Pitchfork

-- The forthcoming Red Hot benefit compilation Dark Was the Night (out on 4AD February 17 in the U.S. and February 16 in the UK) features, like, every band Pitchfork covers. A few of those bands will be on hand this Friday, February 6, to DJ the album's New York release party. The party jumps off at the downtown bar Stanton Public, and members of the National, Blonde Redhead, and Yeasayer will man the ones and twos. So which band do you think will have the most feedbacky DJ set?

-- The beef between absurdly rich kingpin-type rappers 50 Cent and Rick Ross has been building quickly over the past week or so, and it came to some sort of unprecedentedly appalling and entertaining climax when 50 posted this video, wherein 50 and a woman claiming to be Ross's baby's mother talk shit on Ross. Also, 50 takes her shopping and intimates that he's going to fuck her. Incredible. This is how people get shot.

-- Stones Throw and Kid Robot  have teamed up to make this already-sold-out vinyl toy of Madlib's squeaky-voiced alter-ego Quasimoto. And it's a pig? Did everyone realize Quasimoto was supposed to be a pig?

-- The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, the gauzy New York dreampop band who you're going to be hearing a whole lot more about, will spend the rest of the winter touring the U.S.

-- Also touring: The decidedly more abrasive, awkwardly-named NY shoegazers A Place to Bury Strangers, who will do a few shows at American colleges before spending April in the UK and Europe.