X to the Z, Xzibit, or just X for short. Detroit native Alvin Joiner will answer to them all. He's been turning out underground hip-hop classics for more than a decadeunder those names, but most people know him for his automotive antics as the host of one of MTV's most prolific, popular, and positive reality shows, Pimp My Ride.

Before all the hip-hop hype and twenty-two-inch chromes, X was like a lot of kids these days: moving around, at odds with his folks and the law, and just trying to figure out what in the world he was gonna do with his life.

Jonathan Davis, the man who as a coroner's assistant "fell in love" with working around dead bodies, nearly became one this summer.

The Korn singer was midway through a European tour when he began noticing bruises on his body and feeling weak after shows. He checked into a London hospital and was diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenic purpura, with a rare blood disease.

While people typically have somewhere between 140 and 400 platelets in their blood cells, he had five.

Imogen Heap. It's name that has recently been at the lips of many critics, actors, and music lovers. Though few would recognize the unconebtional British beauty, most are well-aquianted with her craft. Heap's work has beautified the Garden State score, graced The Last Kiss sountrack, charmed the Chronicles of Narnia theme song, nursed The O.C. fans' broken hearts, and expanded its own networkvia a recent Verizon Wireless campaign

If you find it difficult to pry yourself away from VH1's I Love The 80s reruns, as I do, you may be able to recall the bearded visage of The Call's frontman Michael Been belting out '80s radio favorites like "Everywhere I Go" or "Let the Day Begin." The only guy more put together back then was George Michael.

I haven't behaved like a groupie in at least two decades, but realizing I may never get another chance; I broke professional ranks and asked the one and only will.i.am. of Black Eyed Peas fame to do my phonemessage. So now, when you call my number you hear, "Hey, what's up? This is will.i.am chillin' with Chris and Tracy; why don't you leave a message?" Problem is everyone thinks it's fake. Come on, will.i.am hangin' with a dude like me? It's so unexpected, but after this interview, which was my second sitting with him in two years, I have learned to expect the unexpected from him.

I first heard Angels & Airwaves when my wife brought home their initial offering, We Don't Need to Whisper. "Listen," she said excitedly, skipping to track four, "The Adventure," blasting it out and singing along with the chorus, "I cannot live, I can't breathe unless you do this with me," until I too was caught up in those passionate, urgent lyrics, picturing their author, Tom DeLonge, shouting them as if his life depended on that single truth. I have long believed that passionate music, which comes from the inside out, is the only type worth listening to.

Just a few years ago, nearl everyone figured pop-punk band Sum 41 was through. After all, guitarist Dave Baksh had jumped ship and the band had parted ways with its longtime producer and manager. Most stories about the band focused on frontman Deryck Whibley and his marriage to fellow pop artist Avril Lavigne. Whibley even admits that for a while, he couldn't find a purpose for making another record.

Crash a late-night chat room for working mothers and you're guaranteed all kinds of banter about “work/life balance,” the catchphrase used to describe a daily routine of spreadsheets and soccer games, power lunches and Spaghetti-O dinners.

As the singer of punk rock stalwart Pennywise and father to three pre-teen daughters, Jim Lindberg has his own take on the term: “More like work/life unbalance,” he deadpans.

With his over wrought pompadour rocking and his signature Gretsch hollow-body guitar twanging away, Brian Setzer arrived on the U.S. pop music scene with a vengeance in the early 1980s. Up to that point, American audiences were OK with reruns of Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days—all benign depictions of a clichéd 1950s heartland America.

Presidents, kings and dictators make proclamations that their subjects must obey, but celebrities make presidents, kings and dictators. And, while heads of state can be strictly adhered to, their authority is usually only as strong as the army behind them. Conversely words spoken into a microphone by a sweaty human backed by four or five other sweaty and generally harmless individuals armed with nothing more than guitars, keyboards and drums are willingly followed more than any monarch or politician in our time. There is probably no more powerful voice in our world than that of a rock star.