Rolling Stone’s 2008 Hot Issue spotlights acts like Band of Horses and Vampire Weekend, but more on that later. For the next week, we’ll be taking a look at Hot Issue hits and misses from the past twenty-one years (because nobody’s cultural thermometer is accurate all the time).

Hit: Rolling Stone named Queens of the Stone Age the Hot Rock in 2000, and while Nick Oliveri is no longer in the band, the Josh Homme-led crew are still going hard. They’ve put out three albums since Rated R (which came out the year they were hot), with Dave Grohl sitting in for the almost-platinum Songs for the Deaf, Lullabies to Paralyze hitting the Billboard chart at number five and this year’s Era Vulgaris clocking in at a slightly less strong fourteen. Yet the band has continued to headline major festivals and attract scores of press love.
Miss: While many were quick to proclaim reggaeton sensation Tego Calderón the Next Big Thing (we did it in 2005), the Puerto Rican MC never quite made it to the bigtime in the States. His long awaited 2006 LP The Underdog/El Subestimado was eclectic and like his previous work, connected on the Latin charts, but he never struck it big on the albums chart: despite the positive reviews it has received thus far, the mainstream press has almost entirely ignored his late-summer release El Abayarde Contraataca.

Bail on Ben Stiller’s The Heartbreak Kid, the latest Farrelly Brothers flick, says Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s Michael Clayton, a stellar film in which George Clooney loses the charm and lets himself fall apart onscreen in an Oscar-worthy performance. For Travers’ full reviews, click above and check out the video.

On Monday, we’ll all get a look at Britney Spears’ long-awaited video for “Gimme More” — it’s premiering on TRL — but the folks at Us Weekly got a first glimpse already: Spears interacts with a sexy alter-ego, and while she’s alone for most of the clip, there are a few surprise scenes. “Dressed very provocatively in fishnets and a black adorned motorcycle vest, Spears shows off a slim, toned physique — including one shot of her naked back,” Us reports, noting that the video was directed by Jake Sarfaty (a.k.a. Jake Nava), who has worked with Beyoncé, Usher and Spears in the past. It’s Spears’ first official new video since “Do Somethin’” from her 2005 Greatest Hits album unless you count “Someday (I Will Understand),” which Spears premiered during the finale of her reality show with Kevin Federline, Britney & Kevin … Chaotic. While “Gimme More” failed to impress at the VMAs, the song has been faring well at radio and on iTunes.

Lou Pearlman’s fall from grace has been well documented, but now Vanity Fair has unveiled their scandalous feature about the boy band impresario who now sits in a jail cell on charges of embezzling $300 million. A short summary: After founding the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC and guiding their careers, both bands turned around and sued Pearlman for fraud (as Justin Timberlake told Rolling Stone, “I was being monetarily raped by a Svengali” — one of the baddest of all time). Pearlman was later investigated for defrauding his investors and fled the country; he was captured in Indonesia in December 2006 and upon his return to the States, his belongings were auctioned off and he was indicted for fraud. While there were mutterings about Pearlman’s alleged perviness for years, this new story really drives the point home. We’ve taken time to comb through the piece and pull out the most distressing details:

• “I would absolutely say the guy was a sexual predator,” Steve Mooney, an aspiring singer and former assistant to Pearlman insists: “More than once, he says, he encountered young male singers slipping out of those doors late at night, tucking in their shirts, a sheepish look on their faces. ‘There was one guy in every band — one sacrifice — one guy in every band who takes it for Lou,’ says Mooney, echoing a sentiment I heard from several people. ‘That’s just the way it was.’”

• Around 1997-1998, allegations of sexual abuse emerged, one of which involved former Backstreet Boy Nick Carter. (more…)

In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Brian Hiatt examines the showdown between the year’s most anticipated releases — and they’re not albums. Go behind the battle to be the best rock video game as Hiatt investigates just how big Rock Band and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock might be, and how the music industry has reacted Guitar Hero’s mega-million-dollar success thus far. Check out the story here.

Related Stories:

• “Rock Band”: A Hands-On Test of the Most Anticipated Video Game of the Year
• Slash Set to Shred in “Guitar Hero III”
• David Cross Takes On J Mascis In “Guitar Hero” Smackdown

Rolling Stone rang up rapper and humanitarian extraordinarie David Banner recently to chat about the Congressional hearings examining the impact of hip-hop lyrics (where he, along with Master P, testified) and caught the articulate onetime Southern University student-government president in a particularly chatty mood. In fact, he shared with us five major complaints he has about the government, people who act fake, racism and Oprah.

1. Hip-hop still has a bad rap:
“I’ve got this joke that I tell people all time: If a Cambodian immigrant got pregnant by a Chihuahua, they would blame it on hip-hop. I saw not just Congress, but America using hip-hop as a conduit to attack poor people. And they admitted in Congress that things you see are more detrimental than things that you hear, but movies, they don’t talk about Scorsese, they’re not talking about Steven Spielberg or Stephen King, and I’m wondering, ‘How can they do hard movies and I can’t do hard music?’”

2. Racism prevents David Banner from rocking like the Police or Johnny Cash:
“One of my top three groups in the world is the Police. I love the old Police with Sting and the drummer holding the drum sticks the old-school drumline way … I happen to fall upon ‘Murder By Numbers.’ [Sings] ‘Murder by numbers, one, two, three … easy to learn as your A, B, Cs.’ He said in the song the best way to kill a man is put poison in his coffee. You look at ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger,’ that was a stalker song. Johnny Cash said he wanted to kill a man just for the sake of killing him. But that’s ‘art.’ So basically what you’re telling me is that [rap is] not art because we’re black.”

3. Oprah is wack (and all anyone really wants is Sex and the City):
“Come on, Oprah. You’re from Mississippi, girl. I don’t mind what you do as a black leader, but if you’re not going to take up for black people, then don’t criticize them. (more…)

What It Is: We’re not entirely sure, but its Japanese creator, Sony, is calling it a “Sound Entertainment Player.” In fact, it’s a robotic, egg-shaped MP3-player with built-in speakers and moving audio reflectors.

Who It’s For: Early-adopters, hacker-types and only-in-Japan gadget hounds. But a word of warning: You’ll need to speak Japanese and have a Windows machine equipped with a Japanese-language OS (Operating System), or your Rolly won’t work.

Why It’s Worthy: Besides its pure and utter whimsicality, the Rolly is portable (not much bigger than a kid-sized football), provides decent sound and boasts graceful robotic movements — the audio reflectors move in different directions to tweak sound, and the entire device itself shoots, spins and stops itself around the room. It’s no surprise, considering Sony created the smooth-operating and now defunct Aibo robotic dog. But the good points don’t stop there: The Rolly also has a motion editor that lets you program different movements for different songs, and built-in Bluetooth means you can stream songs from a computer or your cell phone (something you might consider since the Rolly only has 1GB of built-in memory).

Our Only Complaint: It’s pricey (though a bargain compared to the Aibo), and there’s the big problem of it not working on your English-language computer.

Where to Get It: It’s about $399-ish ($39,000 Yen), and you can pre-order it at gadget-import boutique Dyamism.com, which is working on an English language OS for this thing, so your purchase won’t be in vain.

• From the Ian Curtis biopic Control, check out the Killers’ take on Joy Division’s “Shadowplay.” The cover, which will also appear on the Killers’ upcoming B-sides collection Sawdust, finds the Las Vegas band putting a glossy sheen on the moody 1979 classic, like it was being filtered through a Depeche Mode machine. Who knew Joy Division could sound so sunny?

• Following the first trial showdown of the music industry vs. an illegal music downloader, the RIAA promises that many more of its kind will take place, regardless of whether or not Jammie Thomas, a woman in court for downloading 1,702 songs from Kazaa, is found guilty. “We’re in the long haul in terms of establishing that music has value,” said RIAA president Cary Sherman.

• M.I.A. has teamed up with an Australian all-girls juvenile detention center to record a new song. Through the Heaps Decent program, which helps indigenous and underprivileged youths break into the music industry, M.I.A. spent two days recording the track utilizing the center’s doors and other noises to establish the beat. The finished product will soon be previewed on the Heaps Decent MySpace page before the full track goes on iTunes, with all profits going back into the program.

• Prosecutors in Westchester County, New York, have dropped year-old weapon and drug charges against Jadakiss over a lack of DNA matches on a handgun found in a car Jadakiss was driving when he was pulled over and cops found the car reeked of marijuana in October 2006.

• Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Neilsen is planning on opening a hotel/restaurant in the band’s home base of Rockford, Illinois. “Rick’s,” as the building will be called, will also include a museum that will house Neilsen’s large guitar collection, which includes axes previously owned by Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley and Jack White.

When we first reported that the makers of the Notorious B.I.G. biopic were searching for an unknown to play the film’s title role, we were inundated with Biggie wannabes hoping to make it big as Big. Now MTV News reports that somebody big (and famous) has auditioned to play the legendary Brooklyn MC: Philly rapper Beanie Sigel. “Who else better to play that role, man?” he asked. “I know how much passion I’d put into it. I know how far I would go. I would treat that like Jamie [Foxx] did Ray.” Open auditions are still taking place, however: The latest will happen Saturday, October 6th in New York City (interested parties should prepare to read from an audition script and make a casting video; instructions can be found here).

Related Stories:

• Notorious B.I.G. Biopic-Makers Searching For Un-Notorious Star
• Notorious B.I.G. Civil Case in Jeopardy as Key Witness Recants Testimony
• The Unsolved Mystery of the Notorious B.I.G

Rock Daily is giving away five pairs of tickets to this Saturday’s hotly anticipated Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem show at New York’s Randall’s Island — the last stop on the two groups’ joint tour. If you want to get your hands on a pair of tickets, e-mail the correct answer to the following trivia question to arcadefiretix@rollingstone.com. Include the e-mail address and phone number at which you prefer to be reached and we will contact you if you’ve won. Deadline for submissions is 6 PM today and we will notify winners no later than 2 PM tomorrow.

Question: Where did Arcade Fire record Neon Bible?