Mariah Carey has insisted that there will never be a “new” her. The singer, who scored her 18th US number one with new single ‘Touch My Body’, said she has nothing to fear from emerging stars like Leona Lewis. She told the Observer Music Monthly: “Honestly, there has been so many ‘This is the new her’, and I’m like, ‘OK, show me the new her. Can she come and work for me and be my double’ - I’m not particularly talking about this girl Leona, because I only heard her once and I didn’t really hear a true similarity, particularly in the style of music.

50 Cent has hit back at Alicia Keys following her comments about gangsta rap. Keys was quoted by Blender magazine as calling the genre a government ploy to “convince black people to kill each other”. 50 Cent told CBS News: “I don’t like Alicia Keys no more though… the same reason why I said that I don’t like Oprah Winfrey. I’m prejudiced. I don’t like people who don’t like me. If you don’t like the content that I write because of my experiences [well] I am being who I am when I am writing it. I fall into that ‘label’ as far as you considering artists creating ‘gangsta music’; we fall into that.”