Just because Rob Zombie backed out of penning the last Crow movie doesn't mean the series would shrivel up and disappear. Instead the producers recruited rapper-cum-actor DMX for a starring role and plan to again show that there is life after death -- aptly dubbing the next installment in the supernatural series, The Crow: Lazarus. This time out, the movie will follow the life of a rapper who leaves the music business for love and is killed during a drive-by shooting. The rapper is naturally reincarnated as the Crow and wreaks revenge on the gang that killed him . . .

U2 previewed their first single, "It's a Beautiful Day," from their as-yet-untitled new album online July 31 at their work-in-progress Web site www.u2.com. The song is a throwback to the band's pre-Achtung Baby days, with ringing guitars and a vocal that recalls a younger, edgier Bono . . .

You'll have to wait until October to hear Bono's vocals on "Air Suspension," for New York techno artist, Mocean Worker's forthcoming album Aural & Hearty. The two met when Adam Dorn (Mocean Worker's alter ego) worked on the soundtrack to Bono's Million Dollar Hotel. But that's not the only hand U2's frontman has extended recently: The singer donated a Mercedes Benz for the Postcard From Ethiopia charity auction held in Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel in Dublin on Sunday, and snared $78,000 for the charity fund, after the Pespi Cola Company bought the classic car . . .

Offspring have found time once again to lend support to their favorite file-swapping Internet company, right in the middle of recording their follow-up to Americana with producer Brendan O'Brien. In response to Napster's latest legal scuffles, the band has designed a new "Save Napster" t-shirt to add to its already popular Napster merchandise line. Sure to be the fashion hit of the summer, the $10 black-and-red tee is available via www.offspring.com . . .

With an album five years in the making, Elastica are officially no longer Britpop casualties, as the group has just finalized its deal with Atlantic. The quartet will release The Menace, the follow up to 1995's Elastica, on Aug. 22. A three-week tour will follow beginning mid September. "In many ways it does feel like we're starting again," Frischmann said in June. "I feel like this is a cool starting point for whatever we're gonna do from now on" . . .

The lid is finally off on who's really singing "Will the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up (My Reply)." You'll be relieved (or perhaps disappointed) to find out it isn't Christina Aguilera hitting back at Eminem for saying that she had dalliances with Carson Daly, Fred Durst and Eminem himself. Instead Las Vegas singer Emily Ellis took up her fight, fortified with lyrics penned by KLUC radio programmer Mike Spencer, who was inspired by another parody of the song he heard on Salinas, Calif., radio station KDON sung from the male point of view. "We didn't want to slam one of our biggest artists, so we adapted the song for the female perspective." Ellis rapped back at the Detroit bad boy: "I'm sorry Slim, but this is gonna hurt/They both got farther than you ever will, jerk." Even though the perpetrators have confessed that it's not the former Mouskeeter on the record, it hasn't slowed down requests for the song; in fact, Spencer explained that "It has been our most requested song for the past month." Are they afraid of Aguilera's wrath? Spencer told us, "We don't even think she cares." And he may be right since Aguilera's label said the diminutive singer "hasn't even heard it" . . .

JOLIE LASH, RICHARD SKANSE, JAAN UHELSZKI
(August 1, 2000)