left the Supremes. Ross’s solo career—six No. 1’s, 14 Top 10s, and 30 Top 40s over 15 years—is impressive by almost any reckoning. Any reckoning, that is, except that of the Supremes, the second-biggest pop-chart act of the ’60s (after the Beatles), with 12 No. 1’s, 19 Top 10s, and 26 Top 40s in a remarkably tight six-year-and-change timeframe. (Unlike Destiny’s Child, the Supremes continued to exist after Ross left in 1970—and without her they scored seven more Top 40 hits by 1976.)

I guess, thinking for a minute less like a chart columnist and more like a critic, it could be argued that Beyoncé’s entire career has been as a glorified solo act, and that we might as well tote those DC hits in her column. Unlike dad/manager Mathew Knowles, who by all accounts knew what his girl was doing from the moment Destiny’s Child launched in 1997, it took Berry Gordy a few years to reconceive his star group as a solo-act preparatory vehicle—they only became “Diana Ross and the Supremes” halfway through 1967. On the other hand, unlike Diana, Beyoncé returned to the group in 2004 even after scoring her first raft of solo hits, and the Knowleses insisted on regarding DC as its own distinct thing.

No matter what, among big solo careers that followed already-big group careers—from Beatles/Paul McCartney to Simon and Garfunkel/Paul Simon to Wham!/George Michael—Ms. Knowles already ranks among the bigger ones, and within a few years she’ll probably have Ms. Ross beat for the biggest two-act career by a woman. Not too shabby.

Here's a rundown of the rest of this week's charts:

• It’s stasis above Beyoncé on the Hot 100, with T.I.’s simultaneous hits holding position in the top two slots. “Whatever You Like” continues to slip in sales—at 137,000 downloads, it’s down 11% this week, after a 5% drop last week—but it’s still growing at radio, and that airplay dominance keeps it in the top slot overall for a seventh week. Even so, T.I.’s chart-topper loses its bullet on this week’s chart. But his “Live Your Life,” at No. 2, is bulleted and still growing. The Rihanna duet sells another 180,000 downloads, and as I kinda predicted last week, it’s now the third most-played song at radio, up from fourth. I’m done trying to predict when or if the T.I./Rihanna duet will return to No. 1, but all signs continue to point to a comeback.

• David Cook’s “Light On” makes a modest chart comeback three weeks after it debuted at a tepid (for him) No. 17 and a week after it dropped off the Hot 100 entirely. A rebound in his digital sales, to about 34,000 copies, fuels a re-entry on the big chart at No. 60. It remains absent at most radio stations, including all rock formats and most Top 40 stations—with the exception of Adult Top 40, where it’s up seven slots to rank 29th.

The next week or two might be really interesting for Cook’s chart performance. As of this writing, on iTunes, “Light On” is down, relatively, once again. But that will likely all change in the last 24 hours of the tracking week, after Cook performs the song on a Saturday Night Live episode featuring an appearance by John McCain. A sales boost is inevitable, and the only question is how big that one day will be. SNL has already worked wonders for British singer Adele, who makes her Hot 100 debut this week with “Chasing Pavements” at No. 82, after her performance on the show’s highly-rated episode featuring Sarah Palin. With 25,000 downloads, she’s up 73% over the prior week—but this is actually her second chart week after the SNL performance; one day of sales in the prior chart week did give her a massive sales boost, but not enough to make the big chart immediately.

Bottom line: expect a bit of a pop for Cook next week and maybe a bigger boost the week after—which will help his promotional team get what they really need: the attention of thus far uninterested radio programmers.

• Only one song, Brad Paisley’s former No. 1 “Waitin’ on a Woman,” dropped out of the Country Top 10 this week, and it’s replaced by a new song from… Brad Paisley. “Start a Band,” a duet with Keith Urban, is the leadoff single from Paisley’s forthcoming album and 2008 Worst Album Cover Of The Year contender Play. You have to admire the guy’s consistency: he pumped four Country No. 1 singles from 2007 Worst Cover nominee 5th Gear; he re-released the album (booooo!) with new songs on it, including the aforementioned “Waitin’…,” scoring a fifth consecutive No. 1; and now he moves back into the winners’ circle the very week the previous hit falls out. Unlike slugger Kenny Chesney, who dominated radio last week with six hits from his new album, Paisley is Country’s Joe DiMaggio, batting for a single each time he steps to the plate.

• In a horrible real-world week for Jennifer Hudson, the parallel world of the charts is also a little unkind, as “Spotlight” falls out of the R&B/Hip-Hop chart’s top spot after two weeks there. I would surmise that the gentle, midtempo song is becoming somewhat inadequate radio programming compared with the magnitude of her family tragedy. No word on whether or if Arista will promote a followup single from Hudson’s album, and it’s hard to speculate how her personal travails will affect her radio profile over the next few weeks. The death of a star herself has given chart boosts to the likes of Aaliyah, but Hudson’s sympathy-inspiring situation is rather different.

Forgetting all this awfulness for a moment, the one nice thing about the turnover in the R&B chart’s top spot is who takes over: Ne-Yo, with the utterly superb single “Miss Independent.” Amazingly, this is his first chart-topper there, about two and a half years after he first reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 with “So Sick.”

Top 10s
Last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses (Digital Songs chart includes total downloads/percentage change in parentheses):

Hot 100
1. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
2. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 2, 5 weeks)
3. Beyoncé, "If I Were a Boy" (LW No. 68, 3 weeks)
4. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 3, 10 weeks)
5. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (LW No. 4, 4 weeks)
6. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 5, 13 weeks)
7. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 7, 9 weeks)
8. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 8, 10 weeks)
9. Rihanna, "Disturbia" (LW No. 6, 19 weeks)
10. Jason Mraz, "I’m Yours" (LW No. 13, 28 weeks)

Hot Digital Songs
1. Beyoncé, "If I Were a Boy" (CHART DEBUT, 190,000 downloads)
2. Britney Spears, "Womanizer" (LW No. 1, 181,000 downloads)
3. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 2, 180,000 downloads)
4. Kevin Rudolf feat. Lil Wayne, "Let It Rock" (LW No. 7, 142,000 downloads)
5. Katy Perry, "Hot N Cold" (LW No. 6, 137,000 downloads)
6. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 4, 137,000 downloads)
7. Pink, "So What" (LW No. 5, 133,000 downloads)
8. Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" (LW No. 8, 96,000 downloads)
9. Jason Mraz, "I’m Yours" (LW No. 12, 96,000 downloads)
10. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 9, 88,000 downloads)

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
1. Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent" (LW No. 2, 14 weeks)
2. Jennifer Hudson, "Spotlight" (LW No. 1, 24 weeks)
3. T.I., "Whatever You Like" (LW No. 3, 15 weeks)
4. T-Pain feat. Lil Wayne, "Can't Believe It," (LW No. 4, 16 weeks)
5. Lil Wayne feat. Bobby Valentino, "Mrs. Officer" (LW No. 6, 17 weeks)
6. Jazmine Sullivan, "Need U Bad" (LW No. 5, 26 weeks)
7. T.I. feat. Rihanna, "Live Your Life" (LW No. 7, 7 weeks)
8. Beyoncé, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" (LW No. 10, 3 weeks)
9. Jazmine Sullivan, "Bust Your Windows" (LW No. 8, 7 weeks)
10. Slim feat. Yung Joc, "So Fly" (LW No. 9, 21 weeks)

Hot Country Songs
1. Carrie Underwood, "Just a Dream" (LW No. 3, 16 weeks)
2. Toby Keith, "She Never Cried in Front of Me" (LW No. 1, 18 weeks)
3. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" (LW No. 4, 7 weeks)
4. Kenny Chesney, "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
5. Tim McGraw, "Let It Go" (LW No. 6, 15 weeks)
6. Zac Brown Band, "Chicken Fried" (LW No. 7, 19 weeks)
7. Darius Rucker, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (LW No. 5, 28 weeks)
8. Montgomery Gentry, "Roll with Me" (LW No. 9, 14 weeks)
9. Sugarland, "Already Gone" (LW No. 8, 9 weeks)
10. Brad Paisley with Keith Urban, "Start a Band" (LW No. 13, 20 weeks)

Hot Modern Rock Tracks
1. The Offspring, "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" (LW No. 1, 14 weeks)
2. Weezer, "Troublemaker" (LW No. 2, 16 weeks)
3. Rise Against, "Re-Education (Through Labor)" (LW No. 3, 10 weeks)
4. Apocalyptica feat. Adam Gontier, "I Don't Care" (LW No. 4, 17 weeks)
5. Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire" (LW No. 5, 10 weeks)
6. The Killers, "Human" (LW No. 6, 5 weeks)
7. Metallica, "The Day That Never Comes" (LW No. 8, 10 weeks)
8. Staind, "Believe" (LW No. 7, 18 weeks)
9. Theory of a Deadman, "Bad Girlfriend" (LW No. 9, 19 weeks)
10. Nickelback, "Gotta Be Somebody" (LW No. 10, 4 weeks)

In case you're wondering, the rest of the top 10 will apparently consist of Joe, Kid Rock, Lil Wayne, and Young Jeezy. [HITS Daily Double]

• "Year of the Gentleman? He should have called it Gentleman of the Year." [SF Chronicle]

• "Ne-Yo rarely got it right when it came to the fast stuff, so it's impressive that he's figured it out. Still, it's in heart-broken ballads such as 'So You Can Cry' and 'Stop This World' that Ne-Yo shows off the big emotions and the bigger-still choruses - the catches in his throat and the tunes. You don't need a fancy suit for that." [Philadelphia Inquirer]

• "To his credit, he keeps his disc guest star-free, despite his A-list outside collaborations. In just over two years, he has shown significant growth through three worthy albums, hinting that he may only be scratching the surface of his potential." [USA Today]

• "The music stays modest throughout the album, even at the rare moments when it simulates an orchestral buildup. There's no booming macho bass, no jolting effects. Amid the programmed, hermetic patterns, Ne-Yo sounds isolated and needy, like a sweet, affectionate guy just waiting to be rescued. Among current pop postures it's downright endearing." [NYT]

It's the 21st-century "dog ate my contract," only with more possibility of destruction!

WILL THE REAL NE-YO STAND UP [Page Six]
[Gustav image via Wikimedia]

ONE TWO FEW-LISTENS VERDICT: The songs that teased Ne-Yo's Year Of The Gentleman gave the hint that the singer/songwriter would aim for a more mature pop sound on this album. And Year as a whole would seem to bear this out; even "Single," which has been reconfigured from a New Kids On The Block/Ne-Yo collaboration into a Ne-Yo-only slice of radio R & B, sounds like it makes sense here, thanks to it flowing much better with the grating "if you ain't got no money" bits stripped from it. (Although why Donnie Wahlberg's rap remains on this version is something of a mystery.)

What's most striking to me on Gentleman is Ne-Yo's vocal channeling of Michael Jackson. On his blog he says that the lighter-than-air "Nobody" is his Off The Wall tribute, and the homage is definitely spot-on—but there were more than a few instances on the album where I had to double-check the news that's dribbled out about the album to see if the former King Of Pop had lent his vocals to the album. "Part Of The List" and the over-the-top "Lie To Me" find Ne-Yo locked right in to MJ's vocal mannerisms, particularly the latter, on which Ne-Yo's repeated vocalizing of the word "desperately" sounds like it was cribbed directly from "Dirty Diana." The music plays that part as well, having one foot in the current era and the other planted in the days when Michael Jackson had an iron grip on pop. Perhaps Ne-Yo should be the person who engineers Jackson's comeback, if only because tracks in the vein of the breezy, radio-ready "So You Can Cry" would, in some alternate pop universe, be a much better fit for his voice than anything with Akon.

Gentleman isn't a perfect album—like many full-lengths in the CD era, it could be improved by cutting three songs or so, including the over-the-top album closer "Stop This World"—but it's compulsively listenable, with the singer providing his well-dressed shoulder to ladies of the world, whether they need to cry on it or stand on it.

My affection for this particular remix is well known, but I'd be shirking my duties if I didn't point out that in whoever posted this clip is trying to claim that Ne-Yo's "A Milli" was at some point the third-most-downloaded track on iTunes. Let's all just be happy that "Closer" is finally, deservedly breaking through to the top 40, OK?

Lil Wayne's A Milli Walkthrough... Err... Video [MissInfo.TV]
NE-YO FT. BANGLADESH "A MILLI" REMIX (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) [YouTube]

Come to think of it, the Plies/Ne-Yo song "Bust It Baby (Part 2)" samples Janet Jackson's 1990 song "Come Back To Me":

Even though my affection for Ne-Yo is well-documented around these parts, I'm looking for something a little... sassier, and more call-and-response (seriously, I thought the song was sampling an Anita Baker track for the first two months I knew about it). Like a remix of Kiss' "Forever" in which the singer is getting irritable with Paul Stanley's mealy-mouthed proclamations of fidelity. Or an answer song to the Glenn Medeiros/Bobby Brown duet "She Ain't Worth It":

Yes. Yes. Someone has to make my day and jump on "I'm Worth It '08" before it's time to turn the pop-song calendar year to 2009. Just don't let Bobby know, otherwise he might try to horn in on the recording sessions.

Kon Kan - I Beg Your Pardon [YouTube]
Rose Garden (Lynn Anderson) [YouTube]
Plies - Bust It Baby Part 2 [featuring Neyo] [YouTube]
Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown - She Ain't Worth It [YouTube]

1. Some singers just want to make awful pick-up lines, and some of us are puerile enough to enjoy hearing them.
You get more points for a memorable bad line than for something respectable, but totally anonymous. Chris Brown putting a Wrigley's reference ("double your pleasure, double your fun") inside of an oxymoron ("we've only got one night to...dance forever") is some sort of masterstroke. As is the concept of making love in a club.

2. Some people just ignore the nonsense on top and focus on the beats.
R&B is just as likely as rap or any other genre to bring us novel sounds (pretty much anything recorded by Tricky Stewart) and interesting twists on past ones ("Girls Around The World," "Run"), and it's easier to ignore a self-impressed R&B lothario than some thug with a blocked colon whose naked materialism and received hate speech holds a mirror to society or something (for rock, just take out the naked materialism). It's also fun to hear the latest in technology married to songform rather than treated as an end to itself, which is why old Timbaland productions still get played and Goldie's don't.

3. Mary's pain is not boring, and never will be.
Really, Ne-Yo. To even remotely suggest this is vain and piggish. You've worked with her, and you need to make clear that when you mock R&B, you are not mocking Mary. Show some grace.

Mary J. Blige - Stay Down (Official Video) [YouTube]
Ne-Yo This... And Ne-Yo That!!! [YEAR OF THE GENTLEMAN Blog]

This is the third time in about a week we've posted a link to Ne-Yo's "Closer," but a) now there's a video and b) it's a damn good song. Video's addictive, too. Between this and Gnarls Barkley's "Run" I think everyone should rock zebra stripes. Ne-Yo even gets to look into the camera a bit (without sunglasses!), even though Scott Summers here risks burning a hole through the screen with those eyebrows. Dude should have to put a dollar in a jar every time he touches the brim of his hat. [YouTube]

Ne-Yo To Appear On All My Children [USA Today]
Ne-Yo's YEAR OF THE GENTLEMAN Hits Stores June 24 [The Hype Wire]
Ne-Yo - Closer [YouTube]

Still, the best reason to be excited about the new album is the single, "Closer." Vocally he's moved from "Because Of You"'s Off The Wall ease to the claustrophobic hottie-fear of MJ's later work, but the music is total house. I'm curious to see how they'll try to hide Ne-Yo's glamtastic eyebrows in the upcoming video. Sunglasses? Tilted at? Sunglasses and tilted hat?

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: Have you ever wondered what would happen if R. Kelly redid "Real Talk" as a song that rhymed a little bit more, made him sound like he was saying each word through his teeth and a Vocoder, and had Ne-Yo as the target of its ire? Then you'll be very happy to hear "I'm A Beast," during which R. takes down people who are jacking his style. R. doesn't name names throughout the song, though it's pretty obvious that one of the people he's really unhappy with is his ex-opener Ne-Yo, who's currently suing R. in part because he doesn't think the Pied Piper of R & B is as awesome as he is. And the song even has a happy ending: It closes out with R. promising that there will be a remix where he'll finally call out specific targets—although I'm hoping that it will be less rage-y and more appropriate for spins during late nights at the club.

WHERE TO FIND IT: SOHH's Ya Heard? Blog, which astutely points out that "dude seems mad angry." Gee, you think?

"Plaintiffs allege that an unknown representative of R. Kelly urged Rowe to terminate Smith from the tour given the audience's and critics' more favorable reaction to Smith than the reaction to R. Kelly," the suit states. Compound Touring spent "substantial monies in preparation for the tour and turned down other touring and performance opportunities for Smith in reliance on Rowe's agreement that Smith would perform on the tour," according to the suit.

Since Ne-Yo never even made it through a week of the tour before being sent home to play cellphone Tetris and have sex, he claims he's still owed $735,000, though the suit is looking for "unspecified damages." But perhaps the R. merely wanted to hang on to that three-quarters-of-a-million dollars for legal fees and/or speeding tickets?

Ne-Yo Sues Over R. Kelly Tour Dismissal [Billboard]

"Hate That I Love You" popped up like a tender mercy or urban radio this year, sandwiched between skeezy/silly-ass/sad sensitivity like "Soulja Girl" and "Shawty Is A Ten," but I also found myself daydreaming about a chart-hungry emo band or a conservative Nashville act playing the song straight for a hit of their own, their producers not even needing to musically fiddle with the master tapes. That programming malleability may not fly with the snobs, and to be honest, the Sugarland clusterfuck cover of Beyonce's similarly strummy genre-trasher "Irreplaceable" on this year's American Music Awards and pop emo's general pass-agg ickiness probably prove that the divas should be the ones who stick to sticking it to scrubs/admitting to clinginess. Still, forget figuring out what to tag the backing, because what makes "Hate" great is far less difficult to nail down, i.e. it gets cars (or bars) full of heads swaying as they pretend to be the biggest P.Y.T.'s in contemporary pop serenading each other. (Killer karakoke tune as well, though you need to have a pretty... interesting relationship with your duet partner.) This became a late '07 sing-along anthem for me after a few heartbreak knocks and spending most of the year as an infamous "Umbrella" agnostic, and the sad way I still melt at that telegraphed high note after the breakdown makes me wonder if "mid-tempo R&B with the kind of cheddary acoustic guitars I'd never put up with in a rock tune" is a musical soft spot I just never knew about until 2006.

Rihanna feat. Ne-Yo - "Hate That I Love You" [YouTube]
Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Obama '08 [Official Site; HT DHMBIB]
"You And I" No More? [Political Radar via the Daily Swarm]

^* Possibly wishful thinking on the part of your reporter.

When you tell an interviewer that your addiction to sex has turned you into someone who resembles "Sammy Davis and Bugs Bunny with some porn mixed in," it's probably going to overshadow whatever else you're trying to say about your art. Such was the case with Ne-Yo, who told a Vibe interviewer back in 2006 that his uncontrollable horniness also resulted in him making the grade with most (if not all) of the girls in his junior-year class. A year later, though, he was refuting those claims in interviews and recording the disclamatory "Addicted." The track opens with Ne-Yo reveling in the fact that he's being gossiped about before running down the facts: He's hot, he's freaky, and he knows where the G-spot is. (Hence his declaration that any woman who gets with him will instantly be coverted into a sex addict themselves.) Whether he's hooked on orgasms or not, "Addicted" does reveal one thing about Ne-Yo's adolescence: He was really, really into the more carnally influenced side of Prince, and has even less fear about paying the Purple One homage than he does about inviting ladies into his boudoir.

(Also, no Ne-Yo post would be complete without a shout-out to Aquemini, one of our favorite Idolator readers of 2007. Keep those clicks enraged comments coming!)

Idolator's 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

"I believe it was because the first few reviews of the show, people were talking more about my set than his and I don't think he liked that too much," said Ne-Yo. So will he be spraying R. Kelly down with a can of mace the next time they run into each other? He laughs, "Nah, Nah. I'm gonna keep doing what I do, because it's obvious that's what was hurting him."

Now Ne-Yo, you know we love you more than cranberry sauce, but though he may be crazier than a middle-aged woman drunk off tryptophan and box wine, you may remember R. Kelly reminding you repeatedly that he is the king of R&B. That was no idle boast, though if he keeps dropping padded crud like Double Up, you have a chance to take him down for good (provided the Cook County penal system doesn't get there first).

Ne-Yo Booted Off R. Kelly Tour [BET]

^* In this case the mother would be the American public's affection. Or something.

McDonald's Live, a collaboration between McDonald's and event marketing agency TBA Global, launches with a July 26 performance from Ne-Yo and Kenna at California's Venice Beach Recreation Center. From there, the trek visits such markets as Denver (Single File), Chicago (Twista), Philadelphia (Kevin Michael) and Bloomfield, N.J., (Kat DeLuna, the Dey). The tour wraps Sept. 25 in Austin, Texas, with additional artists to be announced.
"Our strategy was to involve emerging multi-genre artists who are releasing new music this summer," Freeland says, noting that some artists are matched with their hometowns.
As for the rest of the tour's as-yet-unannounced lineup, Freeland says, "We want to make sure we catch artists who are starting to break loose and getting spins at radio. If we lock down and commit with an artist too far in advance, you can't be 100% sure what's going to happen."

That's code for "we're not really sure about that Constantine Maroulis record," we think. Concertgoers will also be able to vote for their "favorite" artists, and the winner will have their music featured in a McDonald's campaign in 2008—and be able to tell the press they shouldn't have entered into the partnership once 2009 rolls around.

McDonald's Goes Live With 10-City Trek [Billboard]
[Photo via Colin Gregory Palmer]

Our TiVo pooped out during last night's BET Awards, but luckily, YouTube has some of the highlights, including Beyoncé's odd homage to Metropolis (or maybe it was Heartbeeps?); 50 Cent getting lost during "Amusement Park," no doubt due to those soul-searching lyrics; and Ne-Yo as center square.