Quick News on Lupe Fiasco, Ludacris and Reverend Al Sharpton

According to Billboard.com, Lupe Fiasco is heading back into the studio this week to record his sophomore album, The Cool. The Chicago MC hopes to release the album on October 31 on 1st & 15th/Atlantic Records. Surprisingly, Lupe is interested in gathering the members of Pink Floyd for a collaboration on the LP. “Nothing has developed yet,” Lupe told Billboard.com. “But once the stew gets swirling and people start talking, you never know. I hope it does work out.” In addition, Lupe is working on a “top secret” project with “another superstar rapper/producer.” Unfortunately, he would not reveal any more details about the project.

Chris “Ludacris” Bridges will reprise his role as the criminal stepson of Ice-T’s character, Detective Fin Tutuola on the season finale of Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit according to TVGuide.com. Luda and SVU executive producer Neal Baer announced the appearance at a press conference on Tuesday (May 1) and promised that the episode will be one to remember. "Last year, we did an episode called 'Venom' [in which] Ludacris' character was on trial for murder and stirred the pot," Baer says. "Now he's back because there were procedural problems in his case: evidence was obtained illegally." Luda’s character hires an attorney, played by actor Steven Weber, who digs up long buried dirt on all of the show’s major characters. "Every character — Benson, Stabler, Tutuola, Cragen, even Novak — they all have issues that are brought up during the court case,” Baer revealed. “It causes calamity for everyone." The season finale airs on Tuesday May 22.

Reverend Al Sharpton and his National Action Network (NAN) will lead a “March for Decency” tomorrow (May 3) in New York City. The march will take place at the offices of the major music labels, such as Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Music Group, in order to ban offensive words such as “bitch,” “ho” and “nigga.” After the march, a rally will then be held at Columbus Circle. “We aren’t marching against artists — we are marching against record companies to ban these words completely,” Tamika Mallory of NAN told Billboard.com. “It’s nice that Russell Simmons asked for these words to be bleeped out, but if we start from the top and ban them, then we won’t have to answer questions at the bottom.”