The trashtastic BET Awards finally did something right tonight when they bowed down and paid homage to the savior of all music; Prince.

In addition to giving the legend a long overdue BET Lifetime Achievement award, they also organised a tribute concert which featured a range of artists, both young and old, performing covers of some of the Prince’s biggest hits.

The incredible Janelle Monae was first up, delivering the best performance of the night with her electrifying rendition of Prince’s #1 hit “Let’s Go Crazy”. Janelle’s fiery stage presence, talent, artistry and originality made her the perfect person to truly tribute Prince in the way that he deserves.

Following Janelle was jazz singer-musician Esperanza Spalding, who performed a breathtaking cover of “If I was Your Girlfriend”, which is lifted from the most critically-acclaimed album of Prince’s career, ‘Sign o’ the Times‘.

Alicia Keys followed with another ‘Sign o’ the Times‘ song, “Adore”. It was a perfect song choice for Alicia and really played on her strengths, but overall I’m just glad she didn’t take the safe route and do “How Come You Don’t Call Me”.

Alicia stuck around on the piano for the next (and final) performance, which saw vocal powerhouse Patti Labelle belting her way through Prince’s signature tune “Purple Rain”.

The tribute finished with Prince walking up to the stage to accept his award, thanking God and warning today’s young generation not to follow in his raunchy footsteps. Easier said than done!

The best part of the tribute wasn’t the performances though, but Prince’s gif-worthy reactions to them.

Watch his Holy purpleness own ya faves below.

While a lot of the headline grabbing performances from tonight’s BET Awards were done by the fellas, the ladies were still doing their part to.

Monica delivered a wonderful performance of her #1 single “Everything to Me”, with a little help from R&B icon Deniece Williams, who sung her 80′s hit “Silly”.

Alicia Keys also performed, busting out another one of her hit-filled medley’s, while also performing her latest smash “Un-thinkable (I’m Ready)”. The best part of the performance is when Alicia asks the audience to put their hands in the air, and then the camera pans across crowd to show a bunch of celebs awkwardly sticking their arms up and looking confused.

Check both performances below.

A noticeably pregnant Alicia Keys was on Good Morning America yesterday to promote her hit album ‘The Element of Freedom’.

The singer performed her hits “Empire State of Mind” and “Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart”, both of which we’ve seen and heard about a million times before, as well as her current chart topper “Un-thinkable (I’m Ready)”.

The song has turned out to be the only sizable US hit from her latest album, and has been sitting at the top of the R&B/Hip-Hop singles for weeks now. It’s also climbing the Hot 100, this week reaching a new peak of #21.

Her album has also surprisingly held up well in the face of several bomb singles, selling over 1.3 million copies in the US alone. It’s also received certifications in Canada, Australia, and across Europe, and is currently her second highest selling album in the UK (after her debut Songs in A Minor).

It’s interesting to see how Alicia’s album still performed strongly after a string of flops, while Christina Aguilera has been struggling with her Bionic LP.

Anyway, watch AK do the Un-thinkable below.

After the desperate “Put It In a Love Song” flopped and was thrown back into the basement where it belongs, the music video for the best song off Alicia Keys new album has finally arrived in “Unthinkable (I’m Ready)”.

With a little help from the hunky Chad Michael Murray, Alicia explores the interracial side of love throughout the years, starting off in the 50′s and making her way through the decades until she reaches the present.

As a song in itself “Un-thinkable” is quite cinematic and classic, and Alicia does a wonderful job of translating the feelings of passion and uncertainty that the song conjures up into the visuals of the video.

Check it out below.

In one of the most interesting and exciting songs she’s recorded in recent memory, soul diva Alicia Keys has tackled the legendary Deborah Harry and Blondie classic “Rapture” for the upcoming Sex and the City 2 soundtrack.

When AK said she was branching out musically on her fourth album The Element of Freedom I was hoping she’d record something like this instead of old I Am Sasha Fierce B-sides like “Put It In a Love Song”. Alicia really nails Deborah’s classic airy high notes and gives the song’s rap verse a modern makeover.

“Rapture” is a great example of how Alicia really is able to step outside her comfort zone if given the right material. Maybe AK should pull an Amerie or Kelis one of these days and try something completely new for one of her future albums. Just a thought.

Remember the other day when that new Lupe Fiasco collaboration with Alicia Keys “Love Letter to the Beat” leaked online? It turns out that song was recorded by Alicia and producer Chad Hugo back in 2006 as a demo for AK’s third album As I Am, but since it wasn’t used Chad has been holding onto it.

Well during Chad’s recent recording sessions with Lupe he must have let the rapper record a few verses over the original track, which then accidentally leaked online. Alicia’s camp, in particular her engineer Ann Mincieli, publicly accused Chad of leaking the song on purpose and then retaliated by leaking The Neptunes Drum Kit audio files online for everybody to download.

Why so serious?

Moving onto something a little lighter, Lupe has premiered the video for his amazing new single “I’m Beaming”. Lupe’s third album Lasers will be released later this year. Hopefully by then Lupe has fixed all the drama with AK’s camp because “Love Letter to the Beat” needs to be mastered and released as a single at some point.

Everybody’s favorite alt hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco is due to release his third album Lasers this year, but until that drops you can keep yourself busy with “Love Letter to the Beat”, a newly leaked Alicia Keys collabo that surfaced online today.

There’s no telling whether this song belongs to Alicia or Lupe, but if I was them I’d be scrambling to put this in my album because the upbeat, 80′s-inspired hip-pop track is a surefire winner.

The song was produced by Chad Hugo of The Neptunes, who really needs to start doing some more stuff away from his partner Pharrell. Chad really adds a fresh spin to the typical Neptunes productions, which can be heard on Kenna’s Make Sure They See My Face and Ashlee Simpson’s underrated Bittersweet World.

Last night was American Idol’s charity television special Idol Gives Back, which featured some stellar performances from urban musics finest such as Alicia Keys (“Unthinkable” “Empire State of Mind”), Mary J. Blige (“Stairway to Heaven”), Black Eyed Peas (“Rock That Body”) and soul singer Joss Stone (“I Put a Spell On You”).

I’m still not a fan of MJB’s “Stairway to Heaven” cover, but it’s hard to knock the Queen of Hip-Hop/Soul when she’s nailing it live with that amazing voice of hers. Orianthi and Randy Jackson on the guitar was the standout moment of the performance though.

Seeing Alicia perform her stellar R&B hit “Unthinkable” was a definite treat, but having to sit through yet another rendition of Empire State of Mind would’ve had me heading to the kitchen for a popcorn break if I was watching it live.

The less said about the Black Eyed Peas ‘singing’ the better, and as usual Joss Stone was amazing.

Anyways check out all the performances below, via Mr  World Premiere.

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It’s been pushed back more than Electro Love and Her Name Is Nicole combined, so now Alicia Keys has just gone ahead and decided to put us out of misery by completely doing away with her Beyonce assisted single “Put It In a Love Song”.

Well, for the time being at least.

“Expect it right after my ‘Un-thinkable’ video. It’s kind of nice that I have such a great video and such a great artist in the can,” she said. “They’re going to be able to see the ‘Un-thinkable’ video first and then see ‘Put It in a Love Song,’ but it probably won’t come until closer to this summer.” {source}

The real reason behind the latest push back of the song clearly lies within the fact that it couldn’t even crack the Hot 100, but I guess that’s what happens when Alicia Keys releases an I Am Sasha Fierce B-side as her latest single.

At least we now have the far superior “Unthinkable (I’m Ready)” to look forward to, which features backing vocals from the sexy MF Drake and has already out peaked “Put It In a Love Song” by miles, this week reaching a new peak of #24 on the R&B charts.

Don’t expect Drake to appear in the video though. According to AK that would be “too obvious”, which actually means he was too busy and probably had better things to do.

Some of musics biggest stars were out today for the appropriately titled NBA All-Stars game in Texas.

Kicking it all off was Usher who performed “More”, “She Don’t Know” and “Yeah” at the pre-game opener, followed by sexy Shakira who shook her way through “She Wolf” and “Give It Up To Me”, and then Alicia Keys who followed Shaki with “Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart”, “Empire State of Mind” and “No One”.

Which one was your favorite? I liked them all!

My loyal reader Yumm showed me this article yesterday, but I held off on posting it because at the time I had already done two Ryan Tedder posts in a row.

Anyways Ryan Tedder is back at it again, this time discussing Cheryl Cole’s upcoming US debut album which he has been heavily involved in, revealing that he’s anxious to get an Alicia Keys leftover song from The Element of Freedom in Cheryl’s hands

“There’s a song I did with Alicia Keys that was finished too late for her album and I’m convinced it’s the perfect song for Cheryl Cole,” he told Digital Spy.

“I’m desperately trying to get the demo out of her label’s grasp so I can play it for Cheryl. It’s a ballad in my sense, so it’s got massive drums and it really moves, and it’ll give you goosebumps when you hear it.”

It’s a ballad in “my sense”? So I assume we’ll be getting another recycled Halo/Already Gone beat then?

Continuing on, Tedder further discussed the sound he was after for Cheryl Cole; and made sure to take a stab at Britney Spears in the process.

“Cheryl likes something real,” he said. “I had a long meeting with the head of her label and he said she doesn’t want kitschy throwaway dance anthems – basically if Britney would sing it, she doesn’t want it.”

If Britney’s songs are so kitschy then why are so many of her hits considered pop classics that are continually covered by more ‘credible’ artists such as Lily Allen, Kate Miller-Heidke, Hard-Fi, The Dresden Dolls and countless others? You can justifiably call Britney untalented and manufactured if you so choose, but at the end of the day she wouldn’t have reached her phenomenal success without at least having great songs.

First Tedder made catty remarks about Hilary Duff, then he roasted Kelly Clarkson and now Britney. Who’s next?

Anyways Alicia Keys was obviously smart enough to not hold onto Tedder ballad, so hopefully Cheryl has enough sense to do the same.

Th beautiful Alicia Keys was snapped in Japan yesterday (pictured above) promoting her new album The Element of Freedom, which was just one stop of many on the R&B diva’s worldwide promotional tour.

Keys was also in France recently to perform the album cut “Distance & Time”, and on AOL sessions to give an amazing performance of “Unthinable (I’m Ready)”. Both can be viewed below.

AK will be releasing two new singles soon; “Empire State of Mind Part II” in Europe, and “Put It In a Love Song” featuring Beyonce for the US.

Despite first two singles “Doesn’t Mean Anything” and “Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart” crashing and burning Alicia’s album The Element of Freedom is doing quite well, this week reaching 840k in the US alone.

How much further do you think she can take the album?