Early into the quarantine, realizing people at home were starving for entertainment, Timbaland and Swizz Beatz took to Instagram Live for a livestream beat battle that captivated hip-hop lovers from all over. That tussle would soon give way to Verzuz, a beat battle series that has included everyone Babyface and Teddy Riley, Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, Ludacris and Nelly, and many more. After a short break, Verzuz has returned with an announcement for their next battle.

The latest one will address the Black Lives Matter protests currently taking place all over the country (and the world), with John Legend and Alicia Keys announced to take part in a duel meant to ring in the Juneteenth holiday. The battle had been rumored to be in the works for quite some time, as fans have called for the two to go head-to-head. Legend himself even requested a piano battle between him and Keys back in May, calling it “the best thing.”

News of the battle arrives as both artists are readying their latest albums. Legend will release his sixth LP Bigger Love on the same day of the battle. Meanwhile, Alicia Keys was slated to release her seventh record ALICIA last month, but delayed it due to the pandemic. Legend and Keys’ battle will also serve as the follow-up to Kirk Franklin and Fred Hammond’s battle at the end of May.

You can watch John Legend and Alicia Keys face off on Fri., June 19, at 8pm EST / 5pm EST.

Despite the fact that players are raising some concerns about the situation, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the NBA doesn’t restart its season in Orlando next month. These various issues, as raised on a call reportedly led by Kyrie Irving on Friday night, will presumably be the source of conversation between the league and its Player’s Association over the coming weeks.

One issue cannot be negotiated away: The United States is currently in the midst of a pandemic, and while the league can take every single precaution possible to make sure those at their various Disney World locations, COVID-19 does not care, as evidenced by the more than two million cases and nearly 117,000 deaths it has caused nationwide. An optimist would say that all of these precautions would work, but as the saying goes, hope for the best and plan for the worst. And in a conversation with Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe, Player’s Association executive director Michele Roberts expressed that her approach before the bubble league begins is that someone will contract the virus.

“That’s the only realistic mind-set you can have going into this. A player is going to test positive,” Roberts said. “It’s not any more of this ‘if’, it’s ‘when’ and what can I do to mitigate against the ‘when.’ When it happens, if I’m not successful, what treatment is available to me, what are my chances of being really, really sick, and how are you detecting the presence of an infection?

“Honestly, I don’t think this is any different than what any American has to come to grips with.”

Roberts, of course, is 100 percent correct, especially with reports coming out in recent days that Disney staffers won’t adhere to the restrictions the NBA puts on its players and are free to come and go as they please. That’s magnified by the fact that Florida has seen an increase in the number of new COVID cases in recent days.

Perhaps the league will get lucky and everyone will stay healthy, which is what every single person is rooting for once they get down to Orlando and set up shop at Disney for several months. But Roberts is a realist, and the reality is that there’s a major risk looming over this entire situation.

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Christine and the Queens have thrived during their time in quarantine. Shortly after it began, Christine began to hold nightly livestream concerts from her living room, becoming one of the first artists to do so. The concerts also arrived shortly after the French singer’s 5-track EP La Vita Nuova, as well as the bonus track she added to the album, “I Disappear In Your Arms.” On Friday, she brought the latter to late-night TV, performing the song remotely on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Performing from an empty venue, Christine freely moved and danced around the stage while belting out the lyrics to the La Vita Nuova bonus track. The performance arrived not long after she serenaded viewers from her apartment for a performance of “People, I’ve Been Sad” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

Aside from her own music, Christine has also delivered numerous covers of songs from various genres. She gave a synth-heavy performance of The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” as well as a cover of Travis Scott’s “Highest In The Room” on 4/20. She also shared a cover of Neil Young’s classic hit “Heart Of Gold.”

You can watch her performance in the video above.

La Vita Nuova is out now via Because. You can get it here.

The musical chairs shuffling of blockbuster release dates continues! On Friday, news broke that Christopher Nolan’s Tenet — once seen as the movie that will bring the masses back to movie theaters amidst a still raging pandemic — was being bumped two weeks back, while Wonder Woman 1984 had been relocated to October. Godzilla vs. Kong was also knocked from its original November 20 date, but that slot didn’t stay open long; as per Deadline, No Time to Die has quickly claimed it, meaning it will open a bit earlier than before.

Mind you, when we say “earlier” we mean five days. The latest Bond, which in our pre-Covid before-time was once slated for release in early April, was supposed to belatedly open on Nov. 25, around Thanksgiving. Now it will…open slightly before Thanksgiving. That’s in America, by the way; in the U.K., it will arrive on Nov. 12. That makes sense; 007 is theirs, after all.

The news was broken on Twitter:

Of course, who knows where we’ll be in November. A second wave of coronavirus infections is still expected, even though Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said it’s “not inevitable.” (Meanwhile, there are plenty of images of newly packed late spring crowds all over the nation sprinkled over social media.) Movie theaters are still optimistically hoping to reopen, with liberal amounts of restrictions, by mid-July. Surely at some point we’ll all be able to watch Daniel Craig fight Rami Malek.

(Via Deadline)

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Skincare, cleaning, and other practical products that’ll give you the before-and-afters you deserve and paid for, gosh darn it.

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Yummy!

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Are you Electric Blue or Fire Engine Red?

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Just two months into the year, Bad Bunny shared his third album Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana. A twenty-song effort, the album would not be his only release of 2020; the Latin star returned just three months later with another album, Las Que No Iban a Salir, a title that translates to The Ones That Were Not Coming Out. A little over a week later, on May 19, Bad Bunny would begin a social media break after tweeting “bye, I left.” Since that day, a lot has happened in the world and, taking a moment to address it all, Bad Bunny shared a statement in Time magazine.

Titled “Forgive Me,” it found Bad Bunny apologizing for not speaking up sooner about the protests that have taken over the country. He also expressed his disbelief with what occurred in recent weeks. “Maybe it’s because I’ve always seen people’s hearts and, in my house, I was always taught that we are all the same regardless of race, religion, and surname; that we are all brothers/sisters,” he wrote. “I SWEAR I don’t feel well, and I don’t think I can express myself properly.”

Bad Bunny also promised to be extremely active in his efforts to fight against systemic racism rather than doing surface-level work. “There are artists who only upload a photo or a basic message just to calm public pressure or to look ‘good,’” he wrote. “Not me… I want to go deeper and see in what way I can serve, how I can support the fight against a systematic monster that has been [around for] centuries.”

You can read Bad Bunny’s full statement translated into English over here.

[via Time]