At 7:53 p.m. EST tonight, the special MTV First: Katy Perry will offer the television premiere of Perry's new clip for "Wide Awake." The video already premiered on VEVO, but the MTV special will be followed by an exclusive interview with Perry and MTV's Sway Calloway on MTV.com. Perry told MTV News that the song and video are "kind of like the labyrinth of my life in the past two years. I just wanted to tell a story about myself kind of going through this journey, maybe sometimes trying to get out of the maze. There's good parts and bad parts." You can check out the video below:



Rush has just released Clockwork Angels, its first new album in five years, and the band is planning something special for the tour. Since orchestrations are featured on several tracks from Clockwork Angels, the band will bring a small string ensemble on the road to recreate those pieces and enhance some of Rush's older material. "Our intention is to take strings out on the road," guitarist Alex Lifeson told Billboard.com. "It's just something different for us, and I can't wait to hear what it sounds like." Lifeson added that the production is "still in a planning stage" but promised that "it's a while new show. It's new staging, new lighting, everything is new and fresh about it. I would say that it's an evolutionary extension of what the (2010-11) Time Machine Tour was, but we are definitely freshening it up and bringing and there'll be a lot of new video stuff going on." Rush's tour kicks off September 7 in Manchester, NH.

After Nicki Minaj didn't play Hot 97/New York's Summer Jam concert because one of the station's deejays disrespected her latest single onstage, Lil Wayne defended his decision to pull his Young Money artist from the show. MTV News spoke to Weezy on Saturday while backstage at Hot 107.9/Atlanta's Birthday Bash, and Wayne said: "That's a female; first and foremost Nicki Minaj is a female. I don't know what anyone else believes, but I believe females deserve the ultimate respect at all times no matter, when or where or how." Weezy continued, "As soon as she called me and told me she felt disrespected, I just declined everything. I pulled her from the show because... no person that works with me will be disrespected in my presence as long as I'm on this planet... It's just an executive move, no salt, no bad feelings, no hard feelings." 

Later today, Shinedown is teaming up with Loudwire.com for an exclusive Twitter interview session starting at 4 p.m. EST. Fans are invited to interact with the Q&A by commenting in real time as the band fields questions from the Loudwire staff, and details can be found at @Loudwire on Twitter or www.loudwire.com. Then on Wednesday, June 20, Shinedown will hit TBS’ Conan for an acoustic performance of their current single, "Unity."

On August 7, Rob Zombie will release Mondo Sex Head, a new collection of remixes of various Zombie tracks. The disc was curated and executive produced by Jason Bentley, MD of KCRW. The remixes feature some of the hottest names in the burgeoning Electronic Dance Movement (EDM) scene, with Jonathan Davis of KoRn and Chino Moreno of Deftones (aka †††) among the contirbutors. Mondo Sex Head will be preceeded by two digital EPs featuring songs from the disc as well as bonus tracks.

The Roots drummer Questlove hopes that getting R&B singer D'Angelo to jam with him at Bonnaroo recently will convince the singer to finally release his first album since 2000's Voodoo. Questlove says that roughly 30 tracks have been recorded over the last few years, with many sessions taking place at Electric Lady studios in New York. "He is about to take a radical 180 turn with this record," Questlove told Rolling Stone. "It's going to throw people off the same way that Prince's Dirty Mind threw his R&B fanbase off. In the past few years, he's discovered Bowie and Zeppelin, The Beatles, Pet Sounds, Captain Beefheart and Zappa. My whole reasoning for doing [Bonnaroo] was to show him who his real audience is." D'Angelo will play at New Orleans' Essence Festival on July 6, and Questlove says the goal is to release the LP around August.

Bob Dylan has announced his first North American tour dates for 2012. After touring Europe this summer, the North American leg kicks off in Lloydminster, Alberta on August 10, with dates currently running through September 1 in Big Flats, NY.