Snoop Dogg has been accused of raping a woman in his dressing room, it emerged on Tuesday.

The alleged victim claims to have been sexually assaulted by the entertainer and his friends following the recording of a show for US television network ABC News.

According to legal papers obtained by website thesmokinggun.com, she alleges she was drugged before being sexually assaulted by the rapper and four of his associates. She is seeking $35 million in combined damages.

The complaint was filed at Los Angeles Superior Court just weeks after Snoop Dogg (real name Calvin Broadus) filed a pre-emptive lawsuit claiming he was the target of an extortion scheme hatched by the woman in question, the website reports.

The 12-page complaint details the circumstances surrounding the alleged attack in January 2002 when Snoop Dogg co-hosted the Jimmy Kimmel Live television show.

The legal documents name ABC News, the Kimmel show, and the Walt Disney Company as defendants, alleging the network is partly liable for the attack because the entertainer’s dressing room was stocked with “large quantities” of champagne and marijuana.

The morning after the incident, the alleged victim claims she told family members about the assault, but was advised not to report it to police because the rapper was a gang member and “would send someone to kill her”.

Four months later, according to the complaint, she contacted the Kimmel program and told them she had been sexually assaulted at the show and was calling the police.

Both sides made an attempt to mediate the dispute in October 2004. This month they agreed to settle at a financial sum less than originally recommended by the mediator, according to the lawsuit.

The alleged deal fell apart on January 18 when the rapper’s insurance company refused to “pay a portion of the compensation previously promised” by his legal team, the papers state.

The claimant alleges that the incident caused “serious emotional distress and anxiety” and left her reclusive, unable to work or go out. She is said to have been “psychiatrically hospitalised” in September 2003 as a direct result of the alleged attack.

After watching this cat’s performance on American Idol I had to ask a few people I know what they thought. I will say that the opinions I got were far and wide.

I heard comments like:

“That nigga set us back 20 years!”

“I was embarrassed to be black”

“Its a shame that black folks gotta resort to this..”

“He is just crazy”

“Ya boy was wildin'”

“Dat nigga on that rock.”

How do you feel about it?

A female acquaintance of comedian Bill Cosby (news) has made an allegation against him that has prompted a police investigation in Pennsylvania, the entertainer’s attorney said Thursday.

Attorney Walter Phillips said he spoke Thursday with authorities in Pennsylvania who told him they have begun an investigation. He would not discuss the specifics of the allegation — which he called “utterly preposterous” — but said it amounts to, at the most, “inappropriate touching.”

No charges have been brought against Cosby. Phillips said the accuser, who lives in Canada, knows Cosby and the alleged incident in question happened about a year ago.

Police in Cheltenham Township, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb where Cosby has a home, declined to comment.

“I know the person making the accusation hasn’t been contacted by authorities,” Phillips said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his office in Philadelphia. “We are hopeful and optimistic that no charges will be brought forward.”

Dave Selby, a spokesman with the Durham Regional Police in Durham, Ontario, said police had passed on allegations from a woman there to authorities in Pennsylvania but declined to confirm whether they involved Cosby.

Cosby postponed a town hall meeting in Cleveland on Thursday and has postponed three upcoming shows in Florida, his publicist David Brokaw said. Brokaw would not say whether the postponements have anything to do with the recent allegation.

The Moesha family is mourning the loss of one of its own. Lamont Bentley, who starred as Hakeem Campbell on the UPN sitcom, died Wednesday when he was thrown from his vehicle just outside Los Angeles. He was 31.

His manager, Susan Ferris, said Bentley was killed when his car skidded off a freeway around midnight.

A spokesman for the California Highway did not immediately return calls late Wednesday. But Craig Stevens, the senior deputy medical examiner for Ventura County, California, told Bentley’s hometown newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the actor “went up a highway off-ramp at a high rate of speed” and then tumbled down an embankment.

Bentley, who was on his way home from a Tuesday night screening of the independent short film Shards, was driving solo at the time of the wreck.

He was pronounced dead at 12:23 a.m. Wednesday.

“It’s like a candle being snuffed right out,” Ferris told the Associated Press.

“Yesterday became a very sad day when we heard of Lamont’s death,” Moesha cohorts Brandy and Ray J said in a joint statement Thursday.

“He has been a friend to us and our family while being a part of the Moesha family and after. Our hearts are sad. Lamont will be missed as a friend and as a real talent. We send our sincere condolences to his daughters and family.”

Although the actor is best known for his role on Moesha during the show’s 1996-2001 run, Bentley also appeared in a handful of films, including the 2001 Snoop Dogg flick The Wash, the 1997 TV movie Buffalo Soldiers and 1995’s Tales from the Hood, as well as the 1994 TV series South Central.

Bentley also made guest appearances on shows like NYPD Blue, Clueless, Family Matters, Soul Food and the Moesha spinoff, The Parkers.

The actor also was an aspiring rapper, but Bentley’s hip-hop project Uprise never secured a record deal with a major label.

Bentley is survived by his two daughters and his mother.

Wardrobe malfunction or fashion statement? That’s what Brazilians were left wondering Thursday, a day after top model Naomi Campbell paraded with her breasts bared at Fashion Rio a weeklong event of fall/winter collections, which ends Friday.

Campbell kicked off the fashion show for the TNG label in a simple white flower print dress, topped with a white mink stole.

But less than halfway down the runway, the sleeveless deep V-neck dress proved more revealing than perhaps designer Tito Bessa had intended. It wasn’t clear if a strap or button had come undone or whether it simply fit Campbell loosely.

Following the fashion show, neither Campbell nor Bessa were talking.

“The people (in Brazil) are happy, I have great friends and the clothes make me look younger, too,” was all Campbell, 34, had to say.

In recent years, Campbell has been a frequent visitor to Brazil, parading at the Rio and Sao Paulo fashion shows. She spent New Year’s at a fashionable island resort at Angra dos Reis.

After the show, Campbell said she was heading back to New York to promote a movie, whose name escaped her.

Campbell was joined by Brazilian top models Isabelli Fontana, Mariana Weickert, Caroline Riberio and Ana Claudia Michels participated in the TNG show.