Earlier this month, Sarah Lewitinn (Ultragrrrl) brought her label, Stolen Transmission, back to the bedroom after leaving Island/Def Jam. This was just one of many things that signaled more changes for the major, and now it turns out that the president of Def Jam, Jay-Z, is stepping down from his position. The NY Times reports:Jay-Z made the announcement with Def Jam’s parent, Universal Music Group, as his employment contract was expiring. Under a separate long-term......

Distributer of royalties, BMI, filed a federal lawsuit against Jay-Z's 40/40 Club yesterday. The performing right organization holds the licensing rights to 6.5 million songs, and apparently plenty of them are being played at the club, the lawsuit cites "unauthorized public performance of musical compositions." In other words, Jay-Z has been holding out and skimping on royalties owed to fellow musicians! The Post reports that Michael Jackson, R. Kelly and over a dozen music publishers......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Lenox Ave. in Manhattan, a shooting on Farragut Rd. in Brooklyn, and a home invasion robbery on 84th St. in Queens. The City honored Jay-Z's mom, Gloria Carter, today for her work overseeing the Shawn Carter Scholarship Fund, a college-oriented educational charity that helps disadvantaged and non-traditional students. A Queens man, already under arrest for threatening a police officer with a gun in front of......

Yesterday, officials welcomed Barclays as the winner in the $400 million naming rights derby for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project. The NY Times reports that the Nets looked at various entities to pitch the idea of becoming lucky one to pay lots of money to have its name on the Frank Gehry-designed arena and decided Barclays Bank "needed a game changer, that they don’t have as big a presence or brand recognition here as......

Embattled Brooklyn apartment dwellers have taken their fight against the proposed site of the new arena for the "Brooklyn Nets" all the way to Athens. A group called Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn unveiled a banner on one of the endangered apartments which reads "Dr. Rogge and the International Olympic Committee, Please Don't Destroy Our Homes." If New York City is awarded the Olympic Games in 2012, the proposed basketball arena would be used to......