Category: Worldwide

Five years can seem like a long time to wait for a new album for many fans (at least, those who don’t remember the gaps between albums from A Tribe Called Quest, Black Star, Dr. Dre, and Guns N’ Roses). So, SZA fans, who have mostly grown up in the era of instant gratification via streaming, delivery, and ride-share services, have been understandably impatient for news about the follow-up to her beloved 2017 debut, CTRL. Much of that ire has been directed at Punch, the president of SZA’s label, Top Dawg Entertainment (often seemingly spurred by SZA herself),

Today, though, Punch — who’s been pretty patient about the whole situation, all things considered (stans: not fun to deal with) — decided to offer some transparency on social media, offering an explanation for the increasingly lengthy delay between projects, especially given SZA’s announcement about a “SZA summer” stoking fans’ impatience. Check it out below.

I guess I should give a bit of context.
SZA and myself initially spoke about a summertime album. Which is why she mentioned summer in a post-Grammys interview.
Shortly after discussing everything with RCA and Top, we decided it was best to do it a little bit later to set everything up correctly, giving it its proper space and lead time.
There is a lot that goes into putting out a album and especially one with this much anticipation. We thank you for your continued patience and understanding. An announcement will be coming sooner than you think.
Punch

Bruce Springsteen has made a career of writing songs about good ol’ fashioned working American people. But why can’t they afford to attend his concerts? That appears to be happening with Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing for Springsteen and The E-Street Band’s newly announced US tour dates for 2023. Tickets for concerts at arenas from Tampa Bay to Tulsa, and Boston have been going for upwards of $4,000, and not all of them are even in the floor section. Fans of The Boss are predictably fuming.

As Variety reports, Ticketmaster’s new dynamic pricing features make it so the “platinum ticket” prices fluctuate based on demand. I suppose the thinking here is to cut out the secondary market by just jacking up the prices yourself? This feels like a slap in the face to fans in the name of capitalism. “Tampa mid-floor for $4,400 each, anyone?,” the Springsteen-focused fan mag Backstreets tweeted out.

Backstreets also cited a portion of Ticketmaster’s explanation for this controversial pricing structure, which says they are, “Similar to how airline tickets and hotel rooms are sold.” This is what the Ticketmaster copy looks like in full:

“Are Official Platinum Seats resale tickets?

No. Official Platinum Seats were not purchased initially and then posted for resale; they are being sold for the first time through Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster’s Official Platinum seat program enables market-based pricing (adjusting prices according to supply and demand) for live event tickets, similar to how airline tickets and hotel rooms are sold. The goal is to give the most passionate fans fair and safe access to the best tickets, while enabling artists and other people involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true market value.”

For example, the Tampa tickets posted by Backstreets are $3,819 plus another $568.50 for a total of $4,388.50. All of this to see a man who famously sang about having just, “A dollar in my pocket.” Fans have called this out for being “official scalping,” and have said they’ll just resort to bootlegging the concerts online instead.

There is no official response yet from Springsteen, although E-Street Band guitarist Stevie Van Zandt tweeted, “I have nothing whatsoever to do with the price of tickets. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Bubkis. Dick.”

For a former prosecutor, Rudy Giuliani doesn’t seem to have much respect for the justice system—which partly explains why his license to practice law has been suspended in both New York and Washington, DC. Yet his unwillingness to comply with a subpoena to testify as a witness against former boss Donald Trump, or to even show up for a hearing in New York during which he was being given a chance to fight the subpoena, may ultimately lead to Rudy’s undoing.

As CNN reports, Giuliani was originally subpoenaed to appear before a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury earlier this month in order to provide evidence in their ongoing investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. When Rudy made it clear that he had no intention of showing up, the grand jury set up a hearing in New York City (for his convenience) in order to allow him to argue against the subpoena. Despite having no real job, Giuliani was a no-show at the hearing, and as such has been ordered to appear as a witness on August 9.

As CNN wrote:

Giuliani is one of a handful of witnesses who were subpoenaed related to their appearance before Georgia state lawmakers in December 2020. During his early December appearance, Giuliani provided testimony, witnesses and so-called evidence that demonstrated voter fraud, according to court filings. Even after those allegations were investigated and disproven, Giuliani “made additional statements, both to the public and in subsequent legislative hearings, claiming widespread voter fraud in Georgia during the November 2020 election,” by re-upping the same previously debunked evidence, according to court filings.

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the subpoena states that there is evidence Giuliani was “part of a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”

If Rudy decides to play truant again in August, the judge can issue a “material witness warrant” that would allow authorities to arrest the former New York City mayor and detain him until he is able to appear before the grand jury.

No word yet on whether Rudy looks good in orange.

(Via CNN)

Jessica Alba has not fallen for the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s diversity push. The actor, who starred as Susan Storm in Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), says that not much has changed because what she’s seeing from the superhero studio is “still quite caucasian.”

In an interview with Glamour UK, Alba didn’t hold back her feelings. “Even if you look at the Marvel movies – that’s the biggest driver of fantasy and what’s happening right now in entertainment, because it’s sort of the family thing – it’s still quite Caucasian,” Alba said. “I would say I was one of the few back in the day… And it was before Marvel was sold to Disney, but it’s still quite more of the same,” she said.

Since 2018, the MCU has made more than just white guys main characters. 2018’s Black Panther was the first MCU film starring a Black character, and Captain Marvel, released in 2019, was the first MCU film with a female protagonist. 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings introduced the franchise’s first Asian-American hero and 2022’s Ms. Marvel intruded its first Muslim hero, while Anthony Mackie’s Sam Falcon has been crowned as the new Captain America.

“I just think more for the younger people who are coming up, who are going to be our future leaders, it’s important for them to see the world on screen, or in stories, in the dreams that we create as entertainers; it reflects the world that they’re in,” Alba, who has stepped away from acting in the past few years to focus on her business, The Honest Company, added.

(Via Glamour UK)

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in hot water over her husband’s multi-million dollar stock trade. Recently, Paul Pelosi — a heavyweight in the venture capitalist industry who last month crashed his car and was charged with DUI — bought between $1 and $5 million worth of stock in Nvidia, a tech company that manufactures computer chips, on June 17th. That purchase came right before a Senate meeting scheduled for later this week where a bipartisan bill to support semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. is on the table. The bill would offer incentives like tax credits and grants for companies creating these chips using U.S. labor. The deal has proven to be extremely lucrative for the Pelosis.

When questioned today on whether her husband had any inside information on the bill that led to his stock purchase, Pelosi simply brushed the accusation off.

The stock grab has put a sour taste in voters’ mouths, especially since this isn’t the first time Pelosi’s investment portfolio has seemed a bit sketchy — there’s even a Twitter account dedicated to tracking her trades. Last year, Jacobin named Nancy Pelosi their “Wall Street Trader of the Year” noting how the Congresswoman’s wealth had grown by an estimated $16.7 million during the pandemic. At a time when people were struggling to survive, Pelosi’s portfolio was thriving and though dozens of members on Capitol Hill were being investigated for potentially violating federal law with their own suspicious trades, Pelosi seemed to shoot down any notion of a bill banning representatives from investing while in office. Additionally, she’s been dodging questions about her and her husband’s stock trades for years, as evidenced in this old 60 Minutes clip.

“We are a free-market economy,” Pelosi told reporters last year when asked about the ethics of people in Congress investing in the stock market. “They should be able to participate in that.”

Everyone from Sen. Jon Ossoff to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have come out to support a stock trading ban, even getting Republicans to endorse certain measures, but no bill has yet to make it to the floor. And now, people are beginning to wonder if Pelosi’s own investments in the stock market are to blame.

“The people who control the calendar don’t want to bring it to the floor,” Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger said. “The people who control committees of jurisdiction don’t want to bring it to the floor.”

That all said, Pelosi’s shady stock trading seem to be one of the few things these days that is uniting people on both the left and the right.

(Via Yahoo! News)

Former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz is speaking out after quitting an investigation into Donald Trump earlier in the year once it became clear that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was moving towards not prosecuting the former president. In his most in-depth comments yet, Pomerantz told the legal podcast, The Cutting Edge, that biggest stumbling block to indicting Trump were concerns that the prosecution might lose.

While Pomerantz ultimately disagrees with that concern, he did walk the podcast through why Bragg had reservations about taking over an elaborate case from his predecessor Cy Vance. Via The Daily Beast:

“It’s very hard to take somebody who has not been exposed to those facts on a trip through the capillaries of the financial statements in a meeting or even a meeting or two,” he said on the podcast. “The devil was really in the details, and the details couldn’t be explained in kind of short form… ultimately, the DA—the incoming D.A.—and the team were not comfortable going forward. So did we do a bad job of laying out the facts? Did they not hear what we were saying? Were the facts too complicated to explain in the format that we were using?”

As Pomerantz explained, there was “complicated and far-reaching” evidence indicating that Trump had provided false financial information to banks to obtain loans. According to Pomerantz, if the person involved was anyone but the former president, the prosecution would not have had cold feet. He also argued that even if the prosecution did lose the case against Trump it was still the right thing to do because, in Pomerantz’s opinion, there was a preponderance of evidence he committed financial fraud.

“My view is that it is toxic to have people believe that the criminal justice system is unable to hold people accountable if those people have huge financial and political influence,” Pomerantz said. “The rule of law is supposed to extend to the rich and poor alike, to the vulnerable, to the powerful. And I was utterly convinced that if the defendant had not been Donald Trump or the putative defendant, if it had been Joe Blow from Kokomo, we would have indicted without a big debate.”

(Via The Daily Beast)

Kodak Black won’t be going anywhere for a while after being arrested in Florida on drug possession and trafficking charges last week. XXL reports that the “Super Gremlin” rapper’s supervised release was revoked on Wednesday, July 20, and he’s been put on house arrest, where he’ll be electronically monitored and must undergo drug testing. He’ll also have to check in with a probation officer if/when he needs to perform and will have to petition the court to visit the studio (hopefully, he’s got a setup at home, or that could get tricky for him).

Kodak was pulled over for illegal tints in Fort Lauderdale on July 15, and officers found 31 Oxycodone pills in his truck — without a prescription. He was booked for possession of a controlled substance without a prescription and traffick in Oxycodone 14 less than 25 grams and paid $75,000 bond the following day. Kodak’s attorney later said that the rapper was prescribed the Oxy pills when he was shot in Los Angeles earlier this year and for the pain from injuries he allegedly received from prison guards during his stint in Big Sandy, Kentucky on gun possession charges.

Kodak had been released early thanks to outgoing Oval Office occupant Donald Trump in a last-ditch bid to court a favorable vote from a voting bloc he’d spent most of his administration doing his best to completely alienate, but if a judge decides that he’s violated his probation, he could end up back inside for far longer — this time, without the benefit of a mercenary politician looking to curry favor with “the Blacks.”

Charity Ekezie, a journalist from Nigeria, is doing a fantastic job of changing perceptions about Africa because she understands something very important: You can change a lot of people’s minds by making them laugh.

Earlier this year, according to a report by France 24, Ekezie and her friends realized that a lot of commenters on TikTok, especially those in Europe and the United States, have a lot of incorrect perceptions of Africa, and many of them are racist.

Ekezie says that a lot of people see the continent as a prehistoric place that lacks running water, internet access and refrigeration.

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“So I got upset because I thought these were things that people should actually know and I decided to do something about it,” she told TRT World.

“One day I was with my cousins at my house in the village. And I was like, ‘Let’s make a TikTok. Let’s do something sarcastic. Let’s dress up like maidens and go to our village river and make a video,’” she told France 24.

The video has been viewed more than 22 million times since its January posting.

@charityekezie

We don’t have Water, pls send us some 😪😭 with my sisters @oge_smallie and @nameisbeee #charityekezie #kissmyacegoodbye #african

Since then, Ekezie has gone on to produce dozens of hilarious videos where she sarcastically explains how Africans get around without cars, drink without water and stay cool on a continent that lacks air conditioning.

In most videos, she stands right next to something that people think African people don’t have.

Here are some typical questions and her most popular video responses:

How can y’all have a country inside a country?

Fact: Africa is a continent with 54 countries fully recognized by the U.N.

@charityekezie

@bebostunna With these few points of mine, I hope I was able to convince and not confuse you, that South Africa 🇿🇦 isn’t a Scam.👉🏽👈🏽 #sacarsm #charityekezie #africa #southafrica

Why doesn’t it ever rain in Africa?

Fact: Although Africa is one of the more arid parts of the world, an average of 1,000 millimeters of rain falls per year across most of the continent.

@charityekezie

Sometimes the gods also cry cos of our suffering in Africa, and their tears drop heavily from the sky so we use it as water, cos it’s blessed. #sacarsm #charityekezie #africa with @jgolby on Instagram.

Do you have air conditioners in Africa?

Fact: Yes, people in Africa do have air conditioners. More than 3.4 million were sold on the continent in 2021.

@charityekezie

Reply to @maylan_r The African Elephant is not just an animal but a source of fresh air. btw what’s an Air conditioner?🤔 #sacarsm #africa #charityekezie

Do you have stuffed animals in Africa?

Fact: Yes, they do. Watch the video.

@charityekezie

Reply to @m4dh4tter12 Real animals are the real deal. #sacarsm #africa #charityekezie

How do you charge your phone?

Fact: About half of the people who live in Africa have access to electricity.

@charityekezie

Reply to @lazyleopard_sh Now you know how.🥰 The African Hippo is powerful 🦛 #sacarsm #knowafrica #charityekezie

Is there makeup in Africa?

Fact: Yes, Africa is where people started wearing makeup.

@charityekezie

Reply to @shinobi_2202 What is a makeup please? #sacarsm #charityekezie #africa #makeup

Do you have electricity in Africa?

Fact: Yes, we already answered that question.

@charityekezie

Reply to @adeb451 What is an electricity?😩 I only know of lightning from the god of thunder, Amadioha 🥺 #sacarsm #charityekezie #africa

If Ekezie’s goal is reaching people, she’s doing a great job. Her videos already have more than 27 million likes and she’s just getting started.

Her idea of changing people’s minds through humor is a brilliant way to get her point across. According to Stanford University, humor is a great way to change people’s minds. It allows you to “connect with your audience, diffuse tension, elevate status, foster trust, and compel others to your point of view.”

“So I do hope my videos going to help demystify every single misconception and stereotype about Africa,” she told TRT World. “And I hope that video reaches a lot more people so that they’ll get to understand that Africa is actually really nicer than what they think it is.”

Humans may not always recognize greatness right away, but sometimes it’s so clear it simply can’t be denied.

You don’t have to be a dancer yourself to see when someone’s got moves, and a viral video from choreographer Phil Wright spotlights a kid who’s got moves. Like, wow.

Mariandrea Villegas may be tiny, but she packs a mighty amount of energy, skill, coordination and x-factor into her dancing. Oh and joy. Did I mention joy?

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Villegas, 13, danced alongside choreographer Phil Wright at The Dance Awards and holy moly. She snatched the stage right out from under him.

“I think I got smoked,” he wrote when he shared the video on his Instagram page. “I need to stop dancing with these kids. 😂 They’re low-key superheroes.”

If Villegas is any evidence, he’s right. Watch:

See on Instagram

Upworthy shared the video on Instagram as well, and people loved it.

“When you find your passion at a young age, it’s a beautiful thing to see,” wrote one commenter.

“And all with a smile on her face,” wrote another.

“This kid is an absolute star 🙌” shared another, echoing the sentiment of the copious fire emojis in the comments.

Keep on dancing with joy and passion, Mariandrea! We can’t wait to see more from you. (You can follow her on Instagram if you want to see what she’s done up to now. It’s impressive.)

Billie Eilish, along with her brother Finneas, has written some of the most beloved songs of the past few years. However, if you ask her, as Apple Music’s Zane Lowe just did in a new interview today, songwriting really isn’t her strongest skill, at least not as strong as her abilities as a performer.

The conversation spawned from Eilish praising Finneas’ writing skill/habits and comparing them to her own, saying:

“Dude, Finneas is so annoying. Finneas can make… Finneas can work anytime. The dude doesn’t get a break, like, within himself. He doesn’t need it. For me, I kind of go through phases of feeling really creative and actually getting stuff done, and then go through phases of absolutely nothing at all, musically. The creativity works in other ways, but musically, Finneas is just… the guy can write so fast and so well and so often and constant. It’s his way of expressing himself and it’s really kind of his only way, and so I think that’s a big part of it. For me, I have a lot of ways of expressing myself that I find myself good at, and maybe better at, and feel really confident at. And for Finneas, songwriting is just, like, his tool.”

Lowe then asked if Eilish feels she’s better at expressing herself through means other than songwriting and she replied, “Yes [laughs]. Absolutely!” Lowe asked for an example and Eilish responded, “I feel like I’m a better performer than a writer. I feel like maybe singing is more my… like I feel more… I don’t know.”

After Lowe pushed back on Eilish perhaps selling her songwriting abilities short, Eilish continued, “I go through these many, many months where I’m like, ‘I don’t write songs, I haven’t written songs in a long time.’ And then I’ll sit down and I’ll write.”

Check out the full interview above.