With nearly 400 suits filed against the Astroworld Festival organizers Live Nation and Travis Scott, the Texas Judicial Panel On Multidistrict Litigation has officially agreed to combine the suits into one case under the state’s multidistrict litigation process. Both plaintiffs and defendants wanted to combine the cases for simplicity. The new case will include at least 387 separate lawsuits with almost 2,800 alleged victims, with nearly $3 billion at stake. The suits argue that Live Nation and Travis Scott were negligent in the planning and execution of the festival.
According to Billboard, there was at least one hold-out, Brent Coon & Associates, that “argued in December the process was unnecessary” but fell in line with the rest. The case could also include additional “tag-along cases” that were filed later, with some victims dropping cases during litigation.
Live Nation and Travis Scott were sued in the wake of the Astroworld Festival when eight people were killed and nearly 300 others were injured by a crowd crush during Travis’ first-day closing set. Members of the crowd were suffocated and trampled as Travis reportedly performed for nearly 40 minutes after a mass casualty event had been declared by authorities. Two more victims died from their injuries after the festival, including one as young as 14 years old.
Self-care, as it relates to Black women, is best defined by poet and writer Audre Lorde. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence,” she wrote. “It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
The implications of Black women caring for ourselves above all else are, as Lorde said, political. As the world continues to expect more and more from us, we owe it to ourselves to take care — whether we are given the room to do so, or have to create it from nothing. The rise of self-care gave way to three records in the last decade of R&B music: A Seat At The Table by Solange, CTRL by SZA, and Shea Butter Baby by Ari Lennox. These records carved out three distinct paths in the same lane, creating space for Black women in the idea of preserving the self.
Solange’s A Seat At The Table, released right before the 2016 election, remains a monument of the time. The record’s centerpiece songs, such as “Don’t Touch My Hair” and “Weary,” were instantly topical, acting as a comfort blanket to protect against the increasingly fraught energy surrounding, well, everything. Originally conceptualized as an homage to her family’s Southern roots, and taking up space through documenting Black personhood, Solange lays out all of her failures and triumphs on her fourth record, giving way to truths that are ultimately universal. Her pillowy voice, warm bass, and delicate neo-soul keyboard sounds provide a soft place to land as we confront all of the things that are ugly in this world.
Solange gave the Black image a distinct place in the self-care movement as we know it today: the album cover features her best Mona Lisa, smiling slyly with multicolored hair pins holding the perfect waves framing her face. She presents the idea that before we can care for ourselves, we have to be sure that we are safe. Solange asserts this idea on “F.U.B.U” (which stands for “For Us By Us”), envisioning a world in which it is safe for Black women to rest, to live.
Establishing self-care as both a political and artistic act set the stage for SZA — Solange’s protege of sorts, and the adored singer behind CTRL, her well-loved debut and one of 2017’s most successful albums.
SZA’s video for “The Weekend,” directed by Solange herself, was a beautiful, slow-moving affair. The sleek, minimal track is about a mixed-up love affair, with multiple people vying for the time and attention of one person. This sounds like normal R&B fodder: a relationship gone wrong, a narrator who is upset at the way they’ve been treated. But, “The Weekend” became a beacon of sorts (and a platinum hit without being a single) — it is an admission of weakness if you look further. SZA admits that she is lonely, wanting to replace all of the someone elses in question.
CTRL was not a planned concept. After signing a major deal, SZA wrote and recorded as much material as possible, condensing it down to fourteen songs. And this is evident in the way it plays out; CTRL is a confessional booth, a diary, the ear of a best friend.
On “Supermodel,” the album’s show-stopping, sparse opener, SZA lets us know that she wants to be beautiful for us, and she has a hard time believing that she can. This admission of her lack of confidence establishes honesty as another important tenet of self-care. The album’s closer, “Pretty Little Birds” is a beautiful manifestation for good after everything that SZA has told us went wrong. She has covered the good, the sensual, the messy. She tells us that everything that she needs from her lover, and from us is to see and to be seen. When SZA sings, it is deeply about the self, with feelings examined from each angle with a goal in mind: to grow.
By the time Shea Butter Baby arrived in 2019, Ari Lennox was gaining attention for being the first woman to be signed to J Cole’s Dreamville label. Self-care had been largely established as a worldly, commodifiable interest, rather than a way to create comfort. Shea Butter Baby served as a balm to this concept, a reminder that the journey to self is messy.
Shea Butter Baby is distinctly feminine, the album’s title track featuring Cole himself serving as an ode to the beauty that is Black self-care on a physical level, silk sheets and soft, shiny skin. But, self-care is more than skin deep and Lennox makes sure that we do not forget this. On “Speak to Me,” Lennox is at her most vulnerable, wishing to know the truth about where she stands with someone who she loves. The delicate punch of “I Been” tackles the allure of escapism, Lennox so desperately wanting to be somewhere else while everything is going wrong. On “Static,” the album’s closer, Lennox implores us to save ourselves from drowning beneath all that is unimportant — reminding us that we are in control of our own destinies. Shea Butter Baby finds and cherishes the freedom that it takes to care for the self.
These three records charted distinct journeys for each of these artists on the same course to understand the self. The portraits of Black womanhood that each of these records paint represent different people at distinct points in time, striving to understand what it is that makes us who we are. That quest for closeness to the self is what makes self-care so important, and what makes each of these records a crucial snapshot of what that means for us. These records highlight the need to seek community, growth, and comfort: all necessary pieces to the self-care puzzle.
If you’d told me 20 years ago that 50 Cent would become one of the hottest producers in television with a veritable cinematic universe to his name… Actually, I would have believed you. At the time, he was the biggest thing in rap music, a world-class superstar who had promised to put the radio game in a chokehold — and then did it.
Now, he’s done the same with premium TV; again, if you told me his Power franchise (with three spin-offs plus an unrelated but thematically relevant Black Mafia Family bio series) were majorly responsible for a big boost in Starz subscriptions for the past three years, I would definitely be inclined to believe you.
The story that began with Ghost St. Patrick and Tommy Egan way back in 2014 in the original Power is, in 50’s own words, coming full-circle with the upcoming spin-off, Book IV: Force. Following Tommy’s exploits when he leaves New York for his hometown, Chicago, Tommy will once again get wrapped up in criminal enterprise and intrigue as he gets caught between two of the city’s rival organizations.
With Book IV: Force set to premiere on Starz on February 6, executive producer 50 Cent sat down for a Zoom call with Uproxx to discuss the show’s cultural impact, its catchy theme music, and why he would actually prefer if his cinematic universe was a little more family-friendly.
What modern-day social issues do you hope to address with the show with the story of Tommy in this new city?
Coming into the town, he interacts with who he would just run into. It turns into a whole different thing, but in the future, you should expect him to see more of that culture that we are aware of coming into the show, but it comes in as a resource that he sees. When he’s under circumstances where he gets into something and he involves them to come as muscle.
I’m not trying to fix the world with television. I’m trying to entertain people with it. And I think when you look at everything else that’s there, when you look at the news, all you see are things that speak to the graphic nature of premium television. So this is where we make a connection that network television doesn’t. I think people connect with that, having really flawed characters that people could relate to. I think that’s what makes them watch the show with a different intensity. They feel like they could have played the character.
How much of yourself do you see in your characters when they make choices on the shows? Do you find yourself going, “Well, I would do that differently”? Every time Cane [In Book II: Ghost] does something, I’m just like, “This dummy.”
I definitely do that. “What is he doing? Why are you doing that? I get into it too. I’ve seen the material. I’ve read it. Even when I’m not on set, I still get a chance to see the pieces of it. I watch it, complete it before everybody else watches it, and I’m still not excited until I’m watching it and everybody else is watching it because I’m thinking what everybody else is thinking when they watch it.
How hard is it as the producer not to jump in and be like, “Don’t do that! No. Change that.”
It is very hard. Look, I’ll call the writers or the showrunners of the shows, I’ve called each one of them at points and said, “Why? Why is this like this? Why does it have to be like this?” There are certain scenes that they’ve done in Ghost. I look and go, “Yo, could we tone that down a little bit?”
So, when you put that with younger characters… Also knowing some of the audience is not as mature. I like the sex scenes and stuff but some of it can be insinuated, you don’t have to see it. The fact that we can do it, they feel like, okay, cool. We just don’t want to go from watching television that ended up in soft pornography.
How many spinoffs do you think this universe can support? What would an Avengers-like crossover look like between the shows?
Whew, you said Avengers, that’s crazy. Look, I already took this far enough. If you looked at Power, Ghost, Raising Kanan, and now, Force. finishes the story. Because it was Ghost and Tommy in the beginning.
It’s just, his lady would help him with things. She was the right woman for the journey and the wrong woman in the story because she’s only seeing him one way. So she just wants him to be the biggest drug dealer. Remember that line, “When you look at me what do you see?”, “Biggest drug dealer in the city.”
Right. Right. Right. And it’s like, don’t encourage me to be this. Encourage me to be better.
Something different. And then while he’s having to change a heart no one knows.
And that’s kind of like where every gangster show goes, right? The guys want to go legit and the city won’t let them. The game won’t let them.
At the point that you decide that “I have enough. I’ve made enough. I experienced enough.” Right. This is when you go, “maybe I could have did it legit or did it a different way.” And at that point, the irony of it is you’re under investigation.
Yeah. Because you’ve gotten too big. That’s the danger of being the biggest is that you become a target. When you’re recording the theme music what inspiration do you take away from the show itself and how does it differ from writing music for yourself?
When you get into the theme songs, it’s fun to make those records for me. It’s like each one of them is a separate energy, a separate piece. I’ll go in the studio. I’m like, “Yo, this last one was forced.” It was easy. I had to make something that felt like Chicago and no matter what I write about Chicago, it’s going to feel like New York.
So look, there’s two vocal versions of the song. So when you hear the television show, it’s slightly different from when it’s on the song and it’s because I’ve really set the vocals once I heard the tones in Durk’s verse and what Jeremih the chorus felt like finished. Because we’ve done it several times. He’s done the hook two, three different times before we got it all the way right.
Durk recorded one time and then sent it back and then we heard it and then we had everything, all the pieces to put the song together. And I didn’t want it to feel like a collage because I’m here, they’re there and we just put it together. So I matched the tones of everything else so it’ll feel like a cohesive song.
How do you find angles to play off each individual style out from the collaborators like with NLE Choppa and Lil Durk?
Look, you have with NLE and these guys, these are the new guys, bro. The “hip” part of hip-hop is youth. You know what I’m saying? So what they’re thinking and doing, you got to watch them and see how to wave for what’s coming next. It’s going to go.
Do you think you can ride that wave into the future?
The cadences that they using is not difficult at all. If you listen to the music, you could just go, “Okay. I could write that.” If I was coming right now, I’d be on fire. I think once you’ve been, let’s say seasoned, right? I sold over 35 million records, bro. I have a whole 12 years, 13 years of dominating hip-hop culture. Nobody wants to remember that time period though because it was not comfortable.
When you represent things that are street or that have the energy, it’s on the artist without him even saying anything. The NBA YoungBoy, these kids is coming from different territories, but they have street on them. They can’t help it. It’s already there. You don’t have to have Instagram or Twitter or any of that stuff because once it connects it, it’s just there.
Power Book IV: Force premieres February 6th on Starz.
It’s not all that unusual to see celebrities at big sporting events but in Los Angeles, it’s apparently such a common occurrence that it’s easy to get them confused for one another — even when they look nothing alike. That’s what happened during Sunday’s NFC Championship game between the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers at SoFi Stadium, where Big Sean and Jhene Aiko were misidentified on the Jumbotron as Buffy The Vampire Slayer herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and her husband Freddie Prinze Jr.
On the Jumbotron, a closeup of Big Sean and Jhene Aiko was captioned “Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr.,” prompting Gellar to joke on Instagram, “@bigsean do you get mistaken for me as often as I get mistaken for you? (Swipe right to see my actual date at the #ramshouse).” In her post, she compared a selfie with her and her husband to the photo that appeared onscreen at the game, then added a photo of her and her friend Elsa Collins, with whom she actually attended the game.
Sean and Jhene also seemed tickled by the mishap, with Sean posting a photo of the two staring in confusion at the Jumbotron to his own Instagram Story.
After years of mostly unfounded rumors and speculation, it has finally happened — Rihanna is pregnant with her first child. Go figure, it’d take a pandemic to finally fulfill every gossip blogger’s dream — and every R9 hopeful’s worst nightmare. People magazine confirmed the pregnancy, posting a photo of Rihanna and her partner ASAP Rocky out on the town in New York, with Rihanna sporting a cropped top to show off her baby bump. You can check out the photos below.
Rihanna is pregnant! Rihanna and A$AP Rocky are expecting their first child together. Photographed by Miles Diggs. pic.twitter.com/4toQb9iQhw
Naturally, the news has Rihanna fans going ballistic on Twitter. Rihanna herself shot down pregnancy rumors as recently as a month ago, joking, “Y’all breed me every year dammit,” on Instagram. However, it looks like this time, the fans were right and they aren’t being shy about celebrating — and lamenting that she may have finished making a whole human from scratch before her long-awaited follow-up to Anti, which crossed its six-year anniversary over the weekend. And some fans just seemed distraught that they have “missed their chance” with the singer — insomuch as that number was very technically non-zero in the first place.
OMFG RIHANNA IS WITH CHILD IM GOING TO BE AN AUNT THANK U GOD Congrats sis I’m soooo happy!!!!! pic.twitter.com/rvw4RqUblc
Meanwhile, poor Drake is catching the worst of it, considering how long he openly crushed on Rihanna. Their relationship was short-lived, but that isn’t stopping fans from flaming him up too over the news.
Bad Bunny should really be taking it easy. He’s got his Último Tour del Mundo starting on February 9th in Denver and his World’s Hottest Tour of North and South American stadiums starting in August. If he keeps entering the wrestling ring to grapple with a WWE savage like Brock Lesnar, though, he might not make it to either of those.
That statement might sound preposterous, but that’s exactly what happened this past Saturday night (January 29th) at WWE’s Royal Rumble in St. Louis, Missouri. You see, last year, the Puerto Rican reggaeton star and reigning Spotify streaming king merely performed his song “Booker T” at the event, but this year he actually got in the ring, and it wasn’t pretty. Bad Bunny was first body-slammed by the eventual Royal Rumble champion Brock Lesnar, who then tossed over the ropes like yesterday’s laundry.
The Royal Rumble is a last-man-standing competition, so you have to throw everyone out of the ring to be crowned the victor. Lesnar had just eliminated a wrestler when Bad Bunny knew he was surely next and he retreated to a corner of the ring, looking visibly freaked out. “Did you see the look on bad Bunny’s face?” one announcer says. Before the other announcer shouts, “Jump over the rope Bad Bunny! You got two tours! You got fans, you got music to make!” But it was too late. Lesnar made quick work of Bad Bunny and here’s hoping Bad Bunny has.. .errr… recovered, in time for his tours (wink, wink).
Watch the video of Brock Lesnar “decimating” Bad Bunny above.
Just like Ariana Grande before her, there’s nothing Doja Cat loves more than an intergalactic moment. The pop/rap/R&B star is still slowly but surely doling out videos from her extremely successful 2021 album Planet Her, and tonight she’s shared a video from one of the record’s deep cuts, “Get Into It (Yuh).” And speaking of Ariana, she gets more than just a nod in the album title track — which features a spelled out version of signature “yuh” adlib — but also in the lyrics when Doja commands: “y’all b*tches better “yuh” like Ariana.”
Nothing we love more than when the girls are getting along! That’s how masterful pop culture moments like the “34 + 35” remix video come along. Anyway, in her own video for the track, Doja is a diva in all kinds of space suit getups, alternating between ruling a crew of musical women in a spacecraft, fighting off aggressive alien interlopers, and dancing alone in what looks like a space station elevator shaft. What has this evil boss done? Stolen a beloved cat, one of the most heinous crimes in the entire galaxy. Don’t worry though, just like she’s winning down here on earth, Doja gets the best of him in the end. Watch the clip above.
But before all the buzz around “Mood,” Dior released his debut Industry Plant, back in 2019, and a couple EPs before sharing On To Better Things, a full-length album that officially follows up his debut. But over the course of his last few releases, Dior has been leaning way more into the pop-punk side of things (and recent trend) with several collaborations with Travis Barker, Machine Gun Kelly, or both. Dior even appeared on a song off MGK’s pivotal jump to pop-punk, Tickets To My Downfall.
So it’s not that surprising that there’s a song on Ian’s latest album that features both Barker and Machine Gun Kelly, but what is surprising is another credited artist on the track: Dan Wilson of the band Semisonic. You see this track, “Thought It Was,” which is the third single from the album, released just a few days before the full-length dropped, interpolates Semisonic’s cult-y 1998 hit “Closing Time” in the melody, an easter egg within the song that plenty of fans will notice upon close listen.
A couple listeners did notice and comment last week when the song first dropped:
Hey @NotNewova – super interested to hear your reaction on the new Iann Dior/Machine Gun Kelly song called Thought It Was. Just FYI, it samples the song Closing Time (because I know you’ll be going ‘wait a minute…’). I’m very interested in your opinion!!
— Shelly-Let Your Light Shine BLM – 59 y.o. (@shellymarie19xx) January 20, 2022
Iann Dior’s new song sounds like “closing time” lol
And one of the song’s other co-writers, Kyle Reynolds, also weighed in to let listeners know they were hearing it right!
Hahah essentially it’s a “flip” of it. Dan Wilson the original songwriter of closing time has songwriting credit on thought it was because we borrowed some of the melody from the original song.
Given how many people love the original, could this be Ian’s next shot at a No. 1 single? Well, it’s only been a week, but who knows, ’90s nostalgia has been at an all time high lately, so there’s always a chance this one will take off like “Mood” did. Hopefully, TikTok will do its thing and give us a mashup of Dior’s new song and the ’90s classic. Check the new song out above, and for good measure, check out the original below.
Earlier this month, the suspects in Young Dolph’smurder — 32-year-old Cornelius Smith and 23-year-old Justin Johnson -— were arrested and charged with first-degree murder two months after the rapper’s death. According to FOX13 Memphis, during their first appearance in court, the two were asked by Judge Lee Coffee if they would need an attorney to be provided for them. They both declined. In a second court appearance, the suspects returned again without lawyers, leaving Judge Coffee to set a deadline for them to find representation.
“If you have a lawyer hired, that’s fine, but as I told you 10 days ago, I cannot allow you to sit in jail week after week, month after month, without a lawyer,” Judge Coffee told Smith and Johnson during the hearing. “If you don’t have a lawyer hired on Feb. 4, I’m going to hire a private attorney to represent both of you all.” In response to Judge Coffee’s request, Smith and Johnson both assured the court that they would have lawyers by the deadlines, adding that their families were working on finding attorneys for them.
This comes after the slain rapper’s label Paper Route Empire released the tribute Long Live Young Dolph. It arrived complete with features from Key Glock, Big Moochie Grape, and more. Key Glock also delivered a video for “Proud,” which appears on the album.
50 Cent is thriving in the TV world. His series Power, which launched in 2014, has birthed a pair of successful spin-offs — Power Book II: Ghost and Power Book III: Raising Kanan — with a third, Power Book IV: Force, set to debut on February 6. (A fourth and final one, Power Book V: Influence, has yet to receive a release date). There’s also his series BMF. But some are waiting on him to finally deliver his long-awaited sixth album. The Queens native spoke about it recently, saying it will most likely be his last.
At the end of last year, 50 Cent shared a video of him performing with a caption that revealed his retirement plans. “Smile my next album might be my last,” he wrote. “I terrorized hip hop for 14 years,don’t believe me Nielsen, the numbers will never lie but i’m nobody’s favorite Smh.” A month later, during a recent appearance on The Talk, 50 was asked if that was still true.
“I probably think I’ll deliver one more full-length album, then the other things I do will be connected to film and television,” he replied according to HipHop-N-More. “I’m having so much success in this area that I have opportunities to keep releasing music through the projects that I’m bringing.”
As for what’s next, 50 Cent is set to join Tyler The Creator And Megan Thee Stallion as headliners for UK’s Parklife Festival, which goes down in June.
Congrats sis I’m soooo happy!!!!! 
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