ENERGY

Beyoncé Crowned Atlanta, Georgia As The New ‘Eerbody On Mute War’ Winner

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Beyonce Renaissance Tour Sweden 2023
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Wherever it travels, Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour is the hottest ticket in town. On Friday, August 11, ahead of her first night of shows in Atlanta, Georgia, city officials declared the date an official holiday, “Beyoncé Day.” But that wasn’t the only thing city natives did to show their love for Beyoncé.

On Saturday, August 12, during night two of her Renaissance World Tour, concertgoers proved they were the singer’s most devoted fans by dethroning Washington, DC, of their crown of the “Eerbody On Mute War” winners. The contest started as a fun crowd engagement moment to see who could best sing along to the lyrics to “Energy,” namely, “Look around / Everybody on mute.” It’s turned into a battle of the regional Beyhives.

Once it was time for the Mercedes-Benz Stadium to go silent, they flawlessly hit their mark, and Beyoncé gleefully declared the Atlanta audience as the new “Eerbody On Mute” challenge winners.

Earlier in the show, Beyoncé opened up to the sold-out stadium about what the tour means to her. “This is the gratitude tour,” she said. “This show is all about joy. I hope y’all feel a lot of joy. When I get up on this stage and see y’all, that’s what I feel. Y’all look beautiful tonight.”

Beyonce Awards Washington DC Extra Special “RENAISSANCE” Tour Title

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Even with a few minor speedbumps – such as crew members forgetting to put Beyonce’s ladder in place, or getting a bit too handsy while helping her down – the RENAISSANCE World Tour has been going well so far. For her most recent North American stop, the mother of three performed for Kamala Harris and her husband. The Vice President and her partner joined tens of thousands of others in Washington, DC on Sunday. Not only did Bey give her audience yet another stellar performance, but she also dished out $100K to pay for the local transit to run an hour later due to the bad weather patrons were forced to endure on their way home.

Besides her naturally generous spirit, it’s likely the “Halo” singer was so willing to help out the BeyHive in the nation’s capital due to their “ENERGY.” During the upbeat song, on which Queen B collaborated with BEAM, she’s made a tradition of having her audience go dead silent when she sings the lyrics, “Look around, eerybody on mute.” With each performance, the crowd has gotten better at playing along with her game. According to a tweet on Monday (August 7) morning, Beyonce has crowned DC as the winner of her “war.”

Read More: Beyonce Pays To Extend Metro Hours, Helping Fans Commute Home From Renaissance Tour

Beyonce Has Big Love for Fans in Washington DC

In response to the news, one fan retweeted a video from the moment that Beyonce was stunned by her crowd. Due to their complete silence, a literal echo could be heard in the stadium. This led the Houston native to crack a not-so-subtle smile before giving out the award.

As you may recall, a fan of Beyonce’s was stabbed last month while dancing in a gas station parking lot. The “CUFF IT” hitmaker was sure to show the late man love during a recent performance, and his killer has since been charged with a hate crime. Read more about that at the link below, and check back later for more hip-hop/pop culture news updates. RIP.

Read More: 17-Year-Old Charged With A Hate Crime After Stabbing Beyonce Fan To Death

[Via]

The post Beyonce Awards Washington DC Extra Special “RENAISSANCE” Tour Title appeared first on HotNewHipHop.

Soulja Boy Performs At Rolling Loud To Seemingly Low Energy Crowd, Twitter Reacts

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Soulja Boy recently performed at Rolling Loud Los Angeles, and people say the crowd was pretty dead. Moreover, a particular clip went around social media of Soulja performing his track “Rick & Morty,” a viral offering. However, in the recording, you can’t really hear the crowd screaming lyrics back at him or engaging with the performance. As one Twitter user posted, “there is not a single phone in sight for [Soulja Boy].” Still, some people pointed out in comments and reply sections that, in some recordings for concerts, they mute the crowd mics while the artist is performing.

Furthermore, that’s exactly what’s heard in the clip at the very end, where the rap pioneer instructs the crowd to “make some motherf***in’ noise, man.” Regardless of whether people actually got hyped up to the performance, it’s fair to say that he’s more known for his influence than his present contributions these days. In fact, saying the Atlanta-bred artist was the first to do “x” rap achievement is basically a meme at this point. As such, people seemed much more excited during renditions of classics like “All The Way Turnt Up” by Roscoe Dash featuring Soulja.

Soulja Boy Performs At Rolling Loud

Meanwhile, the “Crank Dat” artist recently made headlines for things curiously outside his wheelhouse or own career. For example, he expressed support for Megan Thee Stallion following her victorious case against Tory Lanez, who shot Meg back in 2020. Moreover, he called out Lanez in the process. “You want to shoot b***hes in the feet n***a?” he said on IG Live. “Yous a p***y n***a. And when you get from jail n***a you know where I’m at. You got a problem n***a I’ll beat your b***h a** n***a. Don’t never rap over none of my beats, don’t never freestyle over none of my beats. You trash n***a. Your music trash.”

Certainly some strong words from Soulja. Sure, some people clowned it for not really being his business, but it seemed like everyone was giving their opinion anyway. Elsewhere, he recently got involved in a spat with Boosie Badazz as well over comments about straight rappers. Regardless of the oddity of that exchange, check out reactions to the Rolling Loud LA performance down below. Also, as always, log back into HNHH for the latest updates and news on Soulja Boy and more notable performance moments.

Twitter Reacts To The Rolling Loud Crowd

Kelis Explains Beyoncé Using ‘Milkshake’ Without Asking Was ‘Personal On Many Levels Which People Don’t Understand’

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Kelis Hollywood Unlocked 2022
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A couple days ago, Kelis shared an Instagram post showing off her hair and outfit. The post had nothing to do with her beef with Beyoncé over sampling “Milkshake” on Renaissance cut “Energy,” but the comments section quickly became all about it.

Responding to comments from fans and detractors, Kelis declared she “won” by Beyoncé removing the sample and also called the Beyhive “a joke.” Beyond that, she also responded to an interesting point.

A fan mentioned how Bia referenced the “Milkshake” lyrics in her 2021 song “Can’t Touch This,” writing, “Not here to cause problem but genuinely concerned why you ain’t say nothing when @bia did ‘can’t touch this’ and took the whole ‘my milkshare brings all the boys to the yard’ ?” To that, Kelis answered, “like I’ve said, it’s all a problem. Every single time. But this was personal on many levels which people don’t understand and I didn’t care to go further into. But yes. It is all a problem that I am going to fix .”

On a related note, another fan commented, “Why can’t we as sisters ever settle anything behind closed doors without giving others the satisfaction of making it look like a feud? I’m so curious to know and understand.” Kelis answered, “it’s bigger then that.”

One of those aforementioned levels is presumably related to Pharrell and Chad Hugo (who produced “Milkshake” as The Neptunes), as she called them out last month. A hater took to the comments to bring them up, writing, “If the Neptunes were so bad to you how come everything you did after you left them flopped? They gave you your big break and your biggest singles which allow you to still tour 20 years later but you’re acting like they stole something from you. You owe everything you have to them be grateful.”

In response, Kelis wrote, “that’s funny cause right after I left them I did bossy and many of my biggest songs were not Neptune produced. And I never said they weren’t talented . I said they are bad people. And further more I made them as much as they made me. Do your homework dumb dumb.”

Find Kelis’ original comments below.

Kelis Instagram comments
@kelis/Instagram
Kelis Instagram comments
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Kelis Instagram comments
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Kelis Calls Beyoncé Fans ‘A Joke’ While Reacting To The ‘Renaissance’ Sample Being Removed: ‘I Won’

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Kelis Hollywood Unlocked Impact Awards 2022
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Beyoncé has herself a hit with Renaissance, but that didn’t stop her from making changes to the new album shortly after its release: She vowed to alter the lyric of “Heated” following backlash over an ableist slur, and after getting called out by Kelis, she removed a sample of Kelis’ “Milkshake” from “Energy.” Now that Kelis has gotten her way, she offered a reaction and she’s pretty pleased.

The comments of a recent Kelis Instagram post not related to the Beyoncé situation was full of comments about it and Kelis responded to a good amount of them over the past couple days. One user just noted the sample removal and Kelis responded, “yeah I won lol only a moron wouldn’t understand that.”

A fan congratulated Kelis and accused Beyoncé and her fans of having a “bullying energy about them.” Kelis responded, “thank you. You can’t be afraid to speak up for yourself no matter how big the bully’s. They are robots. I don’t care about any of them.”

Speaking of the Beyhive, Kelis didn’t mince words with or about them. One apparent Beyoncé fan commented, “Beyonce really tried to make you relevant again (since you haven’t been since the 90s or early 2000s) and you called her a ‘thief’?” Kelis replied, “I called out what it was . You are a mindless sheep. There I go again speaking truth. Lol I guess I just can’t help it lol.”

In other comments, she called the Beyhive “a joke” and said, “it’s got cult written all over it.”

Check out the post and some of the comments below.

Kelis Instagram comments Beyonce
@kelis/Instagram
Kelis Instagram comments Beyonce
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Kelis Instagram comments Beyonce
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Kelis Instagram comments Beyonce
@kelis/Instagram
Kelis Instagram comments Beyonce
@kelis/Instagram

What Made Beyonce Remove The Kelis Sample From ‘Energy?’

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Sharp-eared fans who pressed play on Beyonce’s new album Renaissance today may have noticed that a couple of the songs sound slightly different than they did on Friday when it dropped. On one song, “Heated,” a line has been changed to replace a word described as a slur by disability activists, following up on similar actions taken by fellow star Lizzo when the same concerns were raised over her song “Grrrls.”

The other subtle but big change to Renaissance appears in the song “Energy.” Prior to the album’s release, “Milkshake” singer Kelis posted a video raising concerns with the song, which she had been informed would include a sample of one of her songs. Kelis believed that she was not credited and also felt that she deserved a heads-up call from either Beyonce or the song’s producers. It later turned out that while “Energy” does include interpolation of Kelis’ hit “Milkshake,” the songwriting was properly credited to Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, aka The Neptunes, who wrote and produced the original.

However, that didn’t stop fans from debating whether or not there was an uncredited sample of Kelis singing in “Energy,” so Beyonce apparently updated the song on DSPs to remove a vocal clip toward the end of the track. Industry veteran Naima Cochran, whom Uproxx interviewed about the dispute, believes that Beyonce did so to remove a distraction from the larger discussion she hoped to spark with Renaissance about the breadth and history of Black music, which includes pioneering dance music styles like house and techno in addition to hip-hop and R&B.

So, technically, Beyonce did NOT remove a sample of Kelis from “Energy” because there never was one in the first place. However, she did remove disputed vocals that some fans thought were similar enough to cause confusion. The interpolation of drums from Kelis’ single “Milkshake” remains, but it was properly credited to its original songwriters, The Neptunes. For more information, you can check out our interview with Naima, who brings 20+ years of music business experience with multiple music labels to her expert perspective.

Beyoncé Appears To Be Updating ‘Renaissance’ To Remove The Contested Kelis Sample On ‘Energy’

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kelis beyonce beef
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

Life comes at you fast. And Kelis might be getting what she wanted.

Last week, when Beyoncé’s Renaissance came out and immediately became the most talked-about album in the world, Kelis made it abundantly clear that she did not grant permission for samples — albeit very brief ones — from her songs to be used in Beyoncé’s “Energy.” Kelis’s anger was directed mostly at Pharrell and Chad Hugo, who as The Neptunes, wrote and produced the two Kelis songs in question, “Milkshake,” and “Get Along With You,” and hence, owned the publishing rights holders who could clear the use of those samples for “Energy” (which they also co-wrote.)

“My mind is blown too because the level of disrespect and utter ignorance of all 3 parties involved is astounding,” Kelis said on Instagram, later adding in a video that, “Chad really is like an amoeba, he’s spineless. It’s a miracle he can keep his neck up, but Pharrell knows better. This is a direct hit at me, he does this stuff all the time. It’s very petty — very, very, very — and the reality is that it’s frustrating.”

Well, the issue looks to be coming to a head, as the Kelis samples seem to be getting slowly removed from “Energy” across streaming platforms from “Energy.” At press time, the end of “Energy” on Tidal was playing just Kelis’ isolated sample. Spotify was having intermittent loading issues both Beyoncé’s Renaissance tracks, as well as Kelis’ discography. Users online are claiming that Kelis’ writing credits are missing, although only Pharrell and Hugo would have had their included to begin with.

This story is being updated