Month: July 2023

Last night (July 25), Drake surprised fans during his second of three Madison Square Garden shows by bringing a very special guest: his mom.

In a video from the show, Drake and his mother, Sandi Graham, sit on a couch together as he performs “Look What You’ve Done” from his 2011 album, Take Care, to her.

Given the track is a reflection of how Drake’s loved ones helped jumpstart his career, with his mom being one of the people to get a special dedication in the lyrics, seeing him perform it at MSG made her cry.

“They love your son, man, that boy gone / You get the operation you dreamed of / And I finally send you to Rome / And get to make good on my promise / It all worked out, girl, we should’ve known / ‘Cause you deserve it,” Drake sings, reading from a notebook.

Halfway through his performance, the two of them hug, and then he continues. “Look what you’ve done for me,” he sings directly to her, as she appears to cry after the emotional tribute.

Drake wraps up his Madison Square Garden run tonight on his It’s All A Blur Tour with 21 Savage.

Check out the heartfelt moment between Drake and his mother here.

Rudy Giuliani has reportedly admitted that he made “false” statements about election workers in Georgia. The man once revered as “America’s Mayor” has been targeted in a number of lawsuits and investigations for his involvement in Donald Trump‘s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

While Giuliani has repeatedly maintained that he wouldn’t “flip” on Trump, this latest development shows that he will eventually give up the goods when pressed in courts. Giuliani claimed that the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, smuggled out votes in a suitcase hidden under a table. Wouldn’t you know it? That just wasn’t true.

Via Newsweek:

In a court filing on Tuesday, the former mayor of New York conceded that he had made the statements and had published them to third parties, but said that such an admission would not change his argument that they were “constitutionally protected” and had not adversely affected the workers concerned.

Giuliani did not contest that “to the extent that the statements were statements of fact and otherwise actionable, such actionable factual statements were false.”

Giuliani’s admission could prove disastrous for Trump. The former president is facing a likely indictment for election tampering in Georgia after he was recorded threatening state officials and ordering them to “find” votes. Special Counsel Jack Smith is also investigating Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election including, but not limited to, the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol building.

(Via Newsweek)

Rootin’ tootin’ Lauren Boebert has been known to bend the truth at times, to put it mildly. Quote recently, she showed up late to the Capitol and missed a vote for the debt ceiling bill that she had raged so hard against. Boebert later claimed to have purposely skipped the vote as a “protest,” but video footage showed her sprinting up the stairs (in heels) in a vain effort to make that same vote. That falsehood might have been what led a relative of an Uvalde shooting victim to accuse her of lying about the reason that she casually tossed a commemorative pin into the trash.

Now, Boebert is throwing a fit while accusing President Biden of being a liar, when the right-wing congresswoman is still stubbornly devoted to the King Of MAGA Lies. Yet this is simply a case of Biden not enunciating his words well enough and his critics running with their claims regardless of what did happen.

A bit of background: Joe Biden lost his eldest son, Beau, to cancer. Joe spoke about Beau during his first State Of The Union speech, only to be heckled by Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Over a year later, Boebert is perfectly willing to hang onto her claim that Biden now claims to have cured cancer, and she tweeted about how he “lied” from one of her accounts (“Joe Biden lied about curing cancer”) and sarcastically joked about the topic (“I feel like that would have at least gotten a press release”) from her other account.

As seen in the above clip (about from a discussion on healthcare), Biden responded to a question that Boebert apparently clipped, possibly to remove context. The president expressed his wish that he could cure cancer. Via Newsweek, here’s what he actually stated:

“‘If you could do anything at all, Joe, what would you do?’ I said, ‘I’d cure cancer.’ And they looked at me like, ‘Why cancer?’ Because no one thinks we can. That’s why. And we can. We can end cancer as we know it.”

The White House also provided a transcript of the discussion for what it’s worth. And it’s not worth much to the right-wingers, obviously, because a lot of them are out there tweeting that Biden lied. That includes Boebert, who went on to make that clip part of a thread to argue, “JOE BIDEN IS A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR! @POTUS can’t be trusted, he must be impeached!”

It’s beyond bizarre to hang one’s hat on a misheard quote, but oh well. Never mind that Trump not only continues to repeat the Big Lie but never did tell the truth about a silly typo that launched “covfefe” into the public lexicon.

Ice Spice has the summer on lock. With a song on the Barbie soundtrack, as well as a feature on a Taylor Swift single, the Bronx rapper is inescapable this year. Now, hot of the release of her Like…? (Deluxe) EP, Ice has shared the music video for her viral new single, “Deli.”

As its title suggests, the video features Ice and her crew dancing in a deli. The bodega appears to be closed down, as Ice and friends twerk on counters, stack up cash, and party it up without a care in the world.

Shortly after, Ice steps out to a crowd ready to greet her with much fanfare.

Perhaps this part of the video was inspired by real life. In an interview with Guardian, Ice revealed that she finds herself living a more clandestine life as she’s adjusted to fame.

“I’ll be thinking that I’m low-key, but then people start to notice – and once one person notices, people start to form a crowd and then I be getting a little overwhelmed,” she said. “…That’s the biggest thing to adjust to in real life – not being able to be outside as myself as much. I more gotta be, like, hiding a little bit.”

You can watch the “Deli” video above.

One of the best things about Greta Gerwig’s Barbie — other than Ryan Gosling singing a Matchbox Twenty song to Margot Robbie — is the runtime. It’s only 1 hour and 54 minutes long. Nothing should last two hours, even one of the most fun films of the year (we’ll make an exception for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One because it rules.) Meanwhile, while Gerwig told an entire story in less time than the average trip to Ikea, conservatives are on day whatever of whining about Barbie. And the whiniest of all is Ben Shapiro.

The accidental Ken cosplayer posted a 42-minute and 43 seconds-long video to complain about “one of the most woke movies I have ever seen.” (To be fair, he’s only probably seen two other movies: his own and Small Soldiers, which he thought was about him.) Shapiro wasn’t done with his very public mental breakdown, however. He’s since posted two more Barbie-related videos, one (“Barbie Is Garbage, But You’re Not Allowed To Say So”) coming in at 1:01:55 and another (“Brett Cooper Liked Barbie…..I Have Questions”) clocking in at 34:34.

All told, Shapiro has spent nearly two hours and 20 minutes talking about Barbie, plus whatever cursed footage wasn’t good enough to make the final cut. No wonder Gerwig isn’t concerned about the right-wing backlash: it seems to be helping her movie’s box office total.

Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at [email protected].

The other day it occurred to me that the first Taylor Swift album came out in 2006, which kind of blew me away. For the past 15 years or so, she has been one of the biggest pop stars in the world. And she might be bigger in 2023 than she ever has been. Do you find this strange? It seems like pop stars, at best, have a decade or so at the top before they start to fade. But Taylor shows no signs that her popularity will wane any time soon. Why is that? And will her popularity ever fade? — Monica from Miami

I’ll answer the first question right away: Yes, I do find Taylor Swift’s seemingly unstoppable upward career trajectory to be strange! Not because I feel like she doesn’t “deserve” her fame. (I’m not sure anyone “deserves” fame, but that’s another question.) I just find it incredible that — as you observed — Taylor has defied the laws of pop-star gravity to such a spectacular degree. Based on well-established precedents, she probably should have dipped by now. Instead, her stranglehold on the pop mainstream has only tightened. Think of it this way: At various points in her career she has been linked with artists such as Kanye West, John Mayer, and Katy Perry as personal/commercial rivals. Not one of them is in her league now. She gets older, but her stardom stays the same age.

How did this happen? And will Taylor’s reign ever end? First, we should acknowledge that there are market forces at play that have disadvantaged emerging pop stars — the preponderance of new music, the continuing breakdown of a shared culture, the growth of TikTok — and therefore empowered established brands. An entire generation of artists who similarly became huge in the late aughts and early 2010s — Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd, Drake, Justin Bieber — also rank among the most streamed acts in the world. And that’s because there are a limited number of insurgents with the juice to overthrow them.

Nevertheless, Taylor Swift’s arc still feels exceptional. Let’s briefly review her career: Her debut comes out in 2006, and (sorry) swiftly establishes Taylor as a big-time country music star. Her status in that world grows over the course of the next two albums, Fearless and Speak Now. With Red in 2012, she crosses over as a full-on pop star. Two years later, she puts out her biggest LP, 1989, and effectively takes over the world.

This is her Thriller/Purple Rain moment. A pinnacle that can’t ever be topped. Or so it seems at the time. The follow-up to 1989, 2017’s Reputation, predictably sells a fraction the units that 1989 moved. There’s also the matter of a backlash caused partly by overexposure, and partly by extremely online people who blame her for the election of Donald Trump. This is the moment when pop-star gravity appears to be kicking in. Taylor was up, and now she must come down.

Only that didn’t happen. Lover sold slightly worse than Reputation, but the media started to like her again. And then the pandemic happened in 2020, and Taylor Swift responded by releasing two albums, Folklore and Evermore, that seemed custom designed for listeners to play in seclusion. The year after that, she released her first re-recorded LP, Fearless (Taylor’s Version), and followed it seven months later with the even more successful Red (Taylor’s Version). Then, the year after that, she put out Midnights, her best selling album since Reputation. Like that, Taylor was back up again.

The ongoing Eras Tour has offered near daily confirmation that Taylor Swift is the most dominant pop star of her time. And I think that has a lot to do with how she has framed her “classic” work in relation to her “current” work. To explain what I mean, I’m going to compare the biggest female pop star of the early 21st century to the biggest female pop star of the late 20th century.

Taylor Swift is presently situated 17 years from her first record, which means she’s in the same place as Madonna was in 2000 when she released her eighth album, Music. A chart-topping smash, Music sold three million copies and spun off two Top 5 hits, which indicates that Taylor’s run, while impressive, isn’t unprecedented. Madonna also stayed in the game over the course of several decades as a major pop player.

But let’s imagine that concurrent with Music Madonna also put out a re-recorded version of Like A Prayer, possibly her most iconic album of the ’80s. And let’s also imagine that the media did not regard this as they likely would have in the year 2000, i.e. as a nostalgia move repackaging distant glories. Instead, in this scenario critics frame the “new” Like A Prayer as a triumph that’s just as valid as her “actually new” work.

What I’m talking about here is cachet. In conversations about pop stars, cachet matters a lot. Cachet comes from the idea that you are relevant, and that your success is significant in terms of what it says about the overall culture. Which is another way of saying that pop stardom has as much to do with the perception of success as the reality of success. To make another analogy: The Rolling Stones play the same stadiums that Taylor Swift does, but the popularity of The Stones on the road is understood to be a valorization of the band’s history, not their current status.

Normally, we perceive an artist’s career moving forward in linear fashion. Then the hits stop coming, and the artist is forced to rely more and more on the past to maintain an audience. Sometimes, this is how pop stars are viewed even when the smashes don’t stop coming. When The Stones were roughly 17 years into their recording career, they had a major hit album in 1981 with Tattoo You. But they were still understood by most people to be a group that peaked in the 1960s and ’70s. And this inevitably affected how people thought about their new music. No matter how big they were in 1981, that bigness was seen more as a product of what they were than what they are.

(To anyone who reads me regularly: I am sorry to once again cite Tattoo You as a reference! But it’s an album that explains a lot!)

This is the part about Taylor Swift’s career that is unprecedented. She has, rather brilliantly, convinced the public that her past and present coexist right now. She’s dismantled the former “new work vs. old work” binary for artists and replaced it with the “Eras” paradigm, where her songs are parceled into different concurrent channels that are equally accessible. It’s the same logic that streaming platforms have taught us, where all of music history exists in the same bucket. And Taylor Swift has figured out how to reprogram the public’s internal algorithm better than any of her competitors, so that her historical fame doesn’t count against her contemporary fame. Which is why I don’t expect her to fade anytime soon.

You recently had a viral tweet in which you joked about a new version of the Grateful Dead in light of Dead And Company’s recent decision to discontinue touring. But all kidding aside: Do you expect there to be a new iteration of the Dead in the near future? — Chad from Oklahoma City

If you listen to the band’s manager Irving Azoff, it’s definitely over. He told Pollstar last week that the recent health problems experienced by prodigal drummer Bill Kreutzmann, as well as “the rigors of 30-some nights with trucks and buses and airplanes and all the moving around,” prompted the band to reconsider their future on the road.

But he also said, and I quote (emphasis mine), “The touring parts are over, but there are still special events I’m sure will get offered to them, and you never say never. I’ve learned from managing the Eagles all these years that you never ask that question while the tour is going on. You’ve got to let them finish it, get some rest and get back to their lives and the future will bring what it brings.”

(How funny is it that Irving Azoff ended up managing both The Dead and The Eagles? Not that these bands in reality are all that different, business wise, but I’m sure this connection bummed out some Deadheads down on Shakedown Street.)

So, “the touring parts are over” but also … “you never say never.” What can we glean from this? Well, we know that the “core” members of The Dead are very old. But the two most spry guys, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, are definitely not going to stop touring. And there is a supporting cast of younger musicians — Jeff Chimenti, Oteil Burbridge, Jay Lane — that now have the legitimacy of playing with a highly successful Dead satellite band. And then there’s John Mayer, who beat the odds and won over legions of Dead fans. (The man also has his haters in the scene, of course, but not enough to prevent any version of The Dead that he co-fronts playing arenas or stadiums.)

I find it hard — if not impossible — to believe that these spare parts (plus another ringer, like Joe Russo or Bruce Hornsby) won’t eventually reassemble into a new touring Dead juggernaut. If that happens, that new iteration will no doubt be hugely successful. And once that ends it will likely be followed by yet another new iteration. This is how it works. More than any band of their stature, The Dead have normalized the premise that they are a genre onto themselves, and that one day the music will be carried on without any of the original members. And this will happen because the real star of the Grateful Dead is not Jerry Garcia or Bob Weir or Phil Lesh or even John Mayer. It’s the audience. The audience shows up because they want the experience of being together in the presence of this band’s music. And, like the band, the audience is constantly replacing old members with new ones, spinning it forward as the long, strange trip continues.

Elon Musk hasn’t exactly been the most endearing businessman in the world in light of some of the head-scratching decisions he’s made since taking over Twitter. Jack White has been a vocal critic, and perhaps in light of his shifting opinion on Musk, he’s auctioning off his Tesla. (It could also just be because it’s a ten-year-old car and White wants it gone.)

The car is being auctioned as part of the Third Man Garage Sale through his Third Man Records label. The auction is ongoing now and as an announcement post notes, “Notable inclusions are the White Stripes-era Framus acoustic guitar that was used in the ‘We’re Going To Be Friends’ music video, Jack’s blue Ernie Ball St. Vincent guitar used on the Boarding House Reach tour, Third Man’s cheese-shaped vintage CitiCar used to deliver the World’s Fastest Record, gear from the Third Man Studio, props from the Consolers of the Lonely album shoot, Jack’s personal Tesla, among other vintage odds n’ ends and mechanical wonders.”

The auction notes for the car (a 2013 Tesla Model S Performance) from Third Man Records Archivist Ben Blackwell read:

“Whoa daddy. Ain’t no joke here, what you’re bidding on is Jack White’s personal Tesla model S. He called this car ‘The Green Machine.’ Thought to be the first model S in the state of Tennessee, this car long-served as White’s daily driver. The sound system figured prominently in the mixing of the Raconteurs’ 2019 album “Help Us Stranger” as shown in the attached video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uTRNvDtVak as well as most other music White worked on during the roughly nine year period in which he used the vehicle. Original owner. Calming kelly green paint job. Pretty comfortable seats. Leather interior. Batsh*t crazy fast pedal-to-the-metal speed. No CD player. Does not come with Autopilot capabilities, because that sh*t is crazy dangerous. A respectable vehicle, classy and environmentally conscious. The right choice.”

Check out all the auction items here.

Tucker Carlson’s Twitter show drew a non-trivial amount of eyeballs when it debuted in June, but viewership numbers have been dwindling since then. Still, he presses on, and on his latest episode shared yesterday (July 26), he was joined by Ice Cube, and the pair spent about a quarter of the 12-minute episode talking about the COVID-19 vaccine, specifically about why the rapper didn’t get it.

Carlson asked why Ice didn’t take the vaccine, noting he had “a direct order” to do so, and the rapper responded, “Yeah, I’m not real good with direct orders. […] No, it wasn’t ready. You know, it was six-month kind of rush job and I didn’t feel safe.”

Carlson jumped in, “But they told you you were safe,” and Ice responded, “I know what they said [laughs]. I know what they said, and I heard them. I heard them loud and clear, but it’s not their decision. There’s no repercussions if they’re wrong, but I can get all the repercussions if they’re wrong.”

The host then asked if it was a tough choice for Ice to make and he said, “No, it wasn’t a tough call. I wanted to be an example for my kids, really make sure they wouldn’t take it either, show them that I want to stand on my convictions and that I was willing to lose $9 million and more because we’ve probably lost more since then.”

The part about losing $9 million refers to what he said in a 2022 interview: “I turned down a movie because I didn’t want to get the motherf*cking jab. I turned down $9 million. I didn’t want get the jab. F*ck that jab. F*ck ya’ll for trying to make me get it. I don’t know how Hollywood feels about me right now.”

Elsewhere in the Carlson conversation, Ice noted he never intended for his vaccination status to be a matter of public concern, saying, “I never told anyone not to get vaccinated publicly. That was never my message to the world. I didn’t even want people to know whether I got vaccinated or not. I was pretty upset that that even came out, because I was just gonna quietly, you know, just not take it and deal with the consequences as they came.”

Carlson, for the record, proudly proclaimed he didn’t get the vaccine either: When Ice asked if he got the jab, the host exclaimed, “Of course not!”

Find the full episode of Carlson’s show here.

It’s been 12 years since the late Kobe Bryant shut down the Drew League in a wild game where he scored 45, including the game-winner, to top James Harden’s 50-point performance.

DeMar DeRozan was also part of that game, and in a recent appearance on the Iman Amongst Men podcast with Iman Shumpert, he was asked for his favorite Kobe memory and went to that game. However, the game-winner from Kobe wasn’t even the part that stuck out most to him, but something that happened three minutes of game time before that, when Bryant refused to leave the game at the request of the police there who wanted to get him out before the masses of people in the gym swarmed him at the end of the game.

As DeRozan recalled, police approached Kobe and suggested he leave, which he declined, and then he fully embraced the crowd after knocking down the game-winner, getting swarmed by fans as they poured out of the bleachers and onto the court as he stood, arms raised, in triumph. It is an incredibly cool moment and one that might not have happened with a different superstar. It’s hard to emphasize how big Kobe was in Los Angeles in 2011, a year removed from leading the Lakers to another championship. Some might’ve taken the advice of the police in the gym that day and dipped out early to avoid the craziness at the end, but Kobe wanted to feel that energy and delivered a game-winner just to ensure it was as crazy as possible.

Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour is still going strong. It was reported last month that the “Break My Soul” performer contributed to country-wide inflation in Sweden with her concert stop, with data showing a 0.3-percent rise from April to May sparked by “a broad set of goods and services, for instance, hotel and restaurant visits” and “recreational services.”

Something similar is taking place in Chicago after Beyoncé performed there on July 22 and 23 at Soldier Field. A news anchor discussed it on Fox 32 Chicago, saying, “It isn’t just fans basking in the glow of Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour, Yelp Data shows hotels, restaurants, shops, beauty salons all saw a huge spike as well, especially Black-owned businesses.” Statistics were displayed, showing Beyoncé search trends in the Illinois city. Hotels and travel are up 20%, shopping is up 17%, restaurants is up 14%, and beauty services is up 5%.

More statistics show that cosmetics and beauty stores are up 7%, eyebrow services are up 9%, nail salons are up 2%, shoe stores are up 9%, and men’s hair salons are up 4%. For Black-owned businesses, beauty and spas are up 12%, hotels and travel are up 31%, women searches for hotel and travel are up 44%, LGBTQ+ searches for nightlife are up 2%, and restaurants are up 2%.