Is the Hip Hop Industry Dirtier Than the Dope Game?

Rapper LIL' WAYNE has appeared at an arraignment hearing in New York - pleading not guilty to gun charges. The star - real name Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. - was in court on Monday (25Feb08) facing two felony charges of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. The charges relate to an incident last July (07) when police found a handgun stashed in Carter's tour bus following a performance with Ja Rule at Manhattan's Beacon Theatre. If convicted he faces up to three-and-a-half years in prison due to the city's strict gun laws. Carter is also facing drugs and weapons charges in Arizona after a border patrol inspection of the rapper's tour bus allegedly revealed marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and miscellaneous drug paraphernalia as well as a 40-caliber pistol.

Former Bad Boy artist, Shyne, will be getting out of jail after 7 years a little early. According to The New York Post's Page Six, the Brooklyn rapper will get out of jail a year early for good behavior. He has been serving a 10 year sentence at Woodbourne Correctional Facility stemming from a 1999 New York Club shooting. Shyne was part of a group who was with P. Diddy and his then girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, when Diddy got into a beef with a club goes, Mathew "Scar" Allen and three people were hit with bullets when a gun went off in the club. Shyne signed a $3 million dollar deal with Def Jam from behind bars in 2004 and released the album Godfather Buried Alive but album sales were disappointed. No one knows if Shyne will return to rapping after he gets out of jail.

Though slated to be released for good behavior, Shyne hasn't always been the model prisoner. In '05 he was thrown in the hole for two months after getting into an altercation with another inmate. In related news, Shyne's father Dean Barrow was elected prime minister of Belize earlier this month, the first black person to hold that office, according to USA Today.