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Is Billie Eilish really a Slytherin?

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We’ll read you like a book.

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EA hosted its EA Play Live event to showcase upcoming game releases, and for fans of sports games, all eyes were on what they’d release for their Madden 21 and FIFA 21 titles.

The result was a long wait for a relatively short snippet of a trailer that combined some game engine footage (not gameplay footage) from both games into one trailer for what the two games will look like on next-gen consoles, Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X.

It’s not a lot and, as always with a cinematic trailer, everything requires being taken with a grain of salt, but both games certainly look great and the atmosphere of the stadiums in FIFA continue to get bigger and better. When we’ll get actual gameplay trailers for the two games remains to be seen, along with updates on what might be changing or getting upgraded in the games — beyond the little details that were given out in this week’s Madden trailer that helped officially announce Lamar Jackson’s presence on the cover.

One can expect the biggest expansions will be on the Ultimate Team modes, given that those are where EA makes money off microtransactions, which have become of the utmost importance for sports video game developers in recent years, but hopefully some care will be put into the franchise and career modes to improve those, along with the annual gameplay tweaks we know will be coming.

Less than two years after her crticially-acclaimed sophomore album K.T.S.E., Teyana Taylor will release her third record, called The Album, on Juneteenth. The turnaround from album-to-album is rather quick for Teyana as fans waited nearly four years for the follow up to her debut album, VII. Teyana wrote about the upcoming album and her reasons for releasing it on Juneteenth in an op-ed for Billboard.

“I’ve always been about us being celebrated and celebrating my culture and my people,” she wrote. “For everything to happen, from my album getting delayed and it falls perfectly on Juneteenth, yes, it’s a celebration.” Teyana later explained that while progress has been made, there is still much more work to be done and now is not the time to remove our foot from the gas.

We still got work to do, though. It’s still a lot of work to be done, but I just wanted it to be a thing where Juneteenth is amazing, but even after Juneteenth, we have to keep going. We have to keep celebrating one another and not letting that die down. We have to all keep taking a stand, because it shouldn’t be just a thing where we’re celebrated for one day, or a month, and then that’s that.

Teyana also opened up about handling her pregnancy while watching the recent events that have led to nationwide Black Lives Matter protests.

It’s all the way falling apart for me, because I’m feeling for our people. And to also be a strong Black woman, and be so enraged, [it’s hard], because I’m also pregnant. I gotta find that balance to being mommy, and being that Black woman… So imagine having that mentality and you’re sitting there six months pregnant? That part just makes me cry.

Teyana also revealed that while she is not “condoning” [looting, she is for a ” by-any-means movement,” adding “I don’t care about no glass windows. I’m sorry, because we’ve been trying to be nice. We’ve been trying to be peaceful and it hasn’t gotten us anywhere.”

The Album is out 06/19 via GOOD Music and Def Jam.

[via Billbaord]

Quibi isn’t dead, but it is one the streamer equivalent of life support. When it launched on April 6 — a mere few weeks into the nationwide quarantine — the short-bite service bowed well below forecasts, and has continued to sink; at its current trajectory it’s set to garner less than 2 million paid subscribers, less than 30% of its initial goal. But there’s one person who won’t give in to pessimism: Jeffrey Katzenberg, Quibi’s powerful founder.

As per Variety, the former Disney chairman-turned-Dreamworks co-founder was upbeat when speaking at the virtual edition of the TV festival SeriesFest. “I’m still quite optimistic this is gonna work,” Katzenberg told the crowd. Why would he think that? Partly because he’s hoping patrons will soon be out and about again, waiting on lines, needing time to kill by staring at their phone for 10-minute-a-pop content.

“[W]hen the country opens up… we are all going to be back on the go again,” Katzenberg said. “The difference is, is that we are going to waiting on line for more things than every before… We are going to be waiting like crazy, and I hope Quibi is there to keep you entertained.”

Indeed, he once again blamed the timing. “At the very moment the world stopped being on the go was the moment we launched,” he added. “It was a cement wall we ran into.” He also maintains Quibi isn’t competing with the other big streamers, which you can watch at home. Their territory is different. “They’re all battling for the same thing. We’re in a white space. We want you from 7 in the morning to 7 at night.”

Looks like we’ll see. Maybe if reopening doesn’t go as terribly as it’s gone in certain pockets of the country, there will be tons of people spending gobs of time standing in endless, social distancing lines, ready to fire up some new Reno 911. And there are elections coming up…

(Via Variety)

It’s been well-known for a while now that the nation’s movie theaters were aiming to reopen, for the most part, in mid-July, and as per Variety, that’s becoming increasingly official: AMC has announced that they’re lifting the gates on 450 of their 600 theaters in the United States. Not surprisingly, there will be considerable restrictions, minus one biggie: Guests will be encouraged to wear masks but not required.

Their reasoning? Wearing masks to protect others from your potentially COVID-laced germs have, somehow, become “political.” Shielding the lower half of one’s face has proven controversial in parts of the country, and when photos are made public of people crammed into, say, an Applebee’s, many are sans mask. What’s more, some are very hostile about wearing one. And while they’re requiring staffers to wear them, AMC — which has been losing quite a lot of money since shuttering their locations in mid-March — evidently doesn’t wants to avoid any scenes.

“We did not want to be drawn into a political controversy,” AMC president and CEO Adam Aron told Variety. “We thought it might be counterproductive if we forced mask wearing on those people who believe strongly that it is not necessary. We think that the vast majority of AMC guests will be wearing masks. When I go to an AMC feature, I will certainly be wearing a mask and leading by example.”

The move echoes Cinemark, which revealed a couple weeks ago that they, too, wouldn’t be enforcing masks on their customers, though, unlike AMC, they didn’t mention why. That said, the chain will make masks available, albeit for a $1 fee.

There will be a number of safety precautions afoot, including, as per Variety, the “electrostatic sprayers, HEPA vacuums and upgraded MERV 13 ventilation filters,” all of which should “eliminate airborne particles and reduce the chance that COVID-19 will spread.” They will also clean auditoriums between showings and allow extra time between shows, as well as block out every row to ensure social distancing. Online ticketing will be encouraged, to avoid face-to-face interactions.

Of course, how many will be wearing masks? And how many will throw one of those fits that tend to go viral? Looks like we’ll be finding out in less than a month.

(Via Variety)

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Tory Lanez shows off his affinity for fast cars, pretty women, and lots of money in his new video for “Stupid Again,” the latest single from his April album The New Toronto 3. Opening with a sample of UFC fighter Conor McGregor bragging after his 2016 title bout against Eddie Alvarez, the song finds Tory unapologetically flexing on haters, admirers, and everybody else. The video does the same, as Tory cavorts with vixens, brandishes handguns against his enemies, and makes it rain. He also pays homage to Jay-Z’s “Imaginary Players” skit with an illustrated segment that highlights his riches.

Tory’s recent successes with his Quarantine Radio livestream may make it easy for some to forget that the reason so many viewers tuned in is the enthusiastic fanbase he built up over the past several years of releasing high-quality, entertaining music and videos. He’s been getting back showing off those skills in recent weeks though, sharing the singles “Temperature Rising” and “Dope Boy’s Diary” and featuring on French Montana’s “Cold,” as well as announcing his Social Distancing Tour streaming on YouTube. He also reportedly finished out his label deal, offering him a higher degree of creative freedom, which we’re sure to see him flex as life begins to return to normal.

Watch Tory Lanez’s “Stupid Again” video above.

A few days ago Noname tweeted that felt like rapping. Well, she does just that on her latest release, the minute-long, Madlib-produced “Song 33.” And in case you’re wondering, yes, she does address the J. Cole controversy, after setting up some needed context by addressing the many, many elephants in the room.

“One girl missin’, another go missin’ / One girl missin’, another,” she raps, commenting lyrically on the lack of noteworthy entertainers stepping up on behalf of Breonna Taylor, Oluwatoyin Salau, and all the other young, Black women who have been killed or abused in recent weeks. “But n****s act quiet as a church mouse,” she accuses, “In the studio when duty calls to get the verse / I guess the ego hurt now.”

Then, while she never says his name, she makes it crystal clear who she’s talking about and why. “He really ’bout to write about me when the world is in smokes / There’s people in trees when George was beggin’ for his mother / Saying he couldn’t breathe, you thought to write about me?”

Fans speculated that Noname was the subject of J. Cole’s recent song “Snow On Tha Bluff,” in which he details his complicated feelings about being a movement leader while insinuating that revolutionaries’ messages would get better reception if they adjusted the tone. Cole then all but confirmed that the song was about Noname after fans called him out, but stopped just short of apologizing.

With “Song 33,” Noname makes clear why the backlash against Cole was intense: There’s a war going on outside. Cole’s track, while well-intentioned and perfectly understandable with a healthy dose of empathy on the listener’s part, was also ill-timed and unnecessary in context. “Song 33” responds and puts the focus firmly back where it needs to be: On the victims of racist and sexist violence, and making sure that they are among the last we ever need to memorialize in song or in protests.

Listen to “Song 33” above.