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Uproxx attended Mary J. Blige’s inaugural Strength Of A Woman Festival in 2022. The 2024 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame nominee explained how the event came to be, telling Uproxx, “It was something that just came to us — like, why don’t we do this? Because when we go to the Essence Festival, people are like, ‘I’m going to see Mary.’ So, we’re like, ‘Hmm, well, let me just get my own festival and have everyone come to that festival every year.’”

People will have another opportunity to see Blige at the 2024 Strength Of A Woman Festival And Summit presented by Queen of Hip-Hop Soul and Pepsi in partnership with Live Nation Urban.

“Good Morning NYC!” Blige captioned her Instagram announcement. “We’re proud to present the 2024 Strength Of A Woman Festival And Summit in partnership with @livenationurban. Our purpose is to empower, educate and elevate on May 10-12, Mother’s Day Weekend in New York, NY for the first time. I can’t wait to see you there!”

The 2024 musical lineup features 50 Cent, Jill Scott, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Muni Long, Lola Brooke, and Funk Flex. As per the press release, the weekend will wrap “with a Gospel Brunch, hosted by Mary J. Blige, and Gospel Concert headlined by The Clark Sisters with Femme It Forward.” Pepsi will also bring food by local Black female restaurateurs to the fan experience through Pepsi Dig In—a platform designed to provide visibility, resources, and awareness to Black restaurateurs.

Pre-sale tickets are available now here, and the general sale is scheduled for Friday, March 8, at 10 a.m. ET.

“I’m so excited to bring our Strength Of A Woman Festival And Summit to my hometown, New York City, a place that has always been a huge source of inspiration for me,” Blige said in a statement. “Having the opportunity to continue to uplift, inspire, and build within my community is the reason I created this festival. I’m so grateful for all the support from our performers, attendees, and, of course, our partners, Live Nation Urban and Pepsi. Nobody does it like New York, so get ready.”

See the full day-by-day schedule below.

Strength Of A Woman Festival 2024 Lineup: Friday, May 10

Comedy show at The Apollo Theatre with performances by Tiffany Haddish, Don’t Call Me White Girl, and Paris Sashay; Jazz Concert at Blue Note Jazz Club with a performance by Robert Glasper

Strength Of A Woman Festival 2024 Lineup: Saturday, May 11

Strength Of A Woman Summit at The Glasshouse, hosted by Angie Martinez; Strength Of A Woman Concert at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, with performances by Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Jill Scott, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Muni Long, Lola Brooke, and Funk Flex

Strength Of A Woman Festival 2024 Lineup: Sunday, May 12

Gospel Brunch at the Brooklyn Chophouse in Times Square, hosted by Mary J. Blige; Gospel Concert at Brooklyn Paramount with a performance by The Clark Sisters with Femme It Forward

It’s unfortunately common for shows to get the axe before the series reaches a satisfying conclusion, which is why it was especially frustrating to see Peacock cancel Girls5ever just before its third season. The show starred Busy Phillips, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Paula Pell, and Sara Bareilles as a former 1990s girl group who reunite after decades.

Luckily, Netflix was prepared to step in, and the upcoming season (and seasons one and two) will land on the streamer next week. And that’s not all they are looking forward to.

The girls admitted that they have talked about going on tour together, something they have never done. “I want that to happen,” Goldsberry told Variety. “We’re so ready.” Despite their show, the girls have actually only performed live once together, during a livestream event in 2021 with no audience.

Bareilles, who is already an established singer, is also on board. “I would do it in a heartbeat. Get on a tour bus with these gals. We brought that up a few times. The truth is just schedules and cost. But if that could get sorted out, it would be so much fun.” Now that they have some Netflix momentum, maybe a Girls5eva tour will be heading out on the road soon! Maybe Daisy Jones and the Six will finally get their shot, too.

Thanks to Netflix picking up the series, Phillips thinks that it will help the show reach more viewers. “It’s so smart and funny and it’s that Tina Fey brand of joke on top of joke,” Philipps says. “Meredith Scardino is one of my favorite writers of all time. I think people really love Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and I think that they’re gonna really love this too.” Much like the Girls5eva girls who got a second chance at singing, the show will get a second chance to reach a wider audience. Maybe there will be a show about their show one day. Everyone loves an underdog!

(Via Variety)

Sometimes your passion can be staring you right in the face, and you don’t even know it. That was the case for Spencer Falls, aka The Unlikely Florist, an artist hailing from New Zealand who started a flower-arranging business out of his van in Venice Beach, California. Before Falls was making elaborate arrangements for weddings and events, and shipping his creations all across the country, he was trying to make it as an actor in Hollywood and feeling creatively unfulfilled.

Floristry wasn’t a way out of the business, it was just a means to make some cash after Falls lost the restaurant job he was using to support himself between auditions. What Falls didn’t realize was this was the creative outlet he had always been looking for.

“I wasn’t starting a business, I was playing a character,” says Falls, “Flowers and floristry was just yet another way to support the dream of acting and I think we can be blind to opportunity if we’re too fixated on our own direction that we want to go.”

In the latest episode of Cash Class, accredited financial counselor and personal finance expert, Lissa Prudencio sits down with Falls to talk about the importance of work-life balance and how his parents instilled in him a work ethic that allowed him to follow his passions while staying grounded in realism. They also discuss how he went from an apple picking snowboarding enthusiast in his home country of New Zealand to an unfulfilled actor in LA, to flipping his passion for creativity and challenge into the Unlikely Florist, the greatest role he has ever played.

It’s quite an inspiring journey and a reminder that making money moves doesn’t have to be creatively unfulfilling if you are able to monetize your passions.

“You have to listen to your heart. Looking at the moments in your childhood that brought you the most joy, really hone in on what those things are, you can find yourself something that you’re highly passionate about and it comes pretty easily to you and something that you can… fight for and devote your entire life to.”

Well said! Watch episode three of Cash Class above to learn more about Spencer Falls’ inspiring story.

In January, Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign announced that their joint project Vultures had been reimagined as three complete albums after several delays to the original release. At the time, they gave three new release dates: February 9, March 8, and April 5. With the first part out already and the second part scheduled for release this New Music Friday, when can fans expect it to hit DSPs like Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal?

With most releases, the answer would be 9 pm PT or midnight ET tonight, but with Kanye West, release dates are more like vague suggestions than hard deadlines. Fans watched the first Vultures release date come and go in December without a hint of the new album, with Kanye insinuating that it might have been Nicki Minaj’s fault for not clearing a verse he asked for at the last minute. A second release date in late December also disappointed fans — but didn’t surprise them — and the third release date, the aforementioned February 9, also nearly passed without the album coming out.

However, while Kanye did manage to get the album out on the day (if not at the expected time), it was not without issues. The album was pulled from Apple Music by its distributor, FUGA, which issued a statement claiming that Kanye had only gotten the album through its service through skullduggery and that it was working with DSPs to have it removed entirely. While it’s still available on Spotify, the song “Good (Don’t Die)” was removed after Donna Summer’s estate filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement over an authorized interpolation of her song “I Feel Love.”

So, Vultures 2 might not even come to Apple Music, unless Kanye has a contingency plan, and even if it does, it almost certainly won’t be at midnight. The rest remains to be seen.

Tyla made a new Instagram post today (March 7) where she announced that she would be canceling her tour dates for 2024. She was originally supposed to perform shows in Europe starting later this month, before heading to do a leg in North America, in support of her upcoming self-titled album.

“It’s hard having to turn down opportunities you’ve been waiting your whole life for but God has his plan,” she wrote in the Instagram caption.

Here’s what to know about why Tyla’s tour is canceled.

Why Are Tyla’s Tour Dates For 2024 Canceled?

Tyla opened up in a statement on social media that she canceled her tour due to an injury that she hasn’t healed from. While she didn’t share exactly what happened, it does sound like a serious issue that needs to be dealt with.

“For the past year I’ve been silently suffering with an injury that has tragically worsened,” she wrote. “I’ve seen doctors and specialists with high hopes, but the pain has only become more agonizing as has the severity of the situation.”

“I am absolutely heartbroken to have to say this but as of right now I won’t be able to proceed with the tour,” she wrote. “In consulting with medical professionals, it’s become increasingly clear that continuing any festival or tour dates would jeopardize my long-term health and safety.”

Check out Tyla’s Instagram post about the news below.

All in a dream. All in an Airstream.

If there’s one thing we love at Uproxx Life it’s the intersection of music and travel. So when we heard that global dance music superstar and activist LP Giobbi was dropping her own travel docu-series, we were hyped. The three-part travelouge – “All In An Airstream” – reveals the producer’s 20-day cross-country road trip in (you guessed it) an Airstream motorhome.

Teaming up with DJ Tennis, LP made stops for pop-up performances in forests and within coveted locations, collaborating with local musicians and promoters along the way. While Giobbi is usually seen jet-setting around the world playing monster festivals, the Airstream tour allowed the producer to slow down and connect more intimately with her fans.

Filmed as a three-part series — launching with exclusive content on Uproxx — the documentary closely follows LP Giobbi and DJ Tennis to 10 cities. Starting in Asheville, NC at New Belgium Brewery Co., the two then rolled down to Pelham, TN’s The Caverns. Later, they showed up to Tucson’s Pima Air & Space Museum and popped up in downtown Santa Barbara, CA on a mobile DJ cart.

“I think we started dreaming about this tour during an after-party,” DJ Tennis told Uproxx. “Exploring the idea of going to places where normally DJs don’t go. Instead of taking planes and flying or taking a car, why not in an Airstream? It was a dream for both of us.”

From building circuit boards and full-on synthesizers in Asheville’s Moog Factory to igniting primal beats in the caves at Pelham, TN’s The Caverns, finding the best barbecue in Nashville to having Giobbi’s parents man the Airstream and merch — the docuseries illustrates a more intimate and personal side to an artist on her way to megastardom.

In January, Uproxx forecasted an Ariana Grande album and named it among “The Most Anticipated Albums Of 2024.” The wait was short, as Grande is set to release Eternal Sunshine, her seventh studio album and first since 2020’s Positions. Lead single “Yes, And?” was released on January 12 and became Grande’s eighth-career Billboard Hot 100 No. 1. The full tracklist was revealed last week.

So, when can you actually listen to the album?

When Will Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Come Out On Apple Music?

Eternal Sunshine is due out tomorrow, March 8, which means the album should become available to stream on Apple Music (and across all streaming services) at 9 p.m. PST/midnight EST.

Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Tracklist

1. “Intro (End Of The World)”
2. “Bye”
3. “Don’t Wanna Break Up Again”
4. “Saturn Returns (Interlude)”
5. “Eternal Sunshine”
6. “Supernatural”
7. “True Story”
8. “The Boy Is Mine”
9. “Yes, And?”
10. “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love)”
11. “I Wish I Hated You”
12. “Imperfect For You”
13. “Ordinary Things” Feat. Nonna

Will Ariana Grande Go On Tour In Support Of Eternal Sunshine?

Grande recently sat down for an interview with Zach Sang of Zach Sang Show and discussed whether she’ll go on tour.

“I would love to do shows,” the two-time Grammy winner said. “I love being on stage. I miss being on stage. I miss my fans so much. That’s the honest-to-God truth. I had a really hard time emotionally on my last tour, but I think that’s because of where I was at. So, just like with music, I think I’m really excited to redefine my relationship to shows when I’m ready and to see what that looks like. I do have a very busy year with this and with Wicked, and then the next year, I also have Wicked Part 2, so I’m interested to see what that would look like.”

Grande added, “It would obviously be shorter. If it were anything, it would be a littler something, but I definitely do have the itch. I miss my fans and miss being on stage, but then again, I also am not ready to announce any sort of thing or get people too excited because I don’t want to disappoint.”

Eternal Sunshine is out 3/8 via Republic. Find more information here.

Somewhere, in fictional Europe, a fair-haired despot with mycophobia and a lisp-inducing overbite panics over the elevated humidity levels in her expansive palace. She fears spores more than the backlash over a group of protestors her soldiers recently gunned down. She dreads being seen as ridiculous, even as she converses with her father’s rotting corpse and tortures gala guests with a tone-deaf rendition of a 70s love ballad.

She is ridiculous, but she’s also unlikeable, even to the actress playing her.

In a recent New York Times Magazine interview, Kate Winslet provided a colorful bit of commentary on Elena Vernham – the fascist tyrant reigning over much of the absurdity in HBO’s latest political satire, The Regime.

“God, she’s such an awful, awful cow.”

Just a couple of decades ago, being “awful” was a privilege reserved solely for men. The Sopranos, a show that birthed the concept of “prestige TV,” was rife with them. The show’s protagonist, Tony, was a New Jersey mobster pining for the good ol’ days when he could dump bodies in broad daylight and mow down enemies on crowded streets. Tony was awful, unlikeable even, but, perhaps because men seldom grapple with likability the way women do, he was never stamped with that scarlet letter. (Though his wife certainly was.)

No, Tony’s bad behavior earned him a more respectable label: the anti-hero. Narcissistic, manipulative, and lacking empathy, the anti-hero isn’t concerned with ingratiating himself to audiences. He doesn’t feel compelled to justify his actions. He serves himself, morality be damned, and we either love him or hate him for it. It’s that choice that makes him interesting, compelling, revolutionary. In contrast, anti-heroines have taken a bit longer to find their footing on-screen. For every Don Draper and Walter White, every Travis Bickle and Michael Corleone, few women were allowed to match their depravity.

When they did, they were often pegged as villains, their complexity distilled into something more digestible, uncomplicated. Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, Bette Davis in All About Eve, Tracy Flick in Election, Lucy Liu in Kill Bill. We might not have had the right language or precedent to qualify them, but we were drawn to them all the same, these women who challenged critics to invent new archetypes by which to define them. Who were messy, neurotic, misunderstood chaos-stirrers.

Fast-forward a couple of decades to Winslet playing a delightfully unhinged autocrat drunk on her own fascist Kool-Aid. She’s six degrees separated from other unlikeable women who’ve been ruling our screens, large and small, for the past few years.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s foul-mouthed, fourth-wall-breaking shop owner was so shamelessly horny she didn’t even warrant a name, preferring to be known by the comical insult, Fleabag. She fucked priests and brawled with grown men in crowded restaurants, masturbated to Barack Obama speeches, and wondered if she’d identify as a feminist were she blessed with bigger tits. On paper, she was not likable. And yet, she was one of the most fascinating characters on our TVs in 2016. Before her, on film, Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne mused, resentfully, about the aspirational designation of “the cool girl.” Yes, she may have faked her disappearance, orchestrating an investigation that would catapult her cheating husband to the top of everyone’s whodunnit list. Yes, she may have brutally murdered a man who pined over her for years, framing him as her kidnapper before capitalizing on her ruse by blackmailing her husband into continued matrimony. But, for many, Amy’s most damning sin was questioning a male dogma, one that said hot girls like guzzling beer, gorging themselves on dirty hot dogs, watching them play video games, and listening to them talk about sports. Most importantly, they did all this while still wanting to fuck them.

“You are not dating a woman,” Rosamund Pike says in a voiceover directed to these men. “You are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them.” Of the women guilty of perpetuating this lie, she rants, “They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be.”

Amy, and many of the unlikeable women filling our screens these days, seem done with pretense. Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman, Cate Blanchett in Tar, Rachel Sennott in Shiva Baby, Sarah Snook in Succession, Jodie Comer in Killing Eve, Jodie Foster in True Detective. They’ve all ushered in a sort of renaissance of complex, sometimes irredeemable women. The ones who refuse to shrink themselves for mass consumption. And they’re slowly erasing the silent clause that requires them to fix themselves, to prune any flaws they might have by the end of their story, becoming heroes, or worse, good girls, by its end. Even better, they’re doing away with, what feminist author Roxanne Gay deems the “diagnosis” that makes their unlikability tolerable. For many, there’s no sob story, no long-harbored trauma fueling their actions. We don’t need to know the specifics of their childhood, the multitude of ways in which they’ve been stifled or suffocated or wronged to sympathize or even perversely enjoy the havoc they wreak. Instead, we can just watch (and maybe enjoy) them burning the world down, knowing it was never made for them to begin with.

We should interrupt with a caveat here that, while white women are fully in their breaking bad era on-screen, the ways in which women of color are allowed to challenge conventions of likability are still strictly policed. Generations of fighting against real-life stereotypes like that of the “angry Black woman” mean minority characters face a unique obstacle when embracing the Dark Side. They’re judged more harshly, considered even less relatable, and often not iconized in the pop culture pantheon. Still, when we see Dominique Fishback’s feral killing spree in Swarm, Stephanie Hsu’s multi-verse-threatening nihilism in Everything Everywhere All at Once, or Myha’la Herrold brash bullshit-sniffing in Leave the World Behind, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, and Industry, we believe there’s hope.

Even as leading roles for women wane, as female creative roles are pared back, and male critics judge both more harshly than their women counterparts, TV and film are still finding ways to dismember and bury one-dimensional femme protagonists. In her book, Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate, Anna Bogutskaya relishes listing the categories we put women in on screen. Bitches, sluts, trainwrecks, shrews, witches, mean girls, and psychos, they were the women she was drawn to, the women who “didn’t look, behave, or talk like the blueprint of a ‘good woman.’”

Looking at this year’s Oscar race, it’s hard to find that blueprint.

From Emily Blunt’s booze-addled housewife who pawns her children off to friends and self-destructs over her husband’s many affairs, to Emma Stone’s Frankenstein on a quest of self-discovery (and screaming orgasms), the performances in the running for one of the most coveted awards in Hollywood are far removed from the Susie homemakers and simpering damsels that were once story stand-ins for real-life women. Or, at least, what male auteurs believed women to be. No, the women enjoying the spotlight now are murderers (probably), accessories to war crimes, sex offenders, pretentious actors, single-minded athletes, and posh aristocrats with an abhorrence of all things ugly. They aren’t made in the image of man’s desire. They aren’t mirrors of femininity women are comfortable gazing into for too long. They’re more fascinating than all of that. They’re flawed, nasty, desperate, loud, demanding, uncaring, unfeeling, grieving, and grasping. Wholly unlikeable. Human.

We’ll have more, please.

You’ve probably encountered this problem before: you are home for some holiday or event and you forgot your toothbrush. Luckily, your parents have a nice backstock of every toiletry you could ever need, including those top-tier Kleenex tissues you can’t afford. It’s a common problem! For Clara McGregor, daughter of Ewan McGregor, that problem became personal.

McGregor posted an Instagram Reel showing off a toothbrush she used at her parent’s house, but it wasn’t your typical Oral B Soft Bristle Brush. It was an official Obi-Wan toothbrush complete with various Star Wars phrases (“Goodbye old friend” and “Maye the force be with you”) and a lightsaber. The kind of thing you dreamed of in 2002!

Clara captioned the video with a warning: “Note to self: Don’t rely on your parents to have extra toothbrushes at home.”

Clara and Ewan are starring alongside each other in Bleeding Love, which follows Ewan as The Father who is tasked with bringing his estranged daughter to rehab. The movie is expected to land on streaming later this year.

Unfortunately, the Obi-Wan toothbrush is sold out, but if you are interested in dabbling with the dark side, there’s a Darth Vader one available for only $6.99. Snag a few to leave at your parent’s house!

(Via People)

Ariana Grande is finally returning with her new album titled Eternal Sunshine in just a few hours, much to fans’ excitement. Considering it has been a few years since the pop star last released an album, the anticipation for this one has been building.

Grande also kept a lot of the album pretty under wraps, save for just sharing the tracklist. So far, she has only released “Yes, And?” as a single from the album because she wanted listeners to hear the project in full from start to finish.

Here’s what to know about when you’ll be able to hear it on Spotify.

When Will Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Come Out On Spotify?

Grande’s Eternal Sunshine will be out on Spotify at midnight ET tonight. For those on the West Coast, you can hear it at 9 p.m. PT. All other time zones would have to calculate the conversion based on the ET release time.

It seems like fans are going to hear some emotional tracks also.

“The loss and grief that you hear some of the album, some of the heartbreak stuff, there was so much love and transparency,” Grande shared in a recent interview with Zach Sang (via Elle). “That was something I really wanted to make sure was captured, wasn’t like a ‘f*ck you’ at all and ever.”

Eternal Sunshine is out 3/8 via Republic. Find more information here.