Record of the Year: Leona Lewis Bleeding Love, M.I.A Paper Planes

Dance: Rihanna Disturbia

Best Female R&B Performance: Beyonce Me, Myself & I, Keyshia Cole Heaven Sent, Jennifer Hudson, Spotlight  Alicia Keys, Superwoman Jazmine Sullivan, Need You Bad

Best Male R&B Performance: Eric Benet, You’re The Only One, Chris Brown, Take You Down, Ne-Yo, Miss Independent, Trey Songz, Can’t Help But Wait, Usher, Here I Stand

Best Performance By a Male Duo or Group: Jennifer Hudson feat. Fantasia I’m His Only Woman

Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance: Jazmine Sullivan, In Love With Another Man

Best Urban/Alternative Performance: Chrisette Michelle feat will.i.am, Be Ok

Best R&B Song: Jazmine Sullivan, Bust Your Windows, Raheem Devaughn, Customer, Keyshia Cole, Heaven Sent, Ne-Yo, Miss Independent,  Jennifer Hudson, Spotlight

Best R&B Album: Eric Benet, Jennifer Hudson, Boyz II Men, Raphel Saadiq, Al Green

Best Contemporary R&B Album: Mary J Blige Growing Pains, Jazmine Sullivan, Fearless

Ne-Yo, Year of the Gentleman

For more Nominations go to www.grammy.com

As Washington gears up for January’s presidential inauguration,
tickets to the evening’s festivities are going for hundreds of dollars,
and the city’s remaining hotel rooms are edging into four-figure
territory. Even basements and couches miles from the National Mall are
going for a premium on Craigslist.

But one of the splashiest inauguration packages out there -
including high-end hotel rooms and luxury suites, food and drink, a
(heated) viewing spot right above the parade route, even gowns and
tuxedos to wear to celebratory balls, and a beautician to help you get
ready for it – is going for the most eye-popping price of all:
absolutely nothing.

Virginia businessman Earl Stafford has spent $1 million to give
hundreds of poverty-stricken and terminally ill Americans, along with
wounded men and women in uniform, an inauguration experience that would
ordinarily run each of them thousands of dollars or more.

The 60-year-old black businessman and son of a Baptist minister -
who said his effort was rooted in his faith and good fortune — told the
Washington Post he is ready to spend another $600,000 on meals and
private balls in the Marriott hotel two blocks from the White House
where he rented a bloc of inauguration week rooms just hours after the
election.

He also said he’s hoping to raise roughly the same amount from
sponsors. For now, the money is coming from his family’s non-profit
foundation, the Stafford Foundation.

“We wanted to… bless those who otherwise wouldn’t have an
opportunity to be a part of the great celebration, the inauguration and
the festivities,” he told the paper. “Our objective is to bring in a
cross-section of society — those who are distressed, those who are
terminally ill, those who are socially and economically disadvantaged,
those veterans who are wounded and served our country.

“…We’ve gotten away from those core values that made America great,”
he said. “We just need to get back to caring about one another.”

Stafford, who contributed to and voted for Barack Obama but said he
does not agree with all of the president-elect’s positions – has been
planning the effort since the primary season.

But he said he decided the inauguration would be “a transition in history, if you will… and everyone should be included.”

Source: CNN