NEW YORK (AP) – Jay-Z has no problem with people doubting whether his upcoming CD can live up to his past glories.

“I love that position,” he says in an interview in XXL magazine’s forthcoming December issue. “I love that challenge. That’s the reason I’m making albums. That’s the reason why I love hip-hop. It’s a challenge every time.”

“Show Me What You Got” is the first single from “Kingdom Come,” Jay’s return to recording since “retiring” in 2003 to become president and CEO of Def Jam Recordings.

Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter) is taking heat for the perception that he’s prioritizing his record above one by his former foe Nas, with whom Jay recently reconciled and then signed to Def Jam.

“It ain’t like his album is ready and I’m like, ‘No, no, Nas,”‘ Jay says. “It bugs me out that people really make these things up … I’m not holding Nas’ album back. His album is not ready.”

Jay took over Def Jam from Lyor Cohen, who departed to be CEO of Warner Music Group. “I don’t have a mentor, but I’d say he’s the closest thing to my mentor that I have,” Jay said of Cohen, who oversaw much of his hit-making career.

The bitter breakup with his former Roc-A-Fella Records partner, Damon Dash, was a casualty of Jay-Z’s move to greener pastures. Def Jam, Jay says, offered him $20 million to dump Dash two years before the 2004 split. He rejected it.

So what eventually changed his mind and made him leave Dash?

“You know, I couldn’t live,” he said. “It wasn’t, it wasn’t what it once was, in my eyes. You know, maybe I contributed to it. We all contributed. … Maybe being 34, as opposed to being 26, contributed to it. It was deteriorating. It wasn’t the same thing.”

NEW YORK (AP) – Gael Garcia Bernal, promoting a new movie in which his character gets in trouble with U.S. immigration authorities, criticized the newly approved U.S.-Mexico border fence as “absurd.”

“They are wasting so much money on this instead of using it on a real development plan,” the star of “Amores Perros,” “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “The Motorcycle Diaries,” told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, President Bush signed a bill authorizing 700 miles of fencing along the border despite pleas from the Mexican government for a veto.

“It was argued before that the wall was to secure the borders after Sept. 11,” Garcia Bernal said, “but (the terrorists) weren’t Mexican, they didn’t even pass through Mexico.”

The 27-year-old actor’s comments came during a publicity tour for “Babel,” director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s new film.

In “Babel,” which also stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, Garcia Bernal plays a man living legally in the United States who gets in trouble for challenging immigration agents at the border upon returning from his cousin’s wedding in Mexico.

Garcia Bernal said he prepared for the role by looking to family members from the border zone.

“I tried to emulate many of my cousins who are from that area,” he said.

He also said he spent time walking the streets of Tijuana and talking to residents there “to understand what it means to live under this absurd story,” referring to life along the border.

HONG KONG (AP) – Tatjana Patitz says the golden age of models is over.

“There was a real era, and the reason that happened was because glamor was brought into it. … Now the celebrities and actresses have taken over, and the models are in the backseat completely,” she was quoted as saying in an interview in the November issue of Prestige Hong Kong magazine.

One of the top models of the 1990s, the 40-year-old Swede also said models from her era had healthier physiques.

“Women were healthy, not these scrawny little models that nobody knows their names anymore,” Patitz said.

Patitz said she’s shifting from modeling to making documentaries about animals.

She said she’s preparing to produce a movie about wild horses.

Patitz said modeling was too stressful for her.

“You do three or four shows a day, and then you are up until 3 a.m. with fittings for all the different designers. You never sleep. They never sleep,” she said. “My nerves can’t handle it.”

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) – Snoop Dogg was arrested on suspicion of illegal drug and gun possession, police said.

The rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, was arrested at 3:45 p.m. Thursday at Bob Hope Airport, police said. Snoop Dogg posted $35,000 bail and was scheduled to appear in court Dec. 12.

Airport police officers stopped Snoop Dogg at a loading zone for a vehicle code violation. When officers searched the vehicle they found a gun and marijuana, police said.

“There was no basis for this arrest,” the rapper’s attorney, Donald Etra, said in a statement. “We believe that once this is cleared up, all charges will be dismissed.”

The Orange County district attorney’s office has been considering charges against Snoop Dogg after authorities last month discovered a 21-inch collapsible baton in his bags as he boarded a New York-bound flight from John Wayne International Airport.

The rapper was convicted in 1990 of cocaine possession and charged with gun possession after a 1993 traffic stop. He pleaded guilty in exchange for three years’ probation and a promise to make public service announcements against violence.

He was acquitted of murder in 1996 following the death of an alleged gang member who was killed by gunfire from the vehicle Snoop Dogg was traveling in.

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NEW YORK (AP) – Brad Pitt found an interesting way – make that walk – to blow off steam and bring some levity to the set of his new movie, “Babel.”

In an interview in Entertainment Weekly’s Oct. 30 issue, the 42-year-old actor says he amused himself and his colleagues by yanking up his pants to give himself a wedgie, sticking out his rear and waddling about like a duck. “Throughout the movie, I’d walk around like this,” he says.

“You’ve gotta find things to make you laugh during the shoot,” he adds. “Cate (Blanchett) called it the Hungry Bum.”

He explains: “When your bum’s so hungry it’s trying to eat your pants.”

His character’s story line in “Babel,” in theaters Nov. 10, is not as amusing. He and Blanchett play husband and wife in the multinational drama that follows several families linked by a tragedy in the African desert.

Pitt felt a personal connection to the movie’s one-world message – he is, after all, the adoptive father to girlfriend Angelina Jolie’s children, Maddox, 5, from Cambodia, and Zahara, 1, from Ethiopia. The couple have a daughter, Shiloh Nouvel, who was born in Namibia in May.

“Our kids come from different parts of the world, and it’s the perfect example of, if we didn’t have these perceived differences we wouldn’t be defined by geography,” he said.

“What I liked most (about the script) was this idea that we’re all the same, and it’s our lack of understanding and lack of communication that gets in the way.”

LONDON (AP) – Guitarist Andy Taylor has quit Duran Duran.

Taylor quit last weekend, the veteran rock band announced Thursday, but the remaining four members – singer Simon Le Bon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, bassist John Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor – plan to continue recording and performing as a group.

“We have reached a point in our relationship with him where there is an unworkable gulf between us and we can no longer effectively function together,” the band said in a statement on their Web site.

They apologized to fans for not making the announcement sooner, saying they realized that speculation had been running high about Taylor’s future.

Duran Duran, led by Le Bon, were a big act in the 1980s but later faded from popularity before regrouping five years ago.

“Although obviously disappointed and saddened about this, we are excited about the next chapter of the Duran Duran story and look forward to seeing you all soon,” the statement said.

NEW YORK (AP) – Mariah Carey’s manager says a financial default by a promoter, and not poor ticket sales or demands by the pop star, caused the cancellation of her weekend show in Hong Kong.

Carey, who recently finished her nationwide “Adventures of Mimi” tour, was to perform Saturday at an outdoor space in Hong Kong. It was to be the last stop on the tour after performances in Japan this week, her manager, Benny Medina, said Thursday.

But in a posting on its Web site, promoter Concerts Asia said the Hong Kong date was canceled because the 36-year-old singer had made “specific last-minute demands which we find wholly unreasonable and not with the best interests of Hong Kong, us and also the fans.”

The promoter also said it had only sold 4,000 tickets, despite a “substantial” advertising campaign.

In an interview with The Associated Press, however, Medina disputed those claims. He said 8,000 tickets had been sold, and blamed the cancellation on the tour promoter’s failure to pay Carey money that was due to her.

“If there were only 10 people in this venue, and this particular promoter … had fulfilled his contractual obligations, we would be there. Mariah Carey loves her fans in Southeast Asia,” Medina told the AP. “He has defaulted several times, right up into the last 48 hours. Literally we tried to hang in there with this guy.”

The tour was Carey’s first since the release of last year’s multiplatinum “The Emancipation of Mimi” album, which won three Grammys.

NEW YORK (AP) – Kevin Federline, aka K-Fed and Mr. Britney Spears, says he shrugs off his naysayers.

“If you want to hate me, cool, hate me,” Federline, 28, says in an interview posted Thursday on People magazine’s Web site. “You know why? Because all it’s going to do is help me.”

Federline, an aspiring rapper, has been aggressively promoting his debut album, “Playing With Fire,” set for release Oct. 31. Amid a chorus of boos, he was body-slammed by wrestler John Cena in an Oct. 16 appearance on USA Network’s “WWE Monday Night Raw.” And don’t forget his panned performance at this year’s Teen Choice Awards.

“I know who I am,” says Federline, who promises the album will show his “edgy side.”

Last month, he portrayed an arrogant teen on CBS’ “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

“I shocked myself,” he tells People. “There were parts that I wish I would have done different, but there are parts that really took me, like, “Wow, did I do that?’ I looked at myself and I was like, “It looked good. It looked perfect.”‘

Spears, 24, and Federline were married in September 2004. They have two sons, Sean Preston, 1, and a son born Sept. 12, whose name is reportedly Sutton Pierce or Jayden James. The couple have not confirmed the name.

Federline also has two children from a previous relationship.

“It’s just time to get my stuff down while they’re young, so I can sit back and watch them grow up,” he says.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) – Shakira and the son of an ex-president of Argentina have talked about marriage, his father says, but have no immediate plans to tie the knot.

Former President Fernando de la Rua has told Dominican newspaper Listin Diario the hip-shaking singer and his son, Antonio, “prefer to wait.”

“Kids today would rather live as a couple, they don’t believe that marriage is necessary to be happy,” de la Rua was quoted Thursday as saying.

Shakira and de la Rua’s son have been dating for five years.

De la Rua, in the Caribbean country for a conference, called Shakira “a lover of peace” who is concerned about those less fortunate than herself.

“Shakira is a very good woman, she is very loving to her parents and with her in-laws as well,” he said.

The 29-year-old singer is on tour with her most recent release, “Oral Fixation,” with plans to play in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and her native Colombia in the coming weeks.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) – TV cop Jesse L. Martin became a real-life crime victim after returning to his hometown to shoot a film.

The “Law & Order” star was eating breakfast in a restaurant Monday – signing autographs and even offering career advice to the cook, a would-be stand-up comic – when someone broke into a sport utility vehicle and stole his luggage, video iPod and dozens of autographed photos.

“He’s lived in New York City for 20 years and has never been robbed or a victim of theft,” director Peter McGennis said. “He comes back here and in two days he gets fleeced.”

Martin, 37, was in Buffalo to film scenes for McGennis’ independent movie “Buffalo Bushido.” He flew back to New York City with only the clothes on his back and his wallet.

A graduate of the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, Martin plays Detective Ed Green on the NBC series.