Federline to sign with Jive?

Record label-less Kevin Federline may be near a deal with his wife Britney Spears' label, Jive Records, according to media reports.

"Nothing is definite yet," an unidentified anonymous source told the New York Daily News, "but it looks like K-Fed is going to keep it all in the family."

No word on how the success--or lack thereof--of the dancer-rapper's first single, "Popozao," has affected his obtaining a deal with Jive. But Federline says his first song, almost universally panned upon release, went off according to plan.

"At first, when I put out 'Popozao,' people were kinda laughing at me," he said. "I did it on purpose so people would look at me exactly the way they did. That way, when I come out with my real [expletive], people are [expletive] blown away."

Death Row Records' assets yanked from Knight

Hip-hop entrepreneur Suge Knight's music label, Death Row Records, must begin selling its assets to pay off more than $100 million in debt, according to a court order Friday.

A bankruptcy judge, Ellen Carroll, ordered trustees to take over the fledgling label, which has suffered from "gross mismanagement" in the label's accounting department, Carroll said.

"It seems apparent there is no one at the helm," she said.

Knight did not appear at Friday's hearing. His lawyers claimed Knight was involved in a July 1 motorcycle accident and was also grieving the death of a family member.

Clarkson ordered to lose weight for ads?

Kelly Clarkson, who won the first iteration of American Idol, is apparently in talks to sign a deal with Glaceau Vitamin Water to appear in the company's advertisements. But first, the company says, Clarkson must lose some weight.

Reports say that the company, which has already created a special product line for rapper 50 Cent, will not begin promoting the Clarkson-branded drink and accompanying ad campaign until the original Idol winner loses weight.

50 Cent's Formula 50 flavor of water, which debuted in late 2004, came loaded with 50 percent of the recommended daily dose of vitamins.

But a publicist for Clarkson said the story is fabricated, and that the singer has already shot her first photo shoot. "Nothing could be further from the truth," the publicist said.

Beatles' famous Penny Lane won't be renamed

A government proposal to change the streets whose names are linked to the slave trade targeted Penny Lane, the famous Beatles-referenced street in Liverpool, before the city council corrected its mistake.

"My proposal is to rename several of the streets and to replace them with the names of people who have done something positive," council member Barbara Mace explained to the Associated Press.

"I don't think anyone would seriously consider renaming Penny Lane," she said.

The street is named after James Penny, an antiabolitionist who owned a slave ship in the 18th century.

"It's not trying to rewrite history," Mace said of the council's renaming plan. "You can't. Liverpool's whole history is based on the slave trade. That's on the history books."

In other Beatles news, Paul McCartney's first guitar will be sold at auction in London on July 28. Sixty-four-year-old McCartney, who sang and played bass during his days with the Beatles, learned to play at the age of 15 on a friend's acoustic guitar. The guitar is expected to sell for nearly $200,000.