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Review: Redemption by Jay Rock

2012 felt like a life-time ago, but I still remember getting excited for the talent displayed in TDE after Kendrick Lamar’s breakthrough in Section.80. At the start of the year, ScHoolboy Q’s Habits & Contradictions provided dark, hedonistic grooves for days (“There He Go”; “Nightmare on Figg St.”) while Ab-Soul followed up with Control System, a mostly introspective album that sometimes suggested he might’ve been the group’s most prodigious when it came to wordplay (“Terrorist Threats”; “The Book of Soul”). Jay Rock, maybe the most old-fashioned rapper of the group and certainly the most street-wise, didn’t come up with a full project that year, but I made note of him anyway when he provided one of the best verses on good kid, m.A.A.d. city. I didn’t think much of 90059, but I thought even less of his previous effort, Follow Me Home. Cutting down on the filler was the best move he could make, but we still had that (“Money Trees Deuce,” the direct to video sequel) and the hometown producers only supplied a few beats worth writing home about (“Necessary”; “Gumbo”). Songs like “Easy Bake,” featuring alley-oops with Kendrick Lamar and a detour for a SZA spotlight, and the Black Hippy posse cut “Vice City” with its ridiculous flow, are certainly songs I’d easily miss if I never heard again, but they also highlighted that Jay Rock’s best work might be as features on other people’s songs or when he features other artists on his own.

“WIN,” the lead single of Jay Rock’s new album if you ignore “King’s Dead” (which I’ll get to later), wasn’t exactly the worst thing in the world, and that’s the highest praise I’ve got for it. I’ve been wary of victory-lap “bangers” that use “triumphant” horn hooks since day 1 (on that note, Kendrick Lamar’s “The Spiteful Chant” – sampling Woodkid’s “Iron” – was a dirge, and one of Section.80’s weakest cuts). People have compared “WIN” to “HUMBLE.”, Kendrick Lamar’s lead single to DAMN., and in turn, have started comparing Redemption to DAMN. because they are the artists’ more mainstream-ready records. Quality-wise, there is no comparison. “HUMBLE.”, which gets a bad rep from people who only want more of To Pimp a Butterfly’s impregnable jazz cuts, came with inventive rhymes, a neat flow switch and an exciting music video (particularly during said flow switch). “WIN” comes with Kendrick Lamar shouting “MOMMY” in the background of the choruses, a particularly heartbreaking moment packaged for memes and nothing else.

It’d be fine if “WIN” were like “Started from the Bottom” (from Drake’s Nothing Was the Same), by which I mean, an outlier and the rest of the album would be what we wanted from the artist. That’s not the case. There’s also the “obligatory” sex-rap cut featuring a mushy-mouthed Jeremih (whatever happened to him?) and Jay Rock going “Fuck you in a car in the back / Fuck you so good, call back / For real, though / How many fucks I give? Zero.” The track recalls ScHoolboy Q’s Miguel-featuring “Overtime” from the mostly phenomenal Blank Face LP (Q has gone back and forth about whether or not the label had a hand in that song’s appearance). And for whatever reason, “King’s Dead” – originally from the Black Panther soundtrack – finds its way here, but without James Blake’s brief interlude or Kendrick Lamar’s climaxing verse. Smart move, I guess, since hearing Lamar rap “All hail King Kilmonger!��� makes no sense anywhere outside of that soundtrack. But the fact that he has included that song at all makes me think of label interference, and the fact that he hasn’t bothered to add anything to replace the parts he took out reeks of laziness, and both are emblematic of the album as a whole. Whatever: it’s still fun to hear Future falsetto-sing “La-de-da-di-da, slob on me knob,” I guess?

Those are the album’s biggest issues, but it’s not like the rest is anything to write home about either. In contrast to 90059, Jay taps into bigger-name producers but their beats don’t distinguish themselves (Cardo, Cubeatz, Vinyls, Boi-1da). Hit-Boy brings along a pan-flute for “Wow Freestyle” that ends up sounding like most other woodwind beats in recent memory not named “Mask Off” and certainly nothing like the bangers that Hit-Boy is capable of. Elsewhere, “For What It’s Worth,” produced by Sounwave (responsible for an alarming amount of great Kendrick Lamar songs), sounds non- and the same term can be applied to other beats here (ie. “Knock It Off,” “Broke+-“) to the point that some of these beats sound like Black Panther rejects. There are some memorable ones: “The Bloodiest” – produced by Boi-1da, Jake One, and Allen Ritter – features a pitch-shifted vocal that’s been running through my head for the past few days, and I certainly wasn’t ready to hear what sounds like the Super Mario coin noise to appear on “ES Tales.” Elsewhere, Sounwave and Terrace Martin, provide a lovely backdrop for Jay Rock to rap introspectively on should-have-been-closer “Redemption.” But nothing is at stake here, and that goes for the rapping as well.

Throughout this record, I keep thinking back to ScHoolboy Q’s Blank Face LP, wherein ScHoolboy Q tapped a little bit into the mainstream (“THat Part”; the aforementioned “Overtime”) but for the most part stuck to his vision of dark, sometimes violent grooves (“Groovy Tony / Eddie Kane”; “Blank Face”). That record tapped both 90s’ hip-hop artists/sounds and modern ones, and appealed to a wide crowd. That’s the gold standard, and one of the best albums of that year. By contrast, Jay Rock also taps into the mainstream but doesn’t offer anything – no personality, no color, no darkness. Not even a fucking groove, the nerve! And it’s hard to imagine the mainstream tracks appealing to anyone either, so what’s left is a confused record. The best music is stuff that makes you forget other music exists, and in a month where we’ve been spoiled by good (G.O.O.D) music, a record this nondescript’s just detracting from what we could be listening to instead. The best I can say about Redemption is that at least Jay Rock hasn’t completely lost his mind like Ab-Soul. C PLUS

Source: https://prettymuchamazing.com/reviews/jay-rock-redemption

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Katherine Hughes in Trailer for Bob Shaye's Music Thriller 'Ambition'

by Alex Billington August 21, 2019 Source: YouTube

"You need to pull it together." Shout Studios has unveiled a trailer for the "gripping, suspenseful thriller" titled Ambition, the latest film directed by producer Bob Shaye. In Ambition, Katherine Hughes stars as a young aspiring violinist preparing for a competition. She's incredibly confidant and gets wrapped up in a frightening trap that she has to find her way out of. It raises the question: If an insane person is telling a story, is it real? That sounds like quite an intriguing introduction to this film. The full cast includes Sonoya Mizuno, Giles Matthey, Kyanna Simone, Jared Bankens, Deneen Tyler, Dylan McNamara, and Jordan Salmon, with a special appearance by Lin Shaye. Ambition is said to "create a world where desire and revenge converge into a questionable reality." Seems a bit like Black Swan, but with even more horror.

Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Bob Shaye's Ambition, direct from Shout's YouTube:

In the gripping, suspenseful thriller Ambition, Jude (Hughes) is an intense, driven musician preparing for the biggest performance of her life-but her ambition could end up killing her. As her competitors begin to die bizarre deaths, she recognizes a pattern that seems to connect her. Is she next…? Her suspicions are confirmed in a shocking climax that puts into question her chances for survival, and her sanity. Ambition, which had the working title of Gifted, is directed by veteran producer / filmmaker Robert "Bob" Shaye, director of the films Book of Love and The Last Mimzy previously. The screenplay is written by John Rocco and Jenna Lyn Wright. This hasn't premiered at any film festivals or elsewhere. Shout Studios will release Shaye's Ambition in select theaters + on VOD starting September 20th next month. Is anyone interested?

Find more posts: Indies, To Watch, Trailer

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Source: https://www.firstshowing.net/2019/katherine-hughes-in-trailer-for-bob-shayes-musician-thriller-ambition/

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Optimistic Delusion and Music Business Version 2.0 Syndrome

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Source: https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/04/optimistic-delusion-and-the-problem-of-version-20-syndrome.html

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Want Ads

Wanted: Hair-cutter. Excellent growth potential.

Wanted: Man to take care of cow that does not smoke or drink.

Wanted: Part-time married girls for soda fountain in sandwich shop.

Girl wanted to assist magician in cutting-off-head illusion. Blue Cross and salary.

Wanted: Preparer of food. Must be dependable, like the food business, and be willing to get hands dirty.

Received from ArcaMax Jokes.

Source: https://gcfl.net/archive.php?funny=5541

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Obama Blasts Trump for Not Denouncing Nazis, Calls Him a ‘Symptom’

Former President Barack Obama sharply criticized President Donald Trump in a speech on Friday saying that Trump is “capitalizing on resentment that politicians have been fanning for years,” CNN reports.

Obama spoke to thousands of students at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and mentioned Trump by name for the first time since leaving The White House last year and blasted Republicans politicians in the process.

“It did not start with Donald Trump, he is a symptom, not the cause. He is just capitalizing on resentment that politicians have been fanning for years,” said Obama. “A fear, an anger that is rooted in our past but is also borne in our enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes.”

Adding that “the politics of resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican Party.”

Obama seemingly criticized Trump over his comments in 2017 in which he failed to condemn White supremacists following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that left one woman dead after she was hit by a car driven by a self-identified neo-Nazi.

“It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say that we don’t target groups of people because of what they look like or how they pray. … We are supposed to stand up to discrimination and we are sure as heck to stand up clearly and unequivocally to Nazi sympathizers,” he said. “How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?”

At a rally in North Dakota on Friday, Trump acknowledged Obama’s comments telling the crowd that it put him to sleep, according to CNN.

“I watched it, but I fell asleep. I’ve found he’s very good for sleeping,” said the president.

Trump and Obama’s relationship has always been contentious. In 2011, Trump spread false claims that Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was not born in the U.S.

He’s also attacked him on Twitter and has undone a number of Obama-era policies in the almost two years he’s been in office.

Obama also took the time to urge students to go out and vote, adding that the last two years should be viewed as a reminder to people who think their votes aren’t important.

“Don’t tell me your vote doesn’t matter,” he said, referring to voting as the “antidote” to all that ails Washington. “And if you thought elections don’t matter, I hope these last two years have corrected the impression.”

Source: https://www.ebony.com/news-views/obama-blasts-trump-for-not-denouncing-nazis-calls-him-a-symptom

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Blake Lively Flashing Her Massive Braless Bosom In A Sheer Top… WOW!

Here’s Blake Lively looking ridiculously hot and stunning, and dropping everyone’s jaw to the floor and inducing a serious drool-fest at last night’s A Simple Favor premiere in NYC with one hell of a display of her massive/perfectly-shaped braless bosom in a sheer top… sweet baby Jesus! One of the hottest babes on the planet showing off one of the best bosoms on the planet and totally braless and in a revealing top? Oh yeah, epic drool-fest! So stop reading this and try not to drool all over yourselves!

Photo Credit: WENN

Bonus Galleries:

Related Galleries: Scarlett Johansson Gets Bootylicious… Dayuuuuuuuumn! Taylor Swift Looks Like She Has Bigger Boobs Now… WOW! Selena Gomez Bootylicious And Boobtastic In A Tiny Bikini!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2018 at 12:10 am and is filed under Blake Lively. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Source: http://www.popoholic.com/2018/09/12/blake-lively-flashing-her-massive-braless-bosom-in-a-sheer-top-wow/

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‘SNL’ Morning After: The Must-See Moments From This Week’s Steve Carell-Hosted Episode

Will Heath for NBC

Steve Carell’s triumphant return to Saturday Night Live this weekend was surprisingly rife with more duds than successes. Whenever The Office alum and the cast members did succeed, however, they elicited some of this season’s strongest laughs of the season. That’s no small feat, for at a time when Michael Che, Colin Jost, Kent Sublette and the rest of the sketch show’s writing team seem to be struggling with the precise direction(s) they want to take things in, Carell’s episode was one of the season’s most unified.

Not that that’s always a good thing, as consistency can sometimes be a sign of laziness. (For example, the writing staff had the 56-year-old actor playing disgruntled fathers in at least three separate sketches, and most of them weren’t that great.) Even so, what saved SNL this weekend from utter failure was largely a mixture of Carell’s commitment to every ridiculous little thing the writers threw at him and many of the cast members’ similar devotion to selling what they were given.

This was especially true for Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong, who killed in the “Voter Fraud” cold open, and younger cast members Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner, who regularly stole scenes from their respective sketches. Established acts like McKinnon, Strong and Leslie Jones are so central to SNL‘s current image that they likely don’t have to fight for airtime as much as fresher faces like Gardner and Day. Thankfully, the writers for this week’s episode (and Carell himself) gave them plenty of room to shine.

Here are the key moments from last night’s show.

McKinnon and Strong conquer the cold open, again

While SNL‘s continued attempts at political comedy don’t always hit the mark, McKinnon and Strong’s impressions of Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro are often the exceptions. The pair’s “Caravan” cold open from the Jonah Hill-hosted episode helped launch one of this season’s best episodes to date, which is probably why the writers decided to put them first again with this weekend’s “Voter Fraud” opening sketch. It didn’t quite have the same effect, in terms of propelling what came after, but it’s good nonetheless.

Source: https://uproxx.com/tv/steve-carell-snl-best-sketches-moments/

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Neal Brennan: R Kelly And His ‘Goons’ Tried To Beat Up Dave Chappelle For Making Fun Of Him

YouTube

The release of Surviving R. Kelly has brought new attention to the litany of sexual misconduct allegations brought against R. Kelly. The Lifetime miniseries laying out each accusation has made many reevaluate their collaborations with Kelly, and made many wonder exactly why it took so long for people to take his crimes seriously.

The airing of the show has sparked a criminal investigation of Kelly in Georgia. But one perhaps-unintended side effect is a reevaluation of the way Chappele’s Show lampooned Kelly over a decade ago. The rapper was a consistent target of the D.C. comedian during the show’s run from 2003 to 2006.

One of those sketches, of course, was Chappelle as R. Kelly singing a song called “Piss on You.”

The sketch is one people instantly identify as a Chappelle’s Show bit, along with Charlie Murphy telling the story of Prince playing basketball against he and his brother’s entourage. But unlike the hilarious story about the late musician making pancakes, sketches about Kelly and underage girls makes light of a series of very serious crimes — some of which were committed with urine.

Source: https://uproxx.com/tv/neal-breannan-r-kelly-sent-goons-beat-up-dave-chappelle/

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Warzone

“People of America, when will we learn?” Yoko Ono asked over a briskly strummed acoustic guitar on her 1973 album, Approximately Infinite Universe. “It’s now or never: There’s no time to lose.” She sings those same words on Warzone, a collection of 13 songs from her back catalog that she re-recorded with their original lyrics and somber new synthesizer underpinnings. It’s been 45 years since she first urged her adoptive home to dream of a reality unblighted by violence. The words ring sadder now; the people of the United States ostensibly chose “never.”

A ferocious optimism animates Ono’s half-century career. Her early performance pieces and her 1964 book of creative prompts, Grapefruit, worked from the assumption that art was play, an inborn human faculty. She carried that humanism into the music she made, on her own and with husband John Lennon, throughout the 1970s. Impassioned, erratic vocals tore at long-held conventions of what women behind microphones should sound like. Her liberating irreverence reverberated throughout New Wave in bands like the B-52s and the Talking Heads, as well as underground experimentalists like Meredith Monk. That her legacy as a creative force was so deeply subsumed by the myth of the Beatles speaks to a slowly lifting rockist misogyny, not the quality of her work.

Warzone collects a handful of songs from Ono’s seminal ’70s records alongside tracks from 1985’s Starpeace and 1995’s Rising, plus an interlude from 2009’s Between My Head and the Sky. Most songs tell the same story: Humanity will one day achieve enlightenment and relinquish war in favor of love and unity. The unity of the message speaks to the endurance of the Ono’s idealism. While the original recordings offer a glimpse at the sheer variety of Ono’s discography—her work houses dub beats and thrash metal riffs and acid freakouts—the re-recorded versions drain each track of historical and musical specificity. Most have been slowed to a funereal tempo, which makes lyrics that once brimmed with hope sound like a concession to the ubiquitous cruelty of the present. Ono sings a 20th-century dream for a 21st-century utopia that never came to pass.

When Ono strangled the word “why” during the 1970 song of the same name, she pronounced the question like it had an answer that she could find if she screamed hard enough. She was spurring herself into action. But the 2018 “Why” loses the original’s rock instrumentation and shelves Ono’s feral vibrato. Instead, over wolf howls, trumpeting elephants, and ambient synthesizers, she wails the word as if in mourning. One “Why” looks out onto a course that has yet to be set; the other looks back onto irreversible wreckage.

“Woman Power,” from 1973’s Feeling the Space, loses its sense of spontaneous play. Roaring electric guitars and a commanding drumbeat once gave the track urgency, as if Ono really were singing on the cusp of gender liberation, as if she could sing it into being. The re-recorded take might be the track here closest to its source material, as the guitar riff and drum pattern survive for the song’s first half. But the instruments hide under Ono’s voice; rather than raw and vital, they sound spectral and faded. They soon fall away entirely, replaced by strings arranged by New York composer Nico Muhly. When the band crashes back in and guitarist Marc Ribot tears through a rote solo, it feels as though two visions of the future are competing: one in which women have already seized the power afforded to men, and one in which Ono mourns that power’s lack.

Warzone’s liner notes include a 1972 essay by Ono originally published in The New York Times. “The Feminization of Society” articulates an enduring tenet of feminism: that masculinist ideals have failed the world, and only by means of feminine survival strategies can the world be saved. She argues that women cannot compromise their liberation or achieve it within existing masculine frameworks. Women must rewrite reality by force. Some of Ono’s writing has aged well. On the other hand, she flippantly claims that black people have already achieved liberation and women must do the same, at once seemingly forgetting the existence of black women and glossing over the United States’ enduring racism. A year later, she’d release an album with Lennon that printed a racist slur on its cover. On “I Love All of Me,” originally released on Starpeace, she again uses black people as a rhetorical peg, claiming, “I’m a black man who’s come to terms with his anger.” A line no doubt meant as a bid for compassion undermines her vision of universal love, conflating black masculinity with anger without interrogating that association’s roots in white supremacy.

These moments pin Ono’s radicalism to a vision of liberation that ignores the way racism and misogyny structure the world in tandem. They feel dated and draining in a political climate where a majority of white women voted for a candidate serially accused of sexual assault, opting to safeguard the benefits of whiteness by aligning themselves with a violently misogynist party. That Ono never thought to rewrite these lyrics or the included essay while rearranging the songs themselves highlights a disconnect between the hippie utopianism of the 20th century and the current bitter fight for survival of so many.

Because its overt politics now feel so inadequate, Warzone works best as a melancholy gesture, a long look back at a time when dreaming of a better world felt invigorating rather than exhausting. Its peak comes on its last track: a recording of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Nearly a decade after releasing the song, Lennon admitted that Ono deserved partial songwriting credit, because he had penned the lyrics around one of Grapefruit’s prompts. Here, Ono reclaims a song long offered as proof of her late husband’s towering genius.

Ono works against its engraved expectations. Her rendition is melancholy and moving; she sings tentatively against sparse electronic drone, as if reckoning with the weight of all that has been lost in the decades since Lennon sang the same words. She strains a little to hit the high notes before the chorus, the playful vocal flourish so idiosyncratic to the late Beatle. Her voice considers his absence as she pronounces some of his most famous lines: “You may say that I’m a dreamer/But I’m not the only one.” She’s right, of course, and the world she envisions here—no possessions, no nations, no want—still describes the world young radicals are fighting for against late capitalism’s heavy inertia. It’s a beautiful idea, this paradise of which she sings. It just takes more than dreams to get there.

Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yoko-ono-warzone/

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Will Packer's New Series Prompts Atlanta Police To Re-examine Murders Of 22 Black Children

With his latest docu-series, “The Atlanta Child Murders,” film producer Will Packer is calling our attention to the cases of more than two dozen black children who were killed decades ago.

The three-part series, which premiered on Investigation Discovery on Saturday, re-examines the murders of 29 black youth, mostly children and a few adults, between 1979 and 1981. Children were abducted and later found dead, in many cases strangled. Black parents and community leaders condemned the city for not treating the matter with urgency.

In what many suspected to be an effort to calm hysteria and racial tension, authorities identified Wayne Williams as the main suspect and linked him to many of the homicides. He was convicted of killing two adults, but was never tried for the children’s cases. Twenty-two of the deaths are now considered cold cases, and the families of at least 22 murdered children have yet to receive justice. Packer, known for producing “Girls Trip,” “Think Like A Man” and “Stomp The Yard,” among other films, wants to help change that.

“If we don’t, as a country, and if the people who’re in power and have the influence, don’t make the decision to put the resources behind protecting those that are most vulnerable, then something like this can happen again,” Packer told HuffPost.

On Thursday, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and police Chief Erica Shields announced that the cases are being re-examined and that “technological advances in testing DNA evidence will be the main focus,” according to a press release.

“It would certainly be in order for us to look once again at evidence that the city of Atlanta has in its possession... and to determine once and for all if there’s additional evidence that may be tested that may give some peace ― to the extent that peace can be had in a situation like this ― to the victims’ families,” Bottoms said in a statement. “To let them know that we have done all that we can do... to make sure their memories are not forgotten, and in the truest sense of the word to let the world know that black lives do matter.” She also thanked Packer for bringing the murders back to light.

The filmmaker talked to HuffPost about helping these families find justice, how America views black children and how this could happen again if we don’t start protecting the most vulnerable.

For a lot of us who’ve been following your work, it’s definitely something different. Why is this project important for you?

It is different. It’s a little bit of a departure, but at the end of the day I’m a storyteller. I’m a filmmaker, I’m a constant producer, and so I want to put my weight of my name and my brand behind projects that I consider important. And sometimes, it’s about entertainment, it’s about coming to the theater to escape the real world and have a laugh. Other times, it’s about telling the story you may not know, or you may know and don’t know the details, and it may be about giving voice to folks who haven’t had a voice, an opportunity to tell their story on a national platform. That’s what this is. It’s about those family members of the victims who haven’t had an opportunity to tell their stories on a national platform.

This case was a bit before my time, and I’m just so baffled that I hadn’t heard of it until finding out that you were involved in this docu-series. Can you talk about how you got involved with this project?

I grew up in the South, I was aware. I didn’t know all the details that I know now. But I did know that it happened. I grew up in a time where, especially growing up in the South, where I was raised, your parents told you, “Come straight home from school and don’t let the streetlights catch you, and obey your parents. Do what you’re told, and always let somebody know where you are, or else you could get killed like those kids in Atlanta.” That was a cautionary tale for my generation.

And so what happened was, I had a relationship with another production company who produces for Investigation Discovery and does crime-type docs, and they asked if I would be interested in doing something on the Atlanta child murders. I said, “Absolutely.” I said, “It’s something I’m very interested in. It’s something that is a story that... not enough people know, and this was an American tragedy.” A lot of people just don’t even know it happened.

I reached out to Investigation Discovery, along with Jupiter [Entertainment], and we put a team together and Investigation Discovery said I could do it. Originally, it was gonna be just a one-part thing, and it ended up being a three-part doc series. So, I’m proud to be involved.

Yeah, definitely. And I agree with you, as far as it being a national emergency and tragedy. We’ve seen, during that time and in recent years, with the stories of missing black and brown kids, or black and brown kids who have been tragically murdered or taken away from us, those stories don’t always make national news. They don’t always get the proper attention from local authorities that they deserve. In working on this docu-series, what were some of the red flags that you saw in the way that it was handled then that you kind of see still persisting today?

That’s a good question. And you know what? It’s the same as it was then, and then it is now. People who are the least among us, the most vulnerable, the poor. The disenfranchised, the marginalized. Their lives are not valued the same way as those who have wealth, who have means, who have power, who have influence. That’s it. Period. And that is why this was allowed to happen and went on as long as it did in Atlanta, back almost 40 years ago, now. If we’re not careful, something like this could still happen today, because we do not value lives of those who are the most vulnerable, who need our protection the most. We don’t value their lives in the same way.

Yeah. At all. How was it working with the parents and the family members of these children who were taken?

A lot of these family members don’t have closure. There’s a perception out there that... one person who’s in jail, Wayne Williams, was tried and convicted of the murders of these kids, and that’s just not true. That’s a misperception. These cases were closed after Wayne Williams was convicted of murdering two adult men. They closed all the other cases because it was a matter of convenience. The city, and frankly the country, at that time, needed it to go away. And the murders stopped when Wayne Williams got arrested. So the combination of that meant that you have families that never got a chance to watch someone be held accountable via the American criminal justice system. They never got to say, “OK, justice was served... and this person was convicted.” They never got that, and I’ve learned that that is an important part of closure, for many victims.

How does the docu-series approach him being named as the primary suspect?

The doc doesn’t draw conclusions. It allows the viewer to draw their own conclusion, it just lays out the evidence... The doc does a really good, methodical job of painting the picture of what happened, of how it happened, and the results from what was going on during that time. It doesn’t speak to Wayne Williams’ guilt or innocence, but it does beg the question: Is it possible that one person was responsible for all these killings during that time? And I think that’s an important question you gotta ask. I really do. And whether he was or not, the fact that he never sat trial for other murders, I think, is a travesty. I don’t think that’s justice being served for those families.

It’s not a “Wayne Williams’ guilt or innocence” doc. It’s really a doc about these kids and about those families and about those affected. It’s also about a time in our country’s history. But ultimately, yeah. We do present the evidence so that you can watch it and draw your own conclusion about whether or not you think this was one single person doing this.

Was there anything surprising for you, or anything that you learned in the process of working on this?

I was actually surprised at how many people, black and white, do not know about this... If you’re under the age of 40, this is something that maybe you kinda, sorta heard about, but you don’t really know what happened. What this was. And, in my opinion, it’s one of the greatest tragedies that this country has ever witnessed. So, for people to not know about it, that is the thing that was most surprising for me. But hopefully, this’ll be able to shed some light.

What do you think this case, and the way that it was handled, says about how this country views black children?

That the value of black lives, poor lives, marginalized lives, brown, black, immigrant, it’s not the same. They’re devalued. This is not a country that values all lives the same, unfortunately. Still does not, to this day. And if we’re not careful, something like this could happen again. It may not happen on the same scale, but even one life... Even one life of the most vulnerable among us being lost, when it could have been prevented, is a travesty.

And if we don’t, as a country, and if the people who’re in power and have the influence, don’t make the decision to put the resources behind protecting those that are most vulnerable, then something like this can happen again.

I want to zoom in on Atlanta really quickly, because it is a city known for its rich culture, known for having such a vast and diverse black population. What effect do you think this case and these murders had on the city of Atlanta?

It’s a stain still on the city, to this day. It’s a secret, it’s something that’s not widely talked about, but if you’re above a certain age in Atlanta, you know that this happened. I think that it affected the way that the police departments, the GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigations, handled cases going forward. I think that Atlanta was slow to recognize that this was an epidemic that was happening, that there was a pattern amongst these killings. I don’t think that will happen again. And I think that, as a city, Atlanta realized that it did not do justice to the victims by making this a national issue early on. By the time this got to national news, the killings were in the teens. That’s far too many lives to have lost... There were... mistakes made on the political level, on the law enforcement level, on the community level that I would hope would not happen again in the same way.

What do you hope that people take from this docu-series? Whether they knew about these murders, these cases, or whether they didn’t. What do you hope that they walk away from this docu-series knowing?

I hope they realize that... first of all, that it happened. Second of all, that it can happen. It could happen, and it can happen now if we don’t put value on the lives of those that... don’t have a voice, that are the marginalized and disenfranchised. If we’re not careful, something like this could happen again, whether it’s black children in Atlanta or immigrants at the border. We have to say that those who are the least among us, from a traditional hierarchy, socioeconomic standpoint, those that have [less than] are just as important as somebody who comes from wealth, who may be blond-haired, blue eyes, and have a particular family name. We gotta start doing that, as a country. That’s what I hope ― people will watch this and realize, “Wow, this tragedy happened. If just one of those lives could have been saved, then a horrible mistake was made. Let’s not do that again.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/will-packer-atlanta-child-murders_n_5c950a30e4b01ebeef0ea6b3

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Watch Riverdale Online: Season 3 Episode 9

Was there any way the teens could overthrow Hiram Lodge?

That was revealed on Riverdale Season 3 Episode 9 when the supervillain continued his hostile takeover of the town. 

With Veronica ready to take her father down once and for all, she had to contend with her mother who felt she was making a big mistake. 

Meanwhile, Betty helped the girls who escaped with her from the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, but things took a deadly turn. 

Use the video above to watch Riverdale online right here via TV Fanatic. 

Catch up on all your favorite shows and reviews and join in the conversations with other fanatics who love TV as much as you.

Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.

Source: https://www.tvfanatic.com/2019/01/watch-riverdale-online-season-3-episode-9/

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AN NCS PREMIERE: MO’YNOQ — “THE COLLECTOR”

Early last year I discovered Bardo, the then-forthcoming new EP by a black metal crew from Raleigh, North Carolina, named Mo’ynoq — and it made such a powerful immediate impression that I reached out to them to ask if we could premiere one of the tracks to accompany a review of Bardo (and you can find that here). Now Mo’ynoq have completed work on their debut album — Dreaming In A Dead Language — and once again I asked if we could host a premiere of one of the new songs in advance of its official release on January 11th. Once again, the band agreed.

I hasten to add that we don’t usually ask for the opportunity to host premieres. Almost all the time, the requests come to us. But the new Mo’ynoq album is so damned good, and so damned exciting, that I couldn’t resist. The song chosen by the band is the album’s second track, “The Collector“.

This new song begins building from a starting point in which dissonant, eerie, brain-spearing notes ring out, those abrasive and unsettling tones punctuated by the surprising intervention of explosive percussive detonations. When the song eventually finds its rhythm, the music is mid-paced and massive, thanks to an enormous, sludgy bass tone and skull-cracking drum strikes, and also disturbing, thanks to the vocalist’s raw, livid howls and roars.

And then the storm breaks in full — the drums begin blasting, the bass thundering and bubbling, the howls transforming into a mix of shrieks and gruesome roars, and the riffs accelerating into a mad, broiling, yet blood-freezing fury. The pandemonium includes bursts of jolting fretwork and hammering drums, with crazed, flickering, fire-bright, insectile leads. It’s enough to spin your head in a whirr — but it becomes apparent that the band still haven’t finished sending the music’s intensity into the red zone. For the finale, they erupt into an even more breathtaking berserker frenzy, with the vocals reaching incinerating new heights of throat-splitting, blood-spraying, pain and fury.

It really is an electrifying and unsettling experience, and an adventurous and technically impressive one. The trip from the way the song begins to the way it ends is so gripping that if you’re like me you’ll want to return to the start and take this intense thrill-ride again, without delay.

Dreaming In A Dead Language has now become available for pre-order on Bandcamp, adorned by eye-catching cover art created by Pierre Perichaud (aka Business For Satan). We’ll have more to say about the album as a whole in the coming weeks.

BANDCAMP: https://moynoq.bandcamp.com/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/moynoq/

TRACK LIST: 1. Empyreal Decay 2. The Collector 3. These Once Tranquil Grounds 4. Doomed To Endure 5. Carve My Name 6. Witness To The Abyss 7. Buried By Regret

Source: https://www.nocleansinging.com/2018/12/10/an-ncs-premiere-moynoq-the-collector/

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#morninglistening to #RichardStrauss’ #Rosenkavalier in...

#morninglistening to #RichardStrauss’ #Rosenkavalier in @KarajanMusic’s classic recording for EMI / @warnerclassics:

Amazon: http://a-fwd.to/5ecdKRI

A deluxe re-mastered re-issue.

@Philharmonia + #NicolaiGedda as the Italian tenor, #ElisabethSchwarzkopf #ChristaLudwig #TeresaStichRandall et al.!

#classicalmusic #classicalmusiccollection #classicalcdcollection #Strauss #HerbertvonKarajan #opera #DerRosenkavalier #wienerklassik #vonKarajan #WarnerClassics https://www.instagram.com/p/BnVpdsSHd9f/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1pxd30ctq5zzx

https://ift.tt/2Cja1VB via Instagram

Source: http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2018/09/morninglistening-to-richardstrauss.html

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The Christmas Contract Sneak Peek Has Us Wondering What Exactly Is This Contract?

The Christmas Contract premiere is almost here and Lifetime has released a sneak peek of the original film that is reuniting a lot of your One Tree Hill favorites. The scene features Danneel Ackles as Naomi, who is trying to help her best friend Jolie (Hilarie Burton) avoid her ex by pairing Jolie up with her brother Jack (Robert Buckley).

We can tell from the scene that Jolie needs help making her ex jealous, or at least a distraction from his social media PDA posts with his new girlfriend. And Jack thinks whatever this Christmas contract is might actually be "a good deal," but based on the scene alone, it's hard to tell exactly what these two probable lovebirds are actually signing up to do. How does pretending to date help rebrand Jack as an author?

Discover your new favorite show: Watch This Now!

Obviously, we consulted the official description to find out! Apparently, Jolie is also a graphic designer and will make Jack a new website for his novelist career. The contract turns out to be "more than they bargained for," which is TV holiday movie speak for "sparks fly and they fall in love." We can't wait!

The Christmas Contract premieres Thursday, Nov. 22 at 8/7c on Lifetime.

Source: http://www.tv.com/news/the-christmas-contract-sneak-peek-has-us-wondering-what-exactly-is-this-contract-15421637050065364/

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TV Shows Ending in 2019: Broad City, Game of Thrones and 35+ More

When 2019 began, we knew that at least 23 beloved shows would soon be leaving us. Three months later, that number has jumped to 40. Math!

So, which shows have joined the ranks of The Big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones and Jane the Virgin? Well, thanks to Netflix and Marvel’s semi-conscious uncoupling, we’ve added a pair of superhero series to our list. (R.I.P., Jessica Jones and The Punisher!) And we didn’t forget about all you Bronies out there — we’re pouring one out for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, too. (Hey, nine seasons is nothing to shake a horn at!)

Because time is an ever-marching penguin, we’ve also updated our original gallery with the freshest premiere and finale dates (Broad City says goodbye in just four days!), and we’ve noted which shows already ended earlier this year.

For now, we’re omitting shows like The CW’s Arrow and History’s Vikings, whose final episodes could potentially stretch into early 2020. And don’t even ask us about the end of Supernatural, which was announced by its stars on Friday. We’re still processing the news.

Browse our gallery of shows reaching their conclusions this year — you can click here for direct access — then drop a comment with your thoughts below: Which show(s) will you miss most?

Source: https://tvline.com/2019/03/24/tv-shows-ending-2019-full-list-broad-city-game-of-thrones/

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Battle Of World-Altering Finger Snaps: ‘Infinity War’ vs. ‘The Good Place’

Marvel/NBC

A lot of things have happened in 2018. Entirely too many things, one might say, especially if one made the mistake of allowing push notifications to their phone from multiple news sources. And with that barrage of big huge things constantly barreling toward you, it’s easy to miss the smaller things, and the connections between things. For example, did you realize that there were two separate world-altering finger snaps by powerful non-human entities in pop culture this year? Because there were. One in the summer’s biggest box office blockbuster, Avengers: Infinity War, and one in an under-watched-but-beloved network sitcom, The Good Place.

That’s kind of weird, right? That finger-snapping played a huge role in two of the year’s most buzzed about pieces of pop culture? Maybe it’s not as weird as I think it is. I don’t know. Maybe I just want an excuse to write something like “MAYA RUDOLPH VS. THANOS, TWO FINGER-SNAPPING TITANS ENTER, ONE CHAMPION EMERGES.” There’s a really good chance that’s what’s happening here, to be honest. I stand by it.

Let’s break these snaps down.

The Snappers

In one corner, we have Thanos, a monstrous despot from another galaxy who looks like a shaved Grimace on a paleo diet and was on a mission to acquire all of the universe’s infinity stones and lock them into a golden glove that would make him all-powerful. In the other corner, we have Gen (short for Hydrogen), the all-knowing and all-deciding judge who lives in the neutral zone between the good and bad place and is played by Maya Rudolph.

Your first instinct here is probably to give the edge to Thanos because he’s a big beefy warlord who looks like if Barney the Dinosaur had an evil lovechild with Shrek’s mom. He wears armor. He battled Thor in hand-to-hand combat. But consider this: If we accept both of the universes at play here as factual and combine them, that means that Thanos, as a living being, falls under the dominion of Gen, and his fate will be decided by her in the event of his death. That’s real power.

EDGE: The Good Place

The Reason for the Snap

Pretty straightforward, really. And totally opposite. Thanos wants to wipe out half the universe’s population as a way to prevent overuse of resources. Gen wants to put four dead people — Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and my beloved Jason — back on Earth to see if they are capable of becoming better after surviving the tragic accident that killed them the first time.

Want a fun visual: Picture Maya Rudolph sitting at her desk in peace the instant before Thanos snaps his fingers and then picture billions and billions of confused people and aliens just popping up in there. And then picture Maya Rudolph doing a classic Maya Rudolph “oh HELL no” and snapping them all back into existence. And then Thanos snaps them out again. And it just goes on and on for 10 minutes with Maya Rudolph getting more and more furious and Thanos getting more and more perplexed, tapping his glove like it’s malfunctioning or something while Spider-man keeps turning to dust and shrieking “Oh man, Mr. Stark, it’s happening again!”

EDGE: Infinity War, just for the scope

Source: https://uproxx.com/tv/snap-battle-infinity-war-good-place/

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Jimmy Barnes Makes Australian Chart History With 'My Criminal Record'

Jimmy Barnes is a living legend in Australia, a two-time ARIA Hall of Famer who led the storied rock act Cold Chisel and never missed a beat with his solo career, which continues to go strong.

Barnesy, as he’s affectionately known, is now also a history-maker in these parts, his new LP My Criminal Record bowing atop the latest national albums survey, for his 12th solo No. 1. 

With My Criminal Record, released May 31 through Bloodlines, a label of Michael Gudinski’s Mushroom Group, Barnes snags the record for most No. 1s since the ARIA Charts were launched in 1983.

"I’m looking forward to screaming my thanks in person to you all when I get back out on the road shortly," Barnes tweeted after ARIA published its charts on the weekend.

Barnes previously held the record jointly with Madonna and U2, with 11. The Scotland-born singer also has four chart-leaders with Cold Chisel, who were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1993; Barnes was inducted as a solo artist during a ceremony in 2005.

ARIA CEO Dan Rosen paid tribute to Barnes and his achievement. “To have so much chart success over so many years is a testament to Jimmy's enduring appeal to Australian music fans from all walks of life and across multiple generations,” comments Rosen in a statement. “He is truly a legend of our industry and of our country.”

My Criminal Record is Barnes’ first album of original material since Rage And Ruin, which hit No. 3 in September 2010, and his first of originals to reach the summit since Two Fires did so in September 1990. The new set also leads ARIA’s Vinyl Albums tally.

“There will never be another artist in Australia like Jimmy Barnes,” comments Gudinski in a statement. “Sixteen No. 1 albums is simply an incredible achievement and My Criminal Record is, in my opinion, some of the best work of Jimmy’s illustrious career.”

My Criminal Record holds off some tough competition on this week’s ARIA Albums Chart, as Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? dips 1-2, Elton John’s Diamonds rises 8-3, Pink’s former leader Hurts 2B Human falls 2-4 and Susan Boyle celebrates her first decade in the record business with Ten, a new collection of classics and new cuts which arrives at No. 5.

[readmore8514974]

Also new to the national albums chart this week is Miley Cyrus' She Is Coming, the first of three, six-track EPs. It’s new at No. 10. Miley’s most recent full-length album, Younger Now, peaked at No. 2 on the chart in October 2017.

London grime authority Skepta banks his second chart entry with Ignorance Is Bliss, new at no. 15. Ignorance is the followup to 2016’s Konnichiwa, which  reached No. 13. 

On this week’s ARIA Singles Chart, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” locks down a seventh week at No. 1, while Katy Perry has the week’s highest debut as “Never Really Over” starts at No. 7. It’s the U.S. pop star’s 13th top ten on the ARIA Singles Chart.

Perry’s last track to impact the survey was “Swish Swish,” which managed a best of No. 22 in July 2017, and her last appearance in the top tier came in February 2017 when “Chained To The Rhythm” reached No. 4.

Source: https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8515097/jimmy-barnes-makes-australian-chart-history-with-my-criminal