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.

Alright, Im at the movies last week supporting black cinema by checking out Fat Albert and I see the preview for Are we there yet? from Ice Cube. Now anyone who saw this knows this is a flat out bite of Cedric’s movie Johnson’s Family Vacation.

Now I saw that one… Im not sure if Im going to see this one. If I do I will probably say I am going to see that carmel honey Nia Long.

Props to Ice Cube for spitting out the flicks. I know when they made this movie they knew it wasnt going to break any box office numbers, but if the movie was made on a low budget it could still turn a profit (and thats the name of the game) its all good.

In looking for pics for this article I came across a contest that they are giving away a Lincoln Navigator as part of the movie’s promotion. You can best believe I entered. Shit, some new wheels would be lovely.

The upcoming third season of Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show is apparently only half-baked.

Work on the hugely anticipated new season of Dave Chappelle’s sketch show is behind schedule due to its 31-year-old ringleader’s illness and lack of new material from his writing staff, according to the New York Post.

The new season was supposed to premiere Feb. 16. It will now begin airing sometime in late April or May, per the Post.

“Dave–and his entire production crew for that matter–got a bit of a late start on writing season three,” network spokeman Tony Fox told the newspaper.

Chappelle has reportedly been laid up with a nasty flu bug, adding to delays brought on by the lack of written material so far for season three. The Emmy-nominated comedy is currently on hiatus for the holidays and will resume production in January.

Last week, Paramount pushed back the season 2 DVD release–which had been slated to hit stores Feb. 8 to coincide with the new TV season–presumably due to the production slowdown. No new release date for the DVD has been set yet.

There was no immediate comment Monday from Comedy Central or Chappelle’s publicist.

Since the offbeat sketch show debuted in January 2003, it has steadily built a large following. By the end of season two, the half-hour show was often pulling in more than 3 million viewers. The DVD release of season one currently ranks as the all-time top-selling TV show on DVD.

In August, Chappelle reupped with Comedy Central in a massive two-year deal, valued at $50 million by the Hollywood Reporter. The deal also set a new Industry precedent–reportedly giving the funnyman a large cut of backend DVD sales.

In addition to his gig at Comedy Central, Chappelle had been working on a book for Hyperion. No word on the book’s status; there’s also no word on the rumored movie deal with Paramount for Chappelle to portray Rick James in a biopic.

Prior to work on his new TV season, Chappelle had been overseeing a feature film/DVD project combining sketch comedy with footage from a Brooklyn block party filmed in September that featured a reunited Fugees. A 10-person crew, directed by Michel Gondry, captured the Chappelle-conceived event.

Rapper Young Buck was charged on Monday with stabbing a fellow performer in a dispute over an autograph that touched off a melee at a Los Angeles-area hip-hop awards show last month, prosecutors said.

Young Buck, whose real name is David Darnell Brown, attacked rapper Jimmy James Johnson after Johnson was refused an autograph by Dr. Dre and then punched the rap impresario in the face, prosecutors said.

Dre, whose true name is Andre Young, was waiting to go onstage to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Nov. 15 Vibe Awards show in Santa Monica, California.

The dispute set off a chair-throwing brawl that spread through the audience of about 1,000, but did not halt the ceremony, which was later televised on network UPN.

Johnson was arrested and remains in custody on a suspected parole violation, prosecutors said.

Brown, 23, faces up to eight years in prison if convicted of the charges filed on Monday, prosecutors said. He remains free on $500,000 bail and was set to be arraigned on Monday.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A charity appearance by rap star Ludacris at Montgomery Mall was cut short Thursday evening after two small fights broke out.

Though scheduled for two hours, he was asked to leave by police after about 20 minutes when security could not control the crowd, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. Well over 100 people had been waiting for more than 30 minutes for the rapper to arrive.

“I would have liked to stay, but I understand I was part of the problem,” Ludacris, a College Park, Ga., native, told the newspaper.

“We expected a lot of people to show up but not to this degree,” said Kristy Jansen, marketing director at Montgomery Mall.

Montgomery police said no arrests were made and declined further comment.

Those who attended weren’t pleased.

“They clearly weren’t prepared for this or had no idea how big an artist he was,” said Tiffany Jones, of Montgomery, who had brought her two children to see the rapper. “Security was inadequate, and it was an unsafe environment.