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“Turning the hood into its own Beverly Hills,” says Watts rapper, producer, songwriter, and community activist STIX. “That’s the ideal community to me.”

When pushed, he expands the idea further.

“A community where people who look like me, whether they be black or brown, or come from a financial situation like I grew up in, whether they are white, Jewish, Indian, immigrant, non-immigrant, LGBT, doesn’t matter — a community where we can all live in one place and have the resources and opportunities available to stimulate our own economy and provide resources and opportunities.”

Centralized communities where people help and care about one another? Where mega-conglomerates aren’t able to leverage the promise of convenience against more empathetic concerns like supporting local businesses? It’s a powerful vision and one which STIX has been chasing throughout his 16-year career. And while rap is often the medium for his message, his social justice mission stays front and center.

“Moving out of the hood is always the goal,” he says. “But why don’t we gentrify or own neighborhoods, wholesale? When we move out of the hood we pay property taxes, those property taxes go to schools that don’t target the people I just spoke about. Then you’re paying the salaries of police and politicians who don’t focus on the needs of those people I just spoke about.”

Talk is easy, but STIX is one to practice what he preaches. Despite early hip-hop success working with Bobby Valentino, tours with Top Dog Entertainment’s Jay Rock and Reason, and acting as the chief architect behind Iggy Azalea’s Ignorant Art mixtape, he hasn’t left the south LA neighborhood he grew up in.

“My neighborhood is a big inspiration behind why I do what I do today,” he says. “I used to see what I didn’t have and I would feel like if I had resources to this, or access to that then I’d be rich. I want to end that cycle for other young individuals who are growing up in places like where I grew up. Make it so they don’t have to say that. So they have the resources and opportunities to make something of themselves.”

That mindset motivated STIX to start the non-profit foundation Think Watts, which places a major emphasis on community mobility and building bridges between the residents in low-income neighborhoodss and professionals in the corporate world.

“Our main mission is to supply the community and low-income communities with education and economic development in regard to financial literacy, entrepreneurship, arts programming, job training, sports pathways, with a subsidiary focus on permanent support of transitional housing for the homeless, and preventing recidivism. My mission is to help those in need and identity what those needs in these communities are and supply them with it via my relationships or my impact with music.”

That adds up to a massive task, obviously, but STIX has a natural ability for pulling the right minds together to get things done. He developed the skill when his primary focus was on rap — grabbing producers and completing an entire album with Bobby Valentino in just three days. More recently, he did it in his CLIO Award-winning advertising work with the Watts Rams.

“Hip-hop is an expression,” he says. “I utilize it as that tool that the streets use to communicate, and I use imagery and innovative content and a message that the corporate world would try to articulate. I bring those together to create something. Every time I create those partnerships, I make sure they do something for the community… [in the case of the Watts Rams] kids growing up without opportunities now have access to a free Pop Warner team that’s coached by the police.”

STIX followed up that work with a song debuted by the NFL’s LA Rams on Monday Night Football, which spoke about racial and social injustice, as well as police brutality.

The realities of 2020 have, unfortunately, put some of the Think Watts community projects on hold. But STIX didn’t let the pandemic stop his mission. Instead Think Watts has pivoted towards doing more food distribution, throwing grocery drives, and even offering rental assistance to low-income families. STIX stresses the importance of offering support now more than ever, in the face of a pandemic that has disproportionately harmed black and brown communities nationwide.

In 2021, much of his focus will be on education, with Think Watts offering community programming around financial literacy, entrepreneurship, coding, and job training. For STIX, courses like these are an outgrowth of his efforts to build bridges between communities of color and the corporate world.

“The corporate world talks at people, not to them,” he says. “What I try to do is be the messenger between both… and be a force for good.”

TMZ reports Lil Wayne has pled guilty to illegally possessing a loaded weapon after his plane was searched at the end of 2019. He’s due back in court for sentencing next month and could receive up to 10 years in prison because of his existing criminal record — he was convicted of a felony gun charge in New York in 2009.

Federal agents were supposedly tipped off to a gun on Wayne’s plane at the Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport on December 23, 2019 and officers found a gold-plated Remington 1911, .45-caliber handgun in Wayne’s bag after he advised them that he was carrying. The bag also allegedly contained cocaine, ecstasy, and oxycodone. According to TMZ, Wayne has a good chance of receiving a more lenient sentence than the maximum 10 years because of his cooperation — federal prosecutors apparently recommended a lighter sentence, but it’s still up to the judge.

Meanwhile, Wayne’s been the subject of plenty other attention-grabbing headlines to close out the year. Although he received praise for the third installment of his No Ceilings mixtape series thanks in part to the “BB King Freestyle” featuring Drake, he also received criticism for shouting out Donald Trump on “Life Is Good” after previously co-signing the defeated incumbent’s last-ditch campagin efforts.

Although they’ve been relatively quiet musically this year, hip-hop’s resident “boy band” Brockhampton hasn’t been lollygagging around. Today, they announced the relaunch of their clothing collection, succinctly titled Gay. The group previously joked around about “pushing the gay agenda” when they signed to RCA Records in 2018, and their clothing collection’s tongue-in-cheek name reflects a similar wicked sense of humor.

The line, “intended to further represent and empower the LGBTQ+ community in mainstream media and retail,” will be available at Zumiez and range from $9.99 to $71.95, including t-shirts, a hoodie, and a hat. The group also released a digital lookbook, creative directed by Kevin Abstract (naturally) and shot by Ashlan Grey. The models in the lookbook are activists from GLAAD’s Youth Engagement Program.

Although they haven’t put out much music in 2020, there was a short span of time toward the middle of the year when they shared a string of singles, beginning with the early May release of “Things Can’t Stay The Same” and “N.S.T.” They followed up a week later with “M.O.B.” and “Twisted,” then finished off the run with “Baby Bull,” “Downside,” and “I.F.L.” Since then, though, they have deleted all the tracks from their YouTube profile, leaving “Sugar” as their most recent track.

Check out the lookbook for Gay below.

Chris Evans spent Thursday night explaining why he isn’t taking Tim Allen’s job as the voice of Buzz Lightyear on Twitter, but an Evans-involved Friday social media entry was much less confusing news. Captain America is apparently joining up with some other Marvel Cinematic Mainstays, directors Joe and Anthony Russo.

Netflix announced that Evans and Ryan Gosling will join Ana de Armas in a new film directed by the Russos based on a novel called The Gray Man, the debut work from Mark Greaney.

The project actually first made headlines back in July, as Deadline reported the budget for the film is expected to be Netflix’s largest ever: upwards of $200 million to create what’s described as a Bond-like cinematic universe:

Said Joe Russo on the film’s scale: “The intention is for it to be competitive with any theatrical, and the ability to do with with Gosling and Evans is a dream for us. The idea is to create a franchise and build out a whole universe, with Ryan at the center of it. We have all committed to the first movie, and that’s got to be great to get us to the second movie. These are master assassins, and Gosling’s characters gets burned by the CIA and Evans’ character has to hunt him down. We have a great working relationship with Netflix, and we go back almost 20 years with Scott Stuber. We formed AGBO to be an agnostic storytelling company, where we figure out the best platform. We think Netflix is the perfect place for this film.”

And it seems to be a huge investment in what’s an intriguing source material. Here’s the novel description, per the author’s website:

Court Gentry is known as The Gray Man– a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible, and then fading away. And he always hits his target. But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. And in their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness.

Now, he is going to prove that for him, there is no gray area between killing for a living– and killing to stay alive.

Deadline noted that Gosling is expected to play Gentry in the film, though Lloyd Hansen (Evans) will be a former CIA pal hunting down Gentry as the picture spans the globe. The Gray Man is billed as the first novel in the series by author, so this may be another franchise in the works if things go well on Netflix. That’s a lot of world-building for the Russos all goes according to plan.

(Via Netflix & Mark Greaney)

In anticipation of the upcoming third entry of Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon project, Man on the Moon III: The Chosen, Cudi surprise-announced his latest collaboration with Adidas to the internet last night and dominated late-night Twitter sneaker discourse. The new collab, an original sneaker silhouette known as the Vadawam 326, follows Cudi and the Three Stripes’ Bill & Ted Artillery Hi drop from last month. This time, the team has put together a mid-rise silhouette that (unsurprisingly) looks fit for a futuristic runway.

The Vadawam sports an upper of overlayed premium leather, with mid-foot windows, hairy suede accents, wide-spaced laces, and a trio of alternating straps. If Elon Musk tries to put these on a future SpaceX astronaut no one will be shocked. Trefoil branding at the tongue and the Cudi x Adidas insignia on the heel complete the design, which sits on a Torsion cushioned heel for added comfort.

The Vadawam was named for Cudi’s daughter and features a digital print “326” embellishment on the sneaker’s outer collar, a reference to Vama’s month and day of birth. It’ll drop in two colorways, a White/ Ecru Tint, Easy Yellow iteration, and a Core Black/ Night Grey/ Solar Pink makeup.

The sneakers are scheduled to land from orbit on December 17th for a retail price of $180. Pick up a pair at the Adidas webstore or select Adidas retailers like Foot Locker on December 17th.

Down in Texas, Ted Cruz declared that he was ready and willing to embarrass himself in front of the Supreme Court, if the justices granted certiorari in a case brought by the Pennsylvania GOP. All of that’s fancy legal language that doesn’t even matter because the Supreme Court unanimously threw Trump under the bus and refused to hear the state GOP’s arguments to overturn election results. And the core issue that matters right now, really, is that Ted Cruz is one of many Republicans who who are putting it all on the line to stand up on behalf of Trump’s (false) “election fraud” whining. Cruz is doing so despite Trump taking shots at Ted’s wife and branding him as “Lyin’ Ted.”

None of Ted’s current sacrificial attitude toward a losing president makes much sense, but Ted is not alone. On Thursday afternoon, over 100 GOP U.S. House members signed onto what Jake Tapper called a “deranged” lawsuit out of Texas. These lawmakers want the Supreme Court to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential victory (while they allege widespread voter fraud in four battleground states), and on Friday, CNN analyst John Harwood spoke to the ridiculousness of the situation. Harwood assessed the situation as one of fear for these lawmakers, who believe that Trump or his followers will trash them, and they’ll do anything to avoid such a situation. Via Mediaite:

“What we’re seeing, Kate, is a demonstration by House Republicans of the extent of the rot inside the Republican Party right now. These people know what Donald Trump is, as Ted Cruz said in 2016, he’s a pathological liar. Marco Rubio called him a con artist… These are people who if Donald Trump said, ‘I’m going to trash you on Twitter unless you go smack your mom in the face,’ they would go smack their moms in the face and try to explain it to them afterward.”

Well sadly, Harwood is probably not wrong (and I’m not even talking about when Cruz elbowed his wife in the face because, obviously, that was an accident, and I’m taking that out of context if only to remind you that, yes, Ted Cruz once elbowed his wife in the face in front of the world). Yet as Harwood states, this matter is very serious because those 106 Republicans are “smacking American democracy in the face.” Yep, he said it.

(Via CNN and Mediaite)

Cyberpunk 2077 is finally out, and it’s a game with a lot of musical involvement. In a similar way to Grand Theft Auto 5, Cyberpunk has in-game radio stations that play music regularly, for which some artists recorded new songs. Grimes’ role in the game goes deeper than that, though, as she plays a pop star character named Lizzy Wizzy.

In addition to the first volume of the game’s soundtrack that released today, Grimes dropped a new DJ mix based on the game, and it features a new song by her, “Delicate Weapon.” The track only gets officially released with the soundtrack’s second volume next week, but since it appears in the mix, the whole thing is available now. It’s right in Grimes’ wheelhouse, as it’s a piece of dark electronic pop that makes use of atmospheric elements, include airy vocals.

This is her second song from the game, as she previously performed and released “4ÆM.”

In 2019, Grimes offered a spoiler-filled description of her character, saying during a livestream, “I play a pop star who committed suicide on stage, and they had to quickly come and perform emergency surgery and replace her whole body with cybernetics while she was dead for an hour. And then she finished the show as a cyborg. One of the greatest pieces of performance art ever made.”

Listen to “Delicate Weapon” above.

If you didn’t know, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez often uses her social media to educate and update her constituents on everything happening in Washington. Sometimes that means live-streaming Among Us on Twitch while encouraging people to vote. Other times that looks like AOC hosting a Q&A on Instagram Live while crafting a tasty meal.

The Congresswoman revived her popular cooking segment last night after taking a bit of a hiatus from sharing recipes and reform updates with her fans and while she gave us some great insight into the latest COVID relief bill, she also shaded her critics who have taken to labeling her “radical” in the press:

“Shoutout to my fellow radicals in the United States who believe crazy things like a full-time job should be enough for you to live and believe in crazy radical things like if you kill someone there shouldn’t be impunity. And also who believe really crazy radical things like you should get a stimulus check without having to bail out a corporation for it. Or that you should get a stimulus check without your employer, you know, if you work for one of these huge conglomerate employers sending you in harm’s way and being completely immune from any accountability for it.”

She went on to call out her detractors who prefer to weaponize her support of raising the minimum wage rather than actually crafting any kind of concrete plan to tackle the growing pay gap in this country.

“You know, shoutout to my fellow radicals who think that we should live in a humane advanced society and that we shouldn’t be under the thumb of a $7 minimum wage and racist systems. Because, I don’t know, that just benefits the people who already are in power to be in power. So, you know, shoutout to my radicals,” she added.

Of course, AOC did all this while cheekily sporting a Tax The Rich sweatshirt, just the latest piece of fashion that’s drawn criticism from her opponents. Republicans famously blasted her Vanity Fair cover earlier this year, claiming she was a hypocrite for donning a $1,400 pantsuit for the spread. Of course, they seemed to not understand how styling magazine shoots really work and believed all of the clothes AOC wore for the shoot were her own. They’ve also griped about the cost of her haircuts over the years, something AOC acknowledged when firing back at Texas Congressman Chip Roy on Twitter earlier today.

Maybe instead of focusing so much on what AOC is doing (and wearing), these politicians can turn their attention to the millions suffering as the pandemic continues to endanger our economy and claim thousands of lives each day? Just a thought.

After announcing a virtual avalanche of new Star Wars and Marvel series coming to the platform over the next two years, Disney+ revealed that it will be raising its subscription prices for the first time since the streaming service launched in November 2019. However, the good news is that the price increase is relatively small, and still makes Disney+ considerably cheaper than competitors like Netflix and HBO Max. (Disney owns Hulu, so that doesn’t really count.) Via Gizmodo:

U.S. subscribers can expect their monthly fee to jump from $7 to $8 starting on March 26, 2021. Disney’s package deal with Disney+, ad-supported Hulu, and ESPN+ will also increase from $13 to $14 a month. It wasn’t immediately clear whether subscribers in other countries can expect future price hikes for either Disney+ or the Disney Bundle.

The price increase also arrives on the heels of Disney+ hitting 86.8 million subscribers as of December 2. The company previously reported that it had 73.1 million subscribers as of October 3, so that’s a 13 million increase that can most likely be traced to the season two premiere of The Mandalorian, which has been a massive hit for the burgeoning streaming service.

As for the value to subscribers, the price increase will happen just as Disney+ finally starts to offer Marvel series after the pandemic pushed back the premieres of WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Those series will debut in January and March, respectively, with Tom Hiddleston’s Loki series following closely behind at an unspecified date. And judging by Disney’s numerous Investor Day announcements, the platform won’t be falling short on Marvel content anytime soon.

(Via Gizmodo)

Since the beginning of the pandemic, guidelines and restrictions and mandates have come at us in a dizzying fashion. Each state has done things differently, and in most states each county has its own approach as well. And while some of the mitigation measures make perfect sense, others seem questionable or downright silly.

Some criticisms are certainly legitimate. Allowing certain indoor gatherings while closing down outdoor park spaces, for example, is an approach that has been panned by prominent experts in epidemiology who rightly point out that outdoor spaces are safer. But that doesn’t mean that all measures that seem odd to us aren’t based in solid reasoning.

A nurse on Facebook offered a response to a post that’s been going around asking why certain measures have been put into place when the people who are charged with carrying them out don’t know how to explain them. Marking her answers to the points with two asterisks, the nurse explained why what might seem illogical from a lay perspective actually has solid grounding in virology expertise.

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“This has been making its rounds, so we decided to provide some answers:

Me AT GROCERY STORE:

Why is there plastic on the payment keypad?

Cashier: to protect people from Covid.

Me : but isn’t everyone touching the plastic keypad the same way they would the regular keypad?

Cashier: no words. Confused look.

**cashiers generally do not study virology, epidemiology or public health. This is the wrong person to ask.

Answer: less porous plastic coverings over key pads offer a surface that is more easily sanitized without risking damage to the mechanisms of the machine by harsh liquid chemicals. The plastic coverings are supposed to be wiped at close intervals of time to reduce the fomite transmission of virus.

Me : Why Dont you pack the grocery bags anymore?

Cashier : Because of covid 19 to reduce the spread of catching or spreading the virus.

Me : But a shelf packer took it out of a box and put on the shelf, a few customers might of picked it up and put back deciding they Dont want it, I put it in my cart then on the conveyer belt, YOU pick it up to scan it.. But putting it in a bag after you scan is risky??

Cashier : no words, confused look

**cashiers generally do not study virology, epidemiology or public health. This is the wrong person to ask.

Answer: having no grocery bagger, an infection reduction strategy employed by many places does eliminate 1 person’s set of hands on the groceries, which is somewhat helpful, however the real reason to eliminate the bagger position is to reduce the risk to the cashier and the bagger. While customers move through the store quickly, reducing their exposure time, a checker and a bagger standing at close proximity for hours (even masked), increases employee exposure risk. This risk can translate to employee outbreaks, reducing the workforce for the company. Spreading employees out, or reducing the numbers of clustered employees prevents the spread of infection within a store’s workforce.

Me AT DRIVE-THRU

Server: (holds a tray out the window with a bag of food for logical friend to grab)

Me: why is my bag of food on a tray?

Server: so I don’t touch your food because of Covid.

Me: didn’t the cook touch my food? Didn’t the person wrapping my food touch it and then touch it again when placing it in my bag? Didn’t you touch the bag and put it on the tray? Didn’t you touch the tray?

Server: no words. Confused look.

**drive-thru servers generally do not study virology, epidemiology or public health. This is the wrong person to ask.

Answer: the food is touched by the cook, and then by the person who wraps and bags the food. The wrapper/bagger then places the food onto the servers tray, and the drive-through server only touches his/her tray instead of the bag, eliminating one set of hands on the bag for the customer, but more importantly eliminating the need for the server to touch anything other than their own tray for the day. This protects the amount of hand to hand contact the server has with others throughout the day as well as the recipient of the food.

Me in SOCIETY

Society ; If you cough or sneeze do it in your elbow or sleeve,

Also society : Dont shake hands or hug anyone or you will spread the virus..

To greet people do an elbow tap instead.

Me : Elbow tap ? Isn’t that where you tell people to sneeze or cough? into their elbow? Now you want people to tap each other with that elbow

wouldn’t it be safer to sneeze into elbow and shake hands like we did before Covid

**Answer: these 2 infection control measures are really supposed to be taken in separate. Hands are the primary germ spreaders, almost everyone understands that. When we cough or sneeze into our hands, and then touch other surfaces, we are likely to spread these germs and possibly make others ill. If you do have to cough or sneeze, using the inside aspect of your elbow, a surface that you are not likely to utilize in other activities is less likely to spread germs. However, if you are frequently coughing or sneezing into your elbow, you should not be in public greeting anyone at all, whether it’s with a handshake or an elbow bump. You should be at home, away from others.

Me AT RESTAURANT:

Hostess: ok, I can seat you at this table right here (4 feet away), but I will need you to wear a mask to the table.

Me: what happens when I get to the table?

Hostess: you can take off the mask.

Me: then it is safe over there?

Hostess: yes.

Me: are those fans blowing above the table? Is that the air-conditioning I feel? Is the air circulating in here? Hostess: no words. Confused look.

**hostesses generally do not study virology, epidemiology or public health. This is the wrong person to ask.

Answer: wearing your mask while walking with the hostess to your table protects you, the hostess, and others who you may breathe, sneeze or cough on en route to your table. Once at your table you should be seated six feet or more away from other guests who are not part of your party. Your party should only consist of members of your own household who you routinely gather with unmasked. Air conditioning, ventilation and fans help disperse and recycle air that may contain virus evenly throughout the space, to be eventually filtered. While stagnant air sits for long periods of time with high concentrations of virus, well-circulated air allows diffusion of the virus into concentrations less likely to cause infection in individuals nearby. Since a certain concentration of virus uptake is needed to make someone ill, this is an effective mitigation strategy that is proven by studies showing less viral transmission among people in well-ventilated spaces.

SOCIETY : You are not allowed to stand and drink at the pub you have to sit down.

**Answer: same as the restaurant scenario. Standing around a bar in close proximity to people that are not from your household leads to the spread of the virus into other households who then spread it to each other. Preventing the mingling of households is the object here. ETA: having patrons sit, also protects the bartender & other staff from being surrounded by a wall of unmasked customers.

But at the shopping centre you are not allowed to sit down, all the chairs are roped off.

**Answer: shopping for essentials should be limited to getting what you need in the quickest period of time reasonable. Eliminating the option to linger in public by eliminating seating areas reduces the amount of people in a single area at a time which reduces transmission.

Who thinks this stuff up?

**Answer: Virologists who study the makeup and behavior of viruses, epidemiologists who study the infectious behavior of pathogens, and public health officials who study public behavior and modification strategies as they pertain to health and safety.

Life is hard for logical people right now. We are being raised without the ability to process and execute logic

**Life is hard for everyone right now, but a lot of us are making it harder by assuming that “logic” is the same as expertise. “

While it’s not a bad idea to ask questions about what we’re being asked to do, it’s a good idea to actually ask people who have the ability to answer those questions from a place of knowledge and experience. Simply saying “it doesn’t make sense” doesn’t mean that it doesn’t, and we’d all be better served if we posed our questions to those qualified to answer them.