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From Escobar to Investo-bar: Investments by Nas Continue to Run Up His Net Worth

February 7, 2023 by newhiphopnews

Nas is known for arguably being one of the greater rappers of our time. However, in the past few years, Nas has added a different title to his name, that of a tech investor. Nas has invested in over 40 companies as a founding partner of Queensbridge Venture Partners. Queensbridge Venture Partners is a venture capital firm created by the rapper and his manager, Anthony Saleh. Nas said he decided to get involved in tech investments because he wanted “to be surrounded by the smartest people in the world.”

Nas has quite an impressive investment profile. Here are some of the companies he has invested in, along with their valuations: Dropbox- $10 billion valuation, Lyft- $5.5 billion valuation, Tilt- $400 million valuation, and Robinhood-raised $50 million in Series B. He was also an early investor in Ring, the smart doorbell company. After Amazon acquired Ring, he made $40 million, following Ring’s $415 million in sales in 2018. Nas was also an early investor in Coinbase, an online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storing cryptocurrency. His stake is now worth $40 million.

Earlier this year, Nas teamed up with Google to raise $20 million in financial banking for Carry1st, a South African gaming company. SpongeBob, Mine Rescue, and Match League are just a few of the games released by Carry1st. In an interview with THR, Carry1st co-founder and CEO Cordel Robbin-Coker said, “We’re excited to partner with this world-class group of investors who, in addition to capital, bring expertise across gaming, fintech, and web3. In 2021, we launched multiple games and digital commerce solutions, achieving really strong growth. Together we can accelerate this growth and achieve our goal of becoming the leading consumer internet company in the region.”

At this rate, it does not look like the Queensbridge rapper is slowing down any time soon, and we are here for it.

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Creators Watch Out: Buzzfeed To Use AI To Create Content

January 27, 2023 by newhiphopnews

BuzzFeed says it will use AI tools provided by ChatGPT creator, OpenAI, to “enhance” and “personalize” its content, according to a memo sent by CEO Jonah Perett to his staff. Buzzfeed is a news and entertainment website that covers many topics, including politics, business, food, music, sports, and the latest technology. ChatGPT is an extensive language model chatbot developed by OpenAI that has a remarkable ability to interact in conversational dialogue form and provide responses that can appear surprisingly human. OpenAI gained attention from industry leaders and investors and has been used to write high school and even create legal documents.

CEO Jonah Peretti said AI would play a relatively significant role in the company’s operations. “To be clear, we see the breakthroughs in AI opening up a new era of creativity that will allow humans to harness creativity in new ways with endless opportunities and applications for good,” he said. Peretti elaborated that the technology will be used to create quizzes and assist in personalizing content specific to its audience. Experts foresee the technology enhancing the quality of many jobs while taking over administrative tasks and replacing some workers.

BuzzFeed will not be the first journalism platform to use artificial intelligence. CNET, an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, and podcasts, has been using an AI tool to generate reports that human editors later scan for accuracy before publication.

Last month, the company said it would cut about 12% of its workforce to rein in costs. The hope is that implementing this AI technology will assist in growing and energizing the business. Buzzfeed recently reported a net loss of $27 million in revenue.

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Microsoft Rumored to Cut 11,000 Jobs in Forthcoming Days

January 18, 2023 by newhiphopnews

Microsoft will begin 2023 with massive layoffs. According to CBS News, the tech giant will shed talent due to the impact of the economy.

The news, originally reported by Sky News, states the software company will announce the layoffs in the forthcoming days, and nearly 5% or 11,000 positions will be cut worldwide. Engineering divisions appear to be the target for talent removal.

Microsoft declined to comment, citing the news is a “rumor.” Microsoft currently employs over 200,000 people across the globe.

Microsoft said earlier this month that it would provide all U.S.-based employees unlimited time off under a new “Discretionary Time off” policy.

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Spotify Gives Megan Thee Stallion, Flo Milli Their Own Anime Characters

December 20, 2022 by newhiphopnews

Spotify and leading Livestream shopping platform NTWRK are collaborating to celebrate the streaming service’s “Feelin’ Myself” playlist with an exclusive trading card pack featuring anime caricatures of iconic female rappers Megan Thee Stallion, Ice Spice, GloRilla and Flo Milli.

The NTWRK x Spotify hype-worthy trading card pack will feature the up-and-coming and established rappers as a modern-day super heroines celebrating women in hip-hop. Fans will have the chance to win the exclusive trading card pack only on the NTWRK app today (Dec. 20) at 1 pm PST / 4 pm EST.

The back of the cards will include the individual initials of each rapper and a barcode that leads users to the Feelin’ Myself playlist, encouraging collectors to dance along as they unveil their new pack of cards.

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Remember When They Wanted to Ban TikTok? It’s Already Starting To Happen

December 19, 2022 by newhiphopnews

U.S. lawmakers and politicians have been increasingly waging war on TikTok, the hugely popular social media app owned by Chinese company Bytedance.

TikTok’s critics have accused the app of being a direct channel to the Chinese government and, thus, a privacy and cybersecurity risk. In particular, they have raised concerns that TikTok collects massive amounts of data from U.S. citizens. It may be shared with the Chinese government and could be used to interfere with U.S. elections by spreading misinformation.

The app is already banned from all devices issued by the U.S. military. This past Wednesday, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a bill banning the app from all devices issued by federal agencies. The bill contains exceptions for law enforcement, national security, and security research.

Earlier this past week, the governors of Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Utah ordered their agencies to prohibit the app on all state-issued devices. These states join Texas, Maryland, South Carolina, and Nebraska, which already have similar bans. These bans also include, for example, blocking the use of the app on campus and dorm WiFi at state universities.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R. Fla.) is leading a bipartisan effort to pass a law banning TikTok altogether in the U.S. The proposed legislation would ban social media companies belonging to “countries of concern,” i.e., China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela.

In a statement on its website, TikTok states that it stores U.S. user data in the United States and that none of its data is subject to Chinese law. It says further that it has never been asked to remove content by the Chinese government and would not do so if asked. However, in July 2022, TikTok confirmed in a letter to U.S. Senators that employees outside the U.S., including China-based employees, could access data on U.S. users.

Implanting a U.S.-wide TikTok ban would present a formidable challenge. Over a billion users visit the TikTok site each month, and substantial commercial interests use TikTok as a platform and rely on its services. A TikTok ban would likely be politically unpopular. It would raise the question of why foreign social media companies are being singled out when there are domestic social media companies, such as Facebook, that are equally capable of disrupting U.S. elections through the spread of propaganda and misinformation.

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Boy Meets Girl x Blueberry Explores the Metaverse

December 12, 2022 by newhiphopnews

Boy Meets Girl and House of Blueberry are releasing a four-piece digital fashion collection. The digital wearables are a representation of bestsellers for Boy Meets Girl in the physical world. Items such as leggings, sweatpants, and two signature T-shirts make up the virtual boutique that Roblox users can browse. Additionally, users can try on designs and create customized digital identities for their avatars.

House of Blueberry is on a mission to build the largest digital fashion house in the universe. They have had over 20 million assets sold, 10,000 stock-keeping units and more than 400,000 unique customers. The Roblox community has 43.2 million active daily users where nearly 67% are under the age 16. In an effort to set the standard high for their digital space, Boy Meets Girl will carry its anti-bullying mission forward into the metaverse through positive messaging in the Blueberry virtual boutique.

Stacy Igel, founder and chief creative officer of Boy Meets Girl said, “As someone who was an early adopter of virtual markets, this was a natural partnership for me. I’m thrilled to bring Boy Meets Girl into the metaverse in collaboration with House of Blueberry. During COVID-19, my son Dylan got to learn a lot about virtual worlds and has been teaching me about Roblox. So you can imagine how excited I am to share this collaboration and how excited he is too.” Roblox is dominated by the youth and many collaborations carried out via the platform shape the perspective of young boys and girls.

Mishi McDuff, chief executive officer and founder of Blueberry, added, “We love the mission of the Boy Meets Girl brand and can’t wait to bring that positive energy into the metaverse. We think the iconic Boy Meets Girl branding will really come to life on Roblox and make for a fun, welcoming virtual experience for our community.”

This project expands The House of Blueberry’s collaborations from past projects with Jonathan Simkhai and the Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen.” In the physical world, Boy Meets Girl has partnered with Saks Fifth Avenue, to carry its core kids unisex organic collection on Saks.com. The collection features an eight-piece sustainable kids collection, including its signature logo hoodies, sweatpants and Ts in mint, light pink, blue, black and heather grey.

The items will be sold exclusively in Blueberry’s metaverse fashion boutique and catalog on January 10th. The T-shirt, leggings, and hoodie sell for 85 Robux and the beanie for 65 Robux.

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Apple Announces New Apple Music Sing Feature

December 7, 2022 by newhiphopnews

The exciting new feature Apple Music Sing, which enables users to sing along to their favorite songs with customizable vocals and real-time lyrics, was unveiled by Apple today. Apple Music Sing provides multiple lyric views to let users take the lead, sing duets, sing backing, and more within Apple Music’s unmatched lyrics experience. Apple Music Sing makes it enjoyable and straightforward for everyone to take part, when and wherever they choose, with a constantly expanding collection that includes tens of millions of the most singable music in the world.

The new Apple TV 4K, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Music Sing will all be available to Apple Music users later this month.

“Apple Music’s lyrics experience is consistently one of the most popular features on our service,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats. “We already know our users all over the world love to follow along to their favorite songs, so we wanted to evolve this offering even further to enable even more engagement around music through singing. It’s really a lot of fun, our customers are going to love it.”

Included in Apple Sing are:

Adjustable vocals: Users now have control over a song’s vocal levels. They can sing with the original artist’s vocals, take the lead, or mix it up on millions of songs in the Apple Music catalog.
Real-time lyrics: Users can sing along to their favorite songs with animated lyrics that dance to the rhythm of the vocals.
Background vocals: Vocal lines sung simultaneously can animate independently from the main vocals to make it easier for users to follow.
Duet view: Multiple vocalists show on opposite sides of the screen to make duets or multi-singer tracks easy to sing along to.

A collection of over 50 specially curated companion playlists for Apple Music Sing will also be released, encompassing all iconic songs, duets, choruses, and anthems that have inspired people to sing worldwide.

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Apple Unveils New Tech in Annual Product Launch

September 8, 2022 by newhiphopnews

A little over fifteen years ago, Steve Jobs stood on stage and revealed the first iPhone in a reveal that would change the world as we know it (for nostalgia, the full video can be found here). On Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook continued the tradition of launch announcements to share some new features and updates to the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods.

The launch event was pre-recorded and delivered from Apple Park, the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Cook started sharing a montage of users who had used their Apple Watches in life-threatening situations and then shared some new features of the upcoming Apple Watch 7. The watch’s biggest change (in addition to a slightly new design and bigger screen) is that it is reportedly more durable and able to withstand more extreme conditions than previous models. The watch targets outdoor athletes with increased water resistance, increased durability, a compass, and a depth metric for scuba divers. The 7 series t also has a new “action” button for quick use while working out or wearing gloves. The 7 series has more health tracking capabilities and car crash detection technology, which can detect if the wearer was in a severe car crash and automatically call emergency services. The watch will also reportedly get up to 60 hours of battery life thanks to a new software rollout.

Cook unveiled the iPhone 14, which comes in two models: the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. The Plus will replace the “iPhone 13 mini” model with a bigger model with a 6.7-inch screen. One of the biggest changes is that digital eSIM technology will replace a physical SIM card. However, the 14’s biggest reveal was the phone’s capability to connect to satellites for emergency services in remote areas thanks to a partnership with Globalstar.

The third product reveal was a new generation of AirPods. An Apple H2 chip reportedly provides better sound quality and clarity. Other new features include an improved volume touch control button, longer battery life, a smaller XS ear tip, and an in-case speaker.

The new Apple Watch will cost at least $799 and will be available in stores on about Sept. 23. Preorders will be available next Wednesday. The iPhone 14 will start at $799 and the Plus will start at $899. Preorders start on Sept 9, but the Plus won’t ship until October. The new AirPods Pro cost $249 and will go on sale on Sept 23.

The full launch video can be seen here.

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Microsoft Reveals that Janet Jackson’s ‘Rhythm Nation’ Could Crash Some Laptop Hard Drives

August 22, 2022 by newhiphopnews

Millions of people have been turning up to Janet Jackson‘s ‘Rhythm Nation’ for over three decades, but some laptop computers apparently are not fans of the chart-topper. Last week, Microsoft revealed a bizarre vulnerability in which playing the 1989 hit can cause certain laptops to crash.

The bizarre story apparently began back when multiple users contacted Windows XP product support to report issues with their devices, mostly the widely used 5400-RPM laptop hard drive that was sold around 2005. It’s common to set up a laboratory experiment on a device or software application whenever there are multiple reports of an issue, such as the reported issue with ‘Rhythm Nation’ and the laptops. The laboratory experiment found that the song didn’t just necessarily crash the laptop that it was being played on, but also nearby laptops that were using the same hard drive model.

Raymond Chen at Microsoft explained it in a blog as such: “the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used.”

Since then, the manufacturer has added a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback. Additionally, this hard drive was a spinning disk hard drive and most spinning hard drives have been gradually phased out in favor of solid-state drives over the years, but as Chen notes, they still persist in a host of devices around the world.

Ironically, the news comes within a few days of Apple’s announcement of a serious security vulnerability (along with a software update) for iPhones, iPads and Macs that could potentially allow attackers to take complete control of these devices.

Perhaps listening to music on cassette or record players is truly the only safe bet anymore.

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Kendrick Lamar and Spotify Launch New In-App Experience

August 11, 2022 by newhiphopnews

My Top 5: Kendrick Lamar Projects, a new, interactive in-app experience that allows users to choose their top 5 favorite Kendrick Lamar projects and share them on social media, was introduced by Spotify.

Kendrick Lamar’s latest album, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, shot to the top of the charts shortly after its release and currently holds the record for being the most listened Hip-Hop album of 2022 on Spotify. Rap and Hip-Hop fans have maintained the discussion on social media. Now, with My Top 5: Kendrick Lamar Projects, Spotify brings this passion for the argument to the fore by enabling fans to simply arrange their favorite Kendrick projects into a shareable visual graphic.

The feature will debut in 23 markets and be offered in 12 languages. On your mobile device, go to https://spotify.com/top5. Choose and arrange your favorites: You can select your top five projects from a list of Kendrick Lamar’s works in the experience, then drag and drop those projects into the visual display to determine the order in which they should appear. After that, tell your pals.

You can learn more about the experience here.

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