It takes a peculiar person to enjoy being interrogated by U.S. immigration agents. Someone, in fact, like Jens Lekman. "I said I was a musician, then one agent told the other one, 'Check him out on Wikipedia,'" the 26-year-old Swede recounts gleefully at a Manhattan café. "So they started reading about me, and they got really into it.

Kanye West is not pissed; he's just in problem-solving mode. Right now, the problem is production costs. "I want to be the No. 1 artist," he says to a member of his crew. "How am I gonna do that with muthafuckin' bad lighting?"