Hawkeye not only introduced Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it also gave us “Rogers: The Musical.” Clint Barton wasn’t a fan (Ant-Man wasn’t there during the Battle of New York, obviously), but maybe you’ll like it more. “Rogers: The Musical” is coming to Disneyland Resort’s Hyperion Stage inside California Adventure Park.
“A timeless story of a timeless hero! A short one-act musical is coming for a limited time this summer to Disney California Adventure Park! Stay tuned for more details,” the Disney Parks Twitter account teased, along with a video of Peggy Carter holding a playbill for the musical.
The fictitious musical all about the life of Steve Rogers, the first Captain America, first debuted in the Disney+ original series, Hawkeye. In the show, all the Avengers are invited to New York for the premiere of the brand new, showstopping musical but only Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, shows up. The MIA Avengers don’t know what they’re missing, though, as viewers are treated to a musical number based on The Battle of New York…though a few creative liberties have been taken here and there.
“Rogers: The Musical” doesn’t have an opening date yet, but during your next trip to Disney, grab a slice of pizza from Boardwalk Pizza & Pasta in honor of Pizza Dog. Or maybe a Not So Little Chicken Sandwich?
A timeless story of a timeless hero! A short one-act musical is coming for a limited time this summer to Disney California Adventure Park! Stay tuned for more detailspic.twitter.com/N8Ugh54LsU
“In middle school, the public school I went to in PG County, we had to wear uniforms. It was a white shirt, khaki pants, and all-black sneakers, so I always rocked the Puma suedes,” Cordae told Nice Kicks. “It’s been a full-circle moment.”
The Grammy-nominated rapper continued, “I like things to be organic and natural. All the extracurricular stuff they do for communities across the globe is tight. Even though they work with amazing artists, it wasn’t based on past work with artists but on how our relationship has been — a collaborative, cooperative thing. They gave me a lot of creative control and let me bring some of my friends, it turned out dope.”
If you, like many others, pass the time by looking at photos of Jonathan Majors (it’s okay to admit this now), you might be curious as to why one object seems to always gravitate towards him. Majors has been everywhere lately–including various quantum timelines and whatnot– but he always carries one thing with him: a cute little cup.
So, to be fair, the cup is probably regular-sized, but next to a Marvel villain/boxing champion, it sure looks small in comparison. But Majors recently made a stop on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, when Cobert gave him a hard time for bringing his own mug, instead of those royal blue Colbert mugs that CBS so graciously provides. Colbert pressed on and Majors finally told the story behind the cup, which is actually very heartwarming.
When asked about bringing his various cups around Hollywood, the actor explained (via CNN), “I’ve been doing this — I’m 33 years old — I’ve been doing this since I left my mother’s house when I was around 18.” He then confirmed that he has a “rotation” of four cups that he brings out and about, thanks to a life lesson his mom taught him.
Majors explained that his mother was nervous about him breaking out in Hollywood. “She was so terrified of the circus that I had joined. She was very clear about safety. ‘No drinking, no drugs, no sex,’ every time I left the house This has happened my entire life. But the drinking was a thing and she’d always say, ‘Baby, watch your cup. Watch your glass,’ and I always kept that in mind, for safety, but also what that meant,” he said, adding the meaning behind the phrase.
“It means . . . You are a vessel. Nobody can fill you up, nobody can pour you out — you do that yourself.” Majors has had quite the time filling himself up by being cast in various star-studded movies over the past few years but his cup trick helps him remain grounded. “Holding onto this is a reminder that, even in this craziness happening, my self-esteem is my self-esteem,” Majors added. “Nobody can make me, nobody can big me up, as it were, or tear me down.”
It seems like the advice is working, considering just how busy Majors has been over the last month alone. After starring in the latest Ant-Man installment as Kang, he is now set up to be the next big bad Marvel villain, thanks to all of this cup confidence. Hopefully, it won’t make him too powerful. That’s what cute little bags are for.
Around this time ten years ago, Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” had already spent five weeks atop Billboard’s Hot Country Songs ranking. Thanks to a remix from Nelly — a preeminent artist at the intersection of hip-hop and country — “Cruise” highlighted the emergence of bro-country and a turning point in hip-hop-inspired country music production. It would go on to spend 24 cumulative weeks atop the chart — setting a new record Billboard‘s longest-running country number one at the time.
In the decade since the success of “Cruise,” the sounds of Black artists have been increasingly present on country radio and streaming playlists, while the faces of Black artists have struggled to break through and solidify a stronghold in the genre’s mainstream beyond a select few mainstays like Darius Rucker, Kane Brown, and, more recently, Jimmie Allen and Mickey Guyton. To put it into perspective, when Kane Brown topped Hot Country Songs in 2017 with “What Ifs,” he was the first Black artist to reach the pole position since Darius Rucker in 2008, who, in turn, was the first Black artist to reach No. 1 on that chart in 25 years. Rucker would reach No. 1 on the chart in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2013. Nevertheless, in the time between Rucker and Brown’s chart-toppers, songs sung by white artists who borrowed liberally from hip-hop production motifs saw great success: “Meant to Be” (Florida George Line & Bebe Rexha), “Body Like a Back Road” (Sam Hunt), and, more recently, “Wasted on You” (Morgan Wallen).
In the latter half of the last decade, a shift started to occur. The dual inflection points of Beyoncé and The Chicks’ performance at the 50th Annual Country Music Association Awards and the removal of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” from Hot Country Songs for “not embracing enough elements of today’s country music” marked a new era for Black artists in country’s mainstream. Beyoncé’s performance highlighted the bluesy foundation of country music’s Black roots, and Lil Nas’s response to the “Old Town Road” controversy, and his subsequent remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, eloquently exposed the inconsistencies within the country music establishment in reference to who is allowed to mix trap and country and still be considered country. For RVSHVD, a rising country star that has gained ample traction on TikTok, those moments “meant more Black people in country music, more Black people showing that we can do this to.” At the turn of the decade, in tandem with the explosion of TikTok, a new generation of Black country artists have emerged as the genre’s next set of crossover stars, equally capable of crafting a knockout hook as they are at bending the notoriously finicky TikTok algorithm to their will.
Tanner Adell, whose sonic profile blends the vocal bombast of a young Carrie Underwood with the lyrical flourishes of early Taylor Swift, has quickly emerged as one of the leading Black country artists on TikTok. She currently boasts over 333,000 followers on the platform with 5.7 million likes across all of her videos — and that’s not counting the videos of hers that have gone viral on Twitter and Facebook by way of fans reposting her TikToks to those sites. Tanner’s two most-viewed TikToks find her promoting her songs by embracing elements of her artistry and personhood that are seemingly outside of the traditional boundaries of modern country music aesthetics.
A snippet of a still-unreleased song titled “Buckle Bunny” garnered 2.8 million views and over half a million likes; the TikTok is a response to a user saying that “where I’m from, buckle bunny is a huge insult,” and Tanner replying “same” in the caption along with a slew of cheeky emojis. Two other TikToks, each of which earned over one million views, feature Tanner responding to a user eagerly inquiring if she is a “Black girl country singer.” The captions for both TikToks contain some variation on injecting country music with “bgm,” or “Black girl magic.” With content like this, Tanner effectively creates a bond between her and new listeners, which, in turn, folds them into a community that finds common ground in embracing elements of themselves that, in some circles, label them as outsiders. In addition to these kinds of videos, Tanner also utilizes TikTok like an everyday person. She posts videos documenting her wash days and hair care routines, playing around with trending filters, and dancing to popular songs and choreography like Lizzo’s “About Damn Time.” For Tanner, her smart, yet effortless, use of TikTok has translated into tangible success — which she has celebrated through, you guessed it, TikToks. She’s on Spotify billboards, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have performed to her song “Honkytonk Heartbreak,” her debut single, and, as of a November 2022 TikTok, “Love You a Little Bit” has garnered over four million streams across platforms.
In both his approach to music-making and the way he tackles the TikTok algorithm, RVSHVD looks to hip-hop. After first gaining traction on the platform through country covers of popular rap songs, Roddy Ricch’s “Ballin” chief among them, RVSHVD figured out his own personal cheat code to the app. On his profile, RVSHVD lists four different playlists of TikToks: Originals, Covers, If I Was Featured On, and Country Versions.
“The country version sort of just happened,” RVSHVD said. “I hadn’t seen anybody covering rap songs in other genres. I seen it in rock, like ‘hip-hop goes rock,’ but I hadn’t seen it in country. So I did that and that just sort of took off.” As the TikTok algorithm would have it, RVSHVD had to switch up his content to stay ahead of the curve. “That’s when I came up with ‘If I Was Featured On,’” he remarked. “I got that from Lil Wayne, back on like Da Drought and Dedication. You remember he used to remix other people’s songs?” It is quite easy to get pigeonholed into a monotonous content loop on TikTok, but RVSHVD found a way to successfully transfer the engagement from his covers to his original music. “I’m constantly coming up with new ideas. As soon as I see something not getting some attention, that’s when I switch it up,” he said. “Like changing the kind of videos I do or changing the kind of sounds I’ve been posting… sometimes it’s just as simple as switching locations.”
Through a steady stream of TikToks chronicling the song’s journey from an unreleased demo to a TikTok sound snippet to an official single complete with a music video, “Hit Different” has put up strong numbers across streaming platforms and currently ranks as RVSHVD’s most popular solo song on Spotify. “Hit Different,” which RVSHVD describes as “a down home song, something about me,” wasn’t his first stab at twisting the TikTok algorithm to launch a single. The promotional cycle for “Dirt Road” was the moment the Willacoochee, Georgia singer realized that there was a community of people that were tuning into what he had to say and offer as an artist beyond covers. “I previewed ‘Dirt Road’ because I put ‘Ballin’ up and that one went viral… I was so scared of that virality leaving that I just kept pumping out stuff,” he said. “I was finding a beat, recording it, shooting a video, and posting it all on the same day.” Once he posted the snippet and saw people liking and commenting on the video, that “confirmed for [him] that they weren’t just here for the covers… they actually wanted to hear [his] music too.”
Just as Tanner displays on her TikTok, for RVSHVD, representation is a driving force behind the way he uses TikTok to advance his career and grow his fanbase. “I remember I was at FarmJam,” he reflected. “This lady came up with her son, and he was super shy and this was a little Black boy. She said that when I got on stage, her song was like ‘Oh, he looks like me!’ I was like, man, that’s dope.”
As it stands, 2023 is off to a relatively slow start for Black artists in country music’s mainstream, but the seeds are there. This month, Kane Brown scored his ninth Country Airplay chart-topper with “Thank God,” a duet with his wife, and a quick glance at the Spotify-curated Fresh Finds Country playlist reveals placements for Black artists such as Rodell Duff, Reyna Roberts, Shannon, and Mike Parker. Slowly but surely, young Black country artists are reclaiming the genre’s Black roots through a sharp understanding of how to use TikTok to grow loyal fan communities. This progress keeps RVSHVD hopeful about where the genre is headed, “Now that country music is including more influences and more sounds, it’s attracting more people and building a new generation,” he said.
The 95th Academy Awards are going down on March 12, and it was revealed today (February 23) that there’s going to be a major reason for music fans to tune in: Rihanna will be performing her Black Panther: Wakanda Forever song “Lift Me Up” during the Oscars broadcast.
This of course comes shortly after Rihanna’s beloved recent performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show.
“Lift Me Up” is nominated for Best Original Song at the 2023 ceremony (her first-ever Oscars nomination), as are Lady Gaga and Bloodpop’s “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick; Diane Warren’s “Applause” from Tell It Like A Woman; M.M. Keeravaani and Chandrabose’s “Naatu Naatu” from RRR; and Ryan Lott, David Byrne, and Mitski’s “This Is A Life” from Everything Everywhere All At Once. “Naatu Naatu” already has one win this awards season, at it was named Best Original Song, Motion Picture at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards over nominees by Rihanna, Gaga, and others.
“Lift Me Up” co-writer Tems previously said of the song, “After speaking with [director Ryan Coogler] and hearing his direction for the film and the song, I wanted to write something that portrays a warm embrace from all the people that I’ve lost in my life. I tried to imagine what it would feel like if I could sing to them now and express how much I miss them. Rihanna has been an inspiration to me so hearing her convey this song is a great honor.”
With the first Oscars telecast since Will Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock set to air in a few weeks (March 12th, to be exact), The Academy’s brain trust is pulling out all the stops to ensure that nothing actually interesting happens this time around. To that end, they’ve announced that they’ll be implementing an Oscars “crisis team” to put out any potential fires before they start. Will Smith was already banned from the ceremony for a decade, so presumably they won’t have to tie him up like the wolfman.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences CEO Bill Kramer told Time Magazine in a new interview:
“But we have a whole crisis team, something we’ve never had before, and many plans in place. We’ve run many scenarios. So it is our hope that we will be prepared for anything that we may not anticipate right now but that we’re planning for just in case it does happen.”
A whole crisis team! I have so many questions. Where did they recruit this “crisis team?” What are the top 10 of the “many scenarios” they’ve “run through?” Somehow I doubt a thousand A-Teams of veteran corporate stooges recruited off LinkedIn with a thousand Power Point decks could’ve come up with “Will Smith storms the stage to slap Chris Rock over a GI Jane joke” as happened last year. Which makes one wonder how this could possibly help this year. “Okay, so far we’ve got ‘Glenn Close goes after Joaquin Phoenix with a pen knife’ and ‘Sean Penn grinds ceremony to a halt when he won’t stop barking like a dog,’ anyone else?”
To her credit, Time interviewer Eliana Dockterman did follow up with a question about how one could possibly envision one of those scenarios. To which Kramer responded:
Because of last year, we’ve opened our minds to the many things that can happen at the Oscars. But these crisis plans—the crisis communication teams and structures we have in place—allow us to say this is the group that we have to gather very quickly. This is how we all come together. This is the spokesperson. This will be the statement. And obviously depending on the specifics of the crisis, and let’s hope something doesn’t happen and we never have to use these, but we already have frameworks in place that we can modify.
“This is the spokesperson, this is the statement…” Ahhh, I think I get it now. This isn’t really about preventing or managing a crisis, it’s a team that knows how to spin a crisis. That makes a lot more sense. Probably a lot easier to0. So when they say “crisis team,” they mostly mean a “carefully-worded apology writing team.” Notes App Boys Assemble!
In any case, it always strikes me particularly funny when the latest Academy CEO vows to return the Oscars to their former glory by ensuring that the event goes off without a hitch. The hitches are all people remember! Last year’s Oscars were dreadfully boring right up until the moment Will Smith let the crazy out and instantly created the most memorable Oscars moment of all time. If you think back to the last five or 10 years of Oscars telecasts, what are the things that stand out? The Slap, followed by the Moonlight/La La Land mixup, theoretically another huge mistake by the Academy.
Going back even further, what else comes to mind? Sacheen Littlefeather rejecting an Oscar on Marlon Brando’s behalf, the streaker… The Oscars, and basically all awards shows, are overly-stage managed self-congratulatory affairs that are far more interesting when all that planning breaks down. It’s all but designed to do so. The best thing that could happen to the Oscars this year is another controversy or another celebrity going “disastrously” off-script. Hopefully the real “crisis team” is tasked with pretending that the people putting on the event aren’t praying for it. It will be more fun and exciting that way.
It’s been pretty well-documented that Ryan Reynolds recently bought European football team Wrexham AFC, for some reason, because it seems like his business model is “why not!” and that’s admirable. But he also has a lot of other stuff going on, like working on the upcoming Deadpool installment that Hugh Jackman so graciously decided to be a part of.
But it seems like Reynolds’ influence is expanding into other territories, as Jackman himself considered buying a team after the initial purchase. But not just any team, he wanted the team to be a Wrexham rival, obviously.
While speaking with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Jackman let it slide that he was actually sent offers to be a partial owner for one of the rival teams. Hey, if Reynolds can do it, surely anyone can. “I will admit to you that when Ryan bought that team, I did get more than one offer from rivals to that team for £1 to come in as a co-owner,” Jackman said. “And it did seriously tempt me.”
Though Jackman has yet to purchase a team, he will go head to head against Reynolds on-screen as Wolverine in Deadpool 3. But he says that the option isn’t off the table, mostly because he loves to be mean to his co-star. “I think if I really want to stick it to Ryan Reynolds, then if Wrexham gets to play Norwich, because obviously there’s a different level here, I think it’d be best if I was heading in the winner,” he joked. We already know that Jackman is the real winner going into this whole thing.
Pusha raps, “All white, all winter / Even snow in the summer / The high falling from the sky / Are you the hunted or the hunter? / I got Tennessee numbers / I sing to the key numbers / The dope boys go crazy / They know I get it out the jungle / I ain’t never been a runner / We ain’t never had to wonder / You heard the pilot lost the load / We call that Dumb And Dumber / There’s no storm without thunder / The bear crawls up and under / Cocaine overload.”
One of the more surreal, yet somehow not totally surprising, moments involving Vladimir Putin’s late-February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the detail that Sean Penn happened to be in the country. Penn was on hand to co-direct a documentary about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s rise from actor/Jon Stewart-like figure to a national leader. Once Zelensky refused to leave Ukraine, he entered folk hero status, but Penn needed to leave Ukraine for safety reasons. The At Close Range actor later described how, before fleeing to Poland on foot, he considered “taking up arms against Russia” but then grew more realistic about the situation.
These days, Penn is absolutely fine about being banned from entering Russia, but he’s reflecting upon how he did meet Putin in 2001 while previously in the country to promote The Pledge at the Moscow Film Festival. In an interview withThe Independent, Penn recalled being whisked off alongside co-star Jack Nicholson to meet Putin, who Penn describes as a “creepy little bully” who gave him “a cold, ugly feeling.” Here’s more:
“We were put in a convoy. We knew that Putin was going to be the honoured guest. In the nature of that time and space, we accepted the invitation. We got in this convoy. And we were going as fast as they wanted to drive, with no care for whether it might have presented danger in the villages we drove through. When farmers with pony-driven carts were trying to come across, the security people in our vehicles would lean out the window to baton them away. It was so needlessly aggressive.”
Penn also reflected upon how he initially began his Ukraine-set documentary with a much more “lighthearted” tone than what eventually materialized for obvious reasons. As explained above, Penn began by hoping to pinpoint what took Zelensky from playing an everyman who accidentally becomes president in Servant of the People to being a sort-of everyman who becomes president.
Things took a turn, and the resulting movie, Superpower (also directed by Aaron Kaufman), has premiered in Berlin and will hopefully be in front of the general public soon. It sounds like a more valuable contribution than when Penn farted next to El Chapo while engaging in “experiential journalism.”
R. Kelly has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for child pornography, according to the New York Times. Kelly will serve this sentence concurrently with his 30-year sentence for sex trafficking and racketeering, except for one year. Kelly was convicted of the more recent charge in his native Chicago in September. He was initially accused of 13 charges, including producing child pornography, enticing minors for sex, and obstructing justice. He was found guilty of six — three counts of coercing minors into sexual activity and three of producing sex tapes involving a minor.
Prosecutors wanted Kelly sentenced to no fewer than 25 years in prison due to his “lack of remorse” for his actions and the presumed likelihood he would resume his crimes. One of the prosecutors, Jeannice Williams Appenteng, said, “The only way to ensure he will not re-offend is to impose a sentence that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life.” Kelly’s defense lawyer Jennifer Bonjean, said he wouldn’t pose a threat in his old age, but it doesn’t look like that argument held up.
Kelly was previously found guilty of racketeering and eight violations of an anti-sex trafficking law in a New York-based federal case. Kelly is appealing both convictions with Bonjean, who previously successfully appealed similar charges against comedian Bill Cosby.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
A short one-act musical is coming for a limited time this summer to Disney California Adventure Park! Stay tuned for more details
pic.twitter.com/N8Ugh54LsU
