Videographer Cole Bennett has become one of the most sought-after directors in all of music over the past few years, accumulating such clients as Blink-182, Cordae, Gunna, Jack Harlow, JID, Juice WRLD, Ski Mask The Slump God, and even rap titan Eminem. The video for Eminem’s “Godzilla” is a wild, colorful affair, but as Bennett revealed during a recent interview with Hot Ones, the goings-on behind the scenes may have been even wilder.
As he chowed down on the super spicy “Wings of Death,” the Lyrical Lemonade founder detailed how Mike Tyson, who makes a cameo appearance in the video, tried to get him high on mushrooms.
“This video was like no other,” Bennett said. “It was one of those things. Like, growing up being a fan of hip-hop music, music videos, and just pop culture. I mean, I remember Eminem as being the biggest thing in the world so to get to work with him so closely and feel that energy and feel him be so ready to just log in all these hours and be so receptive to my ideas and my vision for things to, you know, a song that he had created was really, really cool.”
Continuing, he explained why he had to turn down Tyson’s gift. “Mike Tyson was off shrooms. He offered me some shrooms which, you know, was a bucket list moment for sure. But, you know, being on set and leading this vision was also a bucket list moment so I had to pick my poison there. Didn’t do the shrooms.”
Anne Hathaway is certainly no stranger to being on the receiving end of viral vitriol. She had an entire chapter of it in her career beginning in 2013, notably called the “Hathahate” era. For years, following an unfairly infamous Oscars acceptance speech for her work in “Les Miserables,” the actress couldn’t endure a single interview without having to address the overwhelming amount of people actively, viciously disliking her.
While Hathaway herself admitted that the speech was overly saccharine—an understandable result of trying to compensate for social anxiety and a dash of imposter syndrome—it still in no way qualified being publicly viewed as some sort of indelible sin. Especially considering all the truly terrible behavior that (still) happens at awards shows.
Why people chose to villainize Hathaway is really its own conversation, but how she chose to grow from the experience is truly worth talking about. She not only has clearly been able to recover from a career standpoint—this year alone she has risen to festival darling and “Devil Wears Prada” worthy fashion icon status—she’s also managed to form some bona fide words of wisdom that just might help others create a less hateful, more loving world … spoken by someone who’s actually been through the ringer and had to learn the hard way.
According to a transcribed acceptance speech for ELLE’s 29th Annual Women in Hollywood event, the veteran actress, after generously praising other female icons in attendance, took a moment to share a story about a little girl, “age 8 to 11,” who she overheard lamenting to her mother about another (presumably) little girl, who “hated her own mouth.”
“In my opinion, the language of hatred begins with the self,” Hathaway said. “I felt it was important to bring this concept up because … I really felt for that young, young little girl experiencing the first flush of self-hatred, which is something I’m sure a lot of us understand. And we don’t have enough time to discuss all the myriad causes of the violent language of hatred, and the imperative need to end it.”
Hathaway then addressed how her own self-loathing manifested and magnified itself when reflected back through social media nearly 10 years ago.
“I was given an opportunity to look at the language of hatred from a new perspective. For context—this was a language I had employed with myself since I was 7. And when your self-inflicted pain is suddenly somehow amplified back at you at, say, the full volume of the internet … It’s a thing,” she explained.
“As the mother of young children,” she continued, “I am of the firm belief that we are born experiencing love. And then we form, in a culture of misplaced hate, unhealed hurt, and the toxicity that is the byproduct of both.”
When the effects of an unhealed society reared its ugly head in Hathaway’s direction, she realized that the only way to dissolve its potency would be to “no longer hold space for it, live in fear of it, nor speak its language for any reason. To anyone. Including myself.”
And that really is a simple, yet profound truth. If we wish to live in a kinder world, we must first make space within our own hearts for kindness. Speaking to ourselves and others from a place of compassion in theory takes very little effort. And yet, in practice it requires a conscious choice.
She went on to note, “There is a difference between existence and behavior. You can judge behavior. You can forgive behavior or not. But you do not have the right to judge—and especially not hate—someone for existing. And if you do, you’re not where it’s at.” Again, this is something she has learned firsthand.
Hathaway ended with self-described “debatable optimism,” saying that “I believe the good news about hate being learned is that whoever learned it can unlearn. There is a brain there. I hope they give themselves a chance to relearn love.”
“To that little girl—to all young people, actually,” the speech concluded, “I wish I could tell you the world is in a good place … that you will live untouched by inequality, bias, hate, and autocracy. We’re gonna need you … we need people who have learned to reject the hate prevalent in all facets of our society by contributing to a culture of love, starting with themselves.
“Please, darling, don’t hate your mouth. Love your life.”
You can watch a shortened version Hathaway’s speech below. Unlike in 2013, this is a must-watch for all the right reasons.
We’ve all been there at some point or another, nervously waiting for a big job interview hoping you don’t sweat through your good shirt. Interviews are stressful but there’s likely no job interview more stressful than the one Guy Goma went on in 2006 for the BBC, when he was mistaken for an expert for a news segment. The person they were supposed to interview for the news segment was Guy Kewney, an actual music industry expert. But with cameras rolling and questions being asked, Goma took a deep breath and answered the newscaster.
In the clip you can see Goma likely thinking through how he could gracefully exit the situation after the realization that he had been placed on live television with no idea what he was about to be asked. It didn’t stop him though, once he committed to going along with the expert interview he did pretty well. While he tried desperately to control his breathing, he was able to inform the interviewer that he was predicting more people would begin downloading music online and it would become a faster process. I mean, he was right, even if he had no idea at the time.
Surprisingly, after the on-air snafu and subsequent save by Goma, he didn’t get the job he applied for, which is weird because he was clearly perfect for whatever position he wanted. I’m pretty sure they dropped the ball there, but it sure would be nice to know what happened to the quick-thinking faux expert.
Unfortunately there are no recent updates about the whereabouts of Guy Goma after his brief and random moment in the spotlight, but he’ll always hold a place in television history. Watch Goma’s WTF reaction when he realizes what’s going on below.
Everyone has memories that they’d like to forget. Like that embarrassing moment at a school dance, the inappropriate joke you told in front of the wrong company or getting yelled at by the boss after screwing up at work.
But some memories are so traumatic they haunt us for the rest of our lives, causing severe distress. In people with PTSD, these memories can become more intense over time and impossible to avoid. The theory is that these memories become hard-wired in our psyches in an act of self-preservation. If we keep the trauma top of mind, we’ll be less likely to find ourselves in that situation again.
But the pain of these memories can far outweigh their benefit and lead people into a never-ending loop of trauma. That’s why a new study from the University of York is so encouraging. Researchers have found that using a method known as “sound cues” can help people forget specific memories.
It’s like they took a page out of the script of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a film that contemplates the potential complications that could stem from being able to selectively remove our memories.
For the study, 29 participants were taught associations for pairs of words, first “hammer – office” and then “hammer – Cardi B.” When the participants went to sleep in the University of York’s sleep lab their brain waves were measured to detect when they reached deep or slow-wave sleep.
While in this stage of sleep, the researchers played the object word to them (e.g., “hammer”).
Earlier studies found that when the word pairs were introduced to a participant while awake and then a word suggesting the pair was played to them during sleep, the participant remembered the word pair more vividly in the morning. For this study, researchers presented two word pairs and learned that when the pairs of words overlapped, there was an increase in memory for one pair and a decrease in the other in the morning.
This led researchers to believe that overlapping word pairs can diminish people’s memories in favor of others.
“Although still highly experimental at this stage, the results of our study raise the possibility that we can both increase and decrease the ability to recall specific memories by playing sound cues when an individual is asleep,” says the study’s first author Dr. Bardur Joensen, a former Ph.D. student in York University’s Department of Psychology, in a university release.
“People who have experienced trauma can suffer a wide range of distressing symptoms due to their memories of those events. Though still a long way off, our discovery could potentially pave the way to new techniques for weakening those memories that could be used alongside existing therapies,” he added.
This research could provide a valuable tool in helping people who’ve been through traumatizing events so that they no longer have to live life trapped in their own mental prison. It could also be a valuable tool for everyone to learn how to better categorize and prioritize their memories to improve their mental health.
An Astroworld Festival victim’s family has settled its wrongful death lawsuit with Live Nation and Travis Scott, according to Rolling Stone. 21-year-old Axel Acosta was one of the 10 people who died as a result of injuries sustained in a crowd crush during Travis’ headlining set, and his family’s legal counsel, Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee, announced the settlement — thought to be one of the first among the nearly 300 suits stemming from the incident — today in a press release and on Instagram.
In it, the lawyer said that the terms of the settlement were “confidential” and wrote, “The Buzbee Law Firm announced today that the claims brought by the family of Axel Acosta against Travis Scott, Live Nation, and others involved in the Astroworld tragedy have settled. Victim Axel Acosta was a beloved son, brother, and student. He was kind and loving. He is greatly missed. Please keep his family in your prayers.”
The family and Buzbee filed the suit in November 2021, two weeks after the incident, with 125 other attendees for $750 million. Another lawsuit brought by the family of Brianna Rodriguez was also settled. A coroner confirmed that all 10 of the people who died at Astroworld Festival suffered compression asphyxia, according to Buzbee, who said in a statement, “The report confirms what the family already knew, which is that Axel was crushed and killed that night by the crowd, through no fault of his own. It is also important to note that Axel’s blood contained absolutely no intoxicants or other like substances. Now that we have received the official results, I want to say to our police chief: Shame on you. Shame on you for perpetuating and giving credence to a silly rumor that people were being injected at the concert. In doing so, you added more pain to an already unbearably painful situation for Axel’s family. Axel Acosta’s family looks forward now to presenting their case in court, in front of a jury, in the hopes that all those accountable are held legally responsible, and that a preventable tragedy like this never happens again.”
Between his hero worship of Donald Trump, his penchant for spewing antisemitic conspiracy theories, and his move to purchase Parler, which is essentially Twitter for white supremacists, Kanye West has managed to alienate just about everyone except the former president and the unhinged residents of Trumpland who would like to see the failed reality show host reclaim his Diet Coke button in the Oval Office.
In the piece, Emanuel, who is the CEO of Endeavor, urged corporate behemoths like Apple, Adidas, and Spotify to stop working with West, as they were only giving him a wider platform from which to spread his hate speech. Emanuel also urged Parler’s parent company to not go through with any deal to sell the network to the former Mr. Kim Kardashian.
“West is not just any person,” Emanuel wrote. “He is a pop culture icon with millions of fans around the world. And among them are young people whose views are still being formed. This is why it is necessary for all of us to speak out. Hatred and anti-Semitism should have no place in our society, no matter how much money is at stake.”
Emanuel noted that he wrote a similar piece for HuffPost way back in 2006, in which he asked Hollywood to turn its back on Mel Gibson following his antisemitic outburst after being pulled over while driving under the influence. The agent noted, however, that Gibson has apologized for his past behaviors, and that he has actually recommended him for projects as a result. In other words: being canceled doesn’t have to be a life sentence.
“We are all capable of learning and evolving, and if West would like to be educated about the history and consequences of anti-Semitism and the conspiracy theories he’s parroting, if he wants to reach out to religious leaders — including rabbis, Muslim leaders, Christian leaders — I’d be happy to help,” Emanuel said.
When ESPN put out The Last Dance, it became a true cultural phenomenon, as the 10-part series on Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls was appointment television for sports fans and launched a thousand memes that still make their way around the internet.
The apparent takeaway from TV networks is that people are clamoring for multi-part, hours-long documentaries about sports figures and teams, because in the two years since, there has been an explosion of those types of docuseries being put out by just about every sports network and streaming service. There have been some that have been better and more successful than others, but none have come close to making the splash The Last Dance did, and yet networks will not stop trying.
HBO announced a four-part Shaq documentary, airing Wednesday nights beginning 11/23
The success of The Last Dance has nothing to do with the format — in fact, I’d argue it was successful in spite of how it was presented — but simply because of the subject matter and the timing in which it came out. When they first teased The Last Dance, it was billed as a chance to see never before seen footage from that Bulls season, an unfiltered look at one of the most iconic teams in NBA history, with interviews from just about every major player involved, most notably Michael Jordan. That was the hook, and it was enough to gain a ton of interest because Jordan almost never talks at length about his time in the league, much less the chance to see the GOAT in practice, where there are legendary stories of his insane competitiveness.
What we got wasn’t even that, it was a Michael Jordan documentary with some ’97-98 Bulls nuggets sprinkled in. Again, this worked in spite of itself, because the little footage we did see of practices and the locker room was great (ex: Jordan bullying Scott Burrell and Jordan pitching quarters with the ushers), and the interviews were all tremendous. That was particularly the case for Jordan, who we never hear from despite him still being one of the most recognizable and beloved athletes in the world.
That last part, in particular, is something that is apparently lost on networks that keep giving the green light to these documentaries. I don’t need a 10-part Tom Brady documentary because Tom Brady talks all the time and is literally still playing. There is no lore there, no tall tales to dive into and figure out what’s real and what’s just urban legend. He has the maniacal competitiveness part of the equation, but without the mystique. The man has a podcast, for god’s sake. The same goes for Shaq, a man we see on television every week, who does a million interviews and also has his own podcast. It raises the obvious question that is not “why the heck are there so many podcasts?”: What more can we really learn about someone who is an open book and talks about their life constantly?
That’s not to say The Last Dance didn’t rehash stories that were told before, but they were at least new for a whole generation of viewers who have a connection to Jordan for a variety of reasons — many of which had nothing to do with basketball — and were spoken about at length by the man himself on camera for the first time. Jordan’s mystique is something few modern athletes have because we get glimpses into their lives thanks to things like social media. He’s also someone people care about across generations, unlike many other athletes from his era or before.
Beyond all of that, The Last Dance was released at the peak of the pandemic sports shutdown, a not insignificant factor in its success. Starved for live sports, this was something new that we could all gather around the Twitter machine for each week and react in live time, providing that communal sports viewing outlet that we missed so dearly. It was lightning in a bottle for a number of reasons, but instead of recognizing that, the takeaway has apparently been that people just love hours-long sports documentaries.
Smino fans can finally rejoice. The Missouri rapper will release his long-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s Noir later this month.
Last year, while appearing on late comedian Teddy Ray’s YouTube show, Bear Witness, Take Action, the rapper revealed the inspiration behind his upcoming project, Luv 4 Rent. Smino said the album is meant to discuss the messiness love and relationships can bring, along with its pitfalls.
“It’s based on different types of love,” he said in the interview. “It could be bad love, petty love, obsessive love, real good love, family love. But it’s just about the different ways I lent out my heart to the point where I didn’t have enough left for myself. I just put a pause on a bunch of sh*t. Letting everybody come eat and then you go get the plate last and you like, ‘Damn, I’m hungrier than a b*tch.”
So far, the rapper has shared a few tracks from the album, including a collaboration with J.Cole on “90 Proof” and “I Deserve.” Smino is also expected to co-headline a tour with Atlanta rapper J.I.D. for their Luv Is 4ever Tour in 2023. You can check out the tracklist here.
The “Z4L” rapper’s third album is set to drop via Zero Fatigue and Motown Records on 10/28. You can pre-save it here.
While 2022’s release calendar is coming to a close, Smino’s Luv 4 Rent is one of the most highly-anticipated rap releases still to come. Out on October 28th, the St. Louis rapper’s third studio album has already seen a high-profile single released in the J.Cole featured “90 Proof.” Now the full Luv 4 Rent tracklist was posted to Apple Music today and there are more head-turning features than just J.Cole throughout.
For starters, TDE’s Doechii and the gregarious Fatman Scoop are both on “Pro Freak.” NOLA’s Lucky Daye and frequent collaborator Phoelix are on board for “Modennaminute,” Lil Uzi Vert hops on “Pudgy,” while Cory Henry and Smino’s Zero fatigue crew-mate Ravyn Lenae appear on “Settle Down.” The 15-tracks also include the recently released “Matinee” and there are more features to boot.
While Luv 4 Rent is out this month, Smino is ready to go on a co-headline tour with Dreamville rapper JID starting in January. Check out those tour dates here and peep the whole Luv 4 Rent tracklist below.
1. “4rm Da Source”
2. “No L’s”
3. “90 Proof” Feat. J. Cole
4. “Pro Freak” Feat. Doechii & Fatman Scoop
5. “Ole Ass Kendrick”
6. “Louphoria” Feat. Cruza
7. “Blu Billy”
8. “Matinee”
9. “Modennaminute” Feat. Lucky Daye & Phoelix
10. “Defribillator”
11. “Garden Lady”
12. “Settle Down” Feat. Cory Henry & Ravyn Lenae
13. “Pudgy” Feat. Lil Uzi Vert
14. “Curtains”
15. “Lee & Lovie” Feat. Reggie
Luv 4 Rent comes out on Zero Fatigue and Motown Records, on 10/28. You can pre-save it here.
Fans, however, are impatient and don’t want to wait any longer. They’ve been finding copies on the shelves of Walmart already and have been trying to buy them. According to one TikToker, he was instructed to put it back.
About the album, she shared a message, “We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears. We stare at walls and drink until they speak back. We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren’t — right this minute — about to make some fateful life-altering mistake.” She continued: “This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching — hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve … We’ll meet ourselves.”
Midnights is out on 10/21 via Republic. Pre-order it here.
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