Hip Hop News

On Friday, Polo G’s mom Stacia Mac took to her TikTok to show off all of her son’s accomplishments. The 40-year-old mom-ager posted the video to her nearly 300,000 followers, asking the other moms who claim their sons are “rappers” to step it up. “Moms be like, ‘My son’s a rapper,’” she says. “Does he pop out multiple times? Can he flex? Can he make it through the storm? Does his music go stupid? Is he on billboards? Is he the last of a dying breed? Does he rap effortlessly? Is he the GOAT? Is he Polo G?” The entire time, Stacia Mac is standing in front of her son’s plaques for each song she references. 

@stacia.mac

Moms be like #rap#polog

♬ BGC Drama Effect – whozmanzz

As with many of her other posts, commenters were quick to point out how beautiful Stacia is, and how she, at times, looks younger than her own son. “When polo g mom looks younger than polo g,” one commenter added. “Polo g momma fine asf,” another said. Others thought Stacia wasn’t asking the right questions, commenting, “‘Is his momma fine ??’ thats what you should’ve said.” 

After Stacia posted the TikTok, she went on her Instagram story to make sure she cleared the air about her hyping up Polo G. “PSA Every mom should praise THEIR child,” she wrote. “Doing so doesn’t diminish or take away from anyone else’s accomplishments #ibirthlegends and I’m reppin’ mine EVERYDAY.”

Stacia Mac/Instagram

That’s one supportive mom!

T-Pain was an interesting figure when he came onto the music scene in the mid-2000s. While many found his music to be catchy, others were weirded out by his use of autotune. T-Pain used autotune more than any other artist at the time and eventually, almost every singer was using it too. Some felt like this cheapened the art of singing although, since that time, many have realized that T-Pain’s natural voice is quite incredible and that the criticism from decades ago was overblown.

Recently, T-Pain got to be part of a brand new ad-campaign with Ruffles which actually makes fun of his autotune use. While speaking to Billboard, T-Pain said he wanted to own it and that no matter how much he gets criticized, he will never apologize for using autotune.

“It’s about owning everything that makes you unique and makes you you and being unapologetic about it,” T-Pain said. “So it’s about everything that I’ve been doing for a long time. Like when you bring up Auto-Tune and stuff like that, I didn’t apologize for that. I kept going, I kept pushing, regardless of how much backlash I got for it, regardless how much praise other people got for it above me.”

T-Pain has nothing to apologize for because without his forward-thinking mentality, we would have never gotten so many classics whether it be from himself or those he influenced.

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Eminem’s come a long way over the course of his career but, of course, that’s just a part of growth. There’s no doubt that he was once the most scrutinized celebrity in the world due to how far he was willing to go to offend people. His raps often took aim at everyone and anyone, and the use of homophobic slurs certainly didn’t help his cause. That’s largely why Gen. Z made an attempt on his career this week. 

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That’s why his performance at the 2001 Grammys remains one of the most memorable moments of the award show. Former Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich recently spoke to Yahoo Entertainment about the iconic performance between Elton John and Eminem when they closed the show with a rendition of “Stan” and hugged each other on stage by the end of the show. Ehrlich explained there was no hesitation to include him, even though he’s been controversial and critical of the award show. 

Ehrlich has a differing perspective on who may have thought to bring out Elton John but he said there were a few calls made. “We were looking for a duet partner because they had expressed to us that he was interested in performing with another artist,” he said, even though in an interview with MTV News, the rapper said that it was his idea. However, the relationship he already had with Elton John made the request easy to make. “As soon as we got the message to Elton that we were interested, he sparked to it,” Ehrlich added. “He said, ‘This is exactly the kind of thing that I want to do. I want to break down these barriers. If [Eminem’s] OK with it and he wants to do it. I’d love to do it.” John took a risk since the LGBTQ+ community was already protesting against Em’s inclusion. A spokesperson for GLAAD said, “We were all flabbergasted that [John] would do this.”

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Eminem found a way to incorporate Elton John into the performance. Ehrlich said that everyone was already aware of how big this would be, so they saved it as the show closer. Ultimately, neither of them wanted to seem “exploitative” of the situation and Ehrlich said they accomplished that. “Both of them were very careful about what we could do because they didn’t want it to feel too exploitative, which I don’t think it did,” Ehrlich said. “We honored what we said we would do.”

Ehrlich couldn’t confirm whether they had rehearsed the hug at the end of their performance but he did confirm that Eminem flipped the bird without hesitation or warning. “I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘That’s Marshall,'” he said.

On more Eminem-related content, check out, “Eminem And Cancel Culture: An Incomplete History.”

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Well, it was a nice run forAvengers: Endgame. The Marvel Cinematic Universe film that concluded the Infinity Saga was the highest-grossing movie of all time for almost two years, but Avatar is back in the top spot. James Cameron’s alien adventure flick, which is just a retooling of Pocahontas, was revolutionary when it dropped. Fans got to experience 3D movies that were immersive and lifelike for the first time in regular theaters. 

Disney purchased 20th Century Fox, so Avatar is another one of their franchises now. So, it’s really just two Disney titles battling it out for the top spot. 

Avatar was able to take back the top spot because of China. The country re-released the film this weekend, giving it the little push it needed to edge past Endgame. However, many fans of the MCU are mad at this switch. They believe Avatar is “gaming” the system by re-releasing the film just to get some extra bucks. However, if the demand is there, why not give the people the supply?

However, one can note that Endgame stayed in theaters for months and months (about a year and a half) just to try and beat Avatar in the first place. 

Playboi Carti is one of those artists that fans either love or hate and there really is no in-between. This was especially true after his album Whole Lotta Red came out. There were various people on the internet who were quick to hate on it, however, if you really delved into the project, you would quickly realize how unique and forward-thinking it is. The punk influence is all over the album and there is no denying that it does a lot of things really well.

In the midst of all of this, some fans have theorized that Carti is gay due to his mannerisms and his fashion sense. During a recent cover story with Highsnobiety, Carti spoke on these rumors and said that he is simply being himself. Needless to say, Carti doesn’t care what you think.

“If your cross is straight, then I’m gonna put my shit upside down,” Carti said. “If you hate cigarettes, then I’m gonna smoke as many as I can. I’m anti-everything. I’m not going out my way to have people like, ‘Oh, what the fuck’s Carti on? Is he gay, or is he trolling?’ No, bro—I don’t give a fuck. I’m being myself. I wish I came in like this. But if you look at my career you see little signs of that shit. Even if I wasn’t wearing all black and all that shit, I always had a glimpse of this. ‘Oh yeah, bro out here, he on some whole other shit’—it’s always been me. From the moment I came into this game.”

At this point, Carti seems to be pretty comfortable in his own skin, and that won’t be changing anytime soon, even if some fans are trying to take his individualism to a negative place.

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On Friday, Alabama-based artist Clever dropped his new album Crazy. The tracklist is absolutely star-studded, sporting features from Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, Post Malone, and Lil Baby. Clever told HNHH that all of these features were incredibly special to him, even putting the voice of his son on his track “Call Me Nobody” with Lil Wayne. Perhaps the most important feature, though, is his version of “Life’s A Mess” with Juice WRLD, which he calls the “original version” of the song. 

“To me, this is the original version,” Clever told HNHH in a recent interview. “I had a verse on this song before Halsey did, way before Halsey ever did. And I felt like I just kind of got plucked out of it. For Spotify streams and other reasons, you know what I’m saying? For me, it was about making the song that Juice wanted it to be… in my opinion, it’s the version, you know. It’s the one that he wanted.” 

Clever goes on to say that he doesn’t mean Halsey any disrespect, but that he was cut deep by the fact that he was taken off of the original track, which is on Legends Never Die. “No disrespect to Halsey, I just– I was a little hurt by the fact that I was taken off the record and replaced. I felt like I still had the rights to that song and was still very much a part of that song,” Clever said. 

What do you think, is the version with Halsey or Clever the better track? Let us know your thoughts in the comments and read the full HNHH interview with Clever here.