Jermaine Dupri has told MTV News that he is considering a duet for Janet and Mariah Carey.
"That's been on my mind for a couple weeks now," Dupri admitted. "The hardest part is figuring out a song that fits both of them, because you have two different styles of artists, and the thing when you're dealing with divas is you don't want to overshadow either one, so if you were to do a song for them, it would have to work where both of them would feel they were on the same pedestal, or else someone's gonna have a problem."
MTV News also reports that Janet's album is now set to drop later this year, with a single due out by summer.
"We're in the studio every day trying to get her record together," said Dupri.
"If I can give you anything to look forward to on her record, it's gonna have the greatness of Jimmy and Terry, and I guess you could say the greatness of me [and Janet] combined into one record," he continued.
Jermaine Dupri has signed a deal with Atria Books for his autobiography, "Young, Rich and Dangerous: My Life In Music," according to an MTV.com report.
In the book, Dupri promises to reveal moments from his own love life with Janet, whom he calls his soul mate. Part of what he appreciates about her, he writes, is that she understands the business and goes to strip clubs with him. "I even took Janet to Magic City so she could see where I go," he writes. "It was no big deal."
"People are always asking how I got a woman like that," he writes. "Eminem likes to be a hater, but I'm OK with that because I understand that he doesn't pick on anyone if they aren't successful. I was even excited when he put me in his song - kinda. I didn't even mind all that much when Chris Rock went off at the Grammys last year. He said that finding out I was with Janet was like finding out they were selling Bentleys for $4 and he missed it. But you gotta understand. Janet's a person I think every man in the world probably dreamed about all his life. I can't be mad at him."
He also laments about Virgin, where he is the head of the urban-music division: "That place is like a morgue." But he also offers up a more hopeful perspective about what he hopes to do: "Blow up a sinking label's record sales" to make "urban music history."
Negotiations are under way to settle Janet Jackson's lawsuit against a New Jersey man over memorabilia that she and her superstar brother claimed were stolen.
A federal judge dismissed Michael Jackson's portion of the lawsuit against Henry Vaccaro on Tuesday because he had stopped pursuing the two-year-old case, but his sister's claims remain active, said Edgar Pease III, Vaccaro's attorney.
"We're negotiating a resolution of that," he said.
Vaccaro had a warehouse full of memorabilia from Jackson family members that included gold-trimmed costumes, financial documents, letters, awards and one of Michael Jackson's first outfits worn with the Jackson 5.
According to Pease, the items included gold records and personal items.
The some items were turned over to the Santa Barbara County district attorney's office during its unsuccessful prosecution of Michael Jackson on child molestation charges, Pease said.
Vaccaro, an Asbury Park construction company owner, said he was awarded the memorabilia after years of legal wrangling stemming from a failed business venture that wound up in bankruptcy court.
Most of the items were sold and Vaccaro no longer has them, Pease said.
Jermaine Dupri is shopping a book proposal of his memoirs to publishers this week, Page Six reports.
The gossip column claims that the book, tentatively titled "Young, Rich and Dangerous," will give all of the scoop on working with artists such as Usher and Mariah Carey, and will also include some mentions of Janet.
In a new interview with Newsday, Jimmy Jam revealed that Janet's still-untitled album is scheduled for an April release, and the first single will hit radio "in about a month."
He did not give any other of the album's secrets away.
"The important thing is that we're happy with it now," Jam says. "Once it leaves the studio, anything can happen."
