Singers Patti LaBelle and Kelly Rowland will participate in a battle of the choirs along with Michael Bolton, Nick Lachey, and Blake Shelton for NBC’s holiday talent competition series “Clash of the Choirs,” according to NBC.com. Each of the celebrity choirmasters will go to their respective hometowns (LaBelle to Philadelphia, Rowland to Houston) to assemble a choir of 20 amateur singers who will perform in a live competition in NYC for four consecutive nights in December (Dec. 17-20).

Viewers will decide which choir wins a chance to select a prize that will somehow assist their community (“anything from renovating a school gym to building a new neighborhood playground”). “For the musicians, it’s a chance to give back to the town that supported and nurtured them when they were starting out, and for the choir members, they become instant hometown heroes,” NBC reality chief Craig Plestis said.

Through his Virgin Records deal, Lenny Kravitz is teaming up with Myspace.com to promote his Feb. 5 album release,  It Is Time for a Love Revolution. The campaign idea, “Get on the Bus With the Love Revolution,” is centered around a contest in which MySpace users can submit videos for an opportunity to take part in Kravitz’s “Get on the Bus Tour.” The tour, running Jan. 17-31, will feature an “old-school 1970 Eagle bus that we're totally vibing out a la Lenny,” Capitol Music Group president Lee Trink told Billboard.com. “The bus will pick up a contest winner and a friend in each city along the route, and Lenny will hang out with these winners on the bus. We’ll videotape the whole thing and put it up on MySpace and Lenny’s official site [LennyKravitz.com].”

Emcee Mos Def and his experimental jazz outfit, The Mos Def Big Band will pay tribute to influential hip-hop producer James “Jay Dilla” Yancey during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day performance at Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium in Michigan, according to The Detroit Free Press. The Jan. 21st show will be nearly two years after Yancey’s death due to a rare blood disease. For tickets or more information, visit www.ums.org.

Hip-hop artist Wale was selected as this week’s “iTunes Single of the Week” for his track “Nike Boots,”  popular footwear in  his DC hometown and his metaphor for the capitol’s hip-hop two-step (or lack thereof) on the national scene. “That's the ‘Nike Boots’ theory,” he told URB magazine – he appears on the current cover with Parisian electro house band, Justice. “It’s melancholy, it’s straight to the point, it’s unimpressed, it doesn’t budge, it doesn’t tear... That’s what DC is. And a part of Wale is that.” Wale was recently signed to a production deal with Mark Ronson’s Allido Records. He performed with Ronson on his recent UK tour and at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards.  “I think he's dope, " Ronson told The Washington Post. "Anywhere that I am, I know my show will only be better if he’s onstage. There’s something very like hip-hop ‘bout him, in his swagger, but there’s also this really sort of intellectual, smart side to it and a sense of humor.”