The rapper Proof was gunned down as he stood over the man he’d just knocked to the floor and shot in the head at an Eight Mile bar, police said Wednesday.

Late Wednesday afternoon, a suspect in the killing of the rapper, believed to be a relative of shooting victim Keith Bender Jr., surrendered to police. The man was accompanied by his lawyer.

Bender, a former medic and veteran of Operation Desert Storm, was taken off life support Wednesday morning but remained alive, a family member said.

Proof was in the club Tuesday morning well after closing time with his entourage. At the same time, Bender, a 35-year-old Army veteran, was with friends celebrating news that the heart condition that forced his retirement from the service had improved.

An argument over a pool game escalated into a fight, police said.

Witnesses told police that Proof pulled a gun as he knocked Bender to the floor. Proof shot Bender and, as Proof stood over his prone body, one of Bender’s companions shot several times, police said.

To his fans, the rapper known as Proof was an early player in the city’s hip-hop scene and a best pal of superstar Eminem.

To area police, however, Proof was better known as Deshaun Holton, 32, whose arrest record seemed to prophesize his violent death Tuesday morning at the east side club operating illegally after hours.

When police arrived at the C.C.C. club after 5 a.m. Tuesday nearly all the 15-25 people police believe were inside at the time of the shootings were gone. The cinder-block storefront was locked and officers had to call the fire department to let them into the building.

Several people police found outside the building provided the first leads in sorting out what had happened. Police said Wednesday they were still looking for the guns.

As authorities continued to sort out what happened, it became clear that it was not the first time Proof has been involved with guns or trouble.

His arrest record started in 1993, when he was arrested for assault, to last year when he was charged with possession of a stolen vehicle in Clinton Township. In between, there were two other arrests for assault, another for carrying a concealed weapon and one for disorderly conduct. His only conviction was for disorderly conduct in 2003. The other cases were either dismissed or the outcome was unclear.

In December 2002, Wayne County authorities charged Proof with a felony for failure to pay $26,176 in back child support over a three-year period beginning in 1999. He later paid.

Lacey Wheeler, a Detroit rapper who occasionally ran into Proof, said Proof seemed increasingly frustrated by a lack of attention from local radio stations. Five months ago, Wheeler said, a surly Proof swung at him outside Envy, a Detroit nightclub on Larned.

Like the shooting at C.C.C., Proof had an entourage with him, and in both cases, they failed to keep Proof out of trouble, Wheeler said.

“His whole circle should feel guilty,” he said. “The signs were all there.”

Others who knew Proof rejected any notion that he was struggling. Proof, and others in their group, D12, were said to be planning to record another album soon.

Funeral arrangements for the rapper were incomplete Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick on Wednesday defended Detroit’s rap community, saying most Detroit artists had positive messages.

“I think that the overwhelming majority of the people who would relate themselves to the Detroit hip-hop culture are more into the other elements of hip-hop: clothing, design, poetry, coffee shops,” he said.

The C.C.C club, however, has a troubled recent history.

Detroit police said they have raided the club 18 times in the past decade. In December, police cited management for underage drinking and serving alcohol after hours.

The Michigan Liquor Control Commission is scheduled to hold a hearing on those violations April 26.

If you are like me then you’ve had a thing for Ms. Braxton since she appeared on the scene years ago. Check out these pics of her from a recent concert. Baby girl is looking quite tasty in these pics. Check out those thighs… Toni, I aint trying to wife you, but if I got the opportunity to hit that I’d be bragging about it til the day I die.

Congrats to 36 for picking up the Oscar. While I was at the barbershop I heard a lot of different opinions on how people felt about the whole situation. Some felt that the show was not the right venue for them to perform. Others felt that if a black person won an Oscar that it should have been for their acting not rap music.

I listened to all that shit, but the bottomline to me was that one of my all time favorite rap groups won an Oscar for what they do and they got it without selling out. Fuck those over thinking motherfuckas – Just enjoy the moment.

How do you feel about it?

It’s been a rumor for months, even before the I Declare War show, but it’s official now: Def Jam has signed Nas, and the greatest rap beef of four years ago has become the greatest rap joint-venture prospect of right now. It’s funny; the Times article makes much of the aesthetic border between personas in the Jay/Nas beef: “…they appeared to represent two versions of hip-hop, with Jay-Z cast as the savvy hustler and Nas as the brooding street poet.” That might be true, but I’m not sure we really felt that way at the time, since the Nas that was fresh in our minds then was the Nas of “Hate Me Now” and “You Owe Me” and (especially) “Oochie Wally,” the guy whose boneheaded pop moves had tarnished his respectability and simultaneously fucked up his sales. If I’m remembering right, they were both hustlers; it’s just that Jay-Z was doing it better. Since then, Nas has cultivated the reticent-poet archetype thing, dropping most of the bigtime trappings over the last three albums and disappearing further into his own head. It’s been a good look; even if his sales haven’t gone up much, he’s got goodwill for days, and his integrity, once in question, is pretty much no longer an issue. And now he’s set to capitalize on all that goodwill, moving to a company run by a guy who knows how to market uncompromisingly classicist New York rap.

At the same time, Jay’s been working to bring his own public image closer to the street-poet thing for years, starting with the album on which he dissed Nas in the first place. The Blueprint might’ve had a Trackmasters beat, but it’s still the moment when Jay decided to give up the late-90s keyboard-beep production style and move toward swelling strings and dusty samples and gentle introspection and “I’d probably be Talib Kweli.” Jay always had a bit of closet backpacker in him; even at his coldest, he was more humane than, say, Big Pun. In retirement, his gentleman-about-town steez has reached new heights of regal sophistication; especially when compared to 50 Cent, he’s a model of cosmopolitan elegance. The Cam’ron dis is telling; even though Cam is probably Jay’s equal as an artist/craftsman/wordsmith, his sneering fight-dirty bluster feels crass next to Jay’s aristocratic grace.

Jay has quietly spent the past year or so making over Def Jam in his own image, signing and retaining guys who sit well with the different crannies of his gentleman-gangsta-aesthete thing. In their own ways, Kanye and Jeezy and the Roots and Ghostface all fit comfortably into Jay’s world. DMX doesn’t, and that’s why Jay quietly let him go last week. Murder Inc. doesn’t, and that’s why Irv Gotti will probably be taking it elsewhere soon. Unless LL Cool J’s new album finds him abandoning the dated oiled-up loverman schtick for a gravelly veteran snarl, he’ll probably be gone soon, and so will Method Man and Redman and maybe Joe Budden and possibly Ludacris, whose five-album contract is coming to an end after his next album drops. Def Jam’s hegemonic late-90s roster is a thing of the past, and so this Nas signing is a major coup in almost every conceivable way. But the real test won’t be whether or not the next Nas album sells. The real test will be whether it’s great.

The album will go platinum easily, especially with the Jay collaboration that everyone expects now; Street’s Disciple did 600,000, and that was before all the Def Jam hype. It doesn’t really need to do more than platinum for it to be remembered as a success. But Nas needs to focus and dig deep and deliver a classic. He’ll need to do away with all the Bravehearts collaborations and dubious concept-songs like “Remember the Times.” He’ll need to make use of the cavalcade of expert soul-rap producers he’ll suddenly have at his disposal. He’s got expectations to fulfill.

Nas announced a while back that his next album would be a full-length collaboration with DJ Premier. That might be a good look; they’ve historically had great chemistry, it would keep the album from sounding piecemeal, and Primo’s boom-bap would place the album as part of a purist NY continuum. But I’ll believe it when I see it, especially with Premier giving interviews about how he’s ready to do this thing anytime Nas is; dude’s never really been one for fulfilling promises. And what was the last great Premier track, anyway? “Doobie Ashtray”? That one from the Cee-Lo album? There must be a good reason he was left off The Black Album. More likely, Nas will use Kanye and Just Blaze and Bink and guys like that, expansive velvety strings-and-horns guys, and he’ll use them to build an East-Coast traditionalist monument. That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway. Fuck. I’m excited.

Rapper Obie Trice was shot early Saturday while driving on a freeway, police said.

Trice, a Detroit native and protege of Eminem, was on the Lodge Freeway at about 1:10 a.m. when his vehicle was shot at by someone in another car, said Michigan State Police Sgt. Mario Gonzales.

Trice managed to continue driving and exited the freeway in the suburb of Southfield, where his girlfriend, who also was in the vehicle, flagged down police, Gonzales said. The girlfriend wasn’t wounded.

The rapper was taken to a hospital and was listed in good condition, Gonzales said.

Murder charges against rapper Gucci Mane were dropped on Friday.

DeKalb County prosecutors said there was a lack of evidence to try Mane, whose real name is Radric Davis, for murder in the shooting death of Henry Lee Clark III, a Macon rapper, on May 10.

Mane said he shot Clark in self-defense when Clark and four other men attacked him.

Mane is still being held in the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta after pleading guilty to assaulting promoter Troy Buffor with a pool cue at Big Cat Records in June.

He was sentenced to serve six months and will remain on probation for 6 1/2 years. Attorney Manny Arora said he should be released in January.

He had pleaded no contest to hitting the promoter. He also agreed to pay hospital and medical bills of about $3,000.

Mane released his debut album, “Trap House,” in May. On the day of the album’s release, the rapper posted a $100,000 bond in the murder case.

Dave Chappelle is back on Comedy Central _ well, kind of. The wildly popular comedian, who last spring walked off his show just weeks before its season premiere, will be on view in four episodes’ worth of sketches he filmed before his startling exit, the cable channel announced Monday.

The four half-hours of “Chappelle’s Show” will premiere in weekly showings next April, May or June, the network said.

A 2 1/2-minute preview of this never-before-seen footage will be included in “Comedy Central’s Last Laugh ’05” special, which premieres Sunday, 9 p.m. EST.

Still to be determined is how the sketches will be packaged, since Chappelle’s on-stage introductions were never produced. A full season would have been between 10 and 13 episodes.

“It’s great material, and we think our audience is hungry for it,” said Comedy Central President Doug Herzog, noting that the last original episode of “Chappelle’s Show” aired in May 2004. “Chappelle’s Show,” a raw, satirical comedy show that was both a critical and popular hit, was one of the network’s most valuable properties.

The announcement resolves _ well, kind of _ Chappelle’s dangling status at Comedy Central, with whom he signed a deal in August 2004 reportedly worth $50 million for a third and fourth season. But last May, with the premiere date looming for that third season, Chappelle stunned his fans by ditching the show in mid-production.

His disappearance _ announced by Comedy Central on May 4 _ spurred reports that he had mental or drug problems, but Chappelle later said he was unhappy with the show’s creative direction.

“I’m definitely stressed out,” he told Time magazine a few days after Comedy Central announced the show was indefinitely postponed. “I’m not crazy, I’m not smoking crack.”

He spent two weeks in South Africa before returning home to his farm near Yellow Springs, about 75 miles northeast of Cincinnati. Chappelle, now 32, has since resumed performing live standup.

In the meantime, “Chappelle’s Show” has hung in limbo.

“We had reached out several times to Dave’s camp and asked, `What would you like to do?'” Herzog said. “But we never received a definitive response. … We thought it was time to start unearthing the material we had.” He laughed. “It’s kind of like Bob Dylan’s ‘Basement Tapes.'”

After 15 years, Busta Rhymes has officially cut off his long dreadlocks.

Busta Rhymes, born Trevor Smith, cut off his trademark dreadlocks during a recent photo shoot in a New York barbershop.

I started growing these sh–s in December ’89. I was 17, Busta stated. I signed my [record] deal and said I aint combing my hair no more. I don’t have to.”

The rapper now sports a short crop Caesar hairstyle.

In an effort to memorialize his transition, the former Leader of The New School member recorded the historic occasion on camera while friends and crew members watched.

This is it kid, Busta exclaimed as he prepared to cut his hair. I haven’t felt clippers touch the side of my head in 15 years. Y’all gonna see the sexiest head you’ve ever seen in your life when I’m finished.

Busta remains one of the most original hip-hop artists with his rapid-fire rapping style and innovative videos.

Fans will be able to see Busta sports his new hairstyle in the video for Touch It, which is set to air in media outlets in the coming weeks.

Touch It, produced by Swizz Beats, is the first lead off single for Busta’s new Aftermath/Interscope album The Big Bang which is expected to hit stores in early 2006.