50 Cent has had a storied career in several industries. He’s known as one of the greatest rappers of all time but he’s also taken over recently as a television producer, establishing himself as a strong force with Power and the numerous spin-off series surrounding it. He had to struggle to get to this point though as evidenced by the photos that continue to circulate from his 2011 acting role in All Things Fall Apart.
Whenever somebody has a personal issue with Fif, they always bring back the viral photos of the rapper from All Things Fall Apart, where he portrays a football player who is suffering from a deteriorating illness. Fiddy dropped over fifty pounds for the role, hitting 160 pounds and losing a lot of his muscle. While he gained it back, Freddie Gibbs argues that it might not have been worth the battle because nobody actually even watched the film.
During his conversation with Joe Rogan on the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, Gibbs brings up 50’s movie look after Matthew McConaughey’s weight loss was mentioned. “50 Cent did that sh*t, it was trash though,” said Gibbs. “You remember when 50 Cent got skinny for that movie? Nobody watched that sh*t.”
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The conversation shifts to Christian Bale before jumping back to 50 Cent when Gibbs suggests he can use some donation money. “Damn, 50. He got skinny as f*ck for this sh*t,” he said. “He looks like a Nigerian Olympic runner. But we didn’t watch that movie.”
Joe Rogan was visibly surprised with 50’s transformation when he was looking at pictures, saying, “Look how skinny he got! But still, he looks kind of jacked. But still, he’s kind of ripped. He’s got chest muscles. He looks like a runner. His face looks like sh*t but his body looks like he’s a runner. He didn’t get as bad as Christian Bale.”
Do you remember when Fif lost all that weight? Listen to Freddie Gibbs discuss with Joe Rogan and Brian Moses at the 54:30 mark.
“Basically, I tweeted a joke that I assumed Pheobe Bridgers would probably write the vaccination anthem of our times on her next album, which would probably come out in a few years. But then, I decided I would write it instead in the meantime,” she laughs. “This tweet that I thought was very niche ended up blowing up.”
The song, aptly titled “Immune,” opens with the lyrics, “Traffic from the East Side’s got me aggravated / Hotter than the day my brother graduated / Wait four hours in the sun / In line at Dodger Stadium / I’m not scared of dogs or getting vaccinated.” The song resonated with fans and Bridgers herself, who retweeted the clip of the song with the simple comment, “oh my god.”
“When I tweeted the Phoebe Bridgers parody, which then became a real Jensen McCray song, I didn’t expect it to do what it did,” says the 23-year-old singer/songwriter who found herself suddenly famous. “I always thought there was some artifice to it, but in my case, and in a lot of other people’s cases, it really is just an accident. It was very much fortuitous timing, and I think I wrote a pretty good verse that people liked as well.”
Growing up in a bi-racial Black and Jewish family, the Los Angeles native always knew she wanted to be a musician. She took music lessons as a child and when she attended the Grammy Camp at USC at 16 years old, it cemented her desire to pursue music professionally. She returned to USC for her undergraduate degree, this time to study performance with an emphasis on songwriting, and while she was there, her manager found her on Instagram and, as she shares matter of factly, booked her for a show.
She released her first single, “White Boy” in December 2019, following it with “Wolves” in February of 2020. The plan was to continue rolling out music, but the pandemic put those plans on pause. However, the same mixture of inherent talent and social media magic that had brought McRae to her manager was conjured up again. She was awarded the honor of joining 2021’s YouTube Black Voices campaign, where she hopes her music will “[illuminte] one tile in the mosaic of the Black American experience.”
“I feel like the point of my music is to provide another example of Black womanhood and Black female existence in the world,” she shares when asked about the socially and politically conscious nature of her music. “I think even in my music where I talk about things that are not directly related to my demographic identity, it informs the work I do anyway. When I talk about mental health and unrequited love and adolescence, and in addition, political issues, I feel like my perspective as this person who is at the intersection of a few different marginalized identities comes through always.”
McRae has seen success in the same communities her idols have created, though, in her experience, there’s still more work to be done for women of color in alternative music. “When I would play shows, people would always ask me before I played if I made R&B or if I made ‘urban’ music,” she digs. “I don’t even know what that means. That’s kind of a big word in music. Then after I played, they’d be like, ‘oh, you remind me of “insert white artists here”, but with more soul,’ which to me was just like code for ‘you’re Black.’ I think as with many other fields, white women kind of got the exposure first, and now people are opening up their definition of womanhood and rock music and folk music a little bit more to include women of color in that space.”
When McRae reminisces about her favorite artists, her eyes light up, her speech quickens, and fits of laughter punctuate her sentences. Here, she pays homage to the Black artists who have not only inspired her music but, in some ways, have made her music possible.
Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys is the reason I am a musician. My mom played me her music, and I was so drawn to it right away. She was a mixed girl with braids and I was a mixed girl with braids and I was like, ‘This is everything to me.’ Really, it was her piano playing more than that I was really drawn to. I don’t even really play piano primarily anymore but the piano was my first instrument. Alicia Keys showed me a model of musical identity that really resonated with me when I was a kid. I just loved everything she did — especially The Diary Of Alicia Keys, Songs In A Minor, and As I Am. Those three albums were really important to me.
Stevie Wonder
Alicia Keys and Stevie Wonder were two of the first artists I listened to in childhood. Stevie Wonder [was] just fun and the virtuosity that he had was really inspiring. I just remember being in the car with my older brother and my mom and just begging to hear “Black Man.” We would just scream, “Black Man, Black Man, Black Man!” so she would play that over and over again. My dad is a lawyer, but he has a beautiful singing voice and he used to sing a lot of Stevie Wonder to my mom. That was part of how he courted her, so that’s a very important part of my story.
Tracey Chapman
Tracy Chapman is important in the sense that I get compared to her a lot. I am honestly not as well-versed in her discography, everything that I know I love, but I have to acknowledge the historical lineage that led to me as a musician. She’s a Titan. I’ve seen so many different live performances of her playing “Fast Car” and her silencing arenas with just her and her guitar. That’s really important to me because even though I love playing with a band and that’s something I definitely want to do when shows come back, just the knowledge that it’s possible to silence an arena with just you and your voice and your guitar is something really remarkable. And also alto representation. Higher “feminine-sounding” voices are often favored, and having a super deep voice sets me apart — which is cool but it can also be sort of isolating. There are not a ton of female-identifying artists who have those super deep voices, at least not in the genres I traffic in. So, whenever I do find other artists who have that deep resonant alto, I feel very seen.
Corinne Bailey Rae
One of the other biggest artists in my childhood would be Corinne Bailey Rae. I listened to her self-titled debut constantly when I was a kid. She was another Black woman with a guitar making this interesting fusion of pop and folk and jazz, and she’s British. I’m kind of an Anglophile. I love how delicate and feminine her depiction of Black womanhood is. There [are] a few songs on the album that are so special to me. Obviously, “Put Your Records On” — the big hit — just makes me happy. But “Like A Star” is a song I played at so many school talent shows. That song, “I’d Like To,” I love that song so much. That song to me is like summer. It paints such a vivid picture of growing up in a Black neighborhood. Obviously, for her, it’d been growing up in the UK, but there are a lot of overlaps. When I was little, the neighborhood I grew up in before I moved to the Valley, growing up [with] that sense of community and just being around a large group of Black people, just being fully joyous.
Moses Sumney
A more recent discovery is Moses Sumney. I started listening to him when I was a freshman in college. I don’t remember who originally played me “Plastic,” but I was frozen where I stood when I heard it. Everything I listened to from him is so inspiring. I wrote an essay about his double album græ that I’m going to put on my blog one day. He completely defies all description and, with regard to being someone who’s trying to break out of stereotypical genre boxes myself, to watch the way that he does that is amazing. Everything he does is about bouncing back-and-forth between binaries with regard to not only musical genres, but also gender. He’s so comfortable in himself and makes incredible art that isn’t bound to any social expectation, it’s just really beautiful. His lyrics are so incredible, his voice is its own crazy instrument. He’s so in control of his artistic vision, which is something I aspire to one day. I’m instrumental in all of the decision-making in my art, but I don’t necessarily feel like I am as confident as I one day could and Moses is definitely the model I want to emulate.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
If you haven’t yet caught on to Starrah, you probably just don’t know that you’ve been rocking with her work for years. The ASCAP Songwriter of the Year Award recipient and Grammy-nominated artist is one of the most prolific songwriters and hitmakers in the music industry, with a catalogue ranging from Rihanna’s “Needed Me” in 2016 to Megan Thee Stallion’s insanely successful “Savage (Remix)” last year. Whether you’ve known it or not, you’ve been listening to Starrah’s incredible output for a while now.
Starrah also has an incredible catalogue as a solo artist, as seen in recent singles like “How It Goes” and the James Blake-produced “Keep Calm.” Now the decorated artist is returning with “Miss This,” her first single of the year. The song is a playful crossover love song that blends dancehall and R&B to create a sound that feels tailor-made for the summer.
Its retro, Stranger Things-esque production takes listeners back in time to another era while Starrah’s autotuned delivery gives the new song a burst of futuristic vibes. That contrasting combination makes “Miss This” a stylistically refreshing single, but the vibe is unfortunately cut short due to the song’s brief runtime of one minute and 42 seconds.
Quotable Lyrics Come through when you hit me, I’ma Spin the city Roll ’round, get you dizzy Pronto with the drippy Come through when you hit me
In Cocoran’s lawsuit, the basis centers around the accusation that Chance violated a 2013 verbal agreement during which it was indicated that he would pay Corcoran 15% of his total net profits, only to have the deal broken following the lackluster response to The Big Day. He maintains that Chance used The Big Day as a catalyst to terminate the partnership, despite the fact that Cocoran was actively attempting to persuade Chance to rethink and delay his release entirely.
Now, a new report from The Chicago Tribune indicates that Chance is striking back with a lawsuit of his own. During a recent appearance in Crook County court, Chano accused Cocoran of peddling a “gratuitous, fabricated narrative that is offensive and insulting.” In addition, Chance’s lawsuit seeks to dismiss Cocoran’s own entirely, while hitting his former manager with three separate charges of $1 million dollars for breach of fiduciary duty, interference that led to the loss of business opportunities and profit, and breach of contract.
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“Mr. Corcoran has been paid in full under his management services contract with Mr. Bennett,” reads a statement from Chance’s attorneys, as given to the Tribune. “Yet he chose to file a groundless and insulting lawsuit that ignores his own improper self-dealing and incompetence. Mr. Bennett has moved to dismiss the majority of that meritless lawsuit, and filed his own lawsuit to remedy the harm that Mr. Corcoran caused through his breaches of duty. Mr. Bennett trusts the legal system to reveal the truth of the parties’ relationship in due course.”
In addition, Chance accuses his former manager of sabotaging and derailing potential business opportunities, including one with United Masters. In a scathing assessment, Cocoran was accused of being a “marginally competent business manager” as well as a “bullying and abrasive self-promoter.” Unsurprisingly, Cocoran’s team retaliated with accusations that Chance’s team was downplaying the true reality of their relationship and work as partners. Suffice it to say, it seems likely that both parties are headed for a Big Day in court, as this one doesn’t appear to be headed toward an amicable resolution.
K. Michelle has been open and honest with her followers about her personal journey as she has spent the last several years getting over a dozen surgeries to remove her illegal butt implants. This week, a video started circulating that allegedly showed her backside “bursting”, as described by multiple news outlets that have reported on it. The singer has been forced to respond to the chatter, speaking out on Twitter.
“So the video of me dancing is sad that I even have 2explain,” she wrote on Wednesday morning. “I walked y’all through how difficult this process of removing silicone from my body for 3YEARS/16 surgeries Did we not forget I almost died due 2this?????? Now i’m in the process of 3 reconstruction steps.
What u saw in the video was a happy woman with a faja and my extra fat! I’ve been very open so I can heal ladies. I didn’t have to tell anybody and I could’ve covered up until the process was done, but NO. Ladies need to see and hear the truth. I decided to use my platform to help.”
In the video, K. Michelle is dancing on Live when she suddenly gets awkward as something appears to move on her butt. She proceeds to change angles and shows off her other side, placing a hand over her backside.
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“I havent bothered anyone Ive been out of the way so What I dont understand is what was the purpose or what was so entertaining about a woman FINALLY bein able 2walk again with EXTRA fat from the removal,” she adds. “I saw the comments and of course it was Black women filled with so much hate.
I got on live yesterday and didn’t care that I wasn’t perfect, I knew I had excessive fat left over but I said F*CK it i’m not going to hide nothing in my house. I don’t think people truly understand i’m just happy to be alive. I’ve come so far with this and i’m proud of myself.”
K. says she has one surgery left (hopefully) to remove some skin next week. She’s gearing up for the procedure but, understandably, she finds them taxing and the constant scrutiny on social media doesn’t help her.
The Kendrick Lamar, Dave Free, and Baby Keem-aligned enigma that is pgLang continues to simultaneously build hype and confusion for fans. From working with Calvin Klein to appearing in The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights (Remix)” music video, the record label meets creative agency has been making major moves over the past year, but fans are really waiting to see what this means musically for Kendrick Lamar.
One thing that has remained consistent throughout all pgLang-related news, however, is that Kendrick Lamar and his cousin Baby Keem will be at the forefront of whatever the mysterious company has been working on. Last fall, the two artists covered i-D Magazine and essentially confirmed that fans should be getting really excited for what pgLang has in store, from Baby Keem’s growth to Kendrick’s new sound.
In a recently posted Instagram video, Baby Keem teases a clip from a recent studio session that shows a hooded figure leaning forward while a masked woman walks around him. Although you can’t visually see him, you can hear Kendrick’s voice guiding the young rapper from the background, and as a result, fans have already started speculating that there could be a Baby Keem and Kendrick collaboration on the way.
As the year progresses, fans are sure to learn more about the nature of Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free’s pgLang company, and this Instagram clip from Baby Keem will definitely get listeners excited for pgLang’s upcoming releases. Are you looking forward to a possible Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar collaboration or do you just need a proper full-length follow-up to 2017’s DAMN.?
While many hold the early-2010s mixtape run in high regard — as they should, considering how much classic material was delivered during the pre-streaming period — many tapes have yet to make the transition to the modern era. Luckily, it would appear that things are changing, as many fan-favorite projects have been steadily added to Spotify, TIDAL, Apple Music, and more. It would appear that a big one is on the way with Mac Miller’s Faces officially set to make the jump.
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Widely regarded as one of the late rapper’s most acclaimed bodies of work, the 2014 project’s streaming debut was among the more widely requested. Now, longtime Mac collaborator ID Labs recently shared a promising update on the situation, taking to Reddit to inform fans that the sample clearance process is currently underway. While that doesn’t clarify a timeline, it certainly bodes well for those eager to line their playlist with Mac classics, and rest assured that Faces is home to many. In fact, it’s one of the last projects that largely focused on bars, with everything post-Good AM taking Mac further into soulful and melodic territory.
With Faces officially on the way for a re-release, it’s set to be the second Mac Miller tape to make the transition following K.I.D.S, which recently hit platforms in April of 2020. Are you excited to check out Faces once again? If so — sound off with your favorite tracks below. Rest in peace, Mac Miller.
Vixen Tori Brixx wants the world to know she’s the opposite of weak. The hip-hop model has come forward to share her state of mind following publicized coverage of a nasty split between herself and fiancé Rich The Kid. Tori Brixx Shares Her Status After Split TB went to her Instagram page and didn’t hold […]
