The singer’s publicist said Tuesday that Legend proposed to his girlfriend, model Chrissy Teigen, recently in the Maldives.

No more details are being provided.

Legend has won nine Grammys and released four albums. Teigen was named “rookie of the year” in the Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue last year. She also has a food blog.

Legend turns 33 Wednesday.

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Washington — The White House is offering a challenge to high school students and the prize is the President speaking at your school.

The application deadline for the 2011 Race to the Top Commencement Challenge is March 11 – just five days away! The Commencement Challenge invites public high schools across the country to demonstrate how their school best prepares them for college and a career, helping America win the future by out-educating our competitors and achieving President Obama’s goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. President Obama will travel to the winning school to deliver their commencement address this spring!

Earlier today, Good Morning America ran a segment on the Commencement Challenge featuring Simon Boehme, a member of Kalamazoo Central’s class of 2010, last year’s Challenge winner, and Melody Barnes, Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Check out the video on ABCNews.com .

Last week, musician John Legend was at the White House as part of the “The Motown Sound: In Performance at the White House” event, and he took a few moments to encourage high schools around the country to get involved in the Commencement Challenge:

Applying for the 2011 Commencement Challenge is easy. The application includes three short essays and readily available data from each school that illustrate how schools are promoting college and career readiness for all students while establishing a culture of student success and academic excellence. Applications must be submitted by Friday, March 11 at 11:59 pm EST. Apply today !

http://www.whitehouse.gov/commencement

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By Regina Bradley

Recently, John Legend tweeted that he was about to perform with the hip-hop group The Roots and threw out the term “hip hop soul.” Fascinated, I tried to think of some sexy, academic way to place this term in our current state of hip-hop culture. I got nothin’.

Well, almost nothing. Legend’s blending of rap and Soul music speaks to an attempt to bridge generations. It also seeks to address how memory is shaping contemporary black music and identity.

Black music has long been a gauge of the temperament and social trauma afflicting African Americans. Often it eased, uplifted, and re-enforced the African American spirit.

Here’s an abbreviated walk through:

Black music’s complex formula of intertwining agency and aesthetics is especially prevalent in its trajectory. Negro Spirituals, for example, reflected the fusion and critique of Anglo-Christian theology with slave culture. Using the Biblical Old Testament and, more specifically, the book of Exodus, slaves coded messages of escape and disdain through their communal singing.

Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues,” Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead,” and Bobby Womack’s “Across 110^th Street” are only a sampling of the soundtrack that mirrored the struggle and frustration echoed by blacks in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Soul’s integration into mid 20^th century black life is a fascinating journey. It gave voice to the grittier aspects of the African American experience that gospel music often attempted to ameliorate or overlook.

Soul music made space for hip-hop, reflecting a change in generational observations about similar social ills that afflicted their predecessors. Any suppressed anger left over from the Black Power and Civil Rights Movements extrapolated in rap narratives.

Performers from Melle Mel and Schoolly D to Public Enemy spoke on drug, gang and street culture, acknowledging the quickly deteriorating state of the African American working class.

While rap music and culture later branched out into more “pop-ish” and manufactured subcategories (which is a whole ‘notha essay), black consciousness continued to have a pulsating presence. Rap music’s interpretation of the black experience not only shaped the contemporary idea of Black music, but it also has defined today’s perception of what it means to be black. A prime example of this would be the music and life of Tupac Shakur.

Which leads me back to Legend’s usage of the expression “hip hop soul.” I can definitely see where these two genres intersect and how contemporary music that references both genres can be considered as such. Black culture, like our experience, is never a monolith. Look at the sampling of soul music in mainstream rap. And let’s not forget the industry’s need to repackage artists who exhibit heavy soul influence as “Neo-Soul.”

What is problematic about this latest trend in African American cultural expression is the nagging presence of the need to create something new without the acknowledgement of past contributions. This is indeed the remix era of popular black culture.

In his book Race Music, Gus Ramsey observes that “music and musical practices continue to play a crucial role in the creation, renegotiation, and critique” of what he calls the authenticity trope. Ramsey’s suggestion fits today’s cultural climate because of a constant search to reaffirm a realistic, lived black American experience. This need often frames African American expression.

In other words, what hip-hoppers consider authentic diverges from what blackness meant and looked like for Soul crooners in the 1960s.

Perhaps Legend was inadvertently issuing a call to arms for rekindling black conscious music. Or perhaps he just wanted to send out an artistic tweet. Either way, hip-hop Soul or hip-hop’s soul is being negotiated. Again.

Regina N. Bradley is a doctoral candidate in African American Literature and Culture at Florida State University. She blogs about identity politics, African-American humor, and popular culture at Red Clay Scholar  (http://redclayscholar.blogspot.com).

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It’s around this time every year that I make my annual Smokey Fontaine joke, but being that this year Smokey donned a pencil-thin mustache and appeared onstage as El Debarge, I’ve decided to cut him some slack.

Nice try Smoke, but everybody knows that El Debarge died horribly in a do-rag factory explosion over 25 years ago.

If he hadn’t, it would be the perfect time for him, a la Maxwell, to make a BET Awards Show inspired comeback that would return him to the top of the charts and make grown folks music a premium again.

Wishful thinking, I know.

Latifah was a good host, wasn’t she? She poked fun at all of previous incarnations from both stage and screen and even had a little fun with the notion that she’s (hint, hint) a hint, hint—if you know what I mean.

I couldn’t understand a word from Drake or Eminem and wanted them both off the stage.

I’ve hated that song by Monica right up until the moment that she brought Denise Williams up onto the stage.

Now I love it.

Is Alicia Keys pregnant or do none of her dresses fit?

What exactly is “Dirty Money” and why must anybody watch it televised?

Trey Songz’s mom is a good-looking woman and Nicki Minaj is a bona fide superstar—haters!

How does DJ Khaled keep getting the cream of Hip Hop’s crop to perform on his weird, self-aggrandizing songs?

I wanted to feel for Chris Brown, but the last time I witnessed somebody crying through a performance of any kind it was Oliver McCall as he got beat senseless by Lennox Lewis for the heavyweight title.

Somebody needs to tell John Legend that a true humanitarian wouldn’t force us listen to hour-long acceptance speeches.

I’m glad that Prince is Black. I’ve always suspected that he was, but now I’m sure.

All in all, it’s great (to me at least) that a network—which admittedly has its flaws—consistently outshines the Oscars, Grammys, MTV and everybody else when it comes to putting on award shows.

Outstanding job, BET.

Anybody beg to differ?

NEW YORK — In the months after her husband died, Corinne Bailey Rae was fixated on the grieving process – specifically, whether there is a right and a wrong way to mourn.

It’s not as if Rae acted inappropriately after the death of Jason Rae from a drug overdose in 2008. The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, who dazzled the music world in 2006 with her sunny, silky self-titled debut, dropped out of sight after the tragedy. She spent a good part of her day simply resting, and when she felt like it, taking walks or spending time with loved ones.

She was also confused, in a haze, not knowing how to go forward after the destiny she thought she had was forever altered.

“I’m not familiar with that kind of shock that lasts all that amount of time,” she recalled. “It just sort of takes ages to sink it. You feel it and then you don’t feel it; you know what’s happened and then you don’t really know what happened. …

“Somebody wrote me a letter saying that you need to surrender to it, which I was like, ‘Well, how do I surrender?’”

RELATED: OPINION: Hey, Who Turned Off The Music?

While Rae still has not come to terms with her loss, she has determined that the grieving process is unique and different for everyone. And for her, it included channeling her emotions into her music. The result is her touching, tender new album, “The Sea,” started before the death of her husband but finished nearly a year later.

“There are other people that have had these similar experiences … all different kinds of loss, and I feel like a lot of people don’t really sing about it in popular music,” said an upbeat, reflective Rae during a recent interview. “I want to be that one voice that is saying that this is also a human experience that is worth making music about.”

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From CNN:

Los Angeles, California — Friday night’s star-studded “Hope for Haiti” telethon has raised a record-breaking $58 million, with more donations continuing to pour in from around the world, the benefit’s organizers announced Saturday.

The preliminary figure is a record for donations made by the public through a disaster relief telethon, according to a news release from telethon organizers.

Additionally, the “Hope for Haiti Now” album, a compilation of the night’s musical performances made available on Apple’s iTunes, was the No. 1 album in 18 countries Saturday. Sales figures for iTunes are still being calculated, and the preliminary figure of $58 million does not include donations from corporations or large private donors.

People will be able to make donations to “Hope for Haiti” via phone, Web, text messaging and regular mail for the next six months, according to the news release.

Click here to read more.

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[10:00 a.m. - 1/23/2010] – Stars Unite To Help Haiti In Telethon

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK – Though the all-star telethon was titled “Hope for Haiti Now,” for most of its two hours, it was filled with tear-jerking, depressing moments, from mournful songs and grim-faced pleas from celebrities to the suffering faces of the quake-battered victims themselves.

It took Haiti‘s own native son to lift Friday evening’s despairing tone to one of hope and even revival.

“Enough of this moping, man, let’s rebuild Haiti, let’s show ‘em how we do it where we come from!” Wyclef Jean, the singer and producer, shouted after singing the downbeat “Rivers of Babylon,” with a Haitian flag around his neck.

He segued into the joyful tune “Yele” with an island beat, as musicians danced around him, singing the refrain: “Earthquake, we see the earth shake, but the soul of the Haitian people will never break!”

Jean showcased the resilient spirit of a nation in the midst of catastrophe. On Jan. 12, a powerful earthquake struck the already impoverished country, killing an estimated 200,000 people, displacing many more and reducing much of Haiti to ruins.

The telethon, shown on all the major networks and streamed live on many Web sites, was quickly put together by George Clooney andMTV Networks, along with the help of others, to raise millions of dollars for the Caribbean country.

The list of participating celebrities rivaled any top awards show: Justin Timberlake, Brad Pitt, former President Clinton, Muhammad Ali, Beyonce, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Halle Berry, and many more. Luminaries likeSteven Spielberg worked the phone banks, talking to donors.

“Hey Steven Spielberg, it’s really cool to talk to you,” one woman said to the Academy Award-winning filmmaker.

John Mayer called in a $500,000 donation before the telethon began, according to a representative for MTV. Officials did not have an immediate total for the relief funds raised by the telethon.

Some stars like Matt Damon and Clint Eastwood recounted tragic moments from the quake; others likeDenzel Washington offered inspirational words. Most of the musical performances were downcast, emotional songs. John Legend sang “I Feel Like A Motherless Child.” Kid Rock, Keith Urban and Sheryl Crow sang “Lean On Me.” Beyonce, with Coldplay’s Chris Martin backing her on piano, revised her hit “Halo” with new lyrics: “Haiti we can see your halo, we pray you won’t fade away.”

Madonna provided one of the few upbeat moments with her choir-backed performance of “Like A Prayer.”

Jay-Z, Rihanna and U2‘s Bono and The Edge debuted a new song, “Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour),” as Jay-Z rapped from London: “When the sky falls, and the earth quakes, we gon’ put this back together, we won’t break.”

The telethon was broadcast from New York, London, Los Angeles and Haiti, where CNN’s Anderson Cooperinterviewed quake victims and anchored news clips of the tragedy.

Haitians were able to listen on Radio One Haiti.

A crowd made up mostly of Haiti’s wealthier elite gathered Friday night at Break Time restaurant, one of the only still open in Port-au-Prince, and one of the only places residents could watch the telethon.

Owner Patrick Alexis said he enjoyed seeing the celebrities but was skeptical the money would get to people who need it.

“It’s easy to do a telethon on behalf of the Haitian people, but who will really get the money? I know my country, I know my people, I know the leaders,” he said.

Rabbel Bertrand, 16, who was heading to New Jersey to because his school collapsed, was surprised by the attention on his country.

“I didn’t realize all those celebrities knew Haiti. When you talk about Haiti, people usually just talk about the bad things,” Bertrand said.

Viewers can purchase performances from the evening on Saturday by way of iTunes for 99 cents, with those proceeds going to relief aid as well.

The telethon won’t be the last major celebrity effort for Haiti; BET plans to hold its own all-star telethon on Feb. 5, with Diddy and Queen Latifah as hosts. It will also be aired on MTV and VH1.

Back when I still had my looks and used to hit the downtown Manhattan club scene with a book in my back pocket, there was a song that, whenever played, would get the biggest reaction from the ladies in the house. It was bonus cut on Dr. Dre’s Chronic CD; a song known quite unprintably as “_______ Ain’t ____.”

Imagine my amazement! I would have thought that women would hate this song. But they’d go running out there on the dance floor, dancing with each other and singing all the lyrics! To my thinking at the time, this would have been akin to me starting to pop and lock to a song called “Hang Me a Darkie”.

Of course, this song had one of the best beats on the entire Chronic CD and when I finally did get around to asking one of the young lovelies how she could ignore the obvious insults that the lyrics flung at her gender she replied simply, “The song’s not talkin’ about me!”

“Oh,” I said, starting to dance myself. “You sure?”

Now, if we were face to face and you asked me right now what my favorite radio song was I’d lie and say it was John Legend moaning like Jeffrey Osborne after a bad car accident and then, thankfully, letting Estelle get busy on “No Other Love.”

Of course, the truth is, it’s not that song. It’s actually Lil Wayne and Birdman with “Always Strapped”. I know, I know, I know…

In this song, you have all the worst: crass materialism, forced lesbian acts, drug abuse, violence involving “soda” and a coerced Young and the Restless lifestyle. Yet despite the dreadful subject matter, the lyrics are actually a perfect study in minimalism, with Weezy proving that the wordier is not always the better by delivering a 16 as good as I’ve heard all season.

That was a tough confession for me to make. Somebody please admit to liking “Birthday Sex“ or something worse so I can feel a little bit better about myself.