Island records are to release a special deluxe version of Amy Winehouse’s debut album ‘Frank’ on May 12.

The album originally made number 13 in the UK charts in January 2004 and re-entered at 24 four years later. The new release will be a double CD contating rarities and b-sides with the following tracks:

Disc 1
‘Intro/Stronger Than Me’, ‘You Sent Me Flying/Cherry’, ‘Know You Know’, ‘Fuck Me Pumps’, ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’, ‘Moody’s Mood For Love/Teo Licks’, ‘There Is No Greater Love’, ‘In My Bed’, ‘Take The Box’, ‘October Song’, ‘What Is It About Men’, ‘Help Yourself’, ‘Amy Amy Amy/Outro’

Disc 2
‘Take The Box’, ‘You Sent Me Flying’, ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’, ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’, ‘What It Is’, ‘Teach Me Tonight’, ‘Round Midnight’, ‘Fools Gold’, ‘Stronger Than Me’, ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’, ‘Take The Box’, ‘In My Bed’, ‘Mr. Magic (Through The Smoke)’, ‘There Is No Greater Love’, ‘Fuck Me Pumps’, ‘Take The Box’, ‘Stronger Than Me’, ‘In My Bed’

50 Cent has more than 1 million friends on MySpace, but if the rapper ever decides to leave the social network, he’ll be leaving behind those friends, too. So like a growing number of artists, he’s started his own social networking site.

On Thisis50.com, fans can create profiles and friend lists just like on MySpace, but 50 Cent has direct access to the site’s users and their e-mail addresses.

More and more acts, from Kylie Minogue to Ludacris to the Pussycat Dolls, are launching their own social networks, which are becoming a sort of next-generation version of artist Web sites.

The social networking component gives fans a reason to hang out on a site and visit more often than they would a standard Web site. And artists can sell advertisements on their sites and offer downloads and merchandise for sale — options they don’t have on MySpace or Facebook. Plus, they own the content and data on how fans use their site, which they don’t get on other social networks.

“The thing that separates Thisis50 from MySpace is we control the e-mail database,” says Chris “Broadway” Romero, director for new media at G-Unit Records, which handles Thisis50. “We can e-mail members if we want to.”

Thisis50 isn’t meant to be a fan club, but rather a platform for 50 Cent to showcase his music and music he likes, and comment on news and user profile pages. Ludacris’ WeMix.com, on the other hand, is more of a hub for aspiring artists to upload their music.

The artist networks aren’t meant to replace MySpace or Facebook, which tend to attract a broader audience and more users.

“(Artists) think about MySpace and Facebook as funnels for their own social networks,” says Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, a company that provides social networking tools for Thisis50, Sara Bareilles and others. “They take and use services where they don’t know the users, don’t have access and don’t have full control, and funnel those fans to something they do control.

Britney Spears got the thumbs up from former duet partner Madonna on Thursday.

In an interview on New York’s Z100, Madonna told host JJ that she is a fan of Spears’ “Blackout.”

“I actually love Britney Spears’ new album. I listen to that a lot,” Madonna said.

 In fact, she does more than just listen. “I usually work out to her record,” Madonna said. “I do a combination of Pilates and dance aerobics.”

Madonna also got candid about Britney’s ex, Justin Timberlake, who contributed to her new album “Hard Candy,” which comes out April 29.

Earlier this month it was revealed that Madonna had given Timberlake a Vitamin B shot. It wasn’t so she could see his bottom, as Z100’s JJ suggested.

“I mean, I’ve seen enough butt so that’s OK,” she sighed. “The reason I gave him a B12 shot is cause we only had a certain amount of days in the studio and I didn’t want him using that as a lame a– excuse not to come to work, OK? It’s got nothing to do with butt, I promise you. Listen, I don’t need to give him a shot to see his butt.”

Madonna also revealed that she has no plans to sing some of her classic songs ever again.

“I’m not sure I can sing ‘Holiday’ or ‘Like A Virgin’ ever again. I just can’t,” she said. “Unless somebody paid me like $30 million or something.”

American lawyers are rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of a massive lawsuit following the revelation on Wednesday that the Los Angeles Times was the victim of a hoax when it reported that the rap mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was behind a gun attack on another rapper, Tupac Shakur, in 1994.

The Times reported last week that the attack on Shakur at the Quad recording studios in Manhattan, when he was pistol-whipped and shot three times, was carried out by associates of Diddy and that the rap impresario knew of the plot beforehand.

The newspaper’s report, written by Chuck Philips, was based on FBI reports filed with a federal court in Miami. But the documents have been exposed by The Smoking Gun (TSG) website as fakes, put together by an imprisoned con man, James Sabatino, who is an accomplished document forger.

Sabatino, 31, is a fantasist, says TSG, who has long tried to insinuate himself into important events in hip-hop history, including the shooting of Shakur and the murder in 1997 of another rap star, the Notorious B.I.G.

In his fantasy world, Sabatino has ‘managed’ hip-hop stars and conducted business with Combs, Shakur and others. In fact, says TSG, he is “little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida” currently doing time for fraud.

The purported FBI reports were filed by Sabatino in connection with a lawsuit against Combs in which he claimed he was never paid for rap recordings in which he said he was involved (another fantasy).

How did Chuck Philips, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who spent six months compiling his report, fall for Sabatino’s hoax? He says he believed in the authenticity of the documents in part because they had been filed in court. But TSG claims the Times overlooked numerous misspellings and unusual acronyms that should have cast doubt on the documents’ authenticity.

Also, the documents appeared to have been prepared on a typewriter. A former FBI supervisor told TSG that the bureau ceased using typewriters about 30 years ago. TSG also discovered that the documents could not be found in an FBI database.

The LA Times has apologised to readers and is to launch an internal review.

Leona Lewis is set to become the first British woman to top the hard-to-crack US charts for 20 years.

Not since Kim Wilde had everyone rocking to You Keep Me Hangin’ On has a Brit woman enjoyed such commercial success Stateside.

Lewis has risen from a receptionist role in Hackney, via winning talent show The X Factor, to become one of the hottest musical properties around today.

Industry sources say that Lewis’s first US single Bleeding Love, has stopped Madonna in her tracks and bumped R&B singer Usher off the top of the Billboard Hot 100 after a surge in download sales. Of course, it didn’t hurt when TV Queen ? and one of America’s most powerful women ? Oprah Winfrey endorsed the song on nationwide television.

The new Hot 100 will be revealed today ? and Lewis is hotly-tipped to be at the top of it.

Many of Leona’s new download-buying fans are unaware that she shot to fame after winning The X Factor in 2006, and she has Simon Cowell, her savvy manager, to thank for that.

Tough-talking Simon whisked her off to America and negotiated a $5 million album contract with the music mogul Clive Davis, who signed Whitney Houston. She was sent to record with top US producers and a slick video designed for MTV was filmed for Bleeding Love.

The 22-year-old was soon appearing in US entertainment ‘ones to watch’ lists, and her breakthrough came this month with television appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Winfrey?s nationwide chatshow.

After earning a standing ovation, Oprah turned to Lewis and said: ‘You?re the real-deal girl. Talk about a star is born.’ And cue an instant surge in download and mobile phone track sales.

Amy Winehouse has sold 1.5 million copies of her Back to Black album in the states but, despite her five recent Grammy award wins, has not yet topped the singles chart.