Last Friday was Juneteenth, and to celebrate, many artists released music commemorating the holiday. Beyonce shared the single “Black Parade” as a way to honor her Texas roots and spotlight Black culture and history. Now, Beyonce has followed the official release by granting fans an a cappella version of the song.

Released exclusively on Tidal, Beyonce’s a cappella version of her single strips the instrumentals to just the vocal track, allowing her far-reaching harmonies to shine through. “I’m going back to the South / I’m going back, back, back, back / Where my roots ain’t watered down / Growing, growing like a baobab tree / Of life on fertile ground, ancestors put me on game,” she sings.

Alongside sharing the original version of the track Friday, Beyonce announced her new initiative Black Parade Route. The project compiles a lengthy directory of Black artists, creators, businesses, and services. Furthermore, proceeds from Beyonce’s “Black Parade” track benefits the singer’s foundation BEYGood and its Black Business Impact Fund, which offers financial assistance to Black-owned small businesses in need. “I hope we continue to share joy and celebrate each other, even in the midst of struggle. Please continue to remember our beauty, strength and power,” Beyonce wrote about the project on Instagram.

Listen to the a cappella version of Beyonce’s “Black Parade” on Tidal here.

Three years ago today, Vince Staples released his second full-length album, Big Fish Theory, which included influences from electronic music much more prominently than most of its contemporaries. Now, Staples has taken some time to commemorate the album, doing so by taking to Twitter and sharing some thoughts for fans who didn’t appreciate the record.

Staples tweeted, “I remember when y’all tried to kill me for challenging myself creatively but y’all hairlines pushed bacc so it never phased me.” Staples also noted that he will continue his stylistic experimentation in future releases, writing, “Album 3 finna push the limits too I might get a verse from John Coyega.” When a fan responded by saying that FM! was actually Staples’ third album, he answered, “I hate when you n****s try to tell God where heaven at rebrand your Twitter.”

Another user chimed in by tweeting, “Please don’t drop no weirdo techno sh*t man.” Staples referenced the person’s Twitter profile in his response, writing, “Your header a Honda you don’t make the rules.”

Then another fan commented, “Hey I still think Big Fish Theory was your worst project, objectively speaking, but I’m sorry if you felt like your fans giving you honest feedback and not mindlessly supporting everything you do was a problem.” To that, Staples answered, “Idc what y’all do as long as y’all wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with soap & hot water and follow precautions to help limit the spread of COVID – 19.”

Staples then wrapped up the conversation by closing, “I love all of y’all have a good day.”

Check out Staples’ tweets below, and revisit our review of Big Fish Theory here.

Novak Djokovic is one of the world’s best tennis players, but has had some dramatically terrible views on the COVID-19 pandemic. The Serbian tennis star has said he would refuse a vaccine, broke Spanish stay-at-home orders by practicing at a tennis club, and most recently hosted a charity tennis tournament for COVID-19 relief that practiced almost no social distancing and saw players partying in clubs at night.

The tournament was cut short prior to Djokovic playing in the finals after Grigor Dmitrov tested positive after playing in a match, and with the news Tuesday that Djokovic has tested positive, there are now four players that participated in the Adria Tour event that have contracted the virus. Djokovic released a statement on Tuesday (via the Associated Press) apologizing to the players that were infected.

“Unfortunately, this virus is still present, and it is a new reality that we are still learning to cope and live with. I am hoping things will ease with time so we can all resume lives the way they were,” Djokovic said in a statement released Tuesday. “I am extremely sorry for each individual case of infection. I hope that it will not complicate anyone’s health situation and that everyone will be fine.”

After Djokovic’s announcement, video pulled from Instagram showing the tennis star partying at a club made the rounds on social media and drew quite the response from Nick Kyrgios, who is often criticized for his behavior on the tennis court and said he doesn’t want to hear any of it after what Djokovic did in a pandemic.

It’s a fair retort as Kyrgios clearly wants to put into perspective the difference between antics on the court that, while unbecoming and at times uncalled for, are not as serious in the grand scheme of things as ignoring a global pandemic and putting people at risk because you insist you should be able to party.

Djokovic remains asymptomatic and will self-isolate for 14 days, and it will be interesting to see if his personal experience with the virus will change his tone going forward on events taking added precautions and safety protocols.

The death of Joel Schumacher at age 80 led to an outpouring of tributes from those who worked with the director of multiple Batman movies, as well as 1980s favorites like The Lost Boys, St. Elmo’s Fire, and Flatliners. Several actors expressed gratitude for Schumacher providing them with lessons and opportunities, but Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey believes that his career probably would have fizzled out if not for the A Time To Kill director taking a risk on a relative unknown like himself.

McConaughey revealed in a statement to Variety that his small roles prior to the 1996 legal thriller did not make him a contender for the leading role in a high-profile John Grisham adaptation. Not only did Schumacher provide support when McConaughey didn’t believe he could pull off Jake Brigance, the director actually went to bat, big time:

“Joel not only took a chance on me, he fought for me. Knowing the studio might never approve a relatively unknown like myself for the lead in ‘A Time to Kill,’ he set up a secret screen test for me on a Sunday morning in a small unknown studio because as he stated, ‘Even if you do great, you may not get the part, so I don’t want the industry to ever think you screen tested and DID NOT get the job.”

Not only did McConaughey tell this story to Variety, but George Clooney (who appeared in Schumacher’s Batman and Robin, bat-nipples and all) offered up confirmation: “His career was absolutely started by Joel fighting for him in A Time To Kill.” That, right there, is solidarity between friends. Sure, everyone likes quoting the Dazed and Confused incarnation of McConaughey, but Schumacher recognized that the young actor had range, and he was absolutely correct. McConaughey can dance from romcoms to awards fare, seemingly effortlessly, but none of this may have happened if not for Schumacher recognizing talent over existing stardom.

(Via Variety)

---

View Entire Post ›

The Black Eyed Peas’ new album, Translation, has a completely different sound than anything they’ve done before, as the group offers its take on the world of Latin music with guests like Becky G, El Alfa, J. Balvin, Ozuna, and Shakira. However, the biggest difference that longtime fans may notice is the absence of the group’s erstwhile fourth member, Fergie, who joined the band on their third album, Elephunk, and remained with them through their 2010 album, The Beginning. She was also missing from their 2018 album Masters Of The Sun Vol. 1. In a new interview with Billboard, they explain why.

All three remaining members are quick to point out that they remain in contact with Fergie and consider her their “sister.” However, as Will.I.Am says, “she’s focusing on being a mom. That’s a hard job, and that’s what she really wants to do and we’re here for her, and she knows how to contact us for a retreat or a breakaway. It’s really the way Fergie designed it, so we’re respecting her design. We love Fergie, and we don’t want anything but awesomeness for her.”

Apl.de.Ap reinforces that the group’s recording schedule simply conflicts with the demands of motherhood. “Even with these small connections, she’s always going to be our sister,” he says. “But unfortunately our schedule is displaced by [her] wanting to be a great mom, and she wants to focus on that. And like Will said, we support her 100%.”

Will even notes that Fergie hadn’t heard the album at the time of the interview, hoping that she likes it when she hears it with the rest of the world. While Translation takes them back to their roots as a trio, the group has brought in a new live vocalist for the time being, J. Rey Soul. Taboo compliments the new singer, saying “how proud I am of J.Rey Soul as well, because I know people are probably wondering who this artist is. The question always is ‘How’s Fergie doing?’ and I get that… I feel we’re giving birth to a new artist, J.Rey Soul. I really want to give her ultimate praise and respect.”

With a new sound, a new member, and a new album, Black Eyed Peas looks to extend their run of pop/hip-hop dominance and given the performance of their new single “Ritmo” with J. Balvin, they appear to be on course to do just that.

Check out the video for “Ritmo” above.

Translation is out now on Interscope. Get it here.

I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, the 2018 true-crime bestseller from the late Michelle McNamara, contained years of research that unquestionably helped law enforcement arrest the Golden State Killer. McNamara even helped coin that nickname for the predator formerly known as the East Area Rapist, who committed 50 rapes and 12 murders while terrorizing California in the 1970s and 80s. Sadly, McNamara passed away two years before the publication of her book and the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, who’s expected to plead guilty on June 29. The book not only illuminates her dogged pursuit of the truth, but also the public awareness that she generated, both of which led to renewed law enforcement attention for a 30-year-old cold case.

Following McNamara’s death (due to an accidental overdose of prescription drugs coupled with a medical condition), her husband, Patton Oswalt, resolved to make sure her book was published. He greenlit the manuscript’s completion, and he’s now appearing onscreen in HBO’s six-part docuseries (directed by Liz Garbus), which includes interviews with survivors, investigators, and those who knew Michelle well. Her empathy, and her non-sensationalized treatment of the material, made the book one hell of a read, and that comes through on the series. Patton read aloud from Michelle’s book while visiting Seth Meyers on the day of DeAngelo’s arrest, and he was gracious enough to speak with us ahead of the series’ debut (this talk took place just prior to this past weekend’s Fyre Fest-esque Trump rally in Tulsa).

It’s now customary for us to greet each other by asking if the other’s alright during the pandemic.

Well, are you keeping safe?

For now, but I’m in Tulsa, and there’s an event this weekend.

Oh god!

People aren’t thrilled about a rally happening.

Trump is so confusing. He canceled it, but it’s back on?

They nixed the Juneteenth date. It’s now happening on Saturday.

Oh, Christ, I’m so sorry. I hope you stay safe! Look out for that goddamn Boogaloo group, which is some kind of white supremacist thing. They’re trying to start a race war, so they dress like Antifa, but they shoot cops? It’s, like, fucking terrifying.

This is when we need your Constable Bob from Justified to save the day.

Oh, thank you!

Before we talk about the HBO series, I can’t resist mentioning one of my favorite passages from Michelle’s book — an anecdote about how you gave her a pep talk about Rocky Balboa to help her stay on her writing path.

[Laughs] I was just trying to find some imagery or a narrative that she could use, and that was Rocky. Like, if you watch the original film, he’s insanely out of shape and just has to rebuild from nothing. That was the metaphor I used, and I hope it doesn’t come off as clumsy, but it was the best that I could come up with. Yes, that was the pep talk I gave her on the book, godddd.

Michelle’s writing felt so human, and that only added to that vibe. She also suggested that you silently mouthed jokes to rehearse while washing dishes.

Oh yeah, I washed dishes because that really fed into my OCD and my, like, assembling of things in my head.

Obviously, the series has plenty of somber and emotional moments, but is also a celebration of Michelle’s work. When did you find out it was happening?

I remember that Liz approached me to pitch the idea, and I really, really liked her as a filmmaker. I knew that she would be great at figuring out the narrative correctly. And when I found out, we were in discussions with Liz, and that’s just kind of how it came together. We were working on the series when [Joseph James DeAngelo] got arrested.

You learned about the arrest when the cameras were rolling.

Yeah, we had been working on the documentary, and then then it happened, so they caught it on camera. Crazy, yeah, it was nuts.

You also pop into the series in several places.

Well, I don’t know that I participated that heavily, but I did make sure and turn all the materials over to Liz and her team, and then I wanted the focus to be on Michelle and the survivors and the investigators. That’s what I wanted it to be.

Very clearly, you were supportive of her work.

I mean, I tried to be as supportive as I could.

It isn’t easy to be married to a writer, I imagine?

[Laughs] Well, since we were both writers, we both understood where we were each coming from at the time.

In your afterword, you wrote that you guys initially bonded over your mutual serial-killer knowledge.

Yeah, definitely. That’s in there. I wanted to definitely do the afterword because I wanted Gillian [Flynn] to do the intro to bring us into her world. She’s such an amazing writer that I wanted her to do the intro, and I would do the very last part. I also wanted the last voice in the actual voice to be Michelle’s, and that’s the “Letter To An Old Man.”

That “old man,” Joseph James DeAngelo, is expected to plead guilty.

I believe so! I think it’s the day after the first episode airs. I’ll be watching, and I think what’s more important that the survivors and the victims’ families will be watching, and the same with the investigators.

In addition to law enforcement, Michelle’s fellow citizen investigators, Paul Haynes and Billy Jensen, were incredible.

Yes, they assembled the book. I handed everything over to them and was like, “Please, just help me get this done.” I didn’t want this work to remain unfinished. I don’t think I would be able to live if that was the case.

When it came to Michelle’s writing, when did you realize how skilled she was?

I mean, right away. Just when you talk to her, you can see what an original mind she had, and how engaged with everything she was, and so reading her writing, to me, it wasn’t surprising how amazing she was.

Are you surprised that her book, and her push for DNA, led to an arrest, and did you gave any gut feeling about it?

Actually, I did not know how this thing would turn out. Again, it was another very happy and pleasant surprise, that the victims’ families and survivors would feel some justice, I hope.

You talked a lot in your Annihilation special about your grieving process, and this opens another door of that, no doubt.

It’s just an ongoing process. I found love again, which I didn’t think would happen. It’s still gonna be day by day for a long time.

So, this docuseries will air over six weeks, and I think it nails the obsessive feel of the book because I binged it in one day.

Wow. It’s a tough one to watch, too.

But like I said, there are positive moments, and Michelle’s vibrant personality was apparent. I did chuckle while reading the book when Michelle formally ruled out Tom Hanks as a suspect due to his Bosom Buddies schedule.

Yeah! That, and she really was able to capture how there is a level of obsession with this subject. And thank you so much for taking the time to watch it all, I really appreciate it. And stay safe. Please! This weekend, if you’re going to go protest in Tulsa or have friends who are going out there, tell them to be very careful and aware, okay? I’m serious, please be safe.

HBO’s ‘I’ll Be Gone In The Dark’ premieres on Sunday, June 28 at 10:00pm EST.

It’s been nearly 35 years since the Beastie Boys broke onto the scene with their iconic debut record, Licensed To Ill. The album was produced by Rick Rubin, who met the boys when they were still in high school. Many years have passed since they first encountered each other. The Beastie Boys are the focus of Apple TV’s Spike Jonze-directed documentary Beastie Boys Story, and Rubin, among other things, hosts the podcast Broken Record. Now, Rubin has invited the living Beastie Boys members Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz to join his podcast in for a reunion.

The podcast episode marks the first time Horovitz and Rubin have spoken in 20 years. There’s no beef between them, they just fell out of contact in the midst of their busy lives. Listening to their candid conversation, their apparent chemistry makes it hard to tell that any time has passed since they last spoke. Throughout the course of the hour-long podcast, Rubin, along with Spike Jonze, reminisce with Diamond and Horovitz about their early days, hanging out in local New York City records stores, and why Rubin infamously disappeared before the group’s breakout opportunity on Madonna’s Like A Virgin tour.

Rubin also talked about how growing up outside the city in the pre-internet days shaped him:

“I would say they had better access than I had because this was pre-internet. Like now, everyone could find out anything they want about anything. Where I was, it was hard to find out anything about anything. I spent a lot of time in the library doing research, and even that research wasn’t [the] sort of ‘culture of the moment’ research, it was about learning about things I was interested in and spending a lot of time in records was my closest way of having any kind of connection to culture.”

Rubin added, “On the downside, maybe by living in the city, it might narrow the view of what was cool. I didn’t know what was cool, coming where I came from. And the beauty of that was, I could see and hear everything. There was very little peer pressure about that where I lived. If you were in the city, there was stuff that was cool to like and not cool to like, and that could have a limiting effect.”

Listen to the full Broken Record session with Beastie Boys, Spike Jonze, and Rick Rubin above.

Eminem has been in the rap game for a long time, and during his tenure, he has, to put it lightly, found himself in a beef or two. Another one started brewing recently thanks to an old Em verse that leaked. On an alternate version of Conway The Machine’s “Bang,” Eminem offers criticism of Joe Budden and of Diddy’s Revolt TV, rapping about the latter, “Shout to Puffy Combs, but f*ck Revolt / Y’all are like a f*cked up remote / Now I get it why our button’s broke.”

Naturally, Revolt caught wind of the diss, and they offered a response of their own. They got their point across using only a handful of words, including a choice expletive. Sharing an image of text, Revolt wrote on Instagram, “F*ck you too Eminem.” They also added in the caption, “Now back to our movement,” followed by a Black fist emoji.

On the song, Eminem said of Budden (who is a broadcaster with Revolt), “Tell this journalist stick to the stuff he knows / Like always running from Migos.” Budden hasn’t offered as direct of a response, but he seemed to address the situation on Twitter. Responding to a user who wrote, “[Budden] really been catching strays all week. Yo just be minding his business,” Budden tweeted, “I really just be trying to chill.”

The NBA and NBPA have reportedly finalized an agreement for the restarted season that will see 22 teams head to Orlando in July, with both sides agreeing, mostly, to the terms and policies laid out in the handbook sent to players last week.

However, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, there are a few additional items or tweaks that have been made to the final agreement. One of the most important of those is an “enhanced insurance policy” that the NBA and NBPA will take out to cover players that go into the bubble to provide extra protection in case of a career-ending injury suffered during the restart or if a player contracts COVID-19 and has long-term effects that ends their career.

It seems to be a bit of a compromise on what players like Jayson Tatum, Bam Adebayo, De’Aaron Fox, and other players nearing extensions after their rookie deals were looking for in terms of added protection from injury. The wording of Woj’s report indicates this will only cover the most severe injuries or COVID-19 outcomes, but will at least offer players a bit of a security blanket in the form of “several million dollars” that mitigates at least some risk of playing again.

Still, the players returning to the bubble will face serious risk, both from the coronavirus and the possibility that after such a long layoff there will be an increase in injury risk once they jump back into competitive basketball. The insurance policy won’t protect them in totality, but it’s still good the players were able to get some kind of assistance from the league for those injury concerns.