The wait is over: Whitney Houston will release her long-awaited “comeback” album September 1, Sony Music announced Thursday. No album titled was revealed.

It will be Houston’s seventh studio album. (Her last album of original material was 2002’s Just Whitney.)

Despite being hailed by the Guinness Book of World Records as “the most awarded female artist of all time” (she’s won a total of 411 awards - including six Grammys), Houston has made more headlines over the years for her erratic personal life.

She sought treatment for substance abuse and split with longtime husband Bobby Brown in 2006.

But in February, record industry icon Clive Davis told MTV News that Houston is ready for her comeback.

“You wait for the great songs to be written,” he said. “The great hits Whitney has given to the public for so many years — you keep encouraging and setting the bar.”

Fans are spending more than just a night at the “Circus” – they’re taking it home.

According to Billboard, “Circus,” Britney Spears’ new album will top the album charts next week.

The album could reportedly sell 450,000 copies in its first week on the racks, the same tally that notched Kanye West’s “808s & Heartbreak” the top spot this week. Should Britney complete the feat, it’ll be her fifth No. 1 album — more than any other female artist except Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson.

Her previous album, 2007’s “Blackout,” sold 290,000 copies to debut in second place thanks to a last-minute rules change that counted sales of The Eagles’ chart-topping Wal-Mart exclusive, “Long Road Out Of Eden.” Previously, albums sold at a single retailer would not be counted toward chart placement.

Britney has been promoting the album everywhere from Germany’s Bambi Awards to the U.K.‘s “The X Factor” to NBC’s Christmas At Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting and will launch a tour in March.

Britney Spears leaves little to the imagination in the video for her new single, Womanizer.

The video, accompanying the dance-heavy track from her upcoming Circus album, starts with a shot of Spears reclining naked in a sauna. She starts singing as the camera pans her body at an angle that avoids getting too risqué.

The video shows that Spears has lost several of the extra pounds she carried when she appeared in a bikini-style outfit during an ill-fated performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.

The next scene shows Spears in lingerie, cooking breakfast for a hunky guy in his underwear, as waves of synthesizers back up Spears’ smooth vocals.

Spears, 26, then morphs into a secretary sporting a short, black wig, leading her office mates in a dance as the hunky guy (now in a suit) watches. She then becomes a waitress, in red hair with lots of tattoos, teasing the guy and his friends.

After that, Spears is dressed as a chauffeur who seduces the male actor in a limousine. The two finally end up in an apartment, with Spears in more lingerie, pulling him around by his tie and later kicking him out of a bed.

Womanizer was produced by the up-and-coming Atlanta production team the Outsyders.

For her sixth new album, due in stores Dec. 27, Spears also enlisted producers and writers including Danja, Max Martin and Guy Sigsworth.

In an effort to further gray the area separating free speech and censorship, Brooklyn assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries is demanding that the New York Comptroller withdraw an $84 million state pension fund invested in Universal Music Group and its parent company Vivendi unless Nas changes the title his new album Nigger. “[They are] profiting from a racial slur that has been used to dehumanize people of color for centuries,” Jeffries said. “It is time for Nas and other hip-hop artists to clean up their act and stop flooding the airwaves with the N-word.” According to the Comptroller’s office, he’s intending to the music company and “urge them not to release the album” under that moniker. Universal had no comment.

Rolling Stone’s Evan Serpick recently spoke to Nas regarding the controversy surrounding the new album. While the MC was reluctant to discuss the album’s specifics (”It’s not ready for me to talk about. The album is done, basically, but … it’s a piece of art”), Nas spoke openly about his, and the record label’s, decision to stick with the name. His last album, Hip Hop Is Dead, was supposed to don the title, but “the climate wasn’t right, and Hip Hop Is Dead is also what I was feeling. That went first, and now I’ve got to get this one off my chest,” he explains, turning to speak about the rash of hate crimes involving nooses around the country. “It’s the new act of hate, and probably because of Barack Obama, people’s ignorance and fear and jealousy is creating an outrage throughout the country, and people are reacting by putting nooses up. It’s been a really serious year,” the rapper explained.

So what of all the controversy? “It’s like talking to your child about sex. It’s hard, but it’s important,” he says. “It’s probably going to make people uncomfortable. I don’t expect a lot of people to sell a record called Nigger. Hopefully, people can open their minds up and lose some of their fear and deal with it. It’s just an album. It’s one piece of the many things I do, and this will be one of my favorite pieces.” And his label is firmly behind him, “It will be certain record stores that will be scared to deal with it. The record label is gung ho, and it’s ready to go.”