Legendary filmmaker John Singleton is going to be taken off life support, according to a statement from his family. The director suffered a severe stroke last week and has been on life support since.
“It is with heavy hearts we announce that our beloved son, father and friend, John Daniel Singleton will be taken off life support today. This was an agonizing decision, one that our family made, over a number of days, with the careful counsel of John’s doctors,” reads the family statement.
Singleton, just 51 years old, is one of the most accomplished directors of all-time, most notably from his feature debut Boyz n the Hood. The film earned him a pair of Oscar nominations, making him both the youngest and first African-American to earn a best director nom.
The director/producer’s most recent project was FX’s Snowfall, a series that explored Los Angeles in the early 1980’s and the crack cocaine epidemic during that time. Singleton served as the show’s creator and executive producer for the first two seasons, with the third season set to be out sometime later this year.
Truly a heartbreaking development for such a talented man. Prayers go out to John Singleton and his friends and family.
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Even though rumors around R Kelly and sexual abuse had been floating around beforehand, the Lifetime documentary Surviving R Kelly brought the controversy into focus again, and sparked a general conversation in the public. Also, it resulted in new criminal charges against R Kelly and a cancellation of his record deal with Sony.
Lifetime has now announced a new documentary, Surviving R Kelly: The Impact that will air in early May. The documentary will look at the aftermath of the original documentary and its impact on culture in general. For example, how it energized broad discussions of sexual assault, changed R Kelly’s criminal case, and lead to a 35% increase in calls to sexual assault hotlines in the United States.
Even though this is obviously a marketing tactic by Lifetime to draw even more attention to its original documentary and milk it for all it’s worth, the release of this follow up documentary may in fact be warranted. Surviving R Kelly was groundbreaking and if Lifetime weren’t going to release another documentary about its impact, somebody else should.
In a surprising turn of events, Schoolboy Q recently characterized Drake as an underrated rapper. Q agreed with Peter Rosenburg on Ebro in the Morning about this description of Champagne Papi. According to Complex and to quote Q himself, “‘He’s one of the greats,’ Q explained, citing the invalid opinions of “dweebs” and saying hip-hop artists don’t try to tear down rock and country music. ‘How you sayin’ somebody sold out? You don’t even know what sold out is in this culture.’ He added, ‘If Drake is trash, you n***as stop giving him 50 billion streams, you get what I’m saying? ‘Cause y’all all listening to it, bruh, it’s too many streams. … You just don’t wanna say it.’ He noted that “when you just lightskinned and from Canada, and n***as wanna, you know—but the n***a hard, c’mon, man.’”
I really see where Schoolboy Q is coming from. According to the amount of streams, Drake is probably the most popular artist in the past 20 years, and even if his music also fuses with R&B and pop, it’s still undeniably hip hop. Maybe his bars aren’t the best or the fastest, but since when is that the criteria for best rapper ever? If it were, then you could easily say Twista is the GOAT, and I know many people would object to that. Personally, I’m not saying that Drake is undoubtedly the GOAT, but he shouldn’t be completely dismissed from the conversation because of his background and mix of musical styles. And since many people do that, then Drake should definitely be characterized as underrated.
This all took place when Schoolboy Q was listing his favorite rappers from each decade and in the 2010s, included himself, Kendrick, Drake, and Black Hippy.
Following his doctor’s orders, T-Pain will be taking a break from touring because of the risk of permanently damaging his voice. According to Complex, T-Pain posted a video to his Instagram explaining the situation:
“”What’s good, man, it’s your homeboy T-Pain, fucking obviously. There’s been a lot of work I’ve been doing. I just got off tour. Sometimes I was doing two shows a day, entertaining the people, going to afterparties, and doing my thing. Just working, working, working, working, working. The truth of the matter is I just haven’t been taking care of myself. So, after my last couple shows, I started getting a few pains in my throat and stuff like that so I went to the doctor and he basically told me that I had to get off the road immediately or I was gonna start doing permanent damage to my voice.”
Can’t really fault a man for putting in so much work. And if he is really at such a risk that he might lose his livelihood, T-Pain should take as much time as he needs to recover. And I guess for those arguing that T-Pain didn’t actually use his voice and just autotune, suck on this.
T-Pain had just released his 6th studio album, 1UP, in February. That album also featured performances from Lil Wayne, Flipp Dinero, Tory Lanez, and more.
And now for something completely different. Part of the best boy band in the world since the Beatles, Brockhampton member Kevin Abstract will be live streaming himself walking on a treadmill for 10 hours. The video will be live streamed on YouTube, with the title being “#THE1999”.
According to Pitchfork, the treadmill is located on Brockhampton Street in Kevin Abstract’s hometown Corpus Christi, Texas. Fans will be there asking Kevin questions such as “What made you wanna be on a treadmill for 10 hours?” with his answer obviously being “Shia LeBeouf”. Not only is that likely a reference to Shia LeBeouf just being a meme in general, but the Eagle Eye actor actually live streamed himself watching his own movies for 24 hours.
Kevin Abstract had just released his album ARIZONA BABY on April 11th. Likely this live stream will somehow involve him promoting that release.
Marvel Avengers: Endgame broke the opening night box office run record with $60 million, surpassing Star Wars: Force Awakens’ previous record of $57 million. Despite how groundbreaking it is, that news should not come to much surprise for those that have been on the Internet anytime in the past month.
And with the movie being released overseas on Wednesday, Endgame’s total sales right now is a staggering $365 million. Projections for the global launch is $1 billion, when it is eventually released in the 4,600 theaters in the US.
Even though this is historic, like I said, with the amount of buzz and press that Endgame has been getting, this should not come to much surprise. I mean, Endgame is the concluding movie in one of the most popular movie series of all time, beginning 21 movies ago with 2008’s release of Iron Man. And with people likely having more personal connection with the story and characters in Endgame than with the recent Star Wars trilogy, many are dying to know how everything ends up.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Endgame has also posted the highest single gross in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, The Philippines, the U.K., Brazil, Egypt, Panama, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Trinidad and Uruguay.
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