Serge Severe wants to break out.
With his new album, "Back on My Rhymes" out and an album release party set for Feb. 18 featuring Manimal House— a live, nine piece funk band – as his back-up band, it's not hard to see that he means business.

Jaime Gomez, aka Taboo, is a member of the Black Eyed Peas, the hip- hop quartet which just performed earlier this month during halftime at this year's Super Bowl. Despite presently appreciating the group's stratospheric perch atop the music industry, it wasn't very long ago that this once-reckless rap star came perilously close to blowing it all.

CLINTON, Iowa (AP) -- Now he's opened his first chicken restaurant in Iowa, rapper Flavor Flav would like to earn his high school diploma in the state and record his efforts for a new reality TV show.

The Grammys love Eminem. But their love for Eminem seems to only extend to the rap categories.

Don't miss the one and only Del the Funky Homosapien (of Heiroglyphics fame) performing this Sunday at Mt. Tabor Theater. Del will play with Bukue One for the Ice Cold Tour. Local group Raise the Bridges will open the set.

BaseRoots Theatre will be performing a reading of "Pantomime" by Derek Walcott at 8 p.m. on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Blackfish Gallery, 420 NW 9^th Ave. in Portland. The show features performances by Bobby Bermea and Jonah Weston, directed by Wendy Wilcox.

Portland, Oregon's own Get It Squad (at left) won BET's 106 & Park Wild Out Wednesdays show on Jan. 26.

In February, the Sequential Art Gallery will be displaying photographs of Haiti by Mike Larremore. The young photographer travelled to the island nation not a month after it was hit by the magnitude 7.0 earthquake.

Although we're already one month into 2011, just in case you missed it, the Multnomah County Library's "Everybody Reads" book of the year is "The Other Wes Moore" by Wes Moore, a Rhodes Scholar, combat veteran, and White House fellow.