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On November 22, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner provided a vague progress report on the investigation into Takeoff’s murder. The 28-year-old Migos rapper was fatally shot in the earliest hours of November 1 while attending a private event with Quavo at 810 Billiards & Bowling in Houston. Takeoff was laid to rest at State Farm Arena in his hometown Atlanta on November 11, and there was outside concern that the manhunt for Takeoff’s killer had run dry.

“I feel good where we’re progressing,” Finner told KPRC 2, per iHeart. “You remember on that day, I met with his mother. I talked with that lady personally, made a promise and there’s a lot being said. We want all investigations on murders when people are being killed to move. But the main thing is we get it right. I do not want to send family members on a rollercoaster ride, and then we have to come back and say, ‘Whoa, that wasn’t the person.’ I want everyone to be patient and just understand there will be some justice here in Houston, Texas.”

Over the weekend, reports began leaking that a 22-year-old named Cameron Joshua and referred to as either Lil Cam or Lil Cam 5th had been arrested by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office for a felony charge of unlawful carrying weapons. Speculation caught fire that Lil Cam 5th was connected to Takeoff’s murder because his arrest report listed that Lil Cam 5th was alleged to have possessed an illegal handgun on November 1 in Houston. But it was nothing more than speculation.

The link was officially made yesterday (November 30). As relayed by The Associated Press, Lil Cam 5th “has been charged in connection” with Takeoff’s murder case, though Lil Cam 5th “is not believed to have fired a weapon during Takeoff’s shooting.” Lil Cam 5th’s attorney, Christopher Downey, asserted that “Cameron Joshua did not shoot Takeoff.” There has still not been a suspect publicly identified as the one responsible for shooting and killing Takeoff.

As of now, Lil Cam 5th’s arrest appears to be a small piece in a large puzzle that authorities are still trying to assemble. It’s been one long month since Takeoff’s tragic passing, but after this week’s developments, it’s probably safe to assume that Finner is asking the public to be patient for a reason.

After a seemingly lengthy period of radio silence, there has been some significant movement in the still ongoing sex trafficking investigation involving Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. His former confidant Joel Greenberg was just dealt an 11-year prison sentence after being zeroed in by the Department of Justice for using taxpayer money to buy drugs, crypto, and sports memorabilia.

Greenberg has also been accused of allegedly providing sex workers to politicians. In the case of Gaetz, one of those workers was allegedly a minor. (The congressman has denied any wrongdoing.) Despite facing a litany of charges, Greenberg has reportedly been cooperating with federal investigators resulting in a lighter sentence for his serious list of crimes. Via The New York Times:

Mr. Greenberg has told federal authorities that he witnessed Mr. Gaetz have sex with the 17-year-old girl and that she was paid. In documents filed in connection with Mr. Greenberg’s sentencing, the Justice Department said he had “provided truthful and timely information” that led to the charging of at least four other individuals and “provided substantial assistance on other matters” that the government would address only in a sealed filing.

However, the investigation into Gaetz has reportedly hit a significant hurdle. The worker in question “has said she does not believe she was a victim.” The lack of charges against Gaetz and others implicated by Greenberg did not go unnoticed by Greenberg’s attorney who surprisingly called out the DOJ.

“If the government is so concerned with general deterrence, then why hasn’t it prosecuted the other individuals, including public figures, who were also involved in Greenberg’s offenses?” Fritz Scheller said during the sentencing hearing. “Indeed, Greenberg’s plea agreement refers to the involvement of multiple co-conspirators, including individuals involved in his sex offense.”

Scheller also revealed that Greenberg’s cooperation was corroborated “by other witnesses and records,” which should probably concern his co-conspirators, whoever that may be.

(Via The New York Times)

Loved your Spotify Wrapped this year? Well, re-watching your Wrapped story just got a little easier.

To re-watch your story, users must open their Spotify app (on Android or iOS) and look for the “Spotify Wrapped” section on the homepage. The first tile selection will have a “Play” button feature in yellow that you will need to tap, and viola! After you tap the tile, your Wrapped stories from 2022 will begin playing. Users can tap the left or right of the screen to go to the previous or next screen.

But if that doesn’t work, there are other ways to access your Wrapped stories. If the prompt for Wrapped is not visible on the homepage, then you can tap the search bar in the app, and the “2022 Wrapped” option should appear as a banner across the top of the screen.

Alternatively, you can type “Wrapped” in the search bar and select the “2022 Wrapped” genre option (which is displayed in the search results). From there, users will need to tap the large banner to start watching their Wrapped stories.

This year the music platform giant has rolled out a new feature for its users that will help offer listeners a “personalized Wrapped experienced” with its new “listening personality” feature.

“Your Listening Personality is a new feature that not only tells you about the music you listen to but what that says about your music taste — bringing a whole new layer of personalization and insight to the entire Wrapped experience,” according to a recent statement.

At least 16 kinds of “personalities” have been created for Spotify Wrapped 2022, including the adventurer, the early adopter, the deep diver, the devotee, and more.

When it comes down to it, 2022 was really Bad Bunny’s year. For the AMAs, he was the most-nominated artist of the year, receiving eight total nods. Spotify declared him the most-streamed artist of the year, and Apple Music named him their Artist Of The Year.

He’s not done making history. The legacy of Un Verano Sin Ti continues today with the announcement that the album landed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Albums year-end chart. Un Verano Sin Ti was at No. 1 for an unrelenting 13 weeks in a row, the most since Drake’s Views in 2016. It’s also the first Latin LP and the first all-Spanish release to finish as the year-end No. 1 Billboard 200 Album.

In September, the singer was also the most-nominated artist at this year’s Billboard Latin Music Awards and ended up winning nine awards, such as Artist Of The Year, Tour Of The Year, and Top Latin Album Of The Year. And he’s been celebrating appropriately; at one point, he brought 80 of his friends out to dinner at a Puerto Rican restaurant in the Bay Area. “Over the phone, they just said, ‘We have 80 Puerto Ricans,’” Francisco Gomez of San Rafael Puerto Rican staple Sol Food told the San Francisco Chronicle in an article about the encounter.

If you’ve ever wanted to watch a car talk to a robot gorilla, you’re in luck. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts — the seventh film in the Transformers franchise, and first since 2018’s series-best Bumblebee — is described as “a ‘90s globetrotting adventure with the Autobots and introduce a whole new breed of Transformer – the Maximals – to the existing battle on earth between Autobots and Decepticons.” Basically, it’s Beast Wars, which is big news for people of a certain age. For everyone else, some of the robots are voiced by Peter Dinklage, Ron Perlman, and Michelle Yeoh, which is cool.

You can watch the dialogue-light trailer (which is set to Notorious B.I.G.) above.

“What’s interesting about Transformers overall is that there are different breeds, different insignias, and different groups, and Beast Wars happens to be one of them. There were these robots whose disguise was animal form, and we have them in our film,” directer Steven Caple Jr. explained to Collider about Beast Wars. “In our film, they’re these prehistoric animals that travel through time and space, and we find them here on Earth.”

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which also stars Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Tobe Nwigwe, Peter Cullen, Liza Koshy, John DiMaggio, David Sobolov, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Pete Davidson, and Cristo Fernández, opens on June 9, 2023.

Fox News may have (reportedly) edited Kanye West’s recent Tucker Carlson interview to remove an anti-Semitic rant about “fake children” that he claimed were in his home and planted there. However, no such editing is to be expected from Infowars, where host Alex Jones presides over ceremonies with as much right-wing provocativeness as possible during Kanye’s Dec. 1 visit. White supremacist podcaster Nick Fuentes was also in attendance, in case you were wondering, and let’s just say that Kanye is diving further into a very dark place.

Ye has had quite a week already after revealing that he owes $50 million in taxes, and his divorce settlement includes a child-support determination that left people thinking that he manifested with those “Gold Digger” lyrics. And now, there’s this: Kanye in a full mask with a bible and dropping more anti-Semitism, as Consequence’s Alex Young pointed out on Twitter.

The visit quickly took a turn when Kanye expressed admiration for Hitler, who he apparently believes invented the Autobahn. And this quote actually happened: “Every human being has value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.”

Here’s the full quote, and Alex Jones seemed uncharacteristically quiet (and possibly uncomfortable, if that’s possible) while this Nazi love happens:

“I see good things about Hitler also. I love everyone, and Jewish people are not gonna tell me, ‘You can love us and what we’re doing to you with the contracts and what we’re pushing with the pornography…’ But this guy who invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud anything good that this person ever did.”

From there, Ye went on a tear about his belief that “anyone who looks at pornography is a form of a pedophile also.”

According to a thread from The Daily Beast’s Zachary Petrizzo, Kanye also declared that Alex and Nick would be tweeting from his account, so there’s also that mess to look forward to ducking. But it says a lot that Alex Jones may have felt “off” about what came out of Kanye’s mouth on Infowars.

Former US President Bill Clinton joined the widespread chorus honoring Christine McVie after her passing on Wednesday, November 30. The former Fleetwood Mac member’s family confirmed the 79-year-old’s death in a statement posted to her social accounts, noting McVie died “following a short illness” at the hospital and surrounded by her family. No further details about her cause of death have been given.

“I’m saddened by the passing of Christine McVie,” Clinton tweeted Wednesday night. “‘Don’t Stop’ was my ’92 campaign theme song — it perfectly captured the mood of a nation eager for better days. I’m grateful to Christine & Fleetwood Mac for entrusting us with such a meaningful song. I will miss her.”

The tweet included a one-minute video of footage from Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. “The tradition of a presidential campaign song dates back to 1800, when John Adams supporters sang the tune ‘Liberty And Adams,’” the video’s captions read. “[‘Don’t Stop’] had reached #3 on the pop charts in 1977 and appealed to Clinton’s baby boomer demographic. After breaking up in 1987, the original Fleetwood Mac lineup reunited for one night, to perform ‘Don’t Stop’ at Clinton’s 1993 Inaugural Gala. ‘Don’t Stop’ became indelibly linked with Clinton, playing at his rally and convention appearances in the years following his presidency.”

McVie joined Fleetwood Mac as its first female vocalist in 1970 and retired from the iconic British-American band in 1998. She had married bassist John McVie in 1968. They divorced in 1976. She retired from Fleetwood Mac in 1998, the same year the band was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, but she returned in 2014 to tour.

Stevie Nicks, who joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, also publicly grieved McVie with a handwritten note.

There is absolutely no way anyone at all is surprised by this news, but YouTube officially announced its Top 10 songs of the year, and wouldn’t you know it, the Encanto soundtrack’s inescapable breakout hit “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is right at the top of the list. The surprise smash topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks in February following the release of the film on Disney+, prompting an all-star performance of the song at the Oscars complete with a new Megan Thee Stallion verse.

In fact, the only one surprised by the song’s success was its writer, Lin-Manuel Miranda. In March, he told Los Angeles Times that he believed a different song from the soundtrack would become the runaway hit. “I would have swapped ‘Colombia, Mi Encanto’,” he said. “‘Colombia, Mi Encanto ’is such a party tune: ‘This could maybe have a little life beyond the movie.’ And the fact that the ensemble song that is incredibly plot-heavy and almost requires having seen the film to fully understand is the one at the top of the charts is one of the most delightful and hilarious surprises … of my life.”

While many attempts to explain Bruno’s popularity have been made over the course of 2022, you can experience it for yourself at the top of the page. Pay attention to the balcony during Dolores’ verse — even Bruno himself can’t resist the groove as the rest of the Madrigal family roasts his entire existence.

As for the rest of YouTube’s top 10 songs list, you can check that out below.

1. Encanto Cast – “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”
2. Kodak Black – “Super Gremlin”
3. Jessica Darrow – “Surface Pressure”
4. Bad Bunny – “Tití Me Preguntó”
5. Future – “Wait for U” feat. Drake, Tems
6. Bad Bunny, Chencho Corleone – “Me Porto Bonito”
7. Karol G, Becky G – “Mamiii”
8. Imagine Dragons x JID – “Enemy”
9. Karol G – “Provenza”
10. Lil Baby – “In a Minute”

Get ready, Bardi Gang: Cardi B might be taking over your airwaves soon.

While chatting with Charlamagne Tha God, Angela Yee, and DJ Envy on The Breakfast Club, the radio hosts asked her if she would be interested in coming to the radio show to host as a part of her rollout.

“You wanna come guest host in the new year, Cardi,” Charlamagne asks.

The New York rapper jokingly responded that she “would bring that sh*t down” but seemed more than happy at the idea of hosting the popular morning show. The radio hosts even proposed that the rapper would be able to bring up any artist of her choosing to interview.

“That would be dope,” Cardi responded. “Yeah, I could do that.”

It’s been nearly four years since Cardi B released her debut album, 2018’s Invasion Of Privacy, which spawned hits such as “Bodak Yellow” and “I Like It,” featuring J Balvin and Bad Bunny.

While the “Bickenhead” rapper has not officially announced the possible upcoming album, she has stayed quite busy — this past summer, she dropped “Hot Sh*t” featuring Lil Durk and Kanye West. Most recently, her collaboration with GloRilla, “Tomorrow 2,” has become a runaway hit. Cardi also made an unexpected appearance during GloRilla’s debut performance at the 2022 American Music Awards, rapping and dancing alongside the Memphis rapper.

It’s not clear when we’ll be getting a new Cardi project (presumably sometime next year), but either way, we’ll be patiently waiting.

Reporters are supposed to ask the right questions to get to the truth but sometimes it seems sports reporters ask questions to throw you off your game. There’s no doubt that this Iranian reporter who was questioning Tyler Adams, the US soccer team captain at the press conference during the World Cup had an agenda that didn’t involve getting to the truth.

It’s not clear if the questions were designed to throw the young player off of his game or if the goal was embarrassment. It really is hard to tell, but Adams handled the unexpectedly harsh encounter with intelligence and poise when some may have found it justified for him to get angry.

The World Cup is being played in Qatar and Iran’s soccer team is in attendance. There have been reports that the Iranian players were threatened with their family members facing “violence and torture” after the team refused to sing the Iranian national anthem. But there was tension with the Iranian government and the American players after the US soccer team displayed the Iranian flag without the Iranian Republic emblem.

Maybe the flag mishap spurred the reporters loaded questions. When the Iranian reporter first addresses Adams, he immediately chastises him for not knowing the correct pronunciation of Iran before moving on to an interesting question choice.

The reporter asked Adams, “are you ok to be representing a country that has so much discrimination against Black people in its own boarders and you saw the Black Lives Matter Movement over the past few years. Are you OK the US meanwhile there’s so much discrimination happening against Black people in America”

Adams, did not get defensive about the correction but responded by apologizing about mispronouncing the name of the country. The player’s response to the rest of the question proves the young captain’s emotional maturity and why he’s captain of the US soccer team.

Watch his entire response below: