Rihanna, one album cycle and several hairstyles ago. (Getty Images)

Tonight at 10p.m., CBS airs the Grammy Awards Nomination Concert, a splashy special co-hosted by Taylor Swift (whose album Red, despite having come out in 2012, won't be recognized this year due to the eligibility calendar). So who will be nominated? We have a few minimally educated guesses:

Album of the Year

• Babel, Mumford and Sons
• El Camino, The Black Keys
• Kisses on the Bottom, Paul McCartney
• Take Care, Drake
• Talk That Talk, Rihanna

Mumford and Sons and the Black Keys, in varying ways, tie the Grammys into historically popular and nostalgic genres, while the kids are served by nods to Drake and Rihanna. Rihanna, whose album Loud also took what's become the pure-pop spot occupied previously by Katy Perry, seems like the safest way to honor the EDM vogue (and, yes, we know she's released an album since Talk That Talk). Drake is a young, sensitive rapper getting a nomination that could also go to young, sensitive R&B singer Frank Ocean for his risky Channel Orange, but it seems likely Mr. Ocean will get his due in the New Artist category. And, finally, you may have forgotten or never known perennial nominee Paul McCartney released an album called (ew) Kisses on the Bottom, but his Olympics performance and the fact that it's an album of standards (Grammy's favorite thing!) mean he could end up at the ceremony.

Record of the Year

• "Diamonds," Rihanna
• "I Will Wait," Mumford and Sons
• "Somebody That I Used to Know," Gotye feat. Kimbra
• "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," Taylor Swift
• "We Are Young," fun. feat. Janelle Monaé

Taylor Swift and Rihanna both scored #1 Hot 100 hits within the eligibility, and both sound pretty vanguard-y (Ms. Swift's record is as palatable for a non-country audience as anything she's ever recorded). Meanwhile, Gotye and fun. both came out of nowhere with comparable Billboard hits--inescapable through the summer months and yet seemingly more accessible to the fuddy-duddy Grammy voter than the airy (and perfectly so) "Call Me Maybe." And Mumford and Sons, given their commercial success and appeal to a traditional aesthetic that sounds nothing like EDM, will likely be the Adele of this year's Grammys once nods to Calvin Harris et al. are dispensed with. For Song of the Year, a category honoring songwriters, sub out "Diamonds" for Adele's "Set Fire to the Rain."

Best New Artist

• fun.
• Gotye
• Ellie Goulding
• Frank Ocean
• One Direction

Much as we hope the year's most forcefully debated singer, dead-eyed semiotic student Lana Del Rey, could snag a nod, this race is between fun. and Frank Ocean, with Gotye inducted for his inescapability, Ellie Goulding for her persistence (she was a "new artist" several years ago but only now getting her due), and One Direction because Justin Bieber and the Backstreet Boys were once nominated in this category, too.

Drake (left) with Guy Fieri

Much-maligned restaurateur Guy Fieri--he of the midtown eatery Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar, lambasted in these pages--has met sad-clown rapper Drake, and the pair cooked up a... maroon-and-yellow-looking dish, flavored with Donkey Sauce and Drake's tears over Rihanna. Rap-Up reports that the photo, taken by Instagram user wordonrd, took place at a charity culinary competition in the rapper's hometown of Toronto. Though the food looks deeply unappetizing, the photo is our favorite Drake collaboration since "Take Care."

Rihanna and Drake, nominated for the "Take Care" video

This morning brought MTV's announcement of its Video Music Awards nominees, with established pop artists like Rihanna and Katy Perry competing with upstarts like Gotye and girl-of-the-moment Carly Rae Jepsen. In the marquee category, Video of the Year, the nominees are:

• Drake ft. Rihanna, "Take Care"
• Gotye ft. Kimbra, "Somebody That I Used to Know"
• M.I.A., "Bad Girls"
• Katy Perry, "Wide Awake"
• Rihanna, "We Found Love"

That's two Rihanna videos (essentially), a lushly overproduced Perryish fantasy of the sort that won last year (with "Firework"), a low-fi YouTube hit, and one completely left-field choice (remember Florence + the Machine first breaching American shores in this category?).

Other notable calls:

• Katy Perry is nominated in "Best Female Video" for a different video, the paramilitary recruiting film "Part of Me" (this is more notably female than "Wide Awake" only according to Lady Macbeth's dictum "Unsex me here" as she strides into battle)
• Critical favorite Frank Ocean is up against three boy bands of varying degrees of boy-bandness and Ms. Jepsen in Best New Artist
• There's now a category for "Electronic Dance Music Video"
• As noted on Twitter, Lil Wayne's devotional ballad to a stripper "How to Love" got nominated as "Best Video With a Message."
• While Lady Gaga's nowhere to be found on the nominations list, internet punching bag Lana Del Rey's "Born to Die" got a few professional nominations. Did you know there's a cinematography category at the VMAs?

The Observer has heard from multiple sources that W.I.P. (the site of the brawl) and Greenhouse (the club that it was spawned from, which shares the same property and address) can operate again, and will do so beginning on July 8th. A spokesperson for the club confirmed: W.I.P./Greenhouse has reached an agreement—"in principle"—with the city to reopen in the coming week.

Even if the legal injunction preventing the club from operating has been temporary lifted, there's still the issue of the club's liquor license to deal with. The license, which was revoked via emergency suspension on Tuesday by the New York State Liquor Authority, is still showing up as inactive on the NY-SLA's website.

On Tuesday, the club's management will meet with an administrative judge for the SLA, in which they'll challenge the agency's emergency suspension. An NY-SLA spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Chris Brown, Drake, and the carnage of W.i.P. (Getty/Getty/Twitter)

New York's club scene is still dealing with the aftermath of the Chris Brown/Drake row earlier this month at the SoHo underground hotspot W.i.P.  The city has shut down the venue for 14 violations following the fight on June 14th, when a barrage of flying bottles and broken glass rained down upon innocent bystanders.

Now club-goers are getting litigious against anybody they can find responsible (although Chris Brown has not yet the target of any of possible lawsuit, give it time), and the hotspot is suing the city. We know, it's hard to keep all these boldfaced names on the lawsuits straight, so here's a handy guide of the defendants and plaintiffs in what will go down in history as The Bottle Battle of 2012.

You won't be seeing this at Barclays' 40/40 Club (Patrick McMullan)

After last week's glass-shattering fracas between Drake and Chris Brown at SoHo's W.i.P., New York's nightclub scene might be seeing a dip in bottle service. Hey, we're not complaining.

Jay-Z in particular is taking a stand against bottles, which are used by gentleman to broadcast to anyone in the nearby vicinity that they are, in fact, ballers. Though his 40/40 clubs in in Chelsea and Atlantic City will still offer the service, the proposed location at Barclays Center--where the rapper holds a stake in the Brooklyn Nets--has put its foot down.

As a spokesperson for Forest Ratner, the developer for Barclays, told The New York Post:

“The 40/40 Club will have no bottle service,”...defining that as “bottles of hard liquor,” such as gin and vodka, “being sold at inflated prices of up to $600 . . . to be purchased and [drunk] all at once in a club setting.”

Drake and Rihanna, sans Chris Brown.

New York may need a time-out to sit and think about what it’s done. According to Mayor Bloomberg, who has already made it clear that NYC citizens will no longer be able to sneak smoking breaks in the park or in their own homes (or anywhere else, really), he is now worried that we’re all fat people ferrying prostitutes to and fro.

Or something like that. How else do you explain the proposed ban on sodas larger than 16 ounces? Is obesity illegal now? And while we’re at it, his Healthiness managed to squeeze in a new statute for streetwalkers, which would penalize taxi  drivers for picking up prostitutes as fares. Even if they weren’t aware that their riders were Jezebels, the cabbies would be fined $10,000 and lose their licenses for driving a woman about town around, well, town. Given the questionable sartorial choices of many of our fine city’s residents, we anticipate more than a few passengers denied a ride on the basis that they look as if they get paid to have sex with strangers.

So far, though, the callous cab bill hasn’t received a lot of attention—perhaps because no major spokesperson has come forward to defend the rights of the barely clad. Madonna, we need you back in New York, ASAP! After all, the 54-year-old mother has no qualms about showing her stuff for money, as audiences at world concerts in Turkey and Rome are now fully aware. Not only has the cone bra made a resurgence during the MDNA world tour, but so have the Material Girl’s nipples and her bare bottom. “No fear” read the ink of Madonna’s back during her stunts, which occurred both times during Madge’s performance of “Human Behavior.” We don’t know; that particular reminder of our own impending mortality is pretty frightening to us.

We would even be willing to deport Drake and Chris Brown to some far-flung tour locale to take her place. The hip-hoppers turned SoHo nightclub W.i.P. into a deleted scene from Bottle Rocket when a fight between the two massive egos (and their bodyguards) broke out last week. Allegedly, the fight was over Mr. Brown’s ex-girlfriend Rihanna, whom Drake is currently wooing. And in a surprising twist, it was the hot-tempered Mr. Brown who was trying to pass the peace pipe to his ex’s new flame. The usually emo Drake’s crew served up their own version of bottle service—namely bottles flying in the direction of Mr. Brown. What is the world coming to when two entertainers can’t even have a decent fight in this town anymore? We remember the days of the Jets and the Sharks—at least they had catchy tunes.

Of course, not everyone can keep a cool personality in this sweltering heat. We know, it doesn’t feel too humid, but temperatures are supposed to rise to the 90s this week. Hope everyone has their Hamptons gear packed. Not that the old New York summer haunt is full of fresh ideas: Real Housewife Sonja Morgan has been profiled not once, but twice for the front pages of Devorah Rose’s Social Life magazine in the past two seasons. Which just shows a real lack of imagination. We’re sure that there are plenty of others who are just as deserving of coverage in the pages of the hard-hitting luxury publication. For instance: Ramona Singer, Countess LuAnn Lesseps and Aviva Drescher. Hell, even Heather Thompson should get a page or two!

But maybe it’s just an exercise in prolonged reader abuse: how many times can we read about Ms. Morgan’s vegetable garden before we start thinking that Ms. Rose’s sadistic impulses have gotten the best of her? Maybe she needs to sit and think about what she’s done.

Of course, the police department won't say they shut down the club where the R & B brouhaha occurred—W.i.P. (or "Work In Progress")—explicitly because of the fight, but the reasons remain undisclosed by the department and unclear to anyone who will talk:

The department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said in a statement that W.i.P., as well as a club above it, Greenhouse, was "closed as a result of several violations in a stipulation agreement that was made by the owners and the N.Y.P.D." A sergeant in the police press office said on Sunday that he was unaware of what those violations were or of the details of the earlier stipulation agreement.

Emphasis ours. They also, for what it's worth, arrested the club's manager for "outstanding warrants." Like the NYPD's shutdown of the club, none of the violations the club's manager was arrested for were made clear. In fact, the only public, civic action explicitly tied to the club's fight that's been made public?

A politician's pithy attempt to capitalize on it:

City Council Speak Christine Quinn released a statement today announcing an emergency meeting between her office, the NYPD and the Nightlife Association. "I am deeply concerned by reports of the bottle throwing melee that injured more than five people in SoHo this week," Quinn said. The speaker said she wanted "to send a clear message to all nightclub patrons that bottles cannot be used as weapons and to determine if the guidelines surrounding bottle service need to be updated or reworked."

It may be worth noting that the three main characters in this fight aren't white. Why?

They stand in stark opposition to those involved in the fight at Meatpacking District club Double Seven just four months ago that involved (of course) attractive women, and the belligerent chest-beating drunks courting them, who got into fights attempting to win their hands. The stars of that one were a prince of Monaco (who also happens to be Grace Kelley's grandson), a nightlife owner, Paris Hilton's ex-boyfriend, a bunch of models, and some moneyed downtown hipsters, all slugging away at each other.

Like the W.i.P. fight, people landed in the hospital, a jaw was broken, and (of course) bottle service was involved.

But unlike the W.i.P. fight, Double Service remains in operation today, and no manager was arrested.

Furthermore, it didn't inspire any calls to action by New York's political class. It was brilliant local tabloid fodder, but unlike the Drake and Chris Brown fight, didn't quite make the national papers. To be fair, it's not like the NYPD or Christine Quinn didn't have any reason to look into W.i.P. prior to this.* It's just surprising that they didn't, at least given the lesser threshold required.

After all, W.i.P.'s creative director Stuart Braunstein quit not three weeks ago after the suicide of artist Adam Grant, prior to which, his work—a $40,000 sculpture on display for viewing in the club—was destroyed, and the club was uninsured for such a thing. W.i.P. was given clearance by the local community board to open in part to its dedication to the idea of itself as a gallery. So why wouldn't they be insured like one? And how was that never looked into? Of course, when confronted with a report on Braunstein's departure from the club, W.i.P. fired back that Braunstein was (as sources told BlackBook) involved in a physical altercation with a female employee, something that (if true) never caught the attention of any city officials, either.

It might be worth mentioning here that Greenhouse—the club above W.i.P. which shares a building and some ownership—was the site of a fatal shooting in 2010, which makes that time they were accused of a racist door policy look like a small nitpick. Barry Mullineaux—an owner of W.i.P.— previously had his massively popular Chelsea nightclub Stereo shut down for good after a shooting in 2008.

To recap:

Shootings, accusations of a racist door policy, destroyed art, and accusations of management/employee physical altercations couldn't raise any serious red flags, cause a club to close (let alone act as serious impediments to one opening), or yield the attention of a local politico. A fight resembling the one at W.i.P.—except with all caucasian men, who didn't happen to be pop stars—didn't result in a club's subsequent NYPD-assisted closure, or get a City Councilwoman to climb atop a soapbox.

But after all of that, one fight between two pop stars over another one—none of whom were white—did. And now we know!

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

[*In the interest of full disclosure, we should maybe mention the fact that the New York Observer had their holiday party this year. To the best of this writer's knowledge, amazingly, no bottles were thrown.]

Chris Brown shows chin-gash on Twitter

Despite the rumors that Chris Brown and Rihanna are back together (they have been partying next to each other an awful lot lately), the rapper is still technically dating Karrueche Tran. Meanwhile, Rihanna has been romantically linked to the most emo hip hop star of all time, Aubrey "Drake" Graham.

Eventually, we knew, this would turn ugly. We just didn't expect Chris Brown to be the one who walked away with the boo-boos.

According to the Daily Mail, Chris Brown and Drake danced a tango of pain last night at the downtown club W.i.P. While the previous evening Mr. Brown had hit up Greenhouse with his lady friend, last night he was apparently out with just his crew in the basement below the SoHo club. That's where he sent over a bottle of champagne to Drake's table. The bottle came back with a note, "I'm f****** the love of your life, deal with it."

Again, let us stress that this is what allegedly happened, because we really can't see Drake stepping up like that, especially with Mr. Brown's notorious temper.

Things got ugly between the two groups, and earlier today, Chris Brown's Instagram account had a picture of a nasty gash (shown above) along with the caption, "How u party wit rich n**** that hate? Lol... Throwing bottles like girls? #shameonya!"

This picture and the message have since been deleted. Perhaps Chris Brown doesn't want to admit that he got into a fight with Drake over Rihanna, or rethought the brilliance behind telling the world that Drake's crew managed to beat him up.

Either way, this will be the defining East Coast/West Coast feud of our hip hop generation...except, of course, that Drizzy is Canadian and Breezy is from Virginia.

The Post reported on Sunday that Manhattan lawyer James McMillan—an entertainment lawyer whose firm represents acts like the Clipse, Ron Browz, J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Too Short and Slim Thug, among others—was claiming that he had his watch effectively stolen by half-Jewish, half-Canadian, recently re-Bar Mitzvah'd rapper Drake.

As the story goes:

1. McMillan took his Rolex in to be cleaned by Rafaello & Co., the midtown store where he purchased it. Their client list, according to the Post, counts Alicia Keys, Jamie Foxx and Carmelo Anthony among its customers.

2. Supposedly, Rafaello & Co. owner Rafael Aranbayev loved the watch, and decided to wear it.

3. McMillan thought his watch would be returned.

4. His watch was never returned.

5. He was offered a replacement watch to hold on to instead.

6. He was told that his watch had been sold.

7. Drake says that the Rolex he wears belongs to him.

If this story doesn't make sense to you, that's because you're a sensible human being. Questions:

- Why didn't McMillan, a lawyer, report his watch missing to police the moment it went missing?

- Why didn't McMillan, a lawyer, think there was something odd when he was told the owner decided to commandeer his $30,000 Rolex Presidential, and report it to police?

Finally, why would the New York Post print this quote in their story about Drake's denial of the watch?..

A source close to Drake said he got it directly from Rolex — and “never heard of this jeweler."

..When a simple Google search would turn up not just a NY Daily News story tying Drake to the jeweler...

"When Drake came in a few months ago it was 6 in the evening. A lot of the stores were already closed, but there was foot traffic. They saw he was here and then it was crazy. I had maybe 1,000 people outside."

...but a picture of Drake, with the guys from Rafaello & Co., in front of a Rafaello & Co. background, as featured on the Rafaello & Co. blog?

That said, the single Yelp review for Rafaello & Co, if you're interested, is three stars:

Rafaello and Co reached out to me concering a review I had posted about them. Their owner has taken steps to rectify the situation and I appreciate their dedication to customer service.

So maybe they'll sort this entire thing out. Until then, we have an early entry for oddest story of the week. Also, good to know that "off-the-back-of-a-truck-market" is (possibly) alive and thriving in Manhattan once again.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek