Category: News

This article originally appeared on 08.06.19

I grew up black in a very white neighborhood in a very white city in a very white state.

As such, I am a lot of people’s only black friend.

Being the only black friend is a gift and a curse. I am black and I love having friends. But I am also, at any given moment, expected to be a translator, an ambassador, a history teacher, and/or a walking, talking invitation into “I am not racist” territory. It’s a lot to handle. See what I mean about that curse?

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Don’t get me wrong, my friends are awesome, just very white. Here are me and a few of my pixelated pals before a high school dance in the early 2000s. Photo courtesy of the author.

So when I saw the animated short-film “Your Black Friend,” I felt so seen. Clearly, I am not alone.

The film, which was written, designed, and narrated by Ben Passmore and is based on his mini-comic of the same name, is a brilliant, refreshing way to examine whiteness and racism. The comic and animated short are an open-letter from “your black friend” to you, their well-meaning white friend, about bias, alienation, and what it means to be a good ally and friend.

It’s funny, honest, and heartbreaking in equal measure. And speaking from personal experience, it captures the experience of being a black friend to white people pretty much perfectly.

So if you’re a “woke” friend and ally, here are some things your black friend wants you to know.

1. You’re going to have to get uncomfortable.

It could be something as obvious and upsetting as a racist joke. Or something as “benign” as your aunt suggesting you cross the street when she sees a group of black kids walking by. But either way, if you want to be a good friend and a real ally, you’re going to have to speak up. You’re going to have to have those tough conversations with people you care about.

It’s not easy to confront strangers or people you love, but if you don’t do it, you are part of the problem. Sitting out isn’t an option. No one said being an ally is easy.

All GIFs Silver Sprocket/YouTube.

2. “Your black friend would like to say something to the racist lady, but doesn’t want to appear to be that ‘angry black man.'”

“He knows this type of person expects that from him, and he will lose before he begins,” Passmore says.

Black people can’t always react or respond the way we want to. When I am followed in a department store, pulled over for no reason, or stared at while picking up dinner at the fancy grocery store, I can’t stop what I’m doing and yell, “YES, I AM BLACK. NO, I AM NOT A CRIMINAL YOU SMALL-MINDED, BIASED ASSHOLES.” Trust me, I want to. But especially when police are involved, I have to be calm, respectful, and obedient.

That’s where you come in. You, white friend, need to speak up and say something when I can’t. If you are not at risk, nor considered a threat, you have a certain amount of privilege in these situations. Use it to demand answers, speak to supervisors, or if things really get dicey, pull out your phone and hit record.

3. We are constantly monitoring our surroundings and adjusting our clothes, hair, speed, and speech to maintain white comfort.

We don’t like it, but one small choice — like deciding whether or not to wear a hood, or the speed at which we reach into our glove box — can be the difference between life and death.

When I am in a parking garage and walking behind a white woman, I intentionally cough or walk a little louder so she turns and notices me.

Why? Because when I don’t, that same white woman will often clutch her purse and occasionally let out an audible gasp as I pass her. This is something my white friends likely don’t realize I have to do. Some of them may even be the pearl-clutchers in the parking lot.

But to maintain white comfort and to avoid having the cops called on us, we often have to tamp down clothes, modify our speech and volume, even do our hair differently. We have to have “the talk” with our kids about how the world sees them, and how act in order to make sure they come home alive.

No, it’s not fair. No, we don’t like it. But so long as this country and its institutions are built on a solid foundation of white supremacy, it’s a grim reality. You need to know that, and take it up with your fellow white people about how to dismantle it.

4. “Your black friend wishes you’d play more than Beyoncé. There are more black performers than Beyoncé.”

“Lemonade” was awesome. There is no denying it. And yes, I love seeing her iconic looks on Instagram too. But there is more to black music and black art than Beyoncé. Dip a toe outside your comfort zone and try new new artists and genres you may not be familiar with. Go listen, see it, and experience it for yourself.

And while we’re here, you can’t say the n-word when you sing along. Nope. You just can’t.

5. Speaking of which, performative blackness is really uncomfortable.

When you wear that braided wig on Halloween, or use your “blaccent” when you’re around me or other black people, it hurts. It’s not cute or charming, and it definitely doesn’t make you seem cool.

Our culture and heritage are not costumes you can slide on and off at your convenience. We don’t get to be black only when it suits us. Neither do you.

6. “Your black friend feels like a man without a country.”

Having white friends and seeming to “fit in” with the majority can feel really alienating. You can feel too “white” for black people, and too “black” for white people when all you want to do is find people to eat pizza with. As Passmore wrote, “He is lost in this contradiction, and held responsible for it.”

7. We would love it if we could stop talking about our anxiety and frustrations regarding racism. But right now, that’s impossible.

Our concerns are urgent and real. We’re getting subpar health care. We’re disenfranchised. We’re over-policed. We’re thrown in jail. We’re killed by people sworn to protect us. It’s exhausting, but we have to keep talking about it. So do you.

We can’t be expected to dismantle white supremacy on our own.

Our white friends and allies need to step up and gather their people. Have the tough conversations. Speak up when you see racism, discrimination, and microaggressions. The time to talk about it is done. Be about it, or find yourself a new black friend.

Watch “Your Black Friend” in full and check out Passmore’s book, “Your Black Friend And Other Strangers,” coming in March.

This article was originally published on January 30, 2018.

Space Jam: A New Legacy sports a 31 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is high for a movie that made me question if I even like movies. That might sound hyperbolic, but you try watching a 20-years-too-late parody of The Matrix with Speedy Gonzales and Granny asking if a lady can check her Twitter (she can, but she won’t like what she sees). Anyway, the “haters” have shared their takes on Space Jam: A New Legacy, but surely the director of the original Space Jam liked it, right? Right…?

In comments made to TMZ, Joe Pytka revealed that it actually took him five different sittings to finish Space Jam: A New Legacy, rather than watching it all in one two-hour period. His biggest problem with it was mostly its protagonist, LeBron James. In Pytka’s eyes, James didn’t bring enough heart or reality to the film.

“The truth is that LeBron ain’t Michael,” Pytka said.

I’m sure Cavaliers, Heat, and Lakers fans are taking this well.

Pytka criticized A New Legacy for its “insignificant” soundtrack and that unlike supporting cast members Charles Barkley, Muggsy Bogues, and Bill Murray in the original, he thinks Anthony Davis, Klay Thompson, and Damian Lillard (and Rick and Morty) didn’t add much. Pytka also laid into how Bugs Bunny was depicted in the sort-of sequel.

“[Bugs] looked like one of those fluffy dolls you buy at an airport gift shop to bring your kid when your business trip has taken too long,” he said.

That’s still one of the kinder things someone has said about Space Jam: A New Legacy.

(Via the Wrap and TMZ)

There’s a fine line between being a cool dad and dishing out nightmare fuel to your children, and — much like his art as a whole — Quentin Tarantino teeters on the edge. In a recent interview with Deadline, Tarantino shared when he thinks his now infant son, Leo, will be ready to watch some of his cult classic films and uh… it’s pretty young. According to Tarantino, and if Leo takes after his old man, he anticipates he’ll be ready to watch Kill Bill by no later than 7 years old:

“If we’re judging by me, I saw a lot of stuff early on when it came out, you know, so I would imagine [early]. If I had to imagine, he would probably, as a little boy, be most attracted to Kill Bill anywhere between 5, 6 or 7.”

If that age feels a bit a bit inappropriate to you, rest assured the director has confirmed he leaves Kill Bill‘s infamous “Pussy Wagon” behind on family outings (yes, that’s in the interview) — primarily because each time he takes it out, the situation becomes an impromptu press tour that he’s not ready to subject his son to. However, jumping back to that whole age thing, it’s worth nothing that according to Tarantino — and as detailed in his upcoming book, Cinema Speculation — around that age is when he began watching more mature films, such as 1967’s Point Blank. And hey, seeing as how his early interest in cinema and violence worked out pretty damn well for him, who are we to judge?

In addition to sharing his thoughts on when his son will be ready to watch Lucy Liu’s character be decapitated, Tarantino also discussed writing novels, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, revisiting Reservoir Dogs, and cleared up some retirement rumors that have been circling around in his exclusive interview with Deadline.

(Via Deadline)

Chance The Rapper hasn’t performed live in quite some time, both as a result of him taking a break after releasing his debut album The Big Day and due to the global pandemic that shut down festivals and tours for over a year. However, in August, he’ll premiere his concert film Magnificent Coloring World in select AMC Theatres across the country, which will give his fans a chance to see him again, and he’ll return to the stage this September at Summerfest in Milwaukee.

In a new interview about the film with Billboard, Chance says the process of editing the film “made me super thirsty” to perform live again. “Watching a performance of mine from four years ago, I’m like ‘I would have done this’ or ‘I would have done that,’” he says. “I’m saying to myself ’I can’t wait to perform this particular song now. I’m looking at it as a performer, but also as a filmmaker.”

Magnificent Coloring World celebrates the five-year anniversary of Coloring Book, Chance’s critically-acclaimed, Grammy-winning third mixtape, and he’s putting it in theaters because “there’s just something different about going to see something in theaters, instead of watching it in your bed or whatever,” he says. “I always knew that I wanted this to be experienced in a group and on a huge screen with crazy surround sound.”

You can catch Magnificent Coloring World in select cities 8/13. Find out more here.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura, for those who don’t know, is the driving force behind the Transformers and G.I. Joe movies. (And a lot of other stuff, but these are our topics today.) For these two properties, someone like Kevin Feige’s role at Marvel – at least as far as the person who makes a lot of the big decisions and being the spokesperson about where things are headed – is a fair comparison.

The approach I had with this interview was pretty much, “So where are we?” We know we have Snake Eyes coming out this weekend, which, after only two G.I. Joe movies, is a complete reboot of the franchise. And next year we have Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which comes after the Transformers franchise didn’t do a complete reboot with Bumblebee, but certainly rebooted its tone. So, again, where are we? What does Lorenzo di Bonaventura want to accomplish with future G.I. Joe movies? (He goes into a surprising amount of detail on future G.I. Joe projects that are in development.) And why is G.I. Joe such a tough nut to crack?

But, first, we start with Cobra Commander. A fan-favorite character that got a pretty unusual treatment in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and now di Bonaventura explains why that character inherently rubs him the wrong way.

When do I get my Cobra Commander origin story movie?

It’s so funny. You know what? I have this funny reaction about Cobra Commander, which is he kind of looks like he’s from the KKK.

Not with that helmet.

Not with that helmet, you’re absolutely right.

The hood, I agree with you. Not a good look. But you can do the helmet and visor.

Yeah. You can do the visor for sure. I don’t know what the next one’s going to be.

Is that why you changed his look so drastically for the Joseph Gordon-Levitt version in The Rise of Cobra?

A little bit. Yeah. A little bit. I probably was the first person who went, “Are you guys sure? Doesn’t he look a little, like from the KKK?” And everybody’s looking at me like, “How dare you say that.” Some of the Hasbro guys were horrified. It was one of the reasons. The idea of why did you want to cover up his face was also interesting to us. What does he look like?

I’ve noticed Hasbro hasn’t put out a hooded version in the Classified series. It’s all the face shield. Maybe you influenced that.

Yeah. I think I might’ve affected that because I’m just like “Guys, it’s pretty obvious to me.” They kept saying, “You have to put it in, you have to put it in.” I’m like, “I will not put it in, whatever the vibe of that is.”

Every time I see marketing for ‘Snake Eyes’ it’s calling it a spinoff. Why isn’t the fact it’s a complete reboot put more out there?

I don’t know how to answer that one. Because I guess, I don’t know. I don’t know why that hasn’t gotten out there.

Because you’re “spinning it off.” I think that makes people think it’s spinning off from the other movies as opposed to starting something new.

Well, it’s probably too late for our messaging, but it’s never too late. We’ll work on that.

Why did you want to reboot after two movies?

I think, first of all, as you know, really as a fan, Snake Eyes is the most popular character and the dynamic between him and Storm Shadow is just too rich. And we thought that for the people who’ve grown up with it and know it, it’s such an interesting experience. Actually see Snake Eyes and hear him talk. And so we felt like that was really a lot of new news for the fan base.

Speaking of the fan base, do you worry they won’t like Snake Eyes talking? To be fair, when I was a kid, before I read the comics, my Snake Eyes action figure had a lot to say.

What’s great about having fans is they are so passionate, and what can be a burden is that they have a very strict interpretation of things at times. I just thought, first of all, it was really hard when he was in the G.I. Joe movies. He’s really a hard character because he doesn’t say anything. You know what I mean? And you can’t see him. I thought that was the interesting part. What is going on under that helmet? And who is that guy?

He worked well in the comics with Larry Hama writing him. But even in the cartoon, he didn’t do much. It was all Duke and Shipwreck and that parrot.

That parrot cracks me up.

I’m going to take that as a hint that the parrot is the next origin story.

Yeah. That would be funny. No, we actually wrote a script now that I’m remembering it. I’ll think about it while we’re talking. Because we did try a G.I. Joe script. Let me think. I’ve a distant memory coming, but I don’t have it…

It sounds like an interesting statement. I want to hear it.

There’s a couple things we have in development right now for G.I. Joe, which is not really origin stories. It is and it isn’t. But what is interesting is it takes a G.I. Joe and essentially brands him a traitor, and then the story is, how does he prove he’s not? And what I liked about that idea was how personal it was. I think that was the goal of Snake Eyes, to find a size of a movie that made you go, okay, we have time to develop the character. The burden of spending a lot of money is that it demands a different kind of movie. In this case, relatively speaking in Hollywood terms, it’s a middle-priced movie that allows you to spend time with the character and really explore what’s driving this guy.

Do you feel that was a problem in the first two movies? That there are so many characters?

I think it’s the problem with, frankly, almost any group, when you actually go to a group movie it splits the narrative so much that it’s tricky. I’ve done movies in the past where you pull the gang together and do the recruitment and go for the mission.

Obviously, in the world of this Snake Eyes movie, G.I. Joe already exists. But is the goal to do a few origin movies, then make a team movie?

I’m a little antithetical to this idea of planning the universe. I find there’s a certain rigidity to that, that doesn’t appeal to me at all.

I would counter that by saying you did two the other way and you are rebooting already. So that tells me you weren’t satisfied with how those went. If that strategy didn’t turn out the way you wanted for the first two, then why not maybe look into that a little bit?

Well, you’re giving me too much credit. I think I would say about the first two movies: I struggled sometimes with the tones of them. I think one of the things I was hoping to find here, and I think Robert Schwentke did a great job with it, is that it has a very unified tone and it takes itself seriously, but not too seriously. That’s what really appealed to me in terms of Snake Eyes: unveiling the character that people don’t know that much about.

I know you’re always going to have your fans who are like, “No, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow fought in Vietnam together with Stalker, and Snake Eyes got blown up and lost his voice.”Look, I’m the whitest guy ever from the Midwest and I was disappointed that Snake Eyes was just some blonde white guy.

I always think the trick of any of these properties that people have some kind of really hard one allegiance to is the trick of the filmmakers, how do you move the story forward and make it fresh? I remember Transformers one, I don’t know how many times I read, “Michael Bay’s going to ruin my childhood.”

I remember the flames on Optimus Prime was the big problem.

It worked okay, didn’t it? And brought a whole new generation of fans.

Every time I talk to you, and you did it again just now, you’re basically like, “Hey, the Transformers movies worked.” But with G.I. Joe you always have this look on your face that’s it’s a tough nut to crack for movies. Why is that?

I think the hard part about G.I. Joe is that the very name still calls up that little green soldier that I grew up with. And there is a rub between that and the fantasy that was created. It fights it. The very name of it fights what the audience is expecting from it.

I know people who are not from the United States originally who will say, “No, I was never a fan of a toy series based on the U.S. Military.” And I’m like, “Oh, but the Larry Hama stuff.” And it’s still, “It’s not for me.”

I think that is part of the rub of it. That’s why I said, tonally, I think there’s some issues with the first two movies that either are too serious or too fantastic. And when we thought about doing this, there was a grounding effect about going infiltrating a Ninja clan that has a philosophy that our hero – which is hard to do in this time and age, to give a hero the amount of awards we give Henry – has to learn to be righteous, if you would. And switch. I think there’s a total thing with G.I. Joe that’s very tricky.

I asked Henry this, but if he winds up doing 10 of these movies, is eventually he going to be wearing a mask and not speaking?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah. I would think so. Yeah, for sure.

Because he seemed into that idea. Still being paid and not having to say dialogue.

He might not like wearing that helmet all the time. I remember Ray Park, several times, taking that thing off and he was all sweat when he took it off. I think you want to get to that place where you see the helicopter crash – and we’ll pick a more modern war and see that transformation. I don’t know where, but I guess if we’re successful enough and I don’t know how to measure success right now, that’s what’s so tricky. I would have guessed that in the third movie, that’s when we would have done that.

If you got your way, what would you want the next chapter to be? Not of Snake Eyes, but just the next time you see G.I. Joe in general as a movie?

It’s funny, there’s 10 pages of one draft that got the tone exactly where I thought it should be. And I gave it to every director and every writer, and then they rejected it.

What was it?

The short version of it it was, one of the Joes is taken. The command says, “Nothing we could do.” Four or five of them band to say, “All right, we’re taking our leave.” They dress up in civies. And they go into a territory, let’s call it…

Val Verde.

[Laughs] There you go, Val Verde, right. An environment in South America, the three borders, do you know what I’m thinking of? A triple frontier? The scene is they arrive, they have no money. They walk into a police station. They look at the most wanted posters on the wall. The police, the captain says, “What are you doing?” And they go, “Well, we’ll be back. We’re going to get this guy.” And our guys are smart enough. They’ve tapped into the phone line. So now they know where this wanted guy is and then there’s a hard cut. The end of the day, they walk in, they’ve got their guy and the police captain is like, “What?” So it’s clever. It’s fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it shows great competence actually. And it doesn’t require firepower to show the ingenuity of the team.

As you said, the Transformers worked. But, but by the fifth one, The Last Knight, it didn’t do as well. Then you did a dramatic tonal shift to Bumblebee. Will the next one, Rise of the Beasts, have the Bumblebee tone?

I think it was really because of the character. The character was so lovable and just so endearing that it led us to that, in a sense. I think it’s very hard to maintain a series over a long period of time, especially one where we’re carving it out each time. I think the audience, to some extent, just started to feel like we were a little bit of a one-trick pony. What we did was we switched it up and said, “Let’s do a really emotional heartwarming story with Bumblebee.” Christina Hodson did a great job with the script. It was almost like in the first draft you knew this was a really good idea. One of the hard things about that movie is that some of the fans really didn’t feel satisfied because there wasn’t enough, wham, smashing and crashing, et cetera. Where’s all the action?

Like that early Cybertron scene? Which is basically straight out of the cartoon.

Yeah. And on purpose. One of the reasons we picked Travis Knight to direct it was because he was a guy who grew up with it and really had this sort of intrinsic DNA in him. I think that’s really helpful.

When are the Transformers and G.I. Joe going to team up? They did this all the time in the comics.

You know, the truth of matter is, the studio has always been against that. Every regime that’s been at Paramount is against it because it’s taking two franchises and making them one, but I think it’s inevitable.

Universal is all but certain to do the Jurassic Park, Fast and Furious stunt. Once that makes like $7 billion, I think everyone’s going to change their mind on combining the two.

If they’re actually going to do something like that and it works, yes. Or maybe the audience will think that’s a little too cynical. I don’t know.

Do you really think there’s any human being out there that wouldn’t be there the first day for Fast and Furious and Jurassic Park? That would be the biggest movie of all time.

The dinosaurs are chasing the cars.

Or maybe the opposite, we don’t know. We’ve got to watch it to find out who’s chasing who.

Yeah, that’s true. That’s funny. I do think it’s inevitable. I just think that we haven’t run out of storytelling yet to require us to put them together in a sense. I don’t know about you, but Alien vs. Predator, in a way, besmirched both of them.

Okay, but that was a long time ago.

I’m an old-timer. I learned the lessons. Yeah, I think it’s a possibility, there’s no doubt about it. It comes up almost every single time we start to debate what the next script is in either one of them. Then it gets pushed aside and then it’ll come up again.

I’m imagining that one person in the room every time, “What if we…”

Well, it’s funny, Steven Caple, who’s directing Transformers right now, is a huge G.I. Joe fan, too. And he was like, “Why aren’t you doing that?” Everyone was like, “Well, try to make a Transformers movie really good. Then we’ll talk about that.” Maybe Steven will be the one to crack through because he loves them both so much.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Porches, aka New York singer-songwriter Aaron Maine, has announced the follow-up to last year’s Ricky Music. Titled All Day Gentle Hold !, it’s his fifth studio album over all.

Along with the news, Maine shared a new single, “Okay” — an upbeat tune with an opening guitar line that frankly reminds me a whole lot of Akron/Family’s “Running, Returning.” As for the accompanying video, which is directed by Maine, the singer is shown performing on a makeshift rooftop in an “I Heart NY” T-shirt, then in a full-on angel get-up. “I recorded this album in my room between October 2019 and April 2021,” Maine said of his new LP in a press release. “The world was flipped and I wanted to make something injected with as much love, urgency, and lust for humanity as I possibly could.”

Last year, in an interview around Ricky Music, Maine told CR Men about experimenting with his sound, saying, “I think it was a wakeup call to be very considerate. [I realized I needed to be] thoughtful and still experiment, and not let it make me quit music. Even though I kind of felt like it could…I felt like shutting up. And then I made these songs, and I kept growing, still. I wanted to make things better. I wanted it to feel like an offering with as much love as I could possibly inject in these songs. In the end, I creatively benefited from having to see the gravity of my words and my position and platform.”

Find the All Day Gentle Hold ! art and tracklist below.

1. “Lately”
2. “I Miss That”
3. “Okay”
4. “Swimming Big”
5. “Back3School”
6. “Swarovski”
7. “Watergetsinside”
8. “In A Fashion”
9. “Inasint”
10. “Grab The Phone”
11. “Comedown Song (Gunk)”

All Day Gentle Hold ! is out 10/8 via Domino. Pre-order it here.

Lorde is well under way with her long-awaited Solar Power album rollout. The singer first returned from an lengthy musical hiatus with her album’s sunny title track, a carefree song meant to be blasted on the beach. But with her new single “Stoned At The Nail Salon,” Lorde offers a more reflective number.

Lorde’s “Stoned At The Nail Salon” boasts the wistful strumming of an acoustic guitar as the singer contemplates how her life has fundamentally shifted in the last few years. She sings of worrying she’s chosen the wrong path and learning to let go of the life she pictured for herself as a teenager. Much like her “Solar Power” track, the song features backing vocals by Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo, according to Pitchfork, as well as New Zealand natives Marlon Williams and James Milne.

About the song, Lorde said she penned it as a reflection on aging:

“This song is sort of a rumination on getting older, settling into domesticity, and questioning if you’ve made the right decisions. I think lots of people start asking those questions of themselves around my age, and it was super comforting to me writing them down, hoping they’d resonate with others too. I used this song as a dumping ground for so many thoughts…”

Listen to Lorde’s “Stoned At The Nail Salon” above.

Solar Power is out 8/20 via Republic. Pre-order it here.

It seemed inevitable that Giannis Antetokounmpo would win a championship at some point in his NBA career, with the bigger question being when that point with come. Ultimately, he reached it on Tuesday night, when the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Phoenix Suns in Game 6 of the 2021 NBA Finals to win the second championship in franchise history.

Antetokounmpo was magnificent all Finals, but he saved his best performance for last. He scored 50 points, ripped down 14 rebounds, blocked five shots, and made 17 of his 19 attempts from the free throw line, doing everything he could to get the Bucks across the finish line on their home floor.

In the aftermath of the win, an old exchange between Antetokounmpo and the late Kobe Bryant went around the Twitterverse. Antetokounmpo got challenged by Bryant to win the league MVP award, and upon doing that in 2019, Bryant both congratulated him and gave him another challenge: win a ring.

One person who saw this was Pau Gasol, and in the aftermath of the Bucks’ win, he took a moment to celebrate Antetokounmpo accomplishing what Bryant challenged him to do.

Whether or not Antetokounmpo goes on to win as many rings as Bryant remains to be seen, but we’re gonna guess that Gasol will be pretty happy no matter how many he ends up taking home in his career.

The past few years have been huge for Megan Thee Stallion. She scored her first No. 1, lived out her dream of making a song with Beyonce, performed at the Grammys, and just became the first-ever rapper to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated‘s swimsuit issue. Megan first got into rapping by watching her mother, who made music under the moniker Holly-wood. But despite her mom’s talents, Megan actually kept her rapping abilities a secret from her mom for many years.

Megan recently sat down for a conversation with Tyra Banks as part of her Sports Illustrated cover interview. Banks, who was the first-ever Black woman featured on the magazine’s cover, asked Megan how she knew she wanted to make music.

“I don’t know what I wanna do when I grow up, but I know I want to entertain everybody,” Megan said about her younger self. “I like to see people smile genuinely, I like to see people having a good time. When I finally figured out what it was I wanted to do, I figured out I wanted to rap because my mom was a rapper. She didn’t know I wanted to be a rapper, but I would literally watch her be in the studio all day be like, ‘This lady is just everything.’”

The rapper continued to say she hid her rapping abilities from her mom until her early twenties because she wanted “to be perfect” first:

“I didn’t want to tell her I could rap until I was 18 because I wanted to be perfect to her. I was practicing since I was like seven. When I got to high school, I was like, ‘I’m not going to tell her yet.’ But she’d have these CDs laying around the house, instrumentals. I would take them in my room and I’d write to them. She’d be like, ‘Megan have you seen my CDs?’ and I’d be like, ‘No. What are you talking about?’ So finally I went to college and I was like, I’ve probably held this secret for long enough. I’d start going to the studio by myself, which was probably kind of dangerous because I was like 19, bopping around trying to it out. I didn’t want her to shut me down. I wanted to show her, ‘Look how I’ve been practicing this whole time and look where I am.’ I finally came to her, I might have been 20, and I was like, ‘I can rap.’ She was like, ‘No you can’t.’ And I was like, ‘Yes I can. […] Momma don’t whoop me, but I’m going to curse.’ So I started going off and I started cursing and she was like, ‘Where did you learn all those words?’ I’m grown too, my momma was always treating me like I was a baby. So she was like, ‘You’re not coming on until you’re 21.’ But there was never anything I was passionate about besides music.”

Watch Megan’s full interview with Banks for Sports Illustrated here.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Viral sensation The Linda Lindas, the teenage punk outfit who you might remember from their killer performance at the LA Public Library, have a new song out called “Oh!” As you would probably expect, it’s a no-holds-barred banger, all tight distorted guitars and chantable lyrics reminiscent of Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, and, as Stereogum pointed out, Y2K punk-rock rebirthers The Donnas.

After The Linda Lindas first shot to national attention, they went ahead and signed to Epitaph Records and performed “Racist, Sexist Boy” on Kimmel. When the talk show host asked for the backstory behind the song, 10-year-old drummer and singer Mila said, “The backstory is that a boy from school told me that his dad told him to stay away from Chinese people, and I told him that I was Chinese and he backed away from me.” 13-year-old bassist and singer Eloise added, “There’s also a lot of sexism around boys our age. […] So we were really angry and we decided to write a song about it.”

When the band signed with Epitaph, they shared some other statements about the song and its impact. Eloise said, “We knew the song would get a good reaction, but we never imagined this. Even though we started the band for fun, now it feels we can actually make a difference with what we’re doing.” Lucia also noted, “People have reached out to us from all over the world — we get a lot of messages from little girls, but we also get messages from grandmothers. We always hope that the music we put out will inspire other young girls, but we also want it to make anyone feel like they can do anything, no matter what age they are.”

Listen to “Oh!” above.