With Cypress Hill, De La Soul, Naughty by Nature, Slick Rick, and Too $hort in the center ring, this year’s Hip Hop Honors show is set to be rather devastating. Factor in a cast of performers that includes Kid Rock, Big Boi, Wyclef Jean, and Lil Jon, and whole thing gets a lot hotter. Carve out time to be in front of the television on Monday, October 6th at 10 pm ET - that’s when the beats start to bounce.

There’s only one way to get psyched for the show. Jump into the massive Hip Hop Honors site we just launched. Old school videos, new school photos, and feature lists of the best rap discs ever and 2008’s top tracks…it’s all here. Check out the playlist of videos by the honorees and see if it gets the party started.

Head into VH1’s Hip Hop Honors site.

As part of Salt-N-Pepa, Sandy Denton struck a blow for women rappers everywhere. The famed trio’s string of hits, including “Push It” and “Let’s Talk About Sex,” opened lots of doors and lots of minds. Since her pioneering heyday of the ’80s, Pep’s gone on to participate in VH1’s Surreal Life, be celebrated on Hip Hop Honors, and show us the subtlties of the reunion with her old partner on the Salt-N-Pepa Show. Of course, she lived her life, too - it’s had its ups and downs.

The new Let’s Talk About Pep, a tell-all autobiography, is filled with the particulars of those ups and downs. Her rough childhood, teen stardom, falling out with Salt, battles with domestic abuse , premonitions of death, promise of celibacy, and lots more. You can purchase the book right here.

We grabbed one of the book’s more dramatic chapters to illustrate how candid the whole thing is. Here’s a section of “The Nightmare.”

“In my dream, I was standing at the top of this huge staircase. This staircase was like something out of Dynasty—with its white, wooden railings that seemed to go on forever. It was the kind of staircase you find in a mansion, splitting two wings. The staircase was so huge that in this dream I couldn’t stand in the middle and grab the railings—they seemed like a mile apart. In my dream, I’m at the top of the stairs and I’m in a fight. I’m on the wrong end of this fight, with my back to this huge staircase. I’m being beaten and I’m not really fighting back because I’m over this staircase—this long, hard, wooden staircase—and if I fall, that’s it. So I’m holding on to this person, trying to hold on to my life. But in my dream, I lose this struggle and end up at the bottom of this staircase broken. I don’t know whether I’m dead or paralyzed, but I’m not moving.

I was barely speaking to Brad. I was recuperating from that last incident with the IUD. I spoke to him long enough to tell him about the no sex for two months. But why was I even entertaining being with him again after that? I was not in my right mind. I was not in a good place…

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The bomb, baby, the bomb! We always get a phalanx of talented artists participating in our annual Hip Hop Honors show, but this year’s line-up is extra terrific. Confirmed to give praise to our old school honorees are Lil Wayne, Kid Rock, Ghostface Killah, MC Lyte, Wyclef Jean, Big Boi, Lil Jon, Q-Tip, Bun B, Biz Markie, Scarface, Cheech and Chong, DJ Kaos, and Sanaa Lathan.

Tracy Morgan hosts the show, which airs on VH1 on Monday, October 6 at 10 ET/PT.

Watch videos by the participants and performers.

Vote for your 10 favorite hip hop videos.

Get more information on this year’s honorees, De La Soul, Too $hort, Slick Rick, Naughty By Nature, and Cypress Hill.

Arson investigators in Long Island are complaining that they can’t get an interview with 50 Cent about the “suspicious fire” that destroyed the house his son and ex-girlfriend were living in. The MC was trying to evict them at time of the blaze.

For the rest of this story, head to Scandalist.

Yup, it’s these two again, and now the rumors about Diddy and his 21-year old protégé Cassie have moved beyond just dating. Apparently they’re like, totally engaged! Did we mention Mr. Combs is almost 39 years old? The mogul/J. Lo ex supposedly told friends and family at his son Justin’s eighth grade graduation last month. “He told everyone to keep it extremely quiet because he didn’t want it to get out, but you could tell he was excited,” says a source who enjoys gossiping anonymously. “Diddy said they hadn’t set a date yet, but he wanted his family to hear the news first.”

Awesome! So this means they’ll be divorced by the time Cassie is 23, right? [Star]

Hip-Hop king Russell Simmons and his model girlfriend Porschla Coleman have ended their new agey love, and Simmons supposedly sent her packing, finishing the deed with a lengthy post in his Huffington Post blog. In it he describes their veggie-loving connection and their yoga practice, which culminated in Porschla receiving her teaching certification thanks, of course, to Russell, who provided a scholarship at her yoga studio through which she funded her studies. But he’s now setting his pretty young thing free to downward dog on his own for a while. Here’s a snippet of his rambling farewell:

A little over a year ago, I met a very sweet and beautiful girl in Atlanta at a party for my book, Do You!. We talked at length about our vegan diets and common interest in yoga. She too was feeling the shift that is happening in America right now of people looking inward…Eventually, she decided to pursue a high certification of yoga that would… license her as a teacher of Jivamukti Yoga. It has been inspiring to see her work so hard towards such an impressive goal. Her name is Porschla Coleman.

He ends his post with ” Congratulations, Porschla, and thank you for the inspiration.” He forgot to add, “Thank you for letting me dump you and then try to make myself feel better by posting this rambling mess about how great you are. But I’m just not that into you. Namaste.” [BET]

This might just be the greatest interview of the century. In a chat with Complex Magazine, Flavor Flav revealed all the stuff we wish we never knew about him - like the worst prank he ever played and the deets of his virginity loss at age 6. Holy crap. Read below for our favorite moments, and check out the entire amazing thing here.

On the time he ate a booger as part of a prank, and how he got revenge:
For the person that put the booger on my hamburger, I got him back by taking some dog sh*t and putting it on the Ritz Crackers and he ate that sh*t.

Discussing his most prized possession:
When we were over in Switzerland, they made a Flav Coo-Coo clock. And when it strikes three o’clock you got little Flav that comes out and say “YeahhhhhBoy! YeahhhhhBoy!”

Detailing the disturbing tale of losing his virginity at six-years old:
Where did I lose my virginity? I lost my virginity in the bushes on a box…A girl and me were having sex on a box in the bushes, in some big tall bushes….This was when I was real, real, real, real, young….I lost my virginity when I was 6 years old…Because you know we learned to have done the nasty back in the days, and me and this girl we experiment, we were experimenting, and my little joint got hard, I penetrated for about a few seconds.

Yeah, boy?

Oops! Diddy was almost left out of the party he was hosting this weekend at Lily Pond in the Hamptons, because the club was already packed with over 1000 people ready to get freaky with the rapper.

“They were blocking Diddy’s grand entrance,” said a spy who was lurking outside the East Hampton nightclub. “He and his entourage arrived with a three-car fleet of Cadillac SUVs and were forced to turn around. He couldn’t even make it close to the front door.”

But never fear! The rapper eventually let go of his grand entrance and snuck in through the back. Once inside the club, the music was turned of for 15 minutes while the VIP section was cleared for His Royal Diddyness. Only the best for our American royalty!

Has Usher finally realized that firing his Mom-ager Jonetta Patton was a bad idea? The singer dumped his mama last year around Mother’s Day for super-manager Benny Medina (he’s handled Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez, to name a couple), but has apparently been freaking out that his latest album is selling way below 2004’s “Confessions.” Medina supposedly tried to stroke his ego and assure him that “Here I Stand” is doing just fine considering the current economic climate, but when Lil Wayne sold over a million copies of his new album in one week, Usher flipped his sh*t. “Usher was livid!,” said a spy. “He threatened to fire everyone.”

The BET Awards, which the singer headlined, also performed poorly in the ratings, and the show’s stinky performance only added to Usher’s anxiety. Now friends are telling the star that maybe he should re-hire his mom, whose beef with Usher’s wife apparently contributed to her getting axed. Now that the ladies are getting along, while her contract get picked back up? [NYDN]

Just about everything that has to do with Pharrell is hot - except the latest news that he plans on eliminating the tattoos on his body - not by that scary laser stuff, but by using his own skin to cover it up. Sounds confusing? Let the uber rapper/producer explain:

“It’s basically like getting a skin graft, but you’re not taking skin from your ass or your legs. These guys actually grow the skin for you. First you have to give them a sample of your skin, which they then replicate. Once that’s been done, they sew it on - and it’s seamless.”

In other words, SEXY.

Wanna dress like Mr. West? Now you can!

Kanye West is sure to quickly become the most egotistical, self-obsessed fashion designer in the world with the release of his new shoe line for Louis Vuitton. Yep, Kanye’s putting the rap game on hold to take the shoe industry by storm. But he’s not stopping there! He’s already designing his own clothes, and he showed up dressed totally in his own designs while in Paris last week to attend the famous French designer’s runway show. “I grew up with the Louis look, you know,” the rapper gushed. “I just love the style.”

Ladies, don’t feel left out! He’s doing a women’s line of clothes (separate from his stuff for LV) in the fall. Tell us - will you wear Kanye couture? [WWD/E! Online]