LOS ANGELES — In the days since Prince's death at age 57, fan-shot performance videos from the music icon's concerts have started popping up in droves on YouTube — something that never would've happened while he was alive.
Enjoy them while they last. It's likely that most won't stay up for long.
In life, Prince was so personally invested in protecting his copyrights that violators sometimes got him on the other end of a telephone call. In death — after a torrent of well-meaning but unauthorized uploads — mop-up is left to the anti-piracy firm he used, some built-in tools on YouTube, his estate and any other interested parties who may want to take up the torch.
It was only two years ago that Prince announced he was s...llion each. While 20 of the defendants remained anonymous, two were identified as Dan Chodera and Karina Jindrov, everyday fans who ran a Prince fan page on Facebook.
These 22 people had uploaded performance videos to Facebook or blogs, which in the lawsuit Prince equated to "thousands of separate acts of infringement and bootlegging."
While, yes, he dropped the case just a day later, it sent a strong message: Prince doesn't like you posting his performances online.
And yes, he might just sue you if you do.
So it's no surprise that performance videos from the Purple One are seemingly starting to be removed from YouTube.
A fan-shot video of his final performance of "Purple Rain" — which was shared by several media outlets — has been removed due to a copyright claim by Web Sheriff, the anti-piracy firm that Prince worked with from 2007 up until his death. Web Sheriff has already issued takedown notices for over 1,000 files on file-sharing websites in the week since his death.
Unlike other file-sharing sites, YouTube takedown notices are not reported online. But chances are, this is just the beginning.
When Prince first started working with Web Sheriff, founder John Giacobbi told The Guardian that it wasn't about money, but artist control.
"He wants to set a template. We don't want to get rid of everything but want to separate proper, normal content from commercial pirates," he said at the time. "He wants people to see his art as he originally perceived it, not on a mobile phone bootleg or whatever."
Seven years later, in 2014, Prince took tighter control over his catalog by bringing his music publishing in-house through his own NPG Music Publishing. NPG was described as "founded by artists for artists."
Meaning, even Prince himself would partake in takedown requests.
In an interview with The Frame, yourlisten.com's Scott Goodman said that, when Prince pulled his music from everywhere but Tidal, he got a call from Prince himself asking for the removal of his music from the site.
"We never had the artist decide to physically call us and ask us to take that music down," he said.
Representatives for Web Sheriff and NPG Publishing did not respond to Mashable's request for comment on whether they plan to pursue takedowns for the videos. Representatives for Prince and YouTube had no comment.
James Sammataro, a Miami entertainment lawyer with experience in copyright and intellectual property law, anticipates some "aggressive plays" in the next few days and weeks.
A source familiar with the management of Prince's content tellsMashable that his music was managed through a mixture of Content ID and DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices. Content ID allows artists to provide reference files for their work so that YouTube can match them against fan uploads, giving them the choice to block, make money from or track user engagement on claimed videos.
While this is highly effective when a fan uploads, say, an album version of "Purple Rain," it's a little trickier for live performance videos.
Due to the massive number of videos posted in the past few days alone, Sammataro says "they're going to have to evaluate which ones are really damaging."
They also may be considering the potential for profit and the risk of alienating fans.
"It's interesting because they're being posted in a respectful manner, to respect the legacy and pay tribute to him," he added. "But this would go against the very grain of what he believed in, and they should be guarded and treated in the highest respects."
Jesse & Joy present their newest single "Dueles." Listen to it here.courtesy / Warner Music Latin
After making the rounds with the melancholic single "Ecos" and the vibrant collaboration "No Soy Una De Esas" featuring Alejandro Sanz, Jesse & Joy present their latest single titled "Dueles."
The record is a pop-rock single that talks about a recent break up. Hoy se cumple un mes que ya no me ves, te fuiste nada más, quisiste renunciar a quererme y como dueles, says part of the heartbreaking lyric, which translates to: Today it's been a month that you don't see me, you left. You gave up on loving me and it hurts. "Dueles" is the third single off of the Mexican duo's latest studio album called "Un Besito Más."
Prior to dropping their single and its lyric video, the talented siblings took by storm the 2016 Billboard Latin Music Awards. There, the duo was part of the "Billboard Duets" performances, where they sang "No Soy Una de Esas" with Mexican Regional artist Luis Coronel, who filled the shoes of Sanz's part. Although they did not nab the awards, Jesse & Joy was a two-time finalist at this year's award for Latin Pop Songs Artist of the Year, Duo or Group and Latin Pop Albums Artist of the Year, Duo or Group. Mexican rock group Manáwon in both categories.
Earlier this month, the "¡Corre!" singers received a platinum album for "Un Besito Más" during a nationwide program in Mexico due to its high sales. The duo's comeback album debuted as #1 on the charts in the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Argentina, among others.
Their second single "No Soy Una De Esas" ft. Alejandro Sanz has remained #1 for more than 18 weeks in radios nationwide across Mexico, and has also continued to stay within the first positions in the United States for more than 6 weeks. Jesse & Joy continue their tour with the following gigs:
May 05– Feria de San Marcos, Aguascalientes May 06– Feria Tabasco, Villahermosa June 10 – Coliseo en San Juan, Puerto Rico
Ruth B's 'Lost Boy' And The Story Behind The Year's Strangest Hot 100 Hit
Ruth B’s “Lost Boy” is easily the most unusual song on theHot 100: when it cracked the top 50 earlier this month, it was the only unadorned piano ballad on the chart’s top half, no small feat. It’s also the only song on the chart inspired by a more than century-old play.
That play is Peter Pan, first staged in 1904 and currently enjoying something of a moment in pop music. Last summer, an album with the same theme was released to accompany the musical Finding Neverland, but despite contributions fromNick Jonas, Jennifer Lopez, and Zendaya, nothing cracked the Hot 100. But Ruth B’s out-of-nowhere success -- she was an unknown without a record deal before “Lost Boy” -- suggests that the problem was with the execution rather than the concept. And Peter Pan’s appeal transcends genres: while “Lost Boy” climbs the charts, country listeners are warming to Kelsea Ballerini’s “Peter Pan,” No. 28 and climbing on the Hot Country Songs chart.
Why now? James Graham, who wrote the Broadway musicalFinding Neverland, believes Peter Pan expresses a common reluctance to “grow up,” conform, and play the game. “There’s so many universals in that story about being human,” he tellsBillboard. While the tale was written by an Englishman, it celebrates the outsider spirit that still holds a strong grip on the American imagination. “Peter Pan himself is this massive rebel,” Graham notes. “An anarchist. A carefree dude who doesn’t care what anyone thinks and refuses to conform. That was very modern at the time, and still 100 years later, whether it’s Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber, the idea of the young rebel trying to hold on to their youth, [who] doesn’t really care, that’s something that survived the passage of time.”
Professor Maria Tatar, a Harvard University professor and the author of The Annotated Peter Pan, echoes these sentiments. “Some kids really want to grow up too fast, especially today,” she says. “As a kid, I always wanted to stay a kid. For me, it’s the fantasy about flying. Lack of gravity is great -- it has to do with not being serious, having fun, playing. The idea of being above it all, being able to escape into this secret other world.”
That secret other world has spawned a thousand spinoffs, and the Peter Pan character in the TV show Once Upon A Time is the one who inspired Ruth B to write her hit. After watching an episode, she headed downstairs to her keyboard. “I was in a Peter Pan headspace,” she remembers. “I sang that first line out of nowhere.”
Ruth is a fan of the app Vine -- especially after a spontaneous decision to post a loop of her singing the chorus to Drake’s “Hold On We’re Going Home,” which led to a large increase in followers. She’d never written a song before the first line of “Lost Boy,” though, so she was hesitant to promote it on the app. “I initially didn’t even want to post it because it was a little bit cheesy,” she says. “But it kept ringing through my head.”
She eventually posted it, and the reaction was immediate: people wanted more. She started to add lines in Vine-able increments. “I would finish studying, come down stairs, and add a line to the chorus,” she explains. “In a week, I had a chorus, so I decided I should turn this into a full song and take it to YouTube.”
The result, built six seconds at a time, is a beatless piano ballad. Chords hang in the air, never pressing on top of each other. Ruth occasionally climbs into falsetto, but the track doesn’t have much movement or drama. Although it’s about finding friends, Ruth sings alone, and this isolation is emphasized by an echo effect. Her Neverland is a place of complete liberty -- “lost boys like me are free” -- and the singer avoids taking sides in the frequently violent squabbles that divide the island’s characters in the original story: “Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Wendy darling, even Captain Hook/ You are my perfect storybook.”
But a perfect story, even one with the long term resonance ofPeter Pan, doesn’t guarantee a national hit. That’s where major label radio promotion comes in handy. The tale of “Lost Boy” seesaws between old and new media -- while there’s a nostalgia inherent in the idea of not wanting to grow up, the most up-to-date technology played a crucial role in the track’s formation; though Vine helped “Lost Boy” bubble up, old-school radio power gave it a key boost.
The radio clout was corralled in part by Lee Leipsner, EVP and head of promotion at Columbia Records. He has been at Sony music for 22 years; before that, he spent five years at Mercury records. On the phone, he has the enthusiasm and fervor of a lifelong salesman, and an arsenal of statistics to support his points. “It never gets old breaking records,” he tells me.
In his view, the Peter Pan theme might have worked against “Lost Boy” at first, at least for people at radio. “[Programmers] hear she’s singing about Peter Pan and they think it’s Disney, it’s G-rated, it’s silly -- my audience is too cool for this,” he theorizes.
But the power of the song and the speed with which it was embraced on Vine convinced Leipsner that the cynics were mistaken. “I knew [that] given the chance, because of what she did on her own, and how [listeners] responded, all we had to do was get the record exposed,” he asserts. “[Ruth] had this record incubated. All we had to do is turn the key and magnify it.”
Leipsner set his sights on Michael Martin and Jayn at KLLC, a Hot AC station in San Francisco. It turned out that “Lost Boy” was already on Jayn’s radar, and she played it the same day she met with Leipsner. “It was so reactive from the start,” he declares. “It happened so fast that [other stations] jumped in quickly as well.”
From there, Leipsner headed to WIXX in Green Bay, WI. “They were one of the first stations on the pop side to playRachel Platten’s ‘Fight Song’ and Hozier’s ‘Take Me To Church,’” Leipsner notes. “They’re not afraid of playing records that seem outside of the norm; odd records that seem to find their way to the middle.” The station agreed to test Ruth’s song with their listeners. “I’ve never seen a score that high for any of our records,” Leipsner declares. “Within one week, the record was No. 1 on Shazam in Green Bay.”
After that, he portrays it as an easy move to other areas -- Baltimore, D.C., Philadelphia. “Everyone gets caught up in tempo and instrumentation,” he notes. “Sometimes the simplest songs have the biggest meaning and the biggest impact. We’ve had a lot of those: ‘Someone Like You’ fromAdele, John Legend’s ‘All Of Me.’” Both of those tracks were No. 1 hits. “Lost Boy” still has a way to go to reach the top ten, but it appeared to regain momentum on this week's chart, jumping to a new peak at No. 41.
Though neither Graham nor Tatar had heard “Lost Boy” before talking with Billboard, both spoke about it favorably after listening. “I completely identify,” Tatar says. “That was my fantasy as a kid: having that special island that is your own, that is imagination and wonder and adventure. The longing for a place like that is captured in those lyrics.” “The poetry and the ideas in the lyrics; it’s very human,” Graham adds separately. “She’s got a very original voice and way of viewing the world -- very mature lyrically and emotionally.”
In Liepsner’s mind, “the best records are the ones that people all think are a little odd, coming from the left or the right to the center.” “Hits come from everywhere,” he continues -- even Neverland.
What to Watch Tonight: The Season Finale of NCIS: Los Angeles, the Series Premiere of Houdini & Doyle, and Blindspot, Mike & Molly, and Reign
By Andy Daglas
What to watch on Monday, May 2...
8pm, Fox Gotham Gordon and Bruce grill Professor Strange about Project Evil Mad Science Stuff Chimera in “Azrael,” spurring the not-so-good doctor to sic the freshly resurrected Galavan on Gordon. They’re not the only ones interested in Strange this week, as Nygma does some investigating of his own.
8pm, The CW Reign In “No Way Out,” Mary grapples with the possibility of sacrificing her cousin to save her own neck, as well as with her new perspective on Gideon. Kind of a mixed emotional bag for Mary this week, I think is the takeaway here. Elsewhere, Lola and Elizabeth team up while Catherine tries in vain to put the past behind her.
8pm & 8:30pm, CBS Mike & Molly Mike is cheesed after Vince abandons their home improvement project in “The Wreck of the Vincent Moranto.” Then in “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” Molly opens her home to a pregnant former student who is living on the street.
8:30pm, TBS American Dad! Francine joins Steve and his friends in their role-playing game, while Stan opens a bargain-basement theme park in the Smith home, in “The Nova Centauris-burgh of Tourism Presents: American Dad.”
SERIES PREMIERE, 9pm, Fox Houdini & Doyle Premier prestidigitator Harry Houdini and mystery master Arthur Conan Doyle put their heads together to solve crimes with a supernatural bent in early 20th century London. “The Maggie’s Redress” kicks off the prolific pair’s adventures with the case of a nun murdered in the notorious Magdalene Laundries.
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE, 9pm, HBO Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah A 2016 Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Short, this film chronicles the 12-year endeavor by director Claude Lanzmann to create his 1985 documentary Shoah. Previously unseen footage and insights from the filmmaker are featured.
9pm, The CW Jane the Virgin Jane is stoked for her first Mother’s Day as a mother, but the Villanuevas’ traditional celebration is disrupted by Petra’s hosting of a holiday brunch. Elsewhere, Rogelio is stung by Dina’s snub, Rafael is menaced by his half-brother’s meshugas, and Jane is imperiled by Anezka’s phony newspaper ad.
9pm, Syfy 12 Monkeys Ah, the beginning of a new time-travel-mission relationship is always so exciting and nerve-wracking, y’know? Will there be sparks? Will you have enough to talk about? Will the other person be rude to Louis XIV and dramatically alter the outcome of the War of Spanish Succession? Anyway, “One Hundred Years” finds Cole and Cassie in that situation (minus the Sun King) when they track a fiendish member of the Twelve in World War II-era New York.
9pm, A&E Bates Motel Norma is divided between Norman and Romero in “Unfaithful,” and her Magic 8-Ball keeps unhelpfully coming up “Leave Me Out of This, That Kid Is Nuts.” As for the younger Bates, he begins to realize just how much everyone has changed while he’s been away. For one thing, his mother never used to consult a Magic 8-Ball 19 times a day?
9pm, TBS The Detour With the kids recuperating from food poisoning, the family seeks some much needed R&R in “The B & B”—and a Southern bed-and-breakfast may be just the place.
NEW NIGHT, 9:30pm, CBS The Odd Couple The comedy expands to two nights per week (in addition to its usual Thursday 8:30pm slot) with “Oscar’s Overture,” in which Oscar tries to impress Charlotte with tickets to a New York Philharmonic fundraiser. There, Felix has some important words for Oscar about honesty for Oscar, while Teddy introduces his wife Diane (Sheryl Underwood) to Dani for the first time.
SEASON 7 FINALE, 10pm, CBS NCIS: Los Angeles In “Talion,” Sam’s son Aiden is at the center of an insidious imbroglio when his military school comes under siege. And the extremist group doing the sieging is led by none other than Sam’s archnemesis, Tahir. Naturally, Sam, Callen, Kensi, and Deeks race to San Francisco to save the day.
10pm, PBS Independent Lens My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did explores the relationship between Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter, both the sons of prominent Nazi officials, along with Phillipe Sands, a renowned human rights attorney who lost much of his family in the Holocaust. The three share a journey through Europe as each shares his own way of coming to terms with the past.
10pm, NBC Blindspot Borden finds himself caring for a mysterious young girl with ties to Jane’s tattoos—and to a terrorist organization. Meanwhile in “Swift Hardhearted Stone,” personal bonds strengthen between Jane and Weller and between Borden and Patterson.
10pm, AMC Turn: Washington’s Spies When Abe’s cover is blown, it’s up to Anna to rescue the ring in “Cold Murdering Bastards.” Elsewhere, Arnold would like Washington to help him deal with the little matter of his treason charges.
10pm, ABC Castle In “Much Ado About Murder,” Castle and Beckett investigate the killing of an actor who gave up the silver screen in order to trod the boards in the theater. You should probably pronounce “theater” with at least three syllables to get the full effect there.
LATE-NITE: – Dr. Phil McGraw, Amanda Crew, and Pentatonix on Conan, 11pm, TBS – Nikolaj Coster-Waldau on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 11pm, Comedy Central – Riki Lindhome on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, 11:30pm, Comedy Central – Louis C.K., Questlove, and Rufus Wainwright on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Bill O’Reilly, Morris Chestnut, and Deerhunter on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS – Dr. Mehmet Oz, Emily Deschanel, and a Music Mash-up from Of Monsters and Men At Work onJimmy Kimmel Live, 11:35pm, ABC – Chadwick Boseman, Carol Kane, Mike Posner, and Mark Guiliana on Late Night with Seth Meyers, 12:35am, NBC – John Stamos, Titus Burgess, and Lukas Graham on The Late Late Show with James Corden, 12:37am, CBS
Radiohead has gone missing -- at least as far as the Internet is concerned.
All of the postings on English rockers' Facebook and Twitter accounts were inexplicably deleted on Sunday and its website also went blank.
Postings on frontman Thom Yorke’s Twitter account have disappeared. Adding to the mystery, some of their U.K. fans received leaflets in the mail from the band that featured oily artwork and an embossed Radiohead logo. "Sing the song of sixpence that goes 'Burn the witch.' We know where you live," reads the leaflet. “Burn the Witch” refers to an unreleased Radiohead song that dates back about 13 years.
Radiohead fans have posted the mysterious leaflet on their social media accounts. It’s believed that Radiohead’s vanishing act could have something to do with the group’s upcoming as-yet untitled album, rumored to come out in the first half of this year, according to Billboard magazine.
The last album from the group was 2011's The King of Limbs. Meanwhile, Radiohead -- whose members also include Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien -- will embark on a tour later this month, with appearances set for several major U.S. music festivals, including Lollapalooza and Outside Lands, the industry trade magazine reports.
PUBLISHED: 20:02 EST, 2 May 2016 | UPDATED: 20:55 EST, 2 May 2016
She is best known for her out of this world role in Avatar.
And Zoe Saldana is soaring to new heights on her latest outing.
The 37-year-old actress looked absolutely stunning in a Dolce & Gabana number as she arrived on the red carpet of the star-studded Met Gala in New York on Monday evening.
+24
Flying high: Zoe Saldana looked fantastic as she arrived at the Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Monday evening
She made quite the grand entrance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as her dress featured a multi-coloured feathered skirt with an elongated train.
The very intricate skirt featured feathers in varying colours, mostly green, and a black body-hugging sleeveless top reminiscent of a corset with sheer and lacy detailings.
The top showed off just a bit of her fabulous figure as it had sheer and lacy detailings as she completed the look with a pair of dangling gold earrings.
+24
Intricate: The 37-year-old star's elongated skirt featured several multi-coloured feathers on it
+24
What a drag! She demanded plenty of attention in her very long skirt as it dragged along the floor
Zoe had her hair pulled back in an elegant braided ponytail as she had natural, complimentary make-up on her face topped off with brown eyeshadow and shiny lip.
She also had a sweet PDA session with her artist husband Marco Perego as they shared a passionate kiss on the red carpet.
The 37-year-old Italian looked dapper in a black three-piece tuxedo while his long blonde locks were in a ponytail as he carried along her patterned clutch.
+24
Gorgeous: The top of her dress was sleeveless and resembled a corset with black sheer and lace detailings
+24
Raising the bar: Zoe posed on the stairs to show just how long the skirt was
Zoe as not the only one with her skirt dragging along on the red carpet as Jennifer Hudson, Emma Watson, Lupita Nyong'o, Bella Hadid, Allison Williams and Rita Ora all had elongated skirts.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit is a high-end, invitation only, black tie fundraiser and the hottest ticket in town.
This year's theme is Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology.
+24
Loved up: She was joined at the event by her husband Marco Perego
+24
Cuddled up: The Avatar actress and 33-year-old Italian artist looked happy to be at the event together
+24
PDA: The couple proudly displayed their love as they shared a smooch on the carpet
+24
Flashing lights: They were not too shy for a bit of PDA
Earlier in the day the happy couple were spotted out and about in the Big Apple with their one-year-old twin boys.
Zoe let the cat out of the bag by sharing a sweet Instagram snap of a baby's bottle, a toy car, fruit gums and a glass of champagne in front of their invite on Sunday evening.
She captioned it: 'The night before #metball2016.'
The couple checked into their New York hotel on Saturday evening after jetting in with their one-year-old boys Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio from the Grand Cayman Islands where they enjoyed a family break.
+24
Big night: Earlier in the evening, the pair were spotted leaving their hotel
+24
+24
Big idea: It seemed to be no easy task hopping into their pick-up vehicle with her huge skirt
+24
Good spirits: Zoe flashed a smile as she tried to figure out how to make it into the car
+24
Helping hand: Two male handlers picked up her skirt as she hopped into the ride
On Monday the couple, who are both aged 37, were spotted pushing the boys in a double stroller along 5th Avenue.
It appeared to be a cool day as the whole family was warmly dressed for the outing.
Zoe wore a black overcoat and pulled the top sections of her long hair back from her face as she expertly steered the stroller.
Her italian artist husband smiled as he walked along next to her in a sand-coloured jacket over a black shirt, black skinny jeans and suede boots that matched the hue of his jacket.
+24
Stunning: The skirt with an elongated train was quite the popular look as Emma Watson also sported one
+24
Gorgeous in green: Lupita Nyong'o also wore a dress that dragged on the floor
+24
Fireworks: Katy Perry wore an intricate black and gold number with an elongated train
+24
+24
Stunning in silver: Rita Ora and Allison Williams both wore the same shimmering colour as their dresses were also very long
+24
Dark side: Bella Hadid sported a black dress with an elongated skirt
+24
Wonder in white: Jennifer Hudson also rocked the featured look in a strapless number
Their boys appeared to be identically dressed in black jackets, black and white check trousers and sneakers.
Zoe didn't give any indication what she will be wearing to the Met Ball. She missed out last year because she had nly recently given birth to the twins but she wore a billowing eye-catching gown in 2014.
Meanwhile, the New-Jersey born beauty will be busy with her film career for the foreseeable future with projects lined up until 2022.
She is star of the three biggest franchises: Avatar, Star Trek and Guardians Of The Galaxy.
+24
'The night before #metball2016': The Avatar actress spilled the beans that she will be in attendance at the star-studded gala as she shared this Instagram on Sunday
Zoe will next be on the big screen in Star Trek And Beyond, reprising her role as communications officer Uhura alongside Chris Pine as Captain James T. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Mr. Spock, which is due for release on July 22.
Next up is Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, which she is presently filming, co-starring Chris Pratt. Cameras rolled on the sequel in February and the sci-fi movie is due out May 5, 2017.
Avatar director James Cameron is planning three sequels to his 2009 blockbuster, set for 2018, 2020 and 2022, and Zoe will play blue-skinned Neytiri in all.
+24
On a roll: Zoe and Marco were spotted out on 5th Avenue in New York with their one-year-old twin boys Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio in a double stroller earlier in the day on Monday
Zoe Saldana and Marco Perego take the twins out in NYC
+24
Chilling with the twins: The invitation only event is the hottest ticket in town and a chance for boys' parents to have a grown up night out with a host of A-listers
Ciara flashes major sideboob in sexy floor-length dress as she works silvery flapper bob at Met Gala
PUBLISHED: 20:52 EST, 2 May 2016 | UPDATED: 02:58 EST, 3 May 2016
It's the evening where fashionistas and celebrities come together.
And Ciara made sure to stand apart from the crowd as she made her grand entrance to the Met Gala in New York City on Monday night.
The 30-year-old embraced the technological theme of the night as she showed off her silvery flapper inspired hair 'do and a whole lot of side boob in a glittery, nude-hued ensemble.
+13
Body Party! Ciara stayed true to the Met Gala's technological theme in New York on Monday by sporting a silvery hair 'do and flashing a whole lot of sideboob in a glittery ensemble
+13
Flashing the flesh! The songbird's backless and sleeveless ensemble flashed plenty of sideboob
The Body Party singer's turtleneck dress was sleeveless and practically backless to show off her cleavage and arms.
It featured an intricate sparkling design over nude fabric for a flirty touch.
The songbird appeared to be sporting a wig, which was curled and pinned to resemble a flapper hair 'do.
As for her complexion, it was polished off with an edgy winged coat of black eyeshadow and bronzed cheeks.
+13
+13
Skin is in! The singer's turtleneck dress was sleeveless and practically backless to show off her cleavage and arms
Ciara's ensemble was finished off with a pair of stilettos in a coordinating shade of bronze.
The hit-maker did not appear to be joined by her fiancé, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson.
Earlier that day, Ciara gave her Instagram fans a sneak peek at her futuristic hair 'do by sharing a snap of herself clad in a bathrobe as she crouched against a door, putting her curled locks and spectacular engagement ring on show.
+13
+13
Taking the spotlight! The 30-year-old did not appear to be joined by her fiancé, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson
'Pre #metgala #SilverMetalHair,' she captioned the snap.
The Met Gala is hosted this year by Taylor Swift as well as Editor of American Vogue Anna Wintour, Idris Elba, and Jonathan Ive, chief design officer of Apple.
Wintour took over as chairwoman of the gala in 1999.
+13
Dare to bare: Ciara's striking ensemble certainly ensured she turned heads as she hit the red carpet alongside the great and good of the showbiz world
+13
+13
Hot metal: The singer's dazzling gown also featured a striking backless style, ensuring she impressed whichever way she turned on the red carpet
+13
Silver siren: Ciara continued the theme of the night from top to bottom, sporting a striking silver hairdo for the occasion
+13
Girls' night: The star seemed in great spirits as she held hands with fellow singer Jennifer Hudson while leaving the star-studded fashion extravaganza
Since then, she has transformed what was once a local fundraiser into one of the world's most elite costume parties that ranks as a celeb magnet only equaled by the Academy Awards red carpet - with A-listers hungry for a chance to be the muse of a fashion designer.
The theme for this year's ball is Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, which seeks to prove that the machine is an 'equal protagonist' to the hand in creating the best fashions of our recent past, our present and our future.
Regular folks who aren't famous enough to score an invite to the gala can simply come see the exhibit beginning May 5.
+13
Giving a glimpse: The I Bet singer gave her Instagram fans a sneak peek at her futuristic hair 'do by sharing a snap of herself clad in a bathrobe as she crouched against a door, putting her curled locks and spectacular engagement ring on show
+13
The usual 'do! Ciara showed off her long, lush hair as she received a kiss from her fiancé, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson
PUBLISHED: 18:44 EST, 2 May 2016 | UPDATED: 05:45 EST, 3 May 2016
Alicia Vikander showed off her fashion-forward style at the Met Gala in NYC on Monday.
It's the biggest night for fashion and the Oscar-winning actress made sure to make an entrance wearing Louis Vuitton for her debut appearance at Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology.
The 27-year-old actress stunned at the glamorous Manhattan event in a red, white, gold and black dress, which was made of a combination of leather and sequins.
Scroll down for video
+11
Quirky style: The 27-year-old actress stunned for her debut appearance at Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology in a red, white, gold and black dress, which was made of a combination of leather and sequins
The dress had a prominent bra outline which was made of red leather as the skirt part of the dress fell loosely around her lithe legs.
Alicia's hair was styled in cute braids and swept off her face into a center part.
+11
+11
Strike a pose: The dress had a prominent bra outline which was made of red leather as the skirt part of the dress fell loosely around her lithe legs. Her hair was styled in cute braids and swept off her face into a center part
+11
Futuristic style: Nicolas Ghesquiere and Alicia pose on the quirky red and white carpet together
It has just been announced that the Swedish actress has been cast as the new Lara Croft in the reboot of Tomb Raider.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the reboot will follow the story of a young and untested Lara Croft fighting to survive her first adventure.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit is hosted by Taylor Swift as well as Editor of American Vogue Anna Wintour, Idris Elba, and Jonathan Ive, chief design officer of Apple.
+11
The new Angelina Jolie! It has just been announced that the Swedish actress has been cast as the new Lara Croft in the reboot of Tomb Raider
+11
Quite the red carpet duo: Nicolas and Alicia smiled for the camera's ahead of the star-studded gala
It has been called the Oscars of the East Coast.
The honorary chairs are the Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld; Miuccia Prada; and Nicolas Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton’s artistic director.
All will be in attendance except for Mr. Lagerfeld, who will be in Cuba because the Chanel Cruise show is in Havana the day after the gala, according to the New York Times.
+11
+11
Hostess with the mostess: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit is hosted by Taylor Swift as well as Editor of American Vogue Anna Wintour, Idris Elba, and Jonathan Ive, chief design officer of Apple
The site added that tickets this year are $30,000 apiece, and tables are $275,000. The party and exhibit are sponsored (this year Apple is the main underwriter), so all the money raised from ticket sales goes to the Costume Institute.
Last year, more than $12.5 million was raised.
The stars in attendance this year also include, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Jason Statham, Kylie Jenner, Rose Byrne and many more.
+11
Hot ticket: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Jason Statham attended the event where tickets are $30,000 apiece, and tables are $275,000. The party and exhibit are sponsored (this year Apple is the main underwriter), so all the money raised from ticket sales goes to the Costume Institute.
+11
Beyond her years: Kylie Jenner stunned in a floor length silver cut-out gown with military shoulder pads as she left her choppy raven locks in a straight style
+11
Metallic goddess: Rose Byrne looked ethereal in her shimmering gown. Her make-up was dramatic with a black smokey eye and deep red lip
Rita Ora struggles to ascend the stairs on the Met Gala's red carpet thanks to the intricate trail on her daring and dazzling feathered ballgown designed by Vera Wang
PUBLISHED: 19:11 EST, 2 May 2016 | UPDATED: 05:03 EST, 3 May 2016
She's no stranger to the more daring side of red carpet glamour.
So it was little surprise to see Rita Ora arriving at the Met Gala in a flesh-flashing frock, which ensured that all eyes were on her as she sashayed up the red carpet.
Arriving at the event, held at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 25-year-old Hot Right Now singer opted for a daring and quirky look - wearing a gown made entirely of silver feathers, which caused an unfortunate hitch when it came to scaling the stairs at the landmark.
Scroll down for video
+25
+25
Struggling to soar: Rita Ora opted for a daring and quirky look for her turn on the Met Gala's red carpet - wearing a gown made entirely of silver feathers, which caused an unfortunate hitch when it came to scaling the stairs at the landmark
The head-turning creation ensured that Rita's turn on the red carpet was one of the most-talked about arrivals of the entire night, with the Vera Wang (whom she arrived alongside) creation making sure the X Factor judge retained her fashionista credentials.
And it seem that she'd taken a unique approach to the dress code theme of 'Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology', opting for a mix of the natural world and metallic man-made elements.
Composed entirely of silver feathers intricately sewn together, the top half of the frock left modesty at the door, with Rita flashing more than a hint of cleavage thanks to the halter-neck torso's revealing keyhole panel.
+25
Flying high in the fashion stakes! Arriving at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 25-year-old Hot Right Now singer looked sensational in the quirky and head-turning ballgown designed by Vera Wang
+25
+25
+25
Show-stealing style: The head-turning creation ensured that Rita's turn on the red carpet was one of the most-talked about arrivals of the entire night
Featuring semi-sheer paneling, the dress allowed the X Factor judge to flash plenty of flesh, while the sweeping design of the garment ensured that she avoided any wardrobe malfunction.
One section of the eye-catching dress flowed down from above her navel before ending at the floor, while Rita's pert and perky posterior was highighted thanks to two other sections which ran across her hips and down into a long trail.
The rear of the dress even afforded the chart-topping siren to subtly show some skin, with a backless design seemingly mingling with the sheer mesh paneling - which afforded onlooker a peak at many of the star's various tattoos.
+25
Rocking out on the red carpet: And it seemed that Rita could barely contain her own excitement as she arrived at one of the hottest events in the global calendar
She's not ruffling any feathers: The crowning glory of the avian-inspired frock was the intricate and feathered trail, which she need help smoothing out as she ascended the museum's staircase
+25
A couture creation? Featuring semi-sheer paneling, the dress allowed the X Factor judge to flash plenty of flesh, while the sweeping design of the garment ensured that she avoided any wardrobe malfunction
The Met Gala is the Superbowl of fashion, there are no missteps here. We all wait anxiously to see which designer brings which celebrity guest and Vera Wang tapped the ever so popular Rita Ora to wear this custom feathery silver gown.
Rita looked so poised and shimmered in this feathery number that had a long feather trail and featured a cut out bust and sides with sheer paneling.
+25
Flesh-flashing fashion: Composed entirely of silver feathers intricately sewn together, the top half of the frock left modesty at the door, with Rita flashing more than a hint of cleavage thanks to the halter-neck torso's revealing keyhole panel
+25
Ruling the roost: One section of the eye-catching dress flowed down from above her navel before ending at the floor, while Rita's pert and perky posterior was highighted thanks to two other sections which ran across her hips and down into a long trail
+25
+25
Gorgeous: Rita always brings it when it comes to red carpet fashion, and Monday was certainly no exception
+25
The struggle is real: Rita seemed to face a spot of bother when climbing the staircase in her plumage-inspired skirt
+25
There she goes! But she seemed to get the hang of it after a while
Rita Ora: On her gift for Beyonce's baby Blue Ivy in 2012
Keeping focus firmly on her frock, Rita left her look uncluttered save for a pair of glittering diamond ear studs.
Ensuring that her striking looks were unmarred by a stray follicle,she wore her blonde locks pinned back into a tight bun which she'd had threaded through with gold metallic diamonds.
Opting for a stripped back make-up palette, the Kosovo-born star chose to accentuate her pretty features with subtle flesh tones - while she made sure her eyes popped with a complementray silver eye shadow.
And while Rita's look is sure to ruffle some feathers in the style world the Body On Me songstress appeared utterly delighted with her frock, and could barely contain her glee.
Flashing a huge smile as she hugged the dress' designer, Vera Wang, Rita appeared to have nothing but compliments for the 66-year-old fashion designer.
+25
A couture creation? Featuring semi-sheer paneling, the dress allowed the X Factor judge to flash plenty of flesh, while the sweeping design of the garment ensured that she avoided any wardrobe malfunction
+25
Fashionable friends: And while Rita's look is sure to ruffle some feathers in the style world the Body On Me songstress appeared utterly delighted with her frock, and could barely contain her glee
+25
+25
+25
Sealed with a kiss: The star showed her thanks by planting a delicate kiss on Vera's cheek
+25
Stylish exit: Rita had similar trouble with her exquisite gown as she hauled it into a car after the ball
+25
+25
Call me! The star was all smiles as designer Vera played around in the back of a cab as they headed off to an afterparty
+25
Hi there! The cheerful X Factor judge waved at fans while flashing her ribcage tattoo
‘We are real human beings’: Diane Guerrero talks about her parents’ deportation
In 2001, Diane Guerrero was 14 and living in Boston with her family when she came home from school to terrible news: Earlier that day, her parents had been detained by immigration officers. Eventually, they were deported to Colombia.
“When you’re the child of undocumented immigrants, you learn to keep your mouth shut,” Guerrero writes in her new book, “In the Country We Love.” But in 2014, the actress (“Orange Is the New Black,” “Jane the Virgin”) broke her silence, writin...experience. The response was enormous and even prompted an invitation to the White House. Since then, Guerrero, who was born in the United States, has become an activist for immigration rights and an ambassador for citizenshi...hite House. In her book, she writes frankly and affectingly about how she made her way on her own and of the fond memories of her family’s life together in America: “Papi sticking his head out of the screen door simply to check on me and my friends. Mami stirring her stew while humming and swiveling her hips to the rhythm ofcumbia or the sounds of her novelas.. . .My wonder years.”
In an email interview, she discussed her childhood, her book and why she decided to speak out.
What motivated you to go public with your family’s experience?
(Henry Holt )
I decided to come forth with my story for the millions of undocumented people in this country — for the mothers, fathers and children separated from their families by deportation. Currently, we have an immigration system in need of repair. I hope those [people] this book reaches come together and take action and become part of the immigration reform movement. To rise and say, “We are not afraid,” to become politically active and to show our political power in the polls when electing officials who represent our communities, officials who are going to fight for a path for citizenship, people who are going to be bold and fight for justice.
How did your parents’ immigration status affect your life as a child?
I learned at a very young age that my parents were undocumented. My parents have always been very honest with me. This created a lot of anxiety for me growing up.
Tell us about the day your parents were taken.
It was the worst day of my life. I realized from then on that life was going to be very difficult. However, my parents taught me to be resilient and resourceful; therefore, I knew I was going to fight for my place in the world.
How did you get through the next years: Who helped you? How did you pay for college?
I was very lucky and had a strong circle of family friends. They looked after me while I finished school. I worked while in high school and college so that I could pay for school. I also had loans.
When was the last time you saw your parents — and what was that like?
This past Christmas. It was great. We did many things together. When we get together, we try to do what we normally would have if we still lived together. We made sure we did family outings like art shopping, monuments and sight-seeing, dinners. My dad even took me to a water park! We go to church, and we even have days were I can just sit around and say nothing. My parents are very proud of me, and we enjoy each other’s company.
How are you helping them come back to the United States?
At the moment, my lawyers and I are revisiting my family’s case and seeing what can be done. My biggest wish and hope is to one day have them come back to the country we love.
What message do you hope people will take away from your book?
There are real families behind this issue, and there are huge consequences in separating families. The damage is far too great to ignore. We are real human beings, and our stories are of value. I want people to realize there is great potential in our communities and great benefits for our country to creating a path for citizenship. Long gone are the days when we should be simply “grateful” and continue to let others humiliate us and silence our plight. We need to be bold and unashamed of our story. We are people who contribute to this country and deserve a chance to do that legally.
I hope my book gives encouragement to a child out there who thinks that because of their situation they don’t matter. I want them to know that they do matter and that they can reach for the stars. I want them to know that there is a lot of work to be done, and they have the power for change.
On May 7 at 6 p.m., Diane Guerrero will be at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington.
IN THE COUNTRY WE LOVE
My Family Divided
By Diane Guerrero with Michelle Burford
Henry Holt. 257 pp
What to Watch Tonight: The Final Season Premiere of Person of Interest, and New Episodes of NCIS,The Grinder, The Night Manager, and Stitchers
By Andy Daglas
What to watch on Tuesday, May 3...
12:01am, Hulu The Mindy Project Seeking some no-strings action, Mindy dives into the online-dating pool in “Mindy Lahiri is DTF.” In less welcome socialization, Jody inadvertently winds up throwing a viewing party for the office’s favorite TV show.
8pm, PBS American Masters “Janis: Little Girl Blue” profiles Janis Joplin, who made an indelible impact on rock and roll in the 1960s despite her brief career and premature death at 27. The film includes archival performance footage, reflections from Joplin’s family and friends, and insights from artists she influenced, such as Melissa Etheridge, Juliette Lewis, Alecia Moore (a.k.a. Pink), and Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power), who narrates and performs “A Woman Left Lonely.”
8pm, CBS NCIS While Gibbs gets to the bottom of a fishy home invasion thwarted by a teenager, Vance and Senior FBI Agent Fornell head to London to follow up on the escaped spy case. Also in “Homefront,” First Lady Michelle Obama welcomes Gibbs to the White House for a roundtable with military spouses, part of the Joining Forces initiative to support veterans and their families.
8pm, The CW The Flash “Rupture” finds Zoom back on Earth-1, here to see the sights, maybe scarf a Big Belly Burger, and oh yeah, while he’s at it… TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Can a still-speedless Barry and the increasingly inaptly named Team Flash foil him? And how will Cisco respond to the concurrent arrival of the titular villain, his brother Dante’s Earth-2 counterpart who’s seeking to avenge Reverb?
8pm & 9pm, Fox New Girl In “Dress,” Jess hurries to finish some last-minute alterations to Cece’s bridal gown, Nick searches for the right way to ask Reagan to be his plus-one, and Schmidt tries to keep his “wedding workshop” under wraps at his workplace while Winston and Aly do the same for their relationship. Then “Return to Sender” sees Jess meeting Sam’s BFF Diane, Nick worrying that Schmidt will once again be hurt by his father, and Winston taking umbrage with someone’s reaction to a birthday gift.
8pm, ABC Fresh Off the Boat Jessica persuades Honey and Grandma that they should rent out their newly finished flip house in “Rent Day.” Despite their misgivings, their new tenants prove to be entirely pleasant and untroublesome people. (Ha, just kidding. This is a sitcom.) Meanwhile, Emery and Evan become a pre-teen detective-ing duo.
8:30pm, ABC The Real O’Neals Jimmy is named Faith Leader at a Catholic Youth Retreat, triggering one of the Seven Deadly Sins in Kenny. (Envy, of course. Well, there may also be some Wrath and Pride involved when he responds by becoming the ringleader of the troublemaking crowd. And maybe Greed? Sin is a rich tapestry.) Elsewhere in “The Real Retreat,” Eileen dispatches Jodi to spy on Pat and his new lady friend.
8:30pm, Fox Grandfathered Following a painful loss, Jimmy must organize the service even as he deals with his own grief in “The Memorial.” Meanwhile, Sara mulls taking things with Craig to the next level.
9pm, NBC Chicago Med A patient with a plethora of heart issues is the source of a disagreement between Dr. Rhodes and Dr. Downey in “Disorder.” Ah, the timeless battle between the Wants What It Wants and the Is A Lonely Hunter schools of cardiac medicine. Elsewhere, Dr. Cho rides along with paramedic Sylvie Brett, and they wind up treating a patient with a leg injury and a hoarding problem, while Dr. Manning and Sarah are suspicious about a case of dog-bites-woman.
9pm, The CW Containment Leo lands in hot water after releasing videos of the pandemonium within the cordon. Though honestly, he wouldn’t have pissed so many people off if he hadn’t released them as autoplayvideos. Meanwhile in “Be Angry at the Sun,” Lex’s plea for reinforcements is denied, Katie has a standoff with a student’s desperate parent, and Teresa reels from a robbery at her mother’s store.
9pm, ABC Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hive continue to battle for the souls of the Inhumans in “Failed Experiments.” Normally at this point in the season, the villain would have the upper hand in such a struggle—but just you wait until those Inhumans get a load of Fitz’s sweet balloon-animal-making skills.
9:30pm, Fox The Grinder Stewart believes the firm should settle after learning that Dean Sr. is guilty in “Divergence.” Not to be defeated, Dean instead opts for an old Grinder tactic: enmeshing himself in a B-story that will serendipitously offer a game-changing insight.
9:30pm, MyxTV Mom vs. Matchmaker Asks this game show: Can meddling mothers wield Cupid’s bow better than a seasoned professional matchmaker? Asks it not: If contestants pick the pro’s preferred paramour instead, will they be persona non grata at future Thanksgiving dinners?
SEASON 5 PREMIERE, 10pm, CBS Person of Interest The final season kicks off with Reese and Finch scrambling to save the Machine’s deteriorating source code before it goes to that big data storage unit in the sky. Elsewhere in “B.S.O.D.,” Root does her darndest to keep Samaritan’s lethal agents at bay, and Fusco grapples with the aftermath of Dominic’s and Elias’s deaths. (New episodes will air twice a week, Mondays and Tuesdays at 9pm, beginning next week.)
10pm, NBC Chicago Fire Dawson bonds with a young boy she rescues from an apartment fire in “Kind of a Crazy Idea.” Meanwhile, Severide is stymied in his efforts to upgrade the firehouse’s fire masks, Kidd’s cunning plan for Molly’s misses the mark, and Cruz and Brett have a trick up their collective sleeve to get Otis to see Dr. Halstead for a blood test.
10pm, AMC The Night Manager As Pine begins to uncover the skeletons in the Roper household’s closet, Burr and Steadman take advantage of the chance to recruit a new asset.
10pm, Freeform Stitchers The team investigates the mysterious death of a young attorney at a high-powered firm in [prepare slow-clap mode] “Pretty Little Lawyers” [slow-clap mode: engaged]. Along the way, Maggie bumps into former flame at that firm, while Camille and Liam’s relationship takes an unexpected turn.
10pm, MTV Awkward. “Misadventures in Babysitting” finds Jenna tending to a tyke and Matty lending her an unexpected hand. In more adult-oriented activities, Lissa learns the trick to being a Palos Hills mom, while Tamara and Sadie get more than they bargained for at a clambake for rich kids.
10:30pm, MTV Faking It Lauren is determined to save Christmas at Hester in “Untitled,” leaving Amy in an uncomfortable (and possibly stop-motion-animated) position. In more personal pursuits, Karma gets Felix ready to ask Amy out, while Shane discovers a secret about Noah.
LATE-NITE: – “Weird Al” Yankovic, Kate Micucci, and Myq Kaplan on Conan, 11pm, TBS – Author and former White House aide Josh King on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 11pm, Comedy Central – Quinta Brunson on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, 11:30pm, Comedy Central – Chris Evans, Marc Maron, kids from Little Big Shots, and Lecrae on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Dakota Johnson, Sebastian Stan, and Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS – Adam Carolla and the Avett Brothers on Jimmy Kimmel Live, 11:35pm, ABC – Derek Jeter, Elizabeth Olsen, Ron Miscavige, and Mark Guiliana on Late Night with Seth Meyers, 12:35am, NBC – Susan Sarandon, Josh Hopkins, Matt Walsh, and Catfish and the Bottlemen on The Late Late Show with James Corden, 12:37am, CBS
SAUSALITO, CA - Afeni Shakur, the mother of Hip Hop luminary Tupac Shakur, has died at the age of 69, according to the New York Daily News.
The publication reports that deputies from San Francisco’s Marin County responded to Shakur’s home in Sausalito, California on Monday night (May 2) after she suffered what’s being reported as a possible cardiac arrest. She was subsequently taken to a nearby hospital but later died just before 22:30 local time.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Coroner’s Office are set to lead the investigation to determine the cause and manner of Shakur’s death.
Afeni Shakur was the subject of Tupac’s 1995 song “Dear Mama.”
Following her son’s death in September 1996, Afeni founded the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts, which was based in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Last July, it was reported that Eminem wrote a letter to Afeni Shakur thanking her for the influence that she has had on his life. He also detailed how her son inspired and encouraged him.
It has been nearly ten years since DMX released a proper studio album. The last release under his name—2015's Redemption of the Beast—was outed as a cash grab by a record label who had the rights to handful of Dark Man X songs by his longtime collaborator, Swizz Beatz.
Since Swizz knows best, he made the grand announcement that not only is X putting the finishing the final touches on his long-awaited comeback album, but it has some pretty high-profile features to boot.
"I am truly ultra proud of the steps my brother has been taking to greatness," the platinum-selling producer said in a month-old Instagram that somehow went under the radar. "Some people think it's easy to shake unfortunate situations but it's not! I would love for all the fans to hit up @DMX and show him love for being focused, clean, & ready to earn back his crown. Long live the Dog AKA my brother AKA the Great.? Love you for life!! RR 4 Life!! Let's get 'em!!Album sounding nice king..... We're just waiting on DRE & Kanye tracks to wrap up!!!!"
The upcoming collaboration between The Good Doctor and DMX will be the official pairing first between the two rap legends. In 2003, a then little known Kanye West produced the track "Dogs Out" for the former Ruff Ryder's fifth studio album, Grand Champ.
Check out Swizzy's IG post about the new DMX album below.
:
I am truly ultra proud of the steps my brother has been taking to greatness 🙏🏽 Some people think it's easy to shake unfortunate situations but it's not! I would love for all the fans to hit up @DMX and show him love for being focused, clean, & ready to earn back his crown 🙌🏾 Long live the Dog AKA my brother AKA the Great🙏🏽 Love you for life!! RR 4 Life!! Let's get 'em!!Album sounding nice king..... We're just waiting on DRE & Kanye tracks to wrap up!!!! 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
A Sleek, Upbeat Disco Track From a Model-Fronted Brooklyn Band
Credit Shervin Lainez
“It’s incredibly hard to write cool, happy music without it feeling saccharine and lowest common denominator,” says Eugene Cho of the Brooklyn disco act Escort. With the new song “My Life,” the band — comprising Cho, front-woman Adeline Michèle (who moonlights as a model) and co-founder Dan Balis, along with an extensive roster of live players — set out to create an exception to the rule. Since Escort’s self-titled debut, its members have styled themselves, often with exacting detail, to the sleek and sultry sounds of the late ’70s and early ’80s. “Disco has become more popular; you don’t necessarily immediately associate it with the Village People,” Cho says. “People don’t just think about polyester and roll their eyes.” In a similar vein to Escort’s 2011 debut, the band’s new album, “Animal Nature,” is filled with neon synths and driving beats that range from Giorgio Moroder-dark to Tom Tom Club-bright, while Michèle’s icy vocals echo the best Danceteria-era divas.
Of all the tracks on the new album, “My Life” could be seen as Escort’s essence distilled, if not contained. “At this point, we feel like we’ve kind of validated our cool card, so we can do something cheesy, because cheesy is cool,” says Michèle, who says they went for something “just completely over-the-top happy — so over the top that it would be good.” But the lyrics, inspired by the life of the jazz singer Anita O’Day, expose a more thoughtful side of the song’s effusive ambitions. “Being a female jazz singer at the time was such an amazing feat. To be this woman touring with these big jazz bands in this incredibly sexist and crazy time is one of the most amazing journeys I can imagine,” Cho says.
Escort’s new single, “My Life”
The track wouldn’t be possible without Michèle’s vocals, which soar far above her usual register. “Eugene was like, ‘What if we got into this gradual progression of you going higher and higher and higher?’” Michèle says. “It’s one of these ideas that sounds like a joke, but when you apply them to real life, it’s awesome.” The song also serves as an homage to the disco hits of the past, in the form of a thank-you to fans that have supported the band over the years. “There are certain disco anthems like ‘I’m Coming Out’ that were just songs, but then there was a feeling in them that turned them into a legitimate gay anthem,” Cho says. “There’s definitely some of that feeling and thinking that is loosely reflected in the lyrics and the celebration of the song.”
It’s not exactly rocket science, describing Escort’s fun sound. The ten-plus member New York band, fronted by musicians Dan Balis, Eugene Cho, and Adeline Michele came out of the gate in 2012 with their self-titled indie-released LP using a euphoric throwback formula that blended ‘80s synths with a cloudburst of classic disco. The entire disc was simply genius, receiving oratorical praise from a flurry of music critics. Simply put, it was one of the greatest dance records not recorded during disco’s golden zenith. Unfortunately, the project escaped the radar of SoulTracks.com when it first dropped, an error not repeated for their more uneven sophomore effort.
Unlike some dance outfits, this retro group is unoffended by the disco label. In fact, in interviews, they wear it proudly. The music isn’t ashamed either. Michele, at times breathy like Janet and in other cases confident like Jody Watley, struts her pipes with Donna Summer sass while the band takes on retro grooves culled from People’s Choice and Chic. Thanks to Daft Punk’s Grammy-award winning Random Access Memories opening up the floodgates to organic disco, the boogie pride and this 21st century disco revivalism now has a global spotlight that’s only getting brighter. Escort benefits from this timing.
These days Escort can be found on the road, premiering their music as the opening act for CeeLo Green on his Love Train tour. Accordingly, part of their set list is comprised of tracks from their sophomore LP, Animal Nature. This 10-track collection (19 in the “Deluxe Edition”) explores a succession of newer rifts, ‘80s pings and galactic tribal funk, putting some pause on their previous back-to-basics disco work ethic.
In places, these adventurous ambitions pay off. “If You Say So” breathes like crystalized Madonna and catchy R&B; kudos to its wondrous synths, charming melody, and feel good rhythm. “My Life,” the lone return to Escort, is just as tantalizing. With its Chic-esque funk and sing-a-long chorus, they pull off a disco-pop gem worth repeating like a KC & the Sunshine Band standard. “Barbarians,” forcing Blondie funk upon a slick stadium chant (“Stand up, stand up/Bang your drums/We are the barbarians”), comes in a distant third-place. “Body Talk,” the album opener, could’ve easily been a runaway hit. It plays with glamorous Eurodisco sophistication, but some of its luster dwindles after the verse and chorus are heard.
In other places the act’s explorations beam hard on Cerrone and Giorgio Moroder electro workouts but somehow gets lost in space. The productions on “Cabaret” and St. Vincent’s “Actor Out of Work” seem too robotic, losing some of its steam midway into both tracks. Thanks to a pitch-perfect live cover of Gino Soccio’s “Dancer” at the 2012 Montreal International Jazz Festival, some of the cool nu-school mixes (“Barbarians”) and a buoyant dub of “Body Talk,” Escort redeems themselves from their airborne spotty experiments. Still, flaws and all, Animal Nature is a stylish and exuberant trip into Cho and Balis’s imagination and gives Michele more ambiences to soar as a disco vixen for a post-Summer generation. Recommended.
During the course of her 50 years in the music business thus far, Melba Moore has racked up an impressive 30-plus charting R&B singles and 13 albums, while also leaving her mark on the Broadway stage and small screen. An ugly split from Orpheus Records during the early 1990s put a halt to her long-running commercial success; but since then, the esteemed vocalist has continued to release material ranging from 2002’s gospel collection I’m Still Here to a 2009 duet set with Phil Perry, The Gift of Love. In the process, she’s turned in continually memorable performances, falling victim only to limited production budgets—and a resulting loss of the artistic vision that guided many of her LP’s of the 1970s and ‘80s.
The cleverly titled Forever Moore, her first solo release in over a decade, proves that she’s still a remarkably vibrant singer and also boasts several bright compositional moments. Overall, however, a combination of less-than-memorable melodies and generic arrangements hamper what should have been a more shining return to form. Longtime fans will undoubtedly enjoy hearing Moore strut her stuff on the nostalgic, chilled-out dancer “The Way of Love” and the celebratory “It’s My Time Again”; but whether that’s enough to lure listeners unfamiliar with her stellar back catalog or not is questionable. On the midtempo title track, she sings, “I’m more than just a memory/What’s meant to be was meant to be,” accompanied by programming that sounds like it was recycled from late-‘90s masters. Meanwhile, her effort to uplift weary souls on “Things Always Work Out” is plausible in tone and phrasing, though over-simplified lines like “The scratch-off’s just ain’t comin’ through” and “Don’t you give up now, even in your darkness light is your horizon” may not quite resonate with lyrically discerning audiences.
Several cuts on Forever Moore come close to hitting the spot, but fall short of leaving a lasting impression. The uptempo “Let’s Dance” is pleasant enough in its feel-good message and well-placed background vocals, but Moore herself doesn’t sound entirely convinced as she utters, “You’re lookin’ at me all night, I know I’m lookin’ fine tonight.” On the slower side, the smooth-grooving midtempo tune “Last Forever” (featuring an uncredited male vocalist) is, in fact, rather stylish—that is, prior to ending before it starts at a mere two-and-a-half minutes.
Anticipated by consumers for more than a few years, Forever Moore was preceded by several singles (not included here) and a title change…both factors which would suggest that serious thought was being put into the final product and presentation. While the end result is musically passable and certainly performed in fine vocal form, the majority of selections and their respective production approaches lack any real edge and feel more rushed than concerned with making a cohesive statement. Consequently, there’s enough of Melba’s presence to satiate hardcore fans, yet little of the spark akin to her classic work with Kashif or Van McCoy to rank Forever Moore amongst many of her more lovingly crafted earlier albums. Moderately recommended.
BWB’s first project seemed like a common sense move to executives at Warner Bros. Sax player Kirk Whalum, trumpeter Rick Braun and guitarist Norman Brown were label mates then when an executive commented that he’d like to see them “together grooving,” Brown recalled in an interview leading up to the release of their latest self-titled project. That first collaboration, Groovin’ dropped in 2002.
The second project took a long time coming as all three musicians focused on releasing their own projects and touring. BWB would not return until 2013 when the trio dropped the Michael Jackson tribute recording Human Nature. Their latest, the self-titled album released on the hot Artistry Music label, is the third installment in the collaboration between Brown, Whalum and Braun and it shows it doesn’t take long for this trio to reestablish a musical connection even after a lengthy layoff.
Although Brown, Whalum and Braun all made their reputations in the jazz world and SoulTrackers know Whalum from his performances with the Mack Avenue Superband, each musician has worked extensively in other genres as well. Braun toured and performed with War and Sade to name a few. Whalum toured with Whitney Houston, and Brown has been compared to George Benson and has been associated with Norman Connors – two artists known for producing high level jazz infused R&B music.
So the ease at which the three communicate and improvise as jazz artists, along with their comfort at laying down infectious R&B and funk grooves consistently throughout BWB is not a surprise. BWB is an instrumental album, and the vocals used on tracks such as “Bolly Boy” and “Bust A Move” are largely an afterthought - although the hook and the asides on the ultra-funky “Turn Up” will make some listeners fondly remember the late George Duke.
What fans of contemporary jazz and instrumental R&B receive on tracks such as the gliding “Memphis Steppin’,” the bluesy “Lemonade” and the funky title track are three artists who have developed an easy musical conversation with each other while living up to their reputations as imaginative and soulful innovators. The old saying is that the third time is a charm, and for BWB, their third album together is yet another charm. Recommended.
The ability use his big voice and equally big physical presence to make sweeping philosophical and political points stands as one of the many gifts that Gregory Porter possesses. Porter took on the turbulence of the waning days of the Civil Rights Movement in “1960 What,” a track with lyrics that reveal the sadly consistent role that structural racism played and continues to play in urban unrest. That tune found Porter drawing upon the fire and brimstone that came to him organically from growing up in the house of a preacher, to paint a three dimensional mental picture of those rage filled days.
Then there’s the anti-gentrification plea “On My Way to Harlem,” a track that found Porter immersing himself in the history of the cultural giants who strode through Harlem and then defiantly telling the speculators and hipsters that he wouldn’t allow the history of the community to be erased.
Like a preacher of social justice, Porter finds the nexus of the spiritual and the political on the memorable title track on his latest project, Take Me To the Alley, which is due out on May 6. “Take Me To the Alley” finds Porter operating in the upper register of his trademark baritone as he sets the scene of a city preparing for the arrival of a mighty man. “Well, they build their houses in preparation for the king/And the line the sidewalks with every sort of shiny thing.” However, this king will not judge the residents on how the preparations they make to receive one who is so might, but rather on society’s treatment of the least of those. “Take me to the alley/Take me to the afflicted ones/Take to the lonely one who somehow lost their way.” The tune is trademark Porter in that it draws upon the lessons from the sermons that Porter likely heard his mother and other preachers give that focus on Christ’s compassion for the poor. And just like those sermons can be seen as biting commentary on an economic, political and racial hierarchy that often had little or no compassion for the afflicted ones, this cut serves as a powerful reminder that the last should be first in the halls of power as well as the church sanctuary.
Still, most of the buzz surrounding Take Me To the Alley involves of a track that gives Porter his too long in coming introduction to Urban Adult Contemporary radio – the duet with Kem on an R&B version of “Holding On.” That cut first came to life as techno number with Porter backed by the English electro duo Disclosure. That track is not included on Take Me To the Alley, and that’s too bad because hearing Porter sing the Disclosure version, the adult R&B version and a stripped down version with Porter backed mainly by piano and bass is to again realize that Porter is a vocalist who can adapt to any style. And while the Porter-Kem version will be a part of summer soundtrack for radio listeners, that jazz and understated version will likely be the one most pleasing to long time Porter fans.
Porter’s appeal stems from his gospel and soul man willingness to bring honesty and vulnerability to his lyrics – recall “Illusion” from Water. However, Take Me To the Alley stands as Porter’s most personal album. The project includes two songs about his young son, “Don’t Lose You Steam,” a rollicking and funky cut in which Porter encourages and challenges a young man to reach his destiny and cross the bridge built by his ancestors; while the infectious and vivid “Day Dream” finds Porter finding wonder in a child’s imagination.
The album also includes, “In Heaven,” a calypso styled track which finds Porter speaking in the voice of his departed mother, who implores him to find comfort in the fact that she is at peace. “In Heaven, that’s where you’ll find me/My love/Not on earth with its heartache and pain.”
A balladeer without peer in contemporary music, Porter mines emotion ranging from regret to helplessness to adoration from a quintet of cuts sprinkled throughout Take Me To the Alley. Each listener will find their his or her favorites, but the standouts for me are the two that find the big former linebacker working vocally through the powerlessness and loss of control that comes with expressions of regret and rejection. On “In Fashion,” Porter compares himself to last year’s styles when he realizes that his lady has decided to embrace a new look, while “Don’t Be A Fool” is a soulful track that shows Porter can beg with the best of them.
The four albums that Porter has released as a solo artist show him to be a songwriter who is conscious, lyrical and efficient. The stories that he tells are always compelling and the images that he conjures with those words are consistently vivid. Porter and his long-time producer Kamau Kenyatta are selfless and confident artists willing to stand aside and provide space for their excellent band that features pianist Chip Crawford, drummer Emanuel Harrold, alto player Yosuke Sato, and tenor player Tivon Pennicott.
Porter fans will have the same question at the end of Take Me To the Alley that were asked at the completion of Water, Be Good and Liquid Spirit. Will this project be the one that brings Porter the recognition that is on par with his talent? He moves closer with each release and whether that process reaches its just conclusion has more to do with the vagaries of the music business than Porter’s talent or the quality of his work, which once again are without question or peer. Highly Recommended.
By Howard Dukes
Check it ID!
First Listen: Snoh Aalegra is “Home”
Snoh Aalegra is a Swedish soulstress who now resides in Los Angeles. She has recently released her second EP, Don’t Explain, which is a smooth, ethereal mix of R&B, electronica, and occasional hip hop, all topped by Aalegra’s captivating vocals.
We feature here her track “Home,” which has a haunting bassline and a sinuous groove. Enjoy!
After weeks of speculation, classic rock’s biggest event since Woodstock has been confirmed. Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Roger Waters and the Who will play a fall concert at the Coachella site in Indio, Calif., called Desert Trip.
The Goldenvoice Entertainment-produced festival is set for Oct. 7-9 at the Empire Polo Field. The Stones and Dylan are featured on Friday; McCartney and Young – who is appearing with the band Promise of the Real – follow on Saturday; and Desert Trip wraps up with Sunday-night performances by the Who and Waters.
Reserved seats and general admission passes go on sale May 9 at 10AM PT at DesertTrip.com. Three-day general admission passes are $399; reserved floor passes are $699, $999 and $1,599. Reserved grandstand passes for the entire festival are $999 and $1599. Standing pit passes for all three days are $1,599. For those making a shorter visit, single-day general admission passes are $199.
The Rolling Stones’ promo clip featured “All Down the Line” from Exile on Main St.. Waters’ teaser included music from Pink Floyd‘s “Brain Damage.” The Who used “My Generation,” while Dylan incorporated “Ballad of a Thin Man.” McCartney chose to include a live take on “I’ve Got a Feeling,” from the 1970 Beatles finale Let It Be.
Each participating Desert Trip act will reportedly be guaranteed as much as $7 million each. The Rolling Stones’ performance could arrive along with a new album of blues-based material, said to be set for release by the end of the year.
Stevie Wonder literally did his best to hold back tears last week during a CNN interview about the death of his longtime friend Prince. You could hear the pain in his voice as he was remembering Prince's musical genius and his life. And even last weekend, while in New Orleans for the Jazz Fest, Wonder paid homage to Prince by playing a brief version of "Purple Rain" on a megaphone.
Prince’s music was so picturesque that even I could see it. I could see his boss Mr. McGee, who thought Prince was never going to be [s--t]. I could see Old Man Johnson’s farm. I could feel that “Purple Rain” too. Prince’s songs were that vivid, the images were that strong. I think I related to the way Prince saw things because we both grew up in the Midwest, where we met all kinds of people and had a great spectrum from which to learn. We both grew up hearing blues, rock & roll, jazz and gospel, and found the value in it all.
When Prince and I spoke last, we talked about how we needed to fix this world. All this bullcrap about getting our country back and “Make America Great Again”—it’s always been great. We just have to stop people filling their minds with lies and prejudice and open them up to the possibilities.
Prince was so inspired, and so inspiring. He was kind, he was disciplined and he knew where he wanted to go. He was able to make big transitions. If Michael was the King of Pop, Prince should be the Emperor. Prince fought for his artistic freedom. He didn’t allow anyone or anything to get in his way. By following his own path, Prince took music to a whole other place, like the Beatles did. He wanted to change the way things were, like Marvin Gaye did. When you do that, you have to be very sure of yourself.
That spirit that drove him gave us an incredible reservoir of music. He loved funk, so he really needed to know how to make things funky. He loved jazz, so he needed to break down what made things truly swing. If Prince wanted to talk about love and sex, he got really into that—deep. And he made us see and feel it all with him. In fact, I’m trying to figure out which child of mine was born because of listening to Prince.
Demi Lovato is the cover star of Latina magazine's June/July 2016 issue.Latina
To say Demi Lovato is having an excellent year is still somewhat of an understatement. With killer vocals, stunning looks and smahing eyebrows, it's safe to say she's at the height of her career; she's madly in love; she's about to kick off her joint tour with Nick Jonas, and she's the new cover star forLatina magazine’s June/July 2016 issue.
One of the reasons we love Demi is she doesn’t hold back in interviews, and this one was no excetion. She opened up about her relationship, her struggles with eating disorders and mental health, and even her political views.
When asked about why she supports Hillary Clinton, Lovato says she’s convinced she’s the most “qualified” candidate. “She will get shit done,” she explained. “I can hopefully help open people’s eyes to how much racism is affecting our country and now infiltrating it in a sense where we might have an incredibly racist Republican candidate,” the singer said, clearly referring to Trump. “It’s terrifying to think that families can be, and sometimes are, separated on a daily basis.”
About her passionate and loving relationship with her Latino man, Wilmer Valderrama: “When I dated white guys, it wasn’t as passionate as my relationship with Wilmer,” she tells Latina. “Maybe that’s just Wilmer. But I do believe that Latin people are just more expressive, more passionate with their emotions.” Lovato describes Valderrama as “very manly, stubborn and protective,” and says, “he cares so much and loves so hard.” The singer has always been very openly grateful about Wilmer’s incredible love and support, and once more called him her best friend.
The “Confident” singer says she can understand Spanish much better than she can speak because she is “not good at retaining information.” She says Wilmer’s mom has teaches her to cook and she now knows how to make arepas. However, Lovato is in the best shape of her life after having “to surrender control over food to somebody else so I can just focus on my mental state” for her recovery.
Gushing once more about her loving, supportive boyfriend, the star explains she’s been at her heaviest and her thinnest with Wilmer, and he’s loved her no matter what, which makes her feel extra secure. He’s seen it all and loves me equally, and it gives me confidence to know that.”
THE VOICE
DEMI LOVATO HAS BRAVELY TAKEN ON HER DEMONS AND OPENED HER HEART FOR THE WORLD TO SEE. NOW, JUST 23, POWERED BY HER NOT-OF THIS-EARTH SINGING ABILITY, SHE IS POISED TO SOAR ONCE AND FOR ALL.
By Jesús Triviño Alarcón Photographs By John Russo
SHE'S A SNAPCHAT QUEEN
She's a Snapchat queen today: Demi Lovato’s makeup and eyebrow game is so strong and her lip-syncing so on point (doing Cher’s “Believe,” of course) that she could win RuPaul’s Drag Racewithout ever touching an elimination stage. She even has a heart-shaped mole! Alas, the whole visual effect is simply created by one of the app’s filters, which Lovato uses to contort her face as crazily as she pleases. “With Snapchat you don’t have to worry about it looking a certain way,” says the unfiltered Lovato, looking snug and comfy in an oversize yellow Moschino sweater and Clark Kent–style glasses at the Malibu home where she just completed her latest Latina cover shoot. “I have so much fun with the filters. I love it.”
Her cheeky Snapchat posts are a sideshow, of course. What she really wants to talk about is her serious embrace of music, which allows her to demonstrate more clearly than ever that the heavens blessed her with vocal cords of gold.
And everyone is noticing. “Lovatics,” her legion of fans, have been cheering her every step of the way; Rolling Stone praised the “powerful vocals” on her latest album, Confident; even Justin Timberlake, who certainly knew all about Lovato’s formidable talent, was bowled over by her performance at the iHeartRadio Music Awards in April. Yet the ever-growing popularity and accolades aren’t the be-all, end-all for Lovato. The objective is more fundamental: create music that matters.
“I don’t care about radio hits,” says Lovato, who grew up listening to Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, and Gladys Knight. “When you try hard for that, it doesn’t happen. It’s songs like ‘Stone Cold’ that I don’t get tired of singing on tour. I get tired of singing ‘Give Your Heart a Break’ and even ‘Confident’ already. I have yet to reach my peak, and also, my voice is better now than it was a year ago. Now I can show people what I can do.”
Lovato’s doing plenty. The big four headlines: She’s embarking on a summer tour, Honda Civic’s Future Now, with best bud Nick Jonas, with whom she also co-launched a record label, Safehouse; she’s head-over-heels in love with Wilmer Valderrama; and now critics are considering her one of popular music’s most powerfully expressive voices, along with the almighty Adele. To put it in millennial terms: Lovato is real AF.
With realness comes hard truth, and Lovato’s been an open book since her well-documented days of battling drug addiction, bipolar disorder, and bulimia. It’s that very honesty, in fact, that invites young women to identify with her and root for her. The world never has to wonder where Lovato stands on something, because she’s usually tapping away on her phone and racing to post before you can say “tweet.” “I’m definitely passionate about the things I believe in,” she says.
No hot topic is off-limits. When a judge blocked fellow pop star Ke$ha’s petition to be released from a recording contract—she accused her producer, Dr. Luke, of subjecting her to years of rape and abuse (allegations he has denied)—Lovato was quick to express herself on social media.
“I thought it was extremely brave of a pop star in the industry to come out and talk about that,” she says. “I do believe it’s very fucked up that he’s not letting her go, aside from all of the other stuff. I think women artists shouldn’t compete—we have to support each other.”
"Wilmer is very manly, and he can be stubborn like Latino men can, but he’s protective and he cares so much and loves so hard."
For encouragement and love, Lovato has two special men: her new fur baby, Batman, a mixed Yorkshire terrier and poodle, and her longtime beau Valderrama. Their relationship had been on-and-off for a few years, but they kept it under wraps until 2014, when their passion exploded into public view and gave the world #relationshipgoals envy.
“When I dated white guys, it wasn’t as passionate as my relationship with Wilmer,” she says with a smile bigger than the Kool-Aid man’s. “Maybe that’s just Wilmer. But I do believe that Latin people are just more expressive, more passionate with their emotions. He’s very manly, and he can be stubborn like Latino men can, but he’s protective and he cares so much and loves so hard. I’ve been blessed enough to have him in my life, and not just as my man, but also my best friend.”
I HAVE YET TO REACH MY PEAK. NOW I CAN SHOW PEOPLE WHAT I CAN DO.
Lovato has not only paired off with a Latino—and men don’t get more Latino than Valderrama—she chose one with Colombian and Venezuelan parents. And that means dealing with his mami. From the sound of it, Lovato feels right at home in Casa Valderrama.
“His mom teaches me to cook. She showed me how to make arepas,” Lovato says. As for the possible language barrier between her and Valderrama’s Spanish-speaking mom, well, that’s no problem. “I can understand Spanish better than I can speak it,” Lovato says. “I’m not good at retaining information or even my own song lyrics, so remembering an entire language has been difficult for me. #SayNoToDrugs,” she adds with a laugh.
All this talk about home cooking has made Lovato hungry. She pops open some Tupperware and digs into her fourth portion-controlled meal of the day: Mexican meatloaf with green beans and potatoes. Having struggled with body-image issues, she’s now on a strict diet-and-exercise regimen.
“For her, food was the enemy, and I wanted to show her that food can really be your friend,” says personal trainer Ronny Camacho, who’s been whipping Lovato into shape since January 2015, while also working with Valderrama. “My goal for her is to eat four meals a day without somebody putting a gun to her head. As far as the workouts, she loves to train hard.”
Lovato is easily in the best shape of her life. She’s toned and fit, and for someone who has battled eating disorders, it’s a huge triumph for her to accept herself as she really is, imperfections and all.
“I’ve actually been on a meal plan for almost two years now, because in my recovery I have to surrender control over food to somebody else so I can just focus on my mental state,” she says. “I’ve been my heaviest in my relationship with Wilmer and also been my thinnest. He’s seen it all and loves me equally, and it gives me confidence to know that.”
While she’s passionate about her gym time, she’s looking forward to the day she turns 60 and can indulge in as much cake as her chubby senior-citizen heart desires. Until then, her goal is to stay on course in all areas, and, naturally, to continue speaking her mind. She’s been pretty adamant about her choice for the next president, and, let’s just say, she isn’t going for a Republican, nor feeling the Bern: It’s Hillary Clinton all the way.
“The reason ‘I’m with her’ is because out of everybody running, she is the most qualified and she will get shit done,” she says. Immigration reform is an issue close to her heart this election year. “I can hopefully help open people’s eyes to how much racism is affecting our country and now infiltrating it in a sense where we might have an incredibly racist Republican candidate. It’s terrifying to think that families can be, and sometimes are, separated on a daily basis.”
Lovato knows about loss. A series of deaths hit her hard last year, when she and Valderrama mourned a close friend, two uncles, a grandfather, and two beloved dogs. That’s a difficult year for anyone.
“When I say goodbye to somebody, I tell them I love them, if I do,” she says with conviction. “I make sure to hug them. I make sure to look at them like it’s the last time I’ll ever see them.” The feeling will permeate her next album, she says, which she vows will have a more soulful vibe. “There’s a lot of pain that I experienced over the past year, and I’m so ready to write about it,” she says. “I’ve stayed sober through it all, I’m a stronger person, but it’s definitely been a very painful year.”
"WHEN I SAY GOODBYE TO SOMEBODY, I TELL THEM I LOVE THEM, IF I DO. I MAKE SURE TO LOOK AT THEM LIKE IT’S THE LAST TIME I’LL EVER SEE THEM."
For now, thankfully, things are looking much brighter—Lovato’s a Snapchat dynamo, she’s raising Batman, she finally got laser eye surgery so she can ditch the Coke-bottle glasses, and, of course, she’s rehearsing for her 37- city tour with Nick Jonas, which begins June 24 in Sunrise, Fla.
“I’ve watched her grow and evolve into a strong and fearless advocate and businesswoman,” says Jonas. “Not only is her talent unmatched, she’s also one of the funniest people I know. I’m so proud of her.”
And she’s not done. Lovato continues to be an advocate for many issues, including mental health care. She doesn’t only talk the talk on social media, she walks the walk in Washington, D.C., with her Be Vocal initiative, which brings awareness and aid to people living with mental illnesses.
“We have to figure out something as a country about how we get mental health care to be as accessible as physical health care,” she says, her voice intensifying. “When you take things to Capitol Hill, it’s tangible and you really feel like you’re making a difference. And if you’re having conversations that are uncomfortable and you’re sharing your story of being vulnerable, people relate. It’s harder for people to relate to you as an artist if you only talk about your love life.”
That willingness to raise the real issues of real people is the boldness of Demi Lovato. She’s dealt with the same struggles, fought her way up mountainsides, and now is using her powerful voice to speak for the voiceless.
What to Watch Tonight: Chuck Returns onSupernatural, Munch Returns on Law & Order: SVU, and the Season Finale of Criminal Minds
By Andy Daglas
What to watch on Wednesday, May 4...
12:01am Pacific, Hulu The Path With the compound in an unwelcome media spotlight, Sarah and the elders question Cal’s methods in “Refugees.” Between that and his discovery of Eddie and Alison’s relationship, Cal soon goes to a dark place, leaving Sarah to address the congregation solo.
8pm, The CW Arrow As Diggle follows a lead on Andy’s whereabouts and sets out for revenge, Oliver and Felicity search for the mystical key to taking down Darhk. In happier affairs in “Genesis,” Alex and Thea go on vacation together, which nope, never mind, that goes horribly wrong too.
8pm, Fox Rosewood “Sudden Death & Shades Deep” finds Rosewood and Villa baffled by the apparently inexplicable demise of a prominent musician and jingle writer. In other mysteries, Donna assigns Mitchie to dig into Erica’s past.
8pm, ABC The Middle Fed up with years of bungled Mother’s Day gifts—and inspired by the kindness of a stranger—Frankie hits upon a different approach in “Not Mother’s Day.” Rather than celebrate her, each of the Hecks will draw a random family member’s name from a hat and do a good deed for that person instead.
8:30pm, ABC The Goldbergs In “Smother’s Day,” Beverly is none too pleased when Barry and Erica give her a hastily thrown-together gift of “mom coupons” for Mother’s Day. (Pro tip: If you’re gonna make mom coupons, make sure you put expiration dates on them so you don’t wind up finger-painting at age 29. Orrrrr so I’ve heard?) In more paternal problems, Adam levies a harsh accusation at Murray when he says no to space camp.
SEASON 4 PREMIERE, 9pm, IFC Maron With Marc in denial, it’s up to his friends to get him into rehab in “Step 1.”
SEASON 11 FINALE, 9pm, CBS Criminal Minds A SWAT team nabs Hotch on suspicion of conspiracy in “The Storm.” Can the BAU team clear his name, or will they be laid low by the wider and more sinister plot that’s brewing?
9pm, NBC Law & Order: SVU Detective Munch returns to lend a hand (or possibly just to pick up a fleece he’d left behind?) in “Fashionable Crimes,” as the team seeks justice for a model who was raped by a famous photographer with powerful connections.
9pm, PBS NOVA “Operation Lighthouse Rescue” examines engineers’ efforts to save Gay Head Lighthouse, a Martha’s Vineyard landmark threatened by the erosion of the island’s cliffs.
9pm, Fox Empire Lucious’s passion project may be kaput after Andre unearths a sinister secret in “The Lyon Who Cried Wolf.” In other shadowy business, Hakeem and Jamal take big risks in pursuit of clandestine affairs, and Rhonda hones in on the identity of her attacker.
9pm, The CW Supernatural Amara hurls some more of her mind-maddening mojo onto a small town in “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” prompting the Winchesters to team up with the local sheriff. In less sinister schemes, Chuck returns with a new proposal.
9pm, ABC Modern Family Claire suspects espionage is afoot in the company as she gears up for Closet-Con. Elsewhere in “Promposal,” Jay teaches Joe the joys of manual labor, Phil and Gloria confront Auntie Alice for stealing her hot sauce recipe, and Mitch and Cam help Luke and Manny court prom dates.
9:30pm, ABC Black-ish In “Super Rich Kicks,” Dre is delighted to learn that Junior’s friends are, unlike Junior, cool kids. Less pleased with the progeny this week is Bow, who tries to get Zoey, Jack, and Diane to admit they’ve broken some items around the house.
10pm, NBC Chicago P.D. The squad investigates the death of an abandoned newborn, and their allies at Chicago Med may be able to offer a critical lead. Elsewhere, “In a Duffel Bag” sees Burgess and Roman growing closer, while Voight is surprised to hear that his son is in town.
10pm, WGN America Underground A rescue mission for a member of the Macon 7 turns lethal in “Black & Blue,” while John and Elizabeth challenge one another over their choices.
10pm, Sundance The Last Panthers “Serpent’s Kiss” finds Khalil making a risky deal with his brother and Naomi making a game-changing discovery in the diamonds case.
10pm, ABC Nashville Rayna and Deacon have a tough time regaining Maddie’s trust, and their uphill climb only becomes uphillier when a supposed ally turns turncoat. Meanwhile in “The Trouble With the Truth,” Scarlett and Gunnar squabble about their past partnership in an interview, Luke’s good deed doesn’t go unpunished, and country star Kelsea Ballerini stops by to perform.
10pm, FX The Americans Elizabeth and Philip are pushed to their limits as they deal with local agents in “The Magic of David Copperfield V: The Statue of Liberty Disappears.” In a stunning twist, the agents in question aren’t rival spies but rival travel agents out to undercut the Jennings family business.
LATE-NITE: – Rob Riggle, Moshe Kasher, and The Heavy on Conan, 11pm, TBS – Bethany Cosentino on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 11pm, Comedy Central – Meghan Markle on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, 11:30pm, Comedy Central – Jeremy Renner, Fran Lebowitz, and Grimes on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Anthony Mackie, Rob Reiner, and Maxwell on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS – Julie Bowen, Wyatt Russell, and Florida Georgia Line on Jimmy Kimmel Live, 11:35pm, ABC – Aaron Paul, Gilbert Gottfried, Thomas Kail, and Mark Guiliana on Late Night with Seth Meyers, 12:35am, NBC – Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, and Bibi Bourelly on The Late Late Show with James Corden, 12:37am, CBS
Red Hot Chili Peppers have released a dreamy new song, "Dark Necessities," and announced their new album, 'The Getaway.' John Shearer/Invision/AP
Red Hot Chili Peppers have shared a new song, "Dark Necessities," the first offering from their new album, the Getaway, out June 17th via Warner Bros. Records.
The track is available to stream onSpotify and Apple Music, and finds the Chili Peppers using washed out guitars and delicate piano to put a dreamy spin on their anthemic funked-out rock sound.
"Dark Necessities" is also available as an instant download for those who pre-order The Getaway. The record will be released as a double vinyl LP (limited to 5,000 copies worldwide) as well as CD; pre-orders also come with a cassette single of "Dark Necessities."
The Getaway marks the Red Hot Chili Peppers' 11th LP and first since 2011's I'm With You. Danger Mouse produced the record, with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich on mixing duties. Album art and a complete track list are below.
Anthony Kiedis spoke with Rolling Stone in October, prior to the Chili Peppers' annual Silverlake Benefit show, and detailed the band's creative progress.
"The torture about doing this [show] is that we've been writing new music for the last year, and we’ve written some songs that I feel are as good as any songs we’ve ever written," Kiedis said. "[Danger Mouse] is very good about coming up with super-modern ideas, but he'll also touch on the acoustic guitar in the control room and strip the song down to its acoustic essentials. Which is a beautiful place to be."
Bassist Flea gave Rolling Stone a progress report in 2014, noting they'd written over 30 songs running the gamut from "super danceable, funky shit" to "some real introspective, pretty stuff."
Red Hot Chili Peppers will headline this year's Lollapalooza, alongside Radiohead and LCD Soundsystem. The fest is scheduled for July 28th-July 31st at Chicago's Grant Park.
The Getaway Track List
1. "The Getaway" 2. "Dark Necessities" 3. "We Turn Red" 4. "The Longest Wave" 5. "Goodbye Angels" 6. "Sick Love" 7. "Go Robot" 8. "Feasting on the Flowers" 9. "Detroit" 10. "This Ticonderoga" 11. "Encore" 12. "The Hunter" 13. "Dreams of a Samurai"
Ron Howard's Beatles Film to Launch Hulu Documentary Division
Film focusing on Fab Four's iconic early period will premiere this fall on company's new doc division following theatrical run
Ron Howard's upcoming Beatles documentary will premiere on Hulu's new documentary division following its theatrical run. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Ron Howard's upcoming Beatles film will be featured in Hulu Documentary Films, the streaming service's newest division. Howard's movie – working title The Beatles:Eight Days a Week – will debut in theaters and on Hulu this fall, Variety reports. The deal marks Hulu's first exclusive documentary premiere following a theatrical run.
Eight Days a Week focuses on the Beatles' iconic early years between 1962 and 1966. It will feature rare and previously unseen footage. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and the late George Harrison's wife Olivia Harrison are involved in the production.
Imagine Entertainment's Howard and Brian Grazer (Apollo 13) will produce with White Horse Pictures' Nigel Sinclair (George Harrison: Living in the Material World) and Scott Pascucci. Jeff Jones and Jonathan Clyde of Beatles company Apple Corps will executive produce alongside Imagine's Michael Rosenberg and White Horse's Guy East and Nicholas Ferrall. Eight Days a Week is Howard's second music documentary following 2013's Jay-Z festival film Made in America.
"We are going to be able to take the Super 8 footage that we found, that was all shot silent," Howard told Rolling Stone in 2014. "We'll not only be able to digitally repair a lot of that, but we've also been finding the original recordings. We can now sync it up and create a concert experience so immersive and so engaging, I believe you're going to actually feel like you're somewhere in the Sixties, seeing what it was like to be there, feeling it and hearing it. And as a film director, that's a fantastic challenge."
Watch Paul McCartney Cover Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy' in Minneapolis
"Thank you Prince, for writing so many beautiful songs, so much music," says former Beatle
Paul McCartney played Prince favorite "Let's Go Crazy" in the late singer's hometown of Minneapolis Wednesday night. Mat Hayward/Getty
Paul McCartney comforted Prince's hometown of Minneapolis with a rousing cover of "Let's Go Crazy" during the encore of his concert at the Target Center on Wednesday night.
"Here's to the man," McCartney said after playing the Purple Raintrack. "Loved that guy. Thank you Prince, for writing so many beautiful songs, so much music. And he's your guy."
"Prince, Minneapolis; Minneapolis, Prince. It goes together," McCartney said onstage with Prince's glowing purple glyph towering in the background. Watch the performance via McCartney's Facebook page.
The former Beatle's live performance also paid tribute to another huge figure in McCartney's career: the late Beatles producer George Martin, whodied in March. McCartney dedicated "Love Me Do" to Martin as it was the first song the Beatles recorded with him in 1962.
McCartney is the latest in a wide range of artists from Bruce Springsteen to LCD Soundsystem to Chris Stapleton to honor the Purple One onstage. Musicians have been performing heartfelt tributes to the late singer since his death at age 57 on April 21st.
What to Watch Tonight: The Series Premieres of Netflix's Marseille and Seeso's Flowers, a West Wing Reunion on Mom, and Inside Amy Schumer
By Andy Daglas
What to watch on Thursday, May 5...
SERIES PREMIERE, 12:01am Pacific, Netflix Marseille Gérard Depardieu heads the cast of this eight-episode French drama centered on an increasingly vicious mayoral race in the Mediterranean metropolis.
SPECIAL PREMIERE, 12:01am Pacific, Vimeo Garfunkel and Oates: Trying to be Special The musical comedy duo of Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci host a fundraiser in Seattle in order to finance their own comedy showcase.
SERIES PREMIERE, 12:01am Pacific, Seeso Flowers Olivia Colman and Julian Barratt star in this British dramedy about a family struggling to keep it together amid secrets and emotional tension. All six episodes stream today. (You can read our review here.)
6pm, Cartoon Network The Powerpuff Girls Blossom goes overboard on the spring cleaning and accidentally unleashes evil forces in “Puffdora’s Box.” The lesson, as always: Never clean. That’s followed by the girls sabotaging the Professor’s new relationship in “Arachno-Romance.”
SERIES PREMIERE, 7pm, Ovation Millennials: Growing Up in the 21st Century This six-part documentary chronicles the lives of 22 children from adolescence to young adulthood, via candid interviews conducted over a span of 15 years. New installments will air weekly through Thursday, June 9.
8pm, CBS The Big Bang Theory Preferring a movie screening over quality time with Amy, Sheldon hires Stuart to spend the day with her instead in “The Line Substitution Solution.” Elsewhere, Penny fails to establish a rapport with Leonard’s visiting mother.
8pm, ABC Grey’s Anatomy In “Mama Tried,” Arizona and Callie have it out over Sofia’s future, Stephanie mulls where she stands with Kyle in the present, and Alex and April treat a pregnant teen who’d previously been admitted to Grey Sloan in the past.
8pm, The CW DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Now that the heroes have captured the villain (yay!), it’s time for a round of “captured villain plays mind games with the heroes” (boo!). In “River of Time,” that takes the form of Vandal Savage convincing Kendra he can reunite her with Carter, and giving Ray grief about his role in her life. In other internecine strife, Snart and Rory take issue with Rip’s plan to deliver the immortal to the Time Masters.
8pm, Fox Bones An ex-con is murdered after disappearing from his halfway house, and one of the suspects has ties to Booth. Meanwhile in “The Last Shot at a Second Chance,” Brennan testifies at an FBI hearing about her assault of a party in a previous case, and the course of true love doesn’t run smooth for Aubrey and Jessica or for Hodgins and Angela.
8:30pm, CBS The Odd Couple In “An Oscar Named Desire,” Oscar and Charlotte are reluctant to take their relationship to the next level, perhaps because that level includes a boss fight that they haven’t got nearly the right equipment for yet. In other nervous behavior, Felix helps Teddy overcome his fear of dogs when Emily regains custody of Biscuit.
9pm, CBS Mom Christy’s pride at making the Dean’s List is tempered by her disappointment at Bonnie’s lukewarm response in “Pure Evil and a Free Piece of Cheesecake.” Perhaps it’s because Bonnie is too distracted imagining working alongside guest star Richard Schiff?
9pm, ABC Scandal Olivia and Abby call a truce and team up against the bigger threat of Hollis Doyle in “Trump Card.” In other strange bedfellows, Edison comes to suspect he made a huge mistake hitching his wagon to Rowan and Jake.
9pm, The CW The 100 Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, and Jasper are thwarted in devastating fashion, while Raven and Monty come upon a key discovery, in “Red Sky at Morning.”
9pm, NBC The Blacklist In “Susan Hargrave,” Red determines that recent tragic events are connected with a woman who’s as chic as she is deadly, like a necklace made out of throwing stars.
9:30pm, CBS 2 Broke Girls Seeking to expand their renovated dessert bar, Max and Caroline try to rent space from the proprietor (Lisa Lampanelli) of the neighboring pizza place in “And the Ten Inches.” This will either involve reasonable, professionally conducted negotiations to achieve an equitable solution, or a wacky, mishap-prone scheme. Could go either way.
10pm, Comedy Central Inside Amy Schumer Amy is honored by the Oscars and eats pasta straight out of the garbage as “Brave” explores a wide spectrum of high and low points.
10pm, FX Archer A hostage situation spirals out of control in “Bel Panto: Part II,” and in the process Archer and Lana go missing.
10pm, BBC America Orphan Black In “From Instinct to Rational Control,” Sarah realizes that the enemy of her enemy is her friend, even if that friend is a former enemy. Elsewhere, Alison tasks Felix and Donnie with infiltrating a Neolution clinic that Beth had investigated, Cosima and Scott receive an unpleasant delivery from Alison, and Rachel grows closer to Charlotte.
10pm, Spike Lip Sync Battle Snoop Dogg and L.A. Clippers star Chris Paul go one-on-one (at fake singing, not basketball).
10pm, CBS Rush Hour When a student at an elite high school is slain, Carter and Lee go undercover as administrators in “Welcome Back, Carter.” Can they get to the bottom of the crime while also reforming the school’s rather antiquated system of record-keeping for advanced placement credits?
10pm, ABC The Catch The team tackles the case of a missing child whose parents are in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. Elsewhere in “The Ringer,” Ben convinces Margot and Reggie to pull a con for their benefactor, and Dao changes his investigative tactics.
11pm, History Join or Die with Craig Ferguson Angela Kinsey, Heather McDonald, and journalist Joel Stein consider history’s biggest presidential “bad boy.” Who can forget the way the ladies swooned whenever Grover Cleveland would moon passersby on Pennsylvania Avenue and then peel away on his velocipede?
LATE-NITE: – Louis C.K., Mary Elizabeth Ellis, and Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals on Conan, 11pm, TBS – The Heavy on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 11pm, Comedy Central – Ken Burns on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, 11:30pm, Comedy Central – Robert Downey Jr., Amy Sedaris, and Chance the Rapper on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Judge Judy and W. Kamau Bell on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS – Rob Lowe, Chloe Bennet, and Bebe Rexha on Jimmy Kimmel Live, 11:35pm, ABC – Dana Carvey, Cyndi Lauper, and Mark Guiliana on Late Night with Seth Meyers, 12:35am, NBC – Sharon Stone, Sebastian Stan, Zach Woods, and Travis Scott on The Late Late Show with James Corden, 12:37am, CBS
Cinco De Mayo Margarita Recipes To Enjoy At Any Fiesta
Tequila Herradura Horseshoe Margarita at Casa Herradura on March 21, 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia.Paras Griffin/Getty Images for Tequila Herradura
Cinco de Mayo is here and there is no better way to celebrate than with a delicious cocktail in hand. In this case, five! Whether you like to stay at home and party with close friends or take the pachanga to the streets, here are some of the best margarita cocktails we have tried.
And since we like to keep our readers happy, we put together these not-so-traditional margarita recipes to give your life a little Latin twist this weekend and the many weekends to come. Ok, yes, you can have them during the week too, especially on Cinco de Mayo!
Corinne Bailey Rae's new album, The Heart Speaks In Whispers, comes out May 13.
Courtesy of the artist
Corinne Bailey Rae, The Heart Speaks In Whispers
Courtesy of the artist
In "Tell Me," the neon-charged fourth track on Corinne Bailey Rae's inspiring third album The Heart Speaks In Whispers, the British-born singer-songwriter sets her sights on a new generation. "This is for the dreamers," Rae wails over a two-step beat as her friends and collaborators Paris and Amber Strother shout support behind her. "Let's make our own scene." Rae is hardly the first to essentially dedicate an album to those with stars in their eyes: She might have been thinking of her fellow Northerners in The Stone Roses declaring one more for the dreamers in 1994's "Daybreak," or of J. Cole, who once sampled her first hit "Like A Star," calling for the revenge of the dreamers in 2014. What Rae adds to this idealists' songbook is a feminine take that blends dreaminess with nuanced awareness of the heart's hesitations and the need, in life, for clarity.
Male dreamers are often hailed as visionaries, their gutsy impracticality a sign of courage and insight. Women dreamers become reduced to attractive cartoons, flighty and vulnerable, the gamine heroines of vaguely countercultural fantasies. The Heart Speaks In Whispers, co-produced by Rae and her longtime collaborator and husband Steve Brown, fights against this split by presenting a woman's imaginative flights within fleshed-out jams and delicate, jazz-informed ballads examining the subtle trajectories emotions can take.
Rae collaborated with the Strother sisters, two-thirds of the innovative L.A. soul group KING, in six of the album's tracks. Working with them and other musicians connected to the thriving black bohemian scene in Los Angeles, she found a community of players who make the boundary-defying, epic music toward which she's long been striving. The Heart Speaks In Whispers is a more assertive and pop-wise work than her moving and challenging 2010 album The Sea, and more expansive than her charming 2006 debut, which earned Rae several hits and prizes. It has the feel of an adventure, full of fellow travelers ranging from star bassists Pino Palladino and Marcus Miller and funky drumming legend James Gadson to the foundational R&B songwriter Valerie Simpson (who co-wrote the heartrending "Do You Ever Think Of Me?") andMoses Sumney, whose choral backing lends resonance to Rae's meditation on surviving sorrow, "Caramel."
What places The Heart Speaks In Whispers in the elite category of transcendental genre-busters from Minnie Riperton to Erykah Badu are those big-sky songs that play as a continuation of the Prince-style revolution KING announced on its striking debut earlier this year. (Rae and the much-lamented superstar were friends, and he worked with KING.) "Green Aphrodisiac" recalls the Purple One's pastoral work on Diamonds And Pearls, while "Horse Print Dress" takes up the playful seductiveness of songs like "Peach." Rae uses her light vocal tone ingeniously throughout The Heart Speaks In Whispers, sidestepping the clichés of oversinging in the new gospel of "Walk On" and infusing gravitas with gentleness in the slow and steady "Hey, I Won't Break Your Heart." After his death, many fans pointed to Prince's legacy of work with female artists. Rae realizes it here — a woman, not a girl, dreaming in her own colors.
Full Album Stream:http://www.npr.org/series/98679384/first-listen
Rihanna isn’t the only one getting the documentary treatment…
According to Rolling Stone, Houston’s estate has given the “ok” for Oscar-winning director Kevin McDonald (Marley, Last King of Scotland) to create a documentary about the late singer.
A statement reveals the film will show the “unvarnished and authentic” story of Houston’s life. “The story that is never told about Whitney is just how brilliant she was as an artist; by many measures, she had the greatest voice of the last 50 years,” McDonald states in the press release. “She changed the way pop music was sung — bringing it back full circle to its blues and gospel roots. She was also completely unique in being a black pop star who sold in countries where black artists don’t traditionally sell.”
The director also made clear that the doc will also hit upon the darker side of her life, including her rocky marriage to Bobby Brown and struggles with substance addiction.
The doc will be pitched to big wigs at the Cannes Film Festival next month by Altitude Films, the same company behind the Amy Winehouse documentary, Amy.
We hadn’t heard from Mario since back in August 2015 when he dropped his Rick Ross-assisted offering “Forever.”
Now the crooner is back with a trap-based R&Banger called “I Need More.” He starts off with a rap-like flow, then he shows he still has the vocal chops, hitting falsettos to all kinds of heights towards the end.
Need more Mario? No word on if this will grace a larger project, but surely he’ll be dropping more newbies throughout the year. Stream the song below and purchase on iTunes HERE.
Not only did Janet drop her video for “Dammn Baby” today, her older brother, Tito “Poppa T” Jackson, delivers his new single “Get It Baby.”
The song was written and produced by Tito Jackson and will appear on his upcoming album, Tito Time available later this fall. The song also features a special guest appearance from hip hop legend, Big Daddy Kane, and of course, “Poppa T” plays his signature guitar on the song, as well. The song has some throwback vibes, but also has a few modern breakdowns in there, too!
“Get It Baby” is already creating early buzz on a national level with radio stations across the country playing the single. “Tito Jackson’s new single is back to the time when R&B music was fun. Kudos for keeping the Jackson family light shining bright“, says Mark Dylan, Program Director of KOKY Little Rock, AR.
“Get It Baby” will be available digitally worldwide on Friday June 3rd, 2016.
SEASON 2 PREMIERE, 12:01am Pacific, Netflix Grace and Frankie The eponymous duo move forward with their newly single lives as the comedy returns for its sophomore season.
STAND-UP PREMIERE, 12:01am Pacific, Netflix Ali Wong: Baby Cobra The comedian addresses the unconventional path her life has taken and the experience of performing a stand-up special while seven months pregnant.
8pm, NBC Adele Live in New York City An extended, 90-minute rebroadcast of the concert special, which originally aired last December, adds five new songs not included in the original version.
8pm, The CW The Vampire Diaries Operation: Save Bonnie creates more problems than it solves in “Requiem for a Dream,” because TVD. And speaking of life-threatening decisions, Stefan and Caroline reckon with the fallout of their relationship as she faces a new threat.
9pm, The CW The Originals The Mikaelsons seek a way to defeat Lucien for good in “Where Nothing Stays Buried,” but a separate threat to Kol and Marcel complicates matters. As Freya and Elijah help on the latter front, Klaus and Hayley head to the bayou, following a new lead on Lucien’s machinations.
9pm, CBS Hawaii Five-0 A member of Five-0 has a personal connection to the young daughter of a slain woman in “Pilina Koko (Blood Ties).” Elliott Gould guest stars as Gerard Hirsch’s dad.
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE, 9pm, Showtime Brand: A Second Coming This documentary traces the path of comedian Russell Brand, who overcame drug addiction and the debauchery of fame to reinvent himself as a political activist.
SEASON 6 FINALE, 10pm, CBS Blue Bloods Frank, Erin, and the mayor are at the center of public outrage after a grand jury fails to indict a cop for shooting a teenager in “Blowback.” Later, Danny and Baez search for an assailant who may have shot an officer in retaliation.
10pm, Cinemax Banshee Dawson and Lucas pursue a person of interest in the serial killings, Calvin calls out Proctor and Kurt, and Carrie’s vigilante zeal spells trouble for her and Deva in “Only One Way a Dogfight Ends.”
10pm, Syfy Wynonna Earp In “Constant Cravings,” Wynonna sets her sights on a Revenant who took part in the attack on the Homestead 15 years ago. Also reckoning with the past is Waverly, who explores a mystery that her Uncle Curtis left behind.
LATE-NITE: – Jane Fonda, Andrew Rannells, and Keith Urban on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Lily Tomlin, Kumail Nanjiani, and Ryan Hamilton on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS
D∆WN heats up the game yet again on Infrared, a collaboration with producer Kingdom.
Released by Fade to Mind, the 4-track EP features the previously-released single “Honest,” as well as “How I Get It,” “Paint It Blue,” and “Baptize.”
“Infrared is invisible radiant energy,” explained D∆WN. “It is invisible to human eyes, but people can feel it as heat.”
D∆WN also spoke with The FADER about the project. “I’ve always appreciated Fade to Mind’s sound,” she said. “It only felt right to take do a special project with them that was curated around simplicity. We wanted something raw and personal. Something you haven’t heard from both parties.”
Aside from dropping Infrared, D∆WN is also heading out on tour this month, with a series of dates across the U.S. before heading overseas in June. The trek includes stops at the FORM Festival on May 13 in Arizona, as well as the Roskilde Festival in Denmark.
At the top of the year, it was revealed that Erykah Badu would be starring in the feature film, The Land, adding yet another acting role to her belt in era when the analog girl is clearly still wrecking the digital world, particularly in the form of her surprise album, But You Caint Use My Phone.
Today, the film’s official trailer has landed upon the internets, showcasing a gripping narrative of Cleveland skaters sorting out their ambitions while doing wrong to do right.
Alongside Badu, the film stars Michael K. Williams and Machine Gun Kelly, but the film’s most glaring feature may just be its soundtrack, which is slated to include new music from Badu, Kanye West, Pusha T, Nosaj Thing and the executive producer himself, Nasty Nasir Jones.
The Land is currently slated for a July 29th release with Mass Appeal Records handling the release of the star-studded soundtrack.
Inspired by Keen’s new line of Uneek footwear, we are talking with a couple of emerging artists we think are truly unique. First up, introducing Morly…
“I kind of blame Bob Dylan for ruining my life,” laughs Katy Morley, a.k.a. singer/songwriter/producer Morly. “I was in college, and I was going to be a neuroscientist, but then his music somehow struck me so deep that everything in my life suddenly felt wrong…
“I wanted to be doing music, but it felt like the furthest thing away from my actual life at the time, at least in my twenty-year-old mind. Becoming a professional musician didn’t seem like a feasible reality, but at the same time I knew I would be really sad if I didn’t try.”
Eight years on, the Minneapolis native’s dream has indeed become a reality, though her unique, soulfully minimalist compositions bear little resemblance to the “not very good” folk songs she says she wrote while initially searching for her own musical identity. Something More Holy, Morly’s new four-song EP, is an enchanting collection of introspective poems sung softly-yet-powerfully against spare electronic dreamscapes. Early 20th century avant-garde composer Erik Satie is an audible influence on Morly’s work — “Probably my biggest inspiration, fundamentally,” she says — but so is Sade.
“I’ve always had a soft voice,” Morly says. “I used to try to sing like Aretha Franklin, but never could. But Sade is someone who found what was good in her voice, and found a way to emphasize that; I found that really inspiring.”
Recorded in collaboration with L.A. producer Stint, Something More Holy’s minimalist tracks are alluring, spacious and flow effortlessly into each other, as if each track was created to be part of a specific dream world. “Stint and I tried to build this whole world for the songs to live in, where they could just exist and be their own thing,” she explains. “I love minimalism in general, but I especially love the way it really forces you to make sure that everything is right and solid, to make sure that you’re really getting to the essence of it and not hiding anything.”
Morly says she first became inspired to create electronic music after a friend played her a record by English electronic duo Mount Kimbie. “It was kind of the first music I ever heard like that,” she recalls. “I was writing folk music and not really sure what I was doing; but then I heard Mount Kimbie and it was like,
‘Okay, this feels right — this is what I want to do!’ Not necessarily copying what they did, but they really opened up the idea of what a song could be, and what sort of sounds you could use.”
On the advice of some producer friends, Morly acquired an Ableton Live workstation and spent several years “disappearing into headphones,” as she puts it, experimenting with sounds and mixing techniques in a manner that drew as much or more upon her education as a painter as they did upon her musical inspirations. “I’d ended up switching to painting as my major in college, and I learned a lot about art history and things that turned me off a bit from visual art, because it just felt so political,” she says. “I felt maybe music was a way to paint with sound, a way to try painting in a new medium. My early instrumentals really felt like paintings to me.”
Morly says that her music continues to evolve, especially now that she’s performing it on stage. “I went on a small tour recently where I played the songs just by myself, so I had to use a computer,” she says. “And I think there was a bit of a novelty there that people appreciated — a girl with like ten machines, singing and playing synthesizer — but at one point, I started feeling like one of those toy monkeys that bangs things together,” she laughs.
“I really do not want to use a computer onstage in the future, so now it’s becoming a process of translating my songs live with other musicians. And I think that’s been subconsciously influencing how I write — it’s a little less digital and a little more organic.,” she says. “I love minimalism, but now that I’ve learned how to do that, I think it’s okay to start building more on top of it. But I really do love a small song, so we’ll see if I grow my songs at all!”
Kristen Bell Discusses Dealing with Anxiety and Depression: 'I Shatter a Little Bit When I Think People Don't Like Me'
Kristen Bell wants you to know there's no shame in dealing with anxiety or depression. Sitting down for an interview on Off Camera with Sam Jones, the actress opened up about her struggle, admitting that she's suffers from both anxiety and depression and has done since a young age as it runs in her family.
"I'm extremely co-dependent," Bell, 35, told Jones. "I shatter a little bit when I think people don't like me. That's part of why I lead with kindness and I compensate by being very bubbly all the time because it really hurts my feelings when I know I'm not liked. And I know that's not very healthy and I fight it all the time."
Although the mother of two acknowledges her popularity in high school, she explained that she still always felt anxious on the inside; causing her to constantly mold her interests around what her classmates were interested in.
Coming from a line of women who have suffered with mental illness meant early education for Bell, whose mother, a nurse, told her early on about her susceptibility to a "serotonin imbalance," after she watched her own mother – Bell's grandmother – suffer through bouts of binge drinking while locked in her bedroom.
"[My mom's] a nurse and she had the wherewithal to recognize that in herself when she was feeling it and when I was 18 said, 'If you start to feel like you are twisting things around you, and you feel like there is no sunlight around you, and you are paralyzed with fear, this is what it is and here's how you can help yourself," Bell added.
Despite there still being a stigma associated with mental illness, the Frozen starsaid she's not ashamed to ask for help when she needs it, and takes medication to keep her anxiety and depression in check.
"If you do decide to go on a prescription to help yourself, understand that the world wants to shame you for that, but in the medical community, you would never deny a diabetic his insulin. Ever," she added. "But for some reason, when someone needs a serotonin inhibitor, they're immediately crazy or something."
"I'm so into health food and just healthy living that my girlfriends and my friends, I feel like, are a little bit over it," she said. "Because I'll walk into the room and be like, you guys, does everybody know about selenium?!"
Lauryn Hill responds to fans after showing up late to show
'I have nothing but Love and respect for my fans,' she says in a Facebook post
In a new Facebook post, Lauryn Hill explained why she showed up two hours late to a show at Atlanta’s Chastain Park Amphitheater on Friday, where she performed for only 40 minutes. “I don’t show up late to shows because I don’t care,” she writes.
Hill continued: “And I have nothing but Love and respect for my fans. The challenge is aligning my energy with the time, taking something that isn’t easily classified or contained, and trying to make it available for others. I don’t have an on/off switch.”
Hill has arrived late for shows before and addressed that in her note, writing, “For every performance that I’ve arrived to late, there have been countless others where I’ve performed in excess of two hours, beyond what I am contracted to do, pouring everything out on the stage.”
She finished by saying, “I have nothing but Love and appreciation for the fans in Atlanta, and regret not being able to give you a full show. We are figuring out a plan to make it up to you, and will announce details as soon as we have them.”
I don't show up late to shows because I don't care. And I have nothing but Love and respect for my fans. The challenge is aligning my energy with the time, taking something that isn't easily classified or contained, and trying to make it available for others. I don't have an on/off switch. I am at my best when I am open, rested, sensitive and liberated to express myself as truthfully as possible. For every performance that I've arrived to late, there have been countless others where I've performed in excess of two hours, beyond what I am contracted to do, pouring everything out on the stage.
Because I care so deeply about the artistic process, I scrutinize, have perfectionist tendencies, and want space made for spontaneity, which is not an easy process, with the many moving parts on the road. Some days we are more successful than others re time. However, the vitality that is infused into the performances is always appreciated by the audiences, who may not know exactly what it took to accomplish. What hasn't been touched upon by the media, I'm sure, are the hundreds of people who rushed the stage and stayed in excess of an hour after the show ended last night, just to connect.
Our challenge is to figure out the best way to accommodate the vitality, spontaneity, and spirit that make the performances worthwhile and special to begin with, while also making that experience available and accessible to others. If I didn't Love and respect the art, I wouldn't be doing this. The audience and I should have that in common.
My true audience knows emphatically that I care. It isn't possible to affect people in any deep and meaningful way without putting sacrificial time in.
I have nothing but Love and appreciation for the fans in Atlanta, and regret not being able to give you a full show. We are figuring out a plan to make it up to you, and will announce details as soon as we have them.
Respectfully, MLH
PJ Harvey Will Play Her First U.S. Shows in Five Years This August
PJ Harvey’s has just announced two summer tour dates in the United States, her first time here in five years. The British songstress’ concerts, which will also feature her nine-piece band, are scheduled to take place on August 16 at New York’s Terminal 5 and August 18 at Los Angeles’ Shrine Expo Hall. Tickets will go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. (in the venues’ respective time zones).
What to Watch Tonight: The Season 1 Finale ofDamien, and New Episodes of Bates Motel,Gotham, 12 Monkeys, and Person of Interest
By Andy Daglas
What to watch on Monday, May 9...
8pm, Fox Gotham Azrael’s running amok fuels Penguin’s vengeful side in “Unleashed.” Meanwhile, Hugo Strange flees the police but Bruce and Selina are on his trail.
8pm, The CW Reign Mary’s efforts to protect Elizabeth inadvertently place Gideon’s life in danger, thus maintaining the life-in-danger equilibrium of The CW universe. Elsewhere in “Strange Bedfellows,” Bash hunts down the malefactors who threatened Catherine.
8pm & 8:30pm, CBS Mike & Molly Upon realizing that Frannie doesn’t have a post-natal plan, Mike and Molly attempt to reunite her with her estranged sister in “Baby Bump.” Then in “The Adoption Option,” Mike and Molly are determined to keep everybody in line when the adoption agency schedules a home visit... thus ensuring the outbreak of mishaps and shenanigans.
8:30pm, TBS American Dad! In “Daesong Heavy Industries,” Steve’s penetrating questions about the Bible shoot holes in Stan’s faith. To regain his religious footing, he schleps the family to Korea to look into rumors of a reconstituted Noah’s Ark.
9pm, The CW Jane the Virgin Jane receives bad news about her wedding venue, even as she’s organizing Mateo’s first-birthday bash in “Chapter Forty-Three.” Elsewhere, Michael suspects that Mutter and Derek are in cahoots, Rafael fields conflicting advice about his current predicament, and Jane doubts her writing ability after Alba offers a lead on a book publisher.
9pm, A&E Bates Motel Norma and Norman try to get back on the same page in “Forever.” But Dylan and Romero have had it up to here with Norma turning a blind eye, and decide to act for Norman’s own good.
9pm, Syfy 12 Monkeys With Cole and Cassie stuck in 1944, Jones has little choice but to dispatch Ramse on a rescue mission in “Emergence.” As he seizes the chance to right his karmic scales, Jones pays a call on old Jennifer Goines to explore the true nature of time and the Twelve’s scheme to destroy it.
9pm, TBS The Detour In “The Wedding,” Robin agrees to preside over the marriage of a Southern gentleman and his Russian bride. But she quickly discovers that all is not vow-uttering and chicken-dancing at these particular nuptials.
9pm, PBS Independent Lens Peace Officer follows William “Dub” Lawrence, a former Utah sheriff who established one of the state’s first SWAT teams in the 1970s, as he tries to get the bottom of his son-in-law’s death in a 2008 incident involving that same team. The film also explores the pervasive militarization of police forces in the United States.
9pm, Fox Houdini & Doyle After an adolescent boy murders a prominent suffragette and claims to be avenging his own murder in a past life, the team must solve a decades-old killing in “A Dish of Adharma.”
9:30pm, CBS The Odd Couple The taunts of rival radio host Rich Eisen spur Oscar to begrudgingly follow his agent’s advice and shake up his show. As you might suspect from an episode called “Make Room for Dani,” that shakeup takes the form of a bigger role for Dani. On the personal front, Felix fumbles his first meeting with Emily’s mom.
SEASON 1 FINALE, 10pm, A&E Damien As Rutledge and Lyons target his associates, Damien must make the ultimate sacrifice in “Ave Satani.”
10pm, ABC Castle In “Hell to Pay,” an escaped psychiatric inmate, axe in hand, drops dead in Castle’s office. The ensuing investigation leads Castle to a novel theory about the culprit: Could it be… Satan?!
10pm, CBS Person of Interest The Machine goes on the fritz in “SNAFU,” pointing Reese and Fusco toward people not involved in crimes while shutting out Finch and Root altogether after identifying them as threats.
10pm, NBC Blindspot Hackers infiltrate the FBI and trigger a lockdown in “Of Whose Uneasy Route.” The confines quickly turn unfriendly for the team, as long-simmering tensions come to the fore. Plus the vending machines are busted so they have to split one Clif Bar, like, 17 ways.
10pm, AMC TURN: Washington’s Spies Peggy manipulates Arnold into contacting the British in “Benediction,” while Caleb lays a trap for Simcoe and Anna works to save Major Hewlett’s life.
SPECIAL TIME, 10pm, TBS Full Frontal With Samantha Bee Samantha delves into the practices of crisis pregnancy centers.
LATE-NITE: – Zooey Deschanel, Team NWTN from America’s Greatest Makers, and Kevin Gates on Conan, 11pm, TBS – Author Sherman Alexie on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 11pm, Comedy Central – Aida Rodriguez on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, 11:30pm, Comedy Central – Jodie Foster, Daveed Diggs, and Graham Nash on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Kaley Cuoco and The National on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS – Ryan Gosling, animal expert Dave Salmoni, and Musical Mashup Flo Rida Georgia Line onJimmy Kimmel Live, 11:35pm, ABC – Kenan Thompson, Beth Behrs, Thomas Rhett, and Eric Kretz on Late Night with Seth Meyers, 12:35am, NBC – Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, and Cyndi Lauper on The Late Late Show with James Corden, 12:37am, CBS
De La Soul Drops Free EP in BitTorrent Bundle 05-10-16
Last year, De La Soul raised over $600,000 on Kickstarter to fund their next album, their first since 2004's The Grind Date.
Recently, they gave an update on the project: It's called and the Anonymous Nobody, and it's out August 26 (via AOI Records). They also sharing a new EP, For Your Pain & Suffering, which is "a preview to future works and also exclusive tracks that did not make the final cut of the album.
Syfy has greenlit a pilot for Krypton, the Superman prequel set on the Man of Steel’s home planet.
The series will be executive produced by David S. Goyer (Man of Steel, Batman v Sumperman, The Dark Knight trilogy), who promised a Gotham-style prequel.
Goyer co-wrote the pilot with Ian Goldberg (One Upon a Time, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles).
The series will take place 200 years before Superman’s birth and the destruction of the planet, following Kal-El’s grandfather as he works to restore the name of the House of El and pull the planet back from disarray.
Rickey Smith, a contestant on season 2 of American Idol, was killed in a car crash on Thursday, May 5. He was 36.
According to TMZ, Smith was on the highway outside of Oklahoma City when another driver reportedly slammed into his car head-on. Police told TMZ that the other driver was booked for DUI.
Rickey Smith in 2003.Chris Polk/FilmMagic
Smith was one of the final eight competitors in 2003. He was well-known for his performance of "What the World Now Needs Is Love," and was compared to R&B great Brian McKnight during his stint on the Fox series. Ruben Studdard ultimately won that season after beating out Clay Aiken.
Paula Abdul and Rickey Smith during The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Activities Committee Presents "American Idol Live" - Arrivals at ATAS' Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood, CA, United States.Chris Polk/FilmMagic
In a 2008 interview with USA Today, Smith spoke about his life after Idol. At the time, the reality TV alum was working at a sports bar in Oklahoma City, where he was tasked with singing the birthday song to restaurant patrons.
"I don't want to sing Happy Birthday all tenderly to a grown man," Smith told the paper. "It's as embarrassing to him as it is to me."
After his season of Idol ended, Smith remained in L.A. for a few years in hopes to launch a music career. "I almost had an album," he told USA Today, "I had some good people around me … I wasn't ready to accept the fact that I had to come back and give up music. I've made peace with it, but it's still frustrating."
Despite giving up on his dreams, Smith was a star to his neighbors in his native Oklahoma. "Anywhere I go," Smith told the paper, "they tell me I'm still a celebrity. I appreciate that."
Christina Aguliera Will Perfrom With A Whitney Houston Hologram On ‘The Voice’
Back in September 2015, it was reported Whitney Houston’s estate was in talks with Hologram U.S.A to bring the vocal icon to life once again via a digital hologram, now we’re about to witness the fruition of those talks!
Entertainment Tonight has confirmed that Whitney will be resurrected in digital form on the May 24th season finale of the “The Voice.” Judge Christina Aguilera is reported to perform with the hologram.
Last week on social media was when rumors began about the top-secret performance after pics and videos surfaced of Aguilera with a Whitney hologram.
This should be interesting! I bet we’ll see a Prince hologram in coming years, too!
Shalamar Reloaded Calls Out The Internet Trolls and Haters In ‘Original’ Video
Last year it was announced original Shalamar member Jody Watley legally won the name of the group (after Howard Hewett and Jeffrey Daniel created their own version of Shalamar with another female lead, Carolyn Griffey) and created a new version of the original trio called Shalamar Reloaded (with new members Rosero McCoy and Nate Allen Smith).
In that announcement, Watley revealed she wanted to “revive the name for a newer audience, not get caught in the safety net of nostalgia.” That’s clear with their first single “Slow Dance” and this newbie called “Original.”
It’s an edgier sound and takes on haters, naysayers and trolls to establish a their identity in this next era Shalamar Reloaded is about the embark on.
Zooey Deschanel Says Prince Refused to Be on New Girl With the Kardashians
It’s no secret that Prince wasn’t the Kardashians’ biggest fan. Back in 2011, the music icon famously kicked Kim K off stage for refusing to dance with him during a Welcome 2 Tour performance. And according to Zooey Deschanel, that wasn’t the only time he showed distaste for the famous family.
The 36-year-old actress appeared on Monday’s episode of Conan and recounted the story of Prince making a cameo on New Girl. After explaining how he had reached out to her saying he’d like to be on an episode of the show, Deschanel revealed that the singer had some stipulations. Turns out, he refused to appear with the Kardashians.
“Someone was friends with some of the Kardashians and had made a phone call and they had kindly come on to shoot a kind of cameo part,” she said, regarding a party scene that featured several celebrities. “It turns out that someone from Prince’s camp said, ‘Who are the celebrities? I hope it’s not a Kardashian…Which is sad because Khloe Kardashian and Kris Jenner had very kindly come in and shot the scene…I felt so bad cause obviously everyone had gone out of there way to be there on that day but Prince was running the show.”
The producers even went so far as to burn any evidence that the reality stars had been on set.
What to Watch Tonight: The Season Finales of New Girl, The Grinder, and Grandfathered, and Kevin Smith's Episode of The Flash
By Andy Daglas
What to watch on Tuesday, May 10...
12:01am, Hulu The Mindy Project After an Indian man claims that Mindy is Indian on the outside and white on the inside, she begins hanging out with more Indian people to see if he’s right. Elsewhere in “Bernardo & Anita,” Jody and Morgan fight over a woman.
SEASON 5 FINALE, 8pm & 9pm, Fox New Girl Nick and Winston help Schmidt rewrite his vows in “Wedding Eve,” while Jess ropes the gang into a game of True American to forestall a potentially awkward conversation with Sam. And hey, Coach and Regan are back! Then at 9pm, “Landing Gear” caps the season with Cece and Schmidt tying the knot—assuming that Schmidt’s last-minute effort to persuade Cece’s mom to attend doesn’t cause him to miss the big day himself.
8pm, ABC Fresh Off the Boat Louis gives Emery some cool-kid pointers in “Gotta Be Me,” while Jessica shows her fun-mom side when she chaperones Eddie’s field trip to Colonial Floridatowne.
8pm, The CW The Flash The now Flash-less Team Flash fends off old foe Girder in “The Runaway Dinosaur” (directed by Kevin Smith and written by Zack Stentz). Elsewhere, the now Team-Flash-less Flash fights to escape whatever parallel universe/dimension/insert-comic-booky-premise-here he’s stuck in for the moment.
8pm, CBS NCIS With one of NCIS’s own clinging to life in the ICU, the rest of the team joins forces with the FBI and MI6 to hunt down the escaped British spy who’s responsible in “Dead Letter.”
8pm, PBS Independent Lens The Armor of Light profiles evangelist minister and anti-abortion activist Rob Schenck, who angers many of his conservative allies when he takes a stand against gun-rights absolutism. He’s joined by Lucy McBath, a woman whose son was fatally shot in an incident involving Florida’s “stand your ground” law.
SEASON 1 FINALE, 8:30pm, Fox Grandfathered Jimmy and Sara consider giving their relationship another go in “The Cure,” but Sara is reluctant to risk getting hurt again. Meanwhile, Gerald concocts an elaborate proposal for Vanessa.
8:30pm, ABC The Real O’Neals Pushed by Eileen to join the workforce, Kenny becomes a tutor in “The Real Other Woman.” But when he develops a bond with his tutee’s mom, Eileen grows jealous. In other parent-child tension, Pat’s desire to be a fun dad inspires a few poor decisions.
9pm, ABC Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Daisy’s deadly prophecy nears its fruition (and hey, with the season finale right around the corner—funny how that works out) in “Emancipation.” In more present-day pressures, the events of Captain America: Civil War have ramifications for S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans.
9pm, NBC Chicago Med April and Dr. Halstead disagree over the best course of action for an alcoholic, homeless man suffering from a broken leg. Elsewhere in “Withdrawal,” Dr. Manning continues to mourn the loss of her husband, Dr. Charles and Sarah treat a pair of elderly women with identical symptoms, and Halstead contemplates a job offer in the Golden State.
SEASON 1 FINALE, 9:30pm, Fox The Grinder Dean Sr.’s malpractice trial comes to its shocking conclusion in “Full Circle,” complete with shocking twists and the shocking return of a special guest star. Can Dean’s grinding and Stewart’s grudging tolerance of said grinding uncover the shocking truth? The answer may shock you.
10pm, ABC BattleBots: The Gears Awaken A preview of the second season of the strongest proof yet that ABC has given up on programming the Tuesday 10pm slot. Twelve robots will butt CPUs, with four of them earning the final spots in the season’s field of 48 competitors.
10pm, NBC Chicago Fire In “Where the Collapse Started,” the team races to rescue more than a dozen people from a collapsed building. In less life-or-death matters, Dawson gets some help in her quest to foster Louie, Otis meets his temporary medical-leave replacement, sparks (the good kind) fly between Severide and Kidd, and sparks (the bad kind) fly between Casey and Antonio.
10pm, CBS Person of Interest Reese’s latest POI has ties to his former CIA cronies in “Truth Be Told,” putting his cover at risk. Unless this was just the Machine’s way of trying to nudge him into patching things up with some old buddies? The Machine’s always up to tricks like that, the big softie.
10pm, MTV Awkward. Jenna and Luke kick things up a notch in “Living in Sin.” Also escalating, though less happily, is Tamara’s debt.
10pm, AMC The Night Manager Roper brings Pine into his inner circle and kicks Corky to the curb. Meanwhile, Burr suspects a leak and fears for her source’s safety.
10pm, Freeform Stitchers To determine the perpetrator behind a plane crash in “Red Eye,” Kirsten must stitch into multiple victims. Would that be called a cross-stitch? I’m not up on the industry parlance. On the personal front, Cameron fears how Kirsten will react to his relationship with Nina, Camille lends a hand to Linus, and Liam continues to stir things up.
SERIES PREMIERE, 10:30pm, USA First Impressions With Dana Carvey America’s best amateur impressionists compete in a series of improv games, with Dana Carvey on hand as the “expert-in-residence.” The first celebrity guest is The Dana Carvey Show veteran Steve Carell, who I hear has gone on to something of a movie career. Freddie Prinze Jr. hosts.
10:30pm, MTV Faking It Amy and Sabrina’s growing bond spurs Karma to seek proof that her old pal’s new gal is fully mal. Elsewhere in “Exposed,” Liam tries to fix up Lauren while Shane seeks advice to fix a problem.
LATE-NITE: – Mindy Kaling, seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones, and Charles Bradley on Conan, 11pm, TBS – Joe Morton on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 11pm, Comedy Central – Lecrae on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, 11:30pm, Comedy Central – David Spade, Laura Bush & Jenna Bush Hager, and Tegan and Sara on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Chloë Moretz, Katie Couric, and physicist Brian Greene on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS – Russell Crow, Mike Birbiglia, and Dead & Company on Jimmy Kimmel Live, 11:35pm, ABC – Kaley Cuoco, Michael Ian Black, Helen Oyeyemi, and Eric Kretz on Late Night with Seth Meyers, 12:35am, NBC – Jane Lynch, Rob Reiner, Thomas Lennon, and Benjamin Clementine on The Late Late Show with James Corden, 12:37am, CBS
Updates / Additions: Lucy Woodward, Elizabeth Cook, etc.
Updates / Additions (as of May 4, 2016) … this will be updated throughout the day as new releases come in, so check back frequently:
New Releases
“You Ain’t Never Been to Texas,” Johnny Lee – June 3
“Exodus of Venus,” Elizabeth Cook – June 17
“It’s Not About the Witches,” T.O.L.D. – June 17
“Centres,” Ian William Craig – July 8
“Till They Bang on the Door,” Lucy Woodward – July 15
“Into the Night,” Jeremy & The Harlequins – Aug. 5
$5 Albums (Nirvana, Michael Jackson & more) … $0.69 Song Store … Band T-Shirts … Best Sellers
Reissues
“Instant Replay – The Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition,” The Monkees – June 24
Better-Late-Than-Never Additions
“Sue Records’ Greatest Hits,” various artists (MP3; 84 songs; Capitol, April 29)
“Patty Duke Sings Folk Songs: Time To Move On,” Patty Duke (MP3; 1968 album; Capitol, April 22)
“The Complete Reprise Singles,” The Electric Prunes (MP3; 24 tracks; Rhino / Warner, April 22)
“The Complete Atco & Loma Recordings,” Linda Jones (MP3; 21 songs; Rhino / Warner)
“The Complete Atco/Atlantic Singles Vol. 1: 1960-1966,” Ben E. King (MP3; 50 songs; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“The Complete Atlantic Recordings,” Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles (MP3; 40 songs; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“The Complete Atlantic Singles,” Barbara Lewis (MP3; 34 songs; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“The Complete Atlantic Recordings,” Jackie Moore (MP3; 30 songs; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“Come For a Dream: The Complete U.K. Sessions 1970-1971,” Dusty Springfield (MP3; 17 tracks; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“The Complete Atlantic Recordings,” Bettye Swann (MP3; 23 tracks; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“The Atlantic Years,” The Sweet Inspirations (MP3; 37 songs; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“A Little Is Better Than Nada: Prime Cuts 1990-1996,” Texas Tornados (MP3; 39 songs; Rhino / Warner, April 22)
“Full Time Woman: The Lost Cotillion Album,” Irma Thomas (MP3; previously unreleased material from 1971-72; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“The Complete Atco Singles,” Vanilla Fudge (MP3; 19 songs; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“The Complete Atco Recordings,” Dee Dee Warwick (MP3; 37 songs; Rhino / Atlantic, April 22)
“Introspect” (MP3; 1968 album, with two bonus tracks), “Games People Play” (MP3; 1969 album, with one bonus track), “Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home?” (MP3; 1969 album), “Joe South”(MP3; 1971 album, with one bonus track), “So the Seeds Are Growing” (MP3; 1971 album), “A Look Inside” (MP3; 1972 album), Joe South (Capitol, April 15)
“Present Company,” Janis Ian (MP3; 1971 album; Capitol, April 8)
Lera Lynn's latest album is titled 'Resistor.' Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Americana Music
The last time we saw Lera Lynn, she was playing a burned-out lounge singer in True Detective's second season, strumming songs like "My Least Favorite Life" while Vince Vaughan and Colin Farrell hashed out their dirty dealings in a nearby booth. For fans of The Avenues — Lynn's 2014 release, filled with layers of lush, gorgeous Americana — this new sound was something different. Dark. Dangerous, even.
Lynn narrows her focus yet again with this year's Resistor. Recorded during the dead of winter with co-producer Joshua Grange, the 10-track album is at once spacey and specific, with Lynn and Grange playing every instrument themselves. Baritone guitars, keyboards and looped drums fill the background, while Lynn's voice — a natural descendent of Hope Sandoval and Margo Timmins' woozy wails — wafts into the spotlight, singing songs that occupy the outer limits of Americana and indie rock.
Rolling Stone Country sat down with Lynn at a Nashville bar to talk about recording, resisting and why making music is like making hash.
For an album recorded in the same neighborhood as Music Row,Resistor does things a bit differently. It's not your typical Nashville project.
I don't think I was trying to give the middle finger to Music Row, necessarily. We just didn't need to do it the way they do it, and we were lucky to get to record everything ourselves. Usually, when you're making a record, dollars are flying out the window and the clock is ticking and your players are asking you if they can go home yet. With Resistor, Josh and I were just punishing ourselves, spending hour upon hour in there.
Did that insular approach affect your songwriting, too? It did. With The Avenues, I feel like my wiring was more open. There was more room. It would've been easy for any guitar player to step in and play some cool shit on that record while still serving the song. I think that may be a characteristic of Americana music in general. But with the songs onResistor, everything was so succinct and deliberate. I wanted the instrumental parts to be just as important and supportive as the words themselves. It wasn't like, "Now there's singing, and now there's some instrumental stuff, and now there's singing again." It was more cohesive.
It sounds like you're crystallizing your sound. From The Avenues toTrue Detective to Resistor, you're learning exactly what sort of music you want to make. I think of it as a series of screen filters or something. Like when you're making hash! [Laughs] You get a bigger screen, then a smaller one, then a smaller one, until eventually all that's left are the crystals. The stuff that falls through the finest screen is the stuff you want to keep, and I feel like that's what time does to a musician. So I made metaphorical hash with this album.
When someone redefines their sound with each album, it can throw listeners for a loop. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, right?
I don't think so. For me, the artists who don't make the same record twice are the most interesting. There's always going to be a common voice running through someone's catalog. It's not like Ray Charles's country album was so incredibly different from his jazz and soul music. It was still his voice and his perspective. But I do think there are some people who really do want bands to continue making an extension of the same thing over and over again.
That problem is very prevalent on big labels, too. Once your team learns how to market you, they don't necessarily want to change their strategy to suit a new sound. Right; they'd rather be on autopilot.
Is that why you've continued to release your own music independently? After the success of True Detective, you must've had offers. There were some handsome opportunities, but there's always a big price to pay. You have to answer to someone else for your own creative output, and they find a way to get a piece of everything. Having struggled as long as I have to get to this point, why shouldn't I just keep pushing ahead? Slowly by surely, it's getting easier. Honestly, aside from some extra money and a little bit more manpower, I don't know what working with a major label would do for us.
Your song "Drive" almost feels like a mission statement for that sort of independence.
That song was about me learning through experience how cutthroat the music business can be. I think every artist has this fantasy that their art is going to be recognized. I also think every artist or musician has to confront the fact that things don't really come to you. You have to go and get them. You spend a lot of time thinking that it's over. Just doubting yourself, you know? At least I do. It's a daily thing, where you feel both ends of the spectrum. Within four hours, you go from saying, "This is gong nowhere, I should quit," to something like, "Hey, it's cool! Who cares if I don't make any money?" So that song was me rooting for myself.
When Devika Bhise was cast in her first major film, the 25-year-old New York-native didn't even have an agent. She found herself in remarkably good company, though; directed by Matt Brown, The Man Who Knew Infinity also features Jeremy Irons, Dev Patel, Stephen Fry, Toby Jones, and Jeremy Northam. After screening at film festivals like Toronto, Tribeca, and Zurich, it is due out in select cinemas this week. "I came back from India after I shot the movie and was like, ‘I just shot a big movie with big stars, hello?'" Bhise explains over the phone. "You expect your phone to ring or something, but that's never how it works," she continues. "Being an actor is about being proactive 100 percent of the time."
Based on the life 20th-century Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, The Man Who Knew Infinity is not a particularly happy story. A prodigious autodidact from a small town in Southeast India, Ramanujan (played by Patel) left his wife Janaki (Bhise) and mother behind to study mathematics at Cambridge University with famous English intellectuals such as G.H. Hardy (Irons). Not everyone at Cambridge was as welcoming as Hardy, and Ramanujan soon found himself isolated from his family, friends, and culture, in a country embroiled in World War One.
NAME: Devika Bhise
AGE: 25
HOMETOWN: New York, NY
CHILDHOOD GOALS: When I was growing up, I watched a lot of Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, and Cary Grant movies— all of those older movies. I wanted to be Audrey when I was young. I wanted to be an actress, but in the same way little girls want to be princesses. I don't think I looked at the actualities of what that would mean, I just wanted to be a star! I used to perform for my parents all the time with my cousins and I always did school plays, but it never really occurred to anyone for me to go into professional acting. [My school] Brearley is a tough place as well, so it's not conducive to leaving and acting on your own while you're in school.
FIRST FILM: When I was in 10th grade at Brearley, I was in my first movie, which I got so randomly. It was called The Accidental Husband. I was contacted by the director Griffin Dunne—he actually saw me dancing at Lincoln Center. I've been doing Indian classical dance since I was three and my mom is an Indian classical dancer as well, so I was often on her stage when she had performances. He saw me perform and I was called in for an audition. I had never auditioned for any real thing ever, so I went in and they were like, "Headshot and résumé." I was like, "What?" I got my mom to email them a picture of me, which was not a headshot. I got that role and it was just an incredible experience. Griffin was such a giving, caring director, who spends time with his actors, which is really important. He really made me feel at home and comfortable with the role. It was a very small part, which got cut down to an even smaller part, but just being in that movie was a great experience and I got into SAG, which I thought was very, very cool. COLLEGE DAYS: When I graduated from high school, I didn't want to go to college. In my head I was like, "I'm 18. I'm so old. I have to start acting now otherwise it won't ever happen." And my parents were like, "Let's slow down for a second. You have to go to college." I was choosing between NYU and Middlebury and Vassar—schools with known acting programs. I got into Hopkins with a Hodson Trust scholarship, which is a $100,000 scholarship for people who they think have done something creative. At the time, I'd made this half an hour documentary about hijras, which are transgender prostitutes in India. I wrote about it in my application and they thought it was cool. Then John Astin, who was the head of the program at Hopkins, called me. He was Gomez Adams in the original Addams Family. He's a big actor of other calibers, but that's how everybody knows him. He took me out to lunch and we talked about the program and he was like, "I'll mentor you, you can pick your curriculum"—he kind of sold the school for me. My parents were like, "If you go to college, afterwards we'll support you if you still want to act, but you need to have an education—a BA in something—so if you change your mind, you're not screwed." At the time I didn't really understand, but I am happy that I went to college in hindsight.
RESEARCHING THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT: It started as this senior project in high school; instead of your classes you spend all your time on one thing and present whatever you've done. I was going to write a paper originally about this community [in India] hijras. They live on the outskirts of society. People think they have mystical powers, that they can curse you. They don't interact with anyone except their own communities. When they're younger, they work as prostitutes, because they can't get any other job. It's quite tragic. It's how society has shaped them. There are a lot of apartment complexes with just hijras and nobody else, because in India it's such a stigma that they don't live amongst other people. Even my mother, who's an educated person, had a little bit of this fear and stigma towards them. It was interesting to me; I just didn't understand it, coming from [New York]. There's no equivalent community here. So I was going to write this paper, and then I was in India the August before my senior year and just took a camera and started recording everything when I was doing research. My parents were so unhappy with this whole thing because I was going to the red light district of Bombay, and all these sketchy, shady areas to meet hijras and talk to them. The hjiras [I met] actually gave me a lot of information. They were as interested in me as I was in them. I didn't have any stigma against them. I hugged one of them and she started crying and she was like, "No one's ever hugged or touched me non-sexually in my life," and it was just such a heartbreaking thing. All of them are young—the ones I talked to were 18. They basically leave home and join this community and they don't have any other options. So they ended up telling me a lot of things that they wouldn't share. The thing about the hijdra community is that they're very secretive. They have traditions and things that they do that they just do not share with the outside world, including how they undergo castration. It's very gory stuff. But they told me all of it, because I think they just didn't know what to make of me. I was this American, I was speaking Hindi in this strange accent. Then I ended up putting it all together and it became this movie. My mom was like, "You should email it in to some festival." I was like, "No, no, no." But then it got into the New York Independent Film Festival and it won the award for Best Social Documentary, which was very cool and unexpected. It's not something I ever really planned to do it just ended up happening because I had all this footage.
GETTING AN AGENT: I didn't have an agent for a very long time. When I graduated, I did this thing where you meet casting directors and take classes with them and just hope they call you in on your own. Then I got cast in this Off-Broadway play through that means called And Miles to Go, which was a beautiful, beautiful play and new as well. It was an interesting experience to be working with the playwright. Every rehearsal and preview, he would change entire chunks of dialogue because he would see how it was working. The play actually did really well, and my manager went to watch it, and after the play I signed with her. I was with just her for a while, and then I only got an agent to come on board, like, a year ago. She acted like an agent for a while—she sent me out for a lot of big projects. It's so hard to get an agent in New York. It's nuts. Every time something happens, you can't expect the world to come knocking on your door.
STAGE TO SCREEN: While I was in college, I was in a play non-affiliated with Hopkins. It was a professional play in Baltimore called The Partition. It's the same story about Ramanujan, but the play adds a little bit of this mystical element to it—it deals with the ghosts of past mathematicians and my character was actually the goddess who they talk about a little bit in the movie, who Ramanujan believed wrote mathematical equations on his tongue. It was that kind of a story; it wasn't much of a biopic. It was about having fun and taking creative license. I was the only woman in the play; Ramanujan's wife and mother didn't have a role in the play. It started with him in England, actually, so they didn't have the preamble of him being in India.
When the producers were researching all the stories and plays that had been about this topic, I guess they heard about me through a couple of reviews that they had read about the play. They got in touch with me and then I met Matt [Brown], who's the director, and I did a screen test and talked to him about my experience with Indian classical dance, which from the part of India that Ramanujan is from as well. They actually wanted to cast a lot of Indians to make sure it was authentic, and I was this New York girl strolling in being like, "No, I can do it better." After a few screen tests—they were casting out of India as well so I had to get through that hurdle—I got the role. THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY: They basically shot the Cambridge stuff for a month and then Dev and I were in India with Arundathi Nag, who plays my mother-in-law, and a few other of the Indian actors. They only brought a really small crew to India, I think because they couldn't pay for everyone to come. So Jeremy [Irons] was not in India, but I've interacted with him a lot because of film Toronto and Zurich and all those festivals we did last year, and he's just lovely, lovely, lovely. But Dev and I were really the ones in India doing the main scenes. Stephen Fry was in India for two days. When I met him I was so in awe.
Courtesy of FXX
You're the Worst, The Strain Get Summer Return Dates at FX Networks
Make your brunch reservations now: Round 3 of Sunday Funday is officially a go.
FXX comedyYou’re the Worst will return for its 13-episode third season onWednesday, Aug. 31, at 10/9c, the cabler announced Tuesday.
Also set for a late-summer launch is Season 3 of The Strain, which begins on Sunday, Aug. 28, at 10/9c on FX. In the supernatural thriller’s third go-round, the people of New York City must fight for survival on their own — but will humans or strigoi win the battle?
FX previously announced return dates for Tyrant (July 6) and Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll(June 30).
Kiefer Sutherland's POTUS DramaDesignated Survivor Ordered to Series at ABC
TVLine has learned that the network has formally handed a 13-episode series order to Designated Survivor, a conspiracy-drama that stars the 24 vet as an unlikely POTUS. The early pickup (ABC doesn’t unveil their fall lineup until May 17) would seem to confirm buzz that the project tested extremely well.
Sutherland plays Tom Kirkman, a lower cabinet member who unexpectedly becomes president after a devastating attack on Washington. Season 1 will find him struggling to prevent the country and his own family from falling into chaos, as he is thrust into one of the most difficult presidencies in history.
The cast also includes Natascha McElhone, Maggie Q, Kal Penn, Adan Canto, Italia Ricci, LaMonica Garrett and Tanner Buchanan.
CBS' BrainDead: Aaron Tveit Issues a Disturbing Warning in New Promo
Aaron Tveit has some sound advice for Mary Elizabeth Winstead in TVLine’s exclusive promo for CBS’ BrainDead: “If I were you, I’d run.”
We can’t say we disagree with his words of wisdom, and neither will you after seeing what’s in store for Winstead’s character on the Good Wife creators’ twisted political dramedy. In this promo alone, she’s mocked, threatened and outnumbered by… well, we’re not quite sure. And something tells us that ambiguity is what’s going to make BrainDead so enjoyable to watch.
Premiering June 13 at 10/9c, BrainDead stars Winstead as a fresh-faced Hill staffer who discovers two things: the government has stopped working, and ‘bugs’ are eating the brains of Congress members. Additional cast members include Danny Pino (Law & Order: SVU), Tony Shalhoub (Monk), Nikki James (The Good Wife) and Johnny Ray Gill (Rectify).
What to Watch Tonight: The Debut of Chelsea Handler's Netflix Series, the Backdoor Pilot forChicago Justice, and The Americans
By Andy Daglas
What to watch on Wednesday, May 11...
SERIES PREMIERE, 12:01am Pacific, Netflix Chelsea Chelsea Handler hosts Netflix’s first semi-nightly half-hour talk show, with new episodes airing every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
12:01am Pacific, Hulu The Path Eddie takes Hawk on a journey of spiritual enlightenment, which may or may not be a euphemism for something. Elsewhere in "The Shore," Cal reckons with his violent side, Nicole struggles in her labor, and Sarah busts out a miracle to save the child.
8pm, The CW Arrow Word of Darhk’s next play spurs Felicity to seek help from her father in “Monument Point.” And since Noah’s stopping by for the week, he may as well have a heart-to-heart with Ollie that unsettles the Emerald Archer.
8pm, Fox Rosewood In “Keratin & Kissyface,” Rosewood and Villa navigate numerous twists and turns in the case of a murdered ATF agent who was working undercover—and who has a connection to a cold case.
8pm, ABC The Middle Sue and Axl refuse to be constrained by a curfew while staying at home for the summer in “Find My Hecks,” so Frankie devises a cunning plan to track them secretly. Meanwhile, Brick is determined to sniff out his competition for class valedictorian.
8:30pm, ABC The Goldbergs Beverly and Lainey, who both detest Barry’s favorite shirt, join forces to rid the world of the offending garment in “Big Orange.” When he realizes it’s gone, Barry enlists his siblings to help him get to the bottom of the matter. Also in a destructive mood this week is Murray, whose plan to tear down the family treehouse dismays Adam.
9pm, Fox Empire Hakeem struggles to incorporate his fiancée Laura into his family and his career, while Cookie comes clean to Jamal about Freda’s father’s fate. Elsewhere in “Rise by Sin,” Jamal makes a devastating sacrifice for Lucious.
9pm, The CW Supernatural In “All in the Family,” Amara gives Dean a glimpse of how she’s tormenting Lucifer/Castiel. Snicker-snagging? Tickle torture? Fuller House binge on an endless loop? Whatever the case, it’s got the Winchesters worried enough that they vow to rescue Cas from her clutches.
9pm, ABC Modern Family Manny convinces the family to ride the rails to Dede’s wedding in “Crazy Train.” The travel itinerary includes Claire and Mitchell working on their wedding toast, Phil and Cameron encountering a favorite author on the train, Luke and Manny on the lookout for ladies, and Alex being swept up in the romance of the railways.
9pm, NBC Law & Order: SVU In “Assaulting Reality,” the squad investigates a reality dating show when one of its contestants alleges that she was raped. But the producers decide to make Benson and company a part of the show.
9pm, PBS NOVA “Bombing Hitler’s Supergun” chronicles a 1943 Nazi plan to barrage London with “superguns” housed in an enormous underground complex in northern France, along with the Allied missions to take out these massive munitions.
9pm, IFC Maron “The Field Trip” sends Mark back to his old stomping grounds on an outing with his rehab group.
9:30pm, ABC Black-ish With Bow and Ruby laid low by the flu, it’s up to Dre to keep the Johnson household together in “Daddy Dre-Care.” It’s not long before the kids are fed up with his way of doing things, and begging their mom to retake the reins.
10pm, FX The Americans Elizabeth is tasked with completing a painful operation in “The Day After.” Even more painful than the Water on the Knee one, and everybody knows what a nightmare that can be.
10pm, NBC Chicago P.D. The backdoor pilot for the next Chicago series, “Justice” finds a hooded assailant wounding Roman, and in her subsequent pursuit Burgess shoots the person she believes is the suspect. But no gun is found at the scene, and the person she shot turns out to be a teenage honor student who may have suffered permanent injuries, setting off a firestorm of protests and an official investigation.
10pm, Sundance The Last Panthers A connection between Naomi and Milan comes to light in “Angel of Death,” as a precarious cease fire settles over war-torn Bosnia.
10pm, ABC Nashville Juliette reunites with her old co-star Noah West and later meets Kesha while on the Oscar campaign trail in “After You’ve Gone.” Elsewhere, Rayna makes another attempt to shield Maddie from the pitfalls that endanger young artists, Scarlett bristles as Gunnar bonds with Autumn, and Will reels from a loss.
10pm, WGN America Underground The day of reckoning is at hand in “The White Whale,” and everyone must pay for their sins. Of course, sins were a lot cheaper in the 19th century then they are today. Why, in those days you could pick up Wrath, Gluttony, Pride, and a dollop of Lust for one thin nickel!
LATE-NITE: – Jodie Foster, Gad Elmaleh, and Mike Posner on Conan, 11pm, TBS – Nate Silver on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 11pm, Comedy Central – Angie Martinez on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, 11:30pm, Comedy Central – Jada Pinkett Smith, Andy Cohen, and Gallant on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Kate Beckinsale, B.J. Novak, and Desiigner on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS – Alec Baldwin, Riley Keough, and Cole Swindell on Jimmy Kimmel Live, 11:35pm, ABC – Anderson Cooper, Cush Jumbo, Walk The Moon, and Eric Kretz on Late Night with Seth Meyers, 12:35am, NBC – Simon Helberg, Chloë Moretz, and Adam Pally on The Late Late Show with James Corden, 12:37am, CBS
Not our words - those of Bryan Cranston, who's just been announced as an executive producer and cast member for Electric Dreams: The World of Philip K. Dick, a new drama series based on the sci-fi shorts of the American author.
Commissioned by Channel 4 and made by Sony Pictures Television, the brief for the seriessounds comparable to the format of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror: each episode in the ten-part series will adapt one of Dick's sci-fi shorts for a "sharp, thrilling standalone drama adapted and contemporised for global audiences by a creative team of British and American writers".
Ronald D. Moore - who's produced sci-fi heavyweights Battlestar Galactica and time-travel drama Outlander - is signed on as writer and executive producer, partnering with Michael Dinner (Justified, Masters of Sex).
"We are so thrilled to be able to explore and expand upon the evergreen themes found in the incredible work of this literary master," said Cranston in a Channel 4 press release.
"As a long-time fan of Philip K. Dick’s work, it’s a tremendous honour and thrill to be part of this series," said Ronald D. Moore. "His short stories are a treasure-trove of material for artists to draw from and I think this will be a very exciting project."
It could be that Channel 4 is preparing the series to replace a hole left by Black Mirror'sswitch to Netflix. Negotiations between Channel 4 and Endemol Shine apparently failed to come to an agreement that would give Channel 4 a "first look option" to premiere the show in the UK.
With a host of Dick's short stories to pick from - including The Minority Report and Second Variety - we're certain the new team will be able to produce something rivalling Netflix's new Black Mirror.
What to Watch Tonight: The Season Finales of The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, and Scandal, and the Season Premiere of Steven Universe
By Andy Daglas
What to watch on Thursday, May 12...
6pm, Cartoon Network The Powerpuff Girls Blossom is determined to impress a famous scientist who visits the school in “Blue Ribbon Blues.”
SEASON 3 PREMIERE, 7pm, Cartoon Network Steven Universe “Super Watermelon Island” reveals the fate of all the Watermelon Stevens, and “Gem Drill” sends Steven on a subterranean voyage.
SEASON 9 FINALE, 8pm, CBS The Big Bang Theory Worlds collide when Leonard’s recently divorced parents and Sheldon’s mom visit at the same time in “The Convergence Convergence.” In shadowier conflicts, Howard and Raj grow paranoid when the feds contact them about their guidance system.
8pm, Fox Bones In “The Fight in the Fixer,” the team investigates the murder of a P.I. whose shady operations made him many an enemy. On the personal front, Aubrey receives a lead on his father’s whereabouts as well as a date request from Karen Delfs, while Brennan and Booth peruse Christine’s very first report card.
8pm, ABC Grey’s Anatomy “At Last” sees things between Owen and Amelia heating up, possibilities between Alex and Jo clearing up, and tensions between Callie and Arizona flaring up.
8pm, The CW DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Rip and Rory get the heebie jeebies in the vicinity of the Time Masters, but for very different reasons. Elsewhere in “Destiny,” Sara takes the helm of the Waverider, Kendra and Carter are reunited, and Snart realizes he might be cut out for a white hat after all.
8:30pm, CBS The Odd Couple In “A Dinner Engagement,” Felix arranges a birthday repast for Emily in hopes of ending her run of bad fortune on her big day. Meanwhile, Charlotte introduces Oscar to his son Evan, presenting another obstacle in their relationship.
SEASON 5 FINALE, 9pm, ABC Scandal The candidates tap their running mates in “That’s My Girl,” but the biggest impact on the election may come from the incriminating information that falls into Cyrus’s hands. Elsewhere, Olivia lands in a fraught situation herself.
9pm, The CW The 100 “Perverse Instantiation: Part One” sets up next week’s season finale with Clarke coming across hope in an unexpected place, and Allie bringing her cunning plan one step closer to fruition.
9pm, NBC The Blacklist In “Alexander Kirk,” the team’s quest for vengeance leads them closer to the criminal mastermind who’s responsible for recent devastation. But to take him down, they’ll have to work within reasonable and necessary boundaries expected of those who uphold the public trust outside the law.
9pm, CBS Mom After hearing conflicting accounts of Violet and Gregory’s breakup, Christy and Bonnie try to piece together the truth in “Mahjong Sally and the Ecstasy.”
SEASON 5 FINALE, 9:30pm, CBS 2 Broke Girls In “And the Big Gamble,” Max and Caroline discover that Han is in deep debt to a criminal element, which leaves him in deep something else. Can the diner crew extricate him from this mess?
10pm, FX Archer Violence erupts and the relative sexiness of the gang is debated, not necessarily in that order, in “Double Indecency.”
10pm, BBC America Orphan Black “Human Raw Material” finds Sarah enjoying a relaxing day off to reconnect with Kira, and some solid mother-daughter bonding is just what wait, nope, never mind, she’s gotta do some investigating and discredit Felix’s new connections instead. That sounds more like it. Elsewhere, Cosima and Donnie dig deeper into the Neolutionist fertility research center, which leads one of them to a familiar face and the other to a stunning discovery.
10pm, Spike Lip Sync Battle Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez and former Emmytone Wilmer Valderrama take the stage of combat.
10pm, Comedy Central Inside Amy Schumer Amy takes up the sax, tries to buy a shirt, and wins the U.S. presidency in “Sociopath.”
10pm, CBS Rush Hour Carter and Lee foil a daring armored truck heist in “Badass Cop.” But the thrill of victory doesn’t last long, as they discover it was merely the rehearsal for a much grander crime.
10pm, ABC The Catch Ben helps Rhys devise a con that will spirit Leah Wells out of FBI custody in “The Package.” In other illicit escape plans, Sophie asks Alice and the team to help a friend get out of an onerous contract, and along the way Sophie proves plenty resourceful herself.
11pm, History Join or Die with Craig Ferguson Tim Meadows, comedian Ian Abramson, and biologist Dan Riskin join Craig to consider history’s dumbest mistake. Top contenders include the Athenians’ Sicilian expedition during the Peloponnesian War, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and NBC moving Jay Leno to 10pm.
LATE-NITE: – Ewan McGregor, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Matt Donaher on Conan, 11pm, TBS – B.J. Novak on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, 11pm, Comedy Central – Audra McDonald on The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, 11:30pm, Comedy Central – Drake, Megyn Kelly, Meghan Trainor, and Emily Wells on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Ryan Gosling & Russell Crowe and Animal Collective on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS – Kerry Washington & Shonda Rhimes, Rob Gronkowski, and Goo Goo Dolls on Jimmy Kimmel Live, 11:35pm, ABC – Judd Apatow, Joe Pera, and Eric Kretz on Late Night with Seth Meyers, 12:35am, NBC – Mindy Kaling and Gordon Ramsay on The Late Late Show with James Corden, 12:37am, CBS
'Enjoy the ride': Corinne Bailey Rae shares her new philosophy on life after pain of losing first husband eight years ago
By RACHEL MCGRATH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 09:29 EST, 12 May 2016 | UPDATED: 12:34 EST, 12 May 2016
At 29, she lost her first husband to an accidental drugs overdose just weeks after winning her first Grammy.
Now, eight years later, Corinne Bailey Rae is sharing what she's learned from that tragedy as she promotes her third album The Heart Speaks In Whispers.
'Life is full of things that you can't predict. Don't spend time wishing your life away, waiting for things to be perfect,' the British singer tells People. 'You're here right now. Enjoying the ride is very important to me.'
+5
Living in the present: Corinne Bailey Rae says her new album The Heart Speaks In Whispers is about listening to the inner voice and celebrating 'now'. She's pictured in Manchester, England, on Thursday
The 37-year-old added: 'I used to plan a lot. But I've realized the vanity in that.'
Following the death of Jason Rae, Corinne says she felt as if she had 'lost everything.'
'I was in so much pain. I was numb,she explained. 'You feel like the pain will last forever, like, 'What's the point of any of it?''
+5
Tragedy: In 2008, the British singer lost her first husband and fellow musician Jason Rae to an accidental overdose of alcohol and methadone. They're pictured in 2007
Gradually, though, she moved forward, finding love again with musician and producer Steve Brown, a friend she'd known for years, and allowing her personal grief to inspire her music.
The couple, who wed in 2013, collaborated on her new album that's released Friday.
'It's all about listening to the inner voice,' she said on BBC Breakfast on Thursday.
The first single from the collection of new songs in called Stop Where You Are, a musical exhortation to live in the present.
Sneaky peak: Corinne Bailey Rae preps for BBC Two
+5
New perspective: The 37-year-old R&B singer, pictured performing in London last month, said her new album was inspired by the grief she felt at her husband's death and her realization of the 'preciousness of life'
+5
New love: In 2013, the Grammy winner married musician and producer Steve Brown who worked with her on her third album that's released Friday. They're pictured in 2015 in a photo posted to social media
Corinne explained: 'There's so many times in life when we can hold our happiness away from ourselves... when I get that job, I'll be happier; when I get a partner I'll be happier; when I lose that weight, when I go on holiday....'
'All the time we're thinking about this time in the future that we'll be happy.'
'I really like the idea of ritualizing the present and celebrating now,' the singer said. 'You can miss your own life if you're always planning ahead.'
+5
Enjoying the ride: Corinne said she's learned that it's easy to push happiness away by focusing on the future while not appreciating what you have now
Florence Welch on Covering Green Day, Quitting Drinking
Florence and the Machine singer also recalls youthful fashion mishaps, sharing a bill with Adele
BY DAVID BROWNE May 11, 2016
Beyoncé isn't the only artist who channeled a recent rocky patch in her private life into an ambitious multimedia project. In April, Florence and the Machine released The Odyssey, a 47-minute film featuring songs from last year's How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful – an attempt, according toFlorence Welch, to make sense of "the car crash of a relationship breakup I was going through." Welch recently spoke to Rolling Stone about somewhat mellower topics, including her skate-punk past, why she loved Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child and when she knew it was time to stop partying.
What's the most British thing about you? I'm attracted to things that aren't simply pretty – there has to be an element of darkness to it, like the beauty of the smog. That comes from growing up in London. I also find it very hard to say something intimate without following it with a joke. "Quickly, make it sarcastic! Pull it back!" I don't know if that's a British thing or just a Welch family thing.
What was your favorite book as a child? Little House on the Prairie. For Christmas, my aunt gave me and my sister little custom smock prairie dresses, and we would make a prairie in our house, with a lake made out of towels. I may have sensed something unsettled in my parents' marriage; they eventually divorced. The book might have symbolized some kind of domesticity or stability to me.
What's the most recent book you've read? I've been reading Patti Smith's M Train. She's given us some really beautiful parts of herself with her [two memoirs]. It's incredibly inspiring the way she can truly be herself in the public eye.
What are your earliest musical memories? My dad has great taste; he used to play me the Velvet Underground, the Smiths and the Stones. He was excited when I got to sing "Gimme Shelter" with Mick Jagger. He said, "You know, I always thought that was the song you were supposed to sing."
It's hard to imagine, but you were really into skate punk. The first CD I ever bought was Green Day's Dookie. It was my first clue that there could be a whole identity around the music you liked. I had the shoes and the world's baggiest cords. The only thing I didn't have was a skateboard.
You even recorded a complete cover of Green Day's Nimrod a few years ago. I was going to see punk bands, and [producer-artist] Dev Hynes and I bonded. We were talking about how we loved Nimrod, and we recorded it in his kitchen with just his guitar. It's out there on the Internet! Later, I met Billie Joe Armstrong, and he told me he liked it. My 13-year-old self's head was exploding somewhere in the past.
What is the best part of success? I love to experiment, to create a world to get lost in. I can do that as a job, down to the outfits and the staging.
Do you ever go too far into that world? I can go off into flights of fancy, and they're not always positive. I can panic quite easily. Sometimes, I have to breathe and be like, "Actually, what's happening right now? Is that real? You're in your house, nothing is actually happening. Oh, OK."
What's the best advice you've ever received? When I got off tour a few years ago, I tried to keep living as I had been. You want to keep the party going, but you're just in your own house. I was like, "Oh, my life is in chaos, and my relationships are so messed up. What am I doing?" A friend said, "Why don't you try not drinking for a while – see what happens?" [Laughs] I was willing to try anything at that point. It definitely helped me write my last record.
How do you relax when you're not on tour? When you're on the road, you're like, "Oh, my God, touring is so stressful." Then you come back and struggle to fit in all these things that you miss from normal life – seeing friends, seeing my mom. You've got to do your own laundry, too, and I can even stress myself out about getting enough rest. By the time I have to leave again, I kind of want to get back on tour, because I can finally relax.
You and Adele sang in the same club early in your careers. What do you remember from that night? I think it was in the Lock Tavern in Camden – tiny room, lots of people crowding around. I did my yelling kind of singing, and then she came on and sang and just played her guitar. I couldn't really see her, but this voice just lifted up over the people, and I was like, "That is an extremely special voice." I went home and wrote a song immediately, though it wasn't up to the level of "Rolling in the Deep."
What's an important rule to live by? If something feels different, or uncomfortable, it means you're growing. My last album was quite exposing. Not having effects on my vocals was terrifying. I would ask my producer, "Please, can you just put some reverb on?" I was nearly crying. He was like, "No, you have to just let your voice be the way it is. You have to be vulnerable."
What advice would you give your younger self? There are certain sartorial choices I would not make, in hindsight. I had black lipstick. I was wearing capes stapled to me. I got famous when I was about 21. It was totally thrilling and also completely terrifying. You're scared and want something to shield you, so you think you've got to have more hair, more makeup. To live in this creation, in this kind of magical alternate universe, kept me safe. But I wouldn't take any of that back. I would just say to that person, "It's going to be OK."
10 things you (pro
Spring in her step! Paula Patton is lovely in white as she goes bare-legged in off-the-shoulder minidress in LA
By RACHEL MCGRATH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:35 EST, 12 May 2016 | UPDATED: 16:50 EST, 12 May 2016
Paula Patton was the epitome of spring style as she arrived at Universal Studios in Hollywood for a TV interview on Thursday.
The pretty brunette, 40, donned an off-the-shoulder white minidress with spaghetti straps and a thigh-skimming hem.
With her hair sleeked back into a bouncy ponytail and a dash of coral lip color, the actress pulled off a perfect look.
Scroll down for video
+8
Spring style: Paula Patton was cool in a white off-the-shoulder minidress as she stepped out in sunny LA on Thursday
Paula added a pair of brown leather gladiator-style wedge heels and went bare-legged, showing off a pink pedicure and manicure.
She accessorized with a gold name pendant for her son Julian, from her marriage to Robin Thicke whom she divorced last year.
The Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol star is busy promoting her upcoming film Warcraft, based on the immensely popular video game.
+8
Leggy look: The pretty actress, 40, went bare-legged in the thigh-skimming number and wore a pair of brown leather gladiator-style wedge heels
+8
Upbeat: Paula happily waved to fans as she headed to an interview with TV entertainment show Extra at Universal Studios Hollywood
+8
Youthful: The star of the upcoming movie Warcraft wore her hair tied back into a bouncy ponytail and accessorized with a pair of large gold hoop earrings and a gold name pendant for her son Julian
in Warcraft, the actress plays the half-human, half-orc character Garona in the film directed by the late David Bowie's son Duncan Jones.
It deals with the first encounters between humans and orcs that form the basis of the video game series World of Warcraft.
The special effects-laden movie co-stars Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper and Ruth Negga, and opens on June 10.
New Warcraft trailer features all-new footage from upcoming film
+8
Stylish: Paula's dress also had a low back and her wedge heels featured silver metallic studs
+8
High energy: Paula had a spring in her step as she ran up the steps to the interview stage, flashing some skin as she went
Paula was a guest on entertainment show Extra where she spoke with host Mario Lopez about her upcoming movies.
It's been a busy few months for the mom-of-one who has had several acting projects lined up following her painful split from her musician husband.
She had a role in the romantic comedy The Perfect Match that was released in March and also appears with Adam Sandler, David Spade and Kathryn Hahn in the comedy The Do Over, that opens on May 27.
+8
Say cheese! The mom-of-one, who divorced husband Robin Thicke last year, posed for a selfie with Extra host Mario Lopez
+8
FX laden: In her new movie, based on the World of Warcraft video game series, Paula plays Garona, a half-human, half-orc character. The film directed by the late David Bowie's son Duncan Jones opens on June 10
First Look: Young Han Solo actor Alden Ehrenreich stars in The Yellow Birds
Soon the world will know Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo, but before that, we’ll get to see him in a much grittier, more realistic battle as the star of the independent war drama The Yellow Birds. Here’s a first look of the 26-year-old as Pvt. John Bartle, a soldier deployed to Iraq who is trying to fulfill two duties — one to his country, the other to the mother of a younger fellow fighter he vowed to protect.
The film is based on the 2012 novel by author ...vin Powers, and it’s being directed by Alexandre Moors, best known for 2013’s sniper drama Blue Caprice. The Yellow Birds — which also stars Tye Sheridan, Jack Huston, and Jennifer Aniston — is just being finished now, and Moors hopes to take it on the festival circuit in the next year to secure distribution.
Having the new lead of a Star Wars movie in the film should help.
Moors said he had no idea his actor was being considered for the part last summer, and didn’t discover it until news leaked over the past several weeks that Ehrenreich was up for Han Solo in the 2018 stand-alone film from Lucasfilm.
“No, no, I read it in the paper, like everybody,” Moors tells EW. “I think that’s great! It seems like such an obvious choice. Looking at him, he embodies the qualities of Harrison Ford, who’s an action man, but has such good comic timing and is light on his feet.”
Ehrenreich ended up in The Yellow Birds by a lucky cascade of events. “We had a previous actor attached, Will Poulter, who took off to do another movie over the summer, and I found myself in a situation where we needed to cast a lead,” Moors said. “Looking at all the young talent in Hollywood, I must say I was very early set on Alden. He’s a step above the bunch.”
Moors was impressed that Ehrenreich has already worked with a number of formidable directors in his short career: Francis Ford Coppola on Tetro and Twixt, Woody Allen on Blue Jasmine, Joel and Ethan Coen on Hail, Caesar!
“He was someone who had the maturity to take on a role like [Bartle], which goes to very dark places at times and needs somebody who has a gravitas and a certain ability to understand the layers in the script,” Moors says.
“To me, when I cast, the first thing you think of is, ‘I am going to be studying that actors face for two hours,’” the director adds. “You need somebody whose face is an emotional landscape that has layers and depth to it. Sometimes it’s difficult when you’re a young age to have that quality. It’s not just about being pretty. I read somewhere and its true — something about Alden that calls for me actors of a past era.”
Ehrenreich has been compared to everyone from Cary Grant, to Jack Nicholson, to Leonardo DiCaprio, and — now, of course — Harrison Ford.
“Exactly!” Moors says. “He’s very masculine and virile, but his comical talents are amazing. He’s very light, very quick, and very sharp. It’s an amazing contrast. It’s a question of range, he has an amazing range.”
In The Yellow Birds, Bartle makes a vow to the mother (Aniston) of another soldier (Sheridan) that he will look after her son on the battlefield, but that becomes increasingly difficult under the intense command of their sergeant (Huston).
Filming was split between Georgia and Morocco, with a one month hiatus in between. “Alden, instead of going back to L.A., he rented a cabin somewhere in California just so he could go fish and be by himself and not lose his focus on the character during that one month time,” Moors says. “That should tell you what kind of actor he is. I don’t think a lot of people would do that.”
Justin Timberlake Talks New Album, the Weeknd Collaboration
Singer reveals 'Trolls' soundtrack will also feature Ariana Grande, Gwen Stefani
BY ALTHEA LEGASPI May 11, 2016
Justin Timberlake talks about how working on 'Trolls' led to him working on new solo material during a new interview.
Justin Timberlake's work executive music producing the forthcomingTrolls soundtrack is what led to him working on material for hisforthcoming album. In an interview with BBC Radio 1Xtra, the singer detailed how follow-up material to 2013's The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2sprung from the project and he also hinted at a future collaboration with the Weeknd.
See Justin Timberlake, Anna Kendrick's 'True Colors' Cover »
Prior to Timberlake releasing "Can't Stop the Feeling!," his first song in three years, Timberlake shared an Instagram photo in the studio with Pharrell Williams, which led to speculation about him working on a new solo album. In the BBC interview, the singer clarified that his meeting with Williams happened after his work on the Trolls song. "I started working on the music for this movie prior to that [photo being taken]," he explained. "But then working on the music for this movie just got me really excited about being back in the studio again 'cause I kind of took some time off, you know, having a new family member, having a son. I just kind of took some time off and wanted to just be in that experience."
Timberlake and his wife, actress Jessica Biel, welcomed their son, Silas, last year.
"And then this [Trolls] project came along and that was a little bit of serendipity as well, you know, to be offered an animated film," he said. Timberlake serves as the executive music producer and also a lead voice for character Branch in the film. "It felt like a job that fell into your lap," he added. He also revealed that both Ariana Grande and Gwen Stefani will appear on the soundtrack, which he said was not completed yet. "Gwen does one that I think I'm actually gonna feature on with her as a duet."
Timberlake said that the work on the film sparked some inspiration. "So then as that was happening I just wanted to stay in the studio, wanted to keep going in the studio 'cause you just get the creativity going."
This led to his recent studio time with Williams and also Timbaland. "I don't know exactly what it's going to be yet 'cause we just really started," he said. He explained that the timeframe of a movie release requires that it's finished by a certain point, whereas with his solo work he doesn't have the same pressure. "I think it's one of those things that's just a feeling like you know it's done when it's done," he said.
The singer also hinted that a Weeknd collaboration may soon be in the works. "The Weeknd and I have been talking about doing a collaboration soon. He's working on an album. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that," Timberlake said. "He's always in the studio anyway. But we've talked about doing something together."
Timberlake recently appeared with his Trolls cast mate Anna Kendrick to perform a cover of Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors." Trolls is scheduled to hit theaters on November 4th, while the soundtrack will be released on September 23rd.
Lupita Nyong'o looks flawless in purple as she steps out amid reports she is to 'star in Marvel's Black Panther'
By DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 16:34 EST, 12 May 2016 | UPDATED: 18:01 EST, 12 May 2016
She's always perfectly put-together.
And Lupita Nyong'o looked typically flawless in purple as she stepped out following a report that she is set to star in Marvel's next blockbuster.
The actress attended the New Dramatists Luncheon in New York on Thursday, after Variety revealed that the 33-year-old is in talks to join Chadwick Boseman in the upcoming blockbuster, Black Panther.
+5
Fashionable superpowers: Lupita Nyong'o looked flawless in purple as she stepped out for the 2016 New Dramatists 67th Annual Luncheon in New York City on Thursday
+5
New project? The 33-year-old stepped out amid Variety's report that she is in talks to join Chadwick Boseman in the upcoming blockbuster, Black Panther
If Oscar winner Lupita joins the Marvel franchise she will play the love interest for Chadwick‘s character T’Challa/Black Panther.
Marvel first debuted the Black Panther character in Captain America: Civil War, while the standalone movie is set for February 16, 2018.
On Thursday, Lupita looked radiant in the long-sleeved shirt-dress which fell below her knees.
The bold colored silk frock cinched her waist and flowed loosely from her petite frame.
+5
Rumor has it: According to reports if Lupita joins the Marvel franchise she would play the love interest for Chadwick Boseman's character of T’Challa/Black Panther
The ever-fashionable 12 Years A Slave star teamed the beautiful ensemble with a pair of floral printed black pumps.
She accessorized minimally with a dainty ring on each hand and tiny studs in her ears.
Lupita wore her hair naturally and opted for a pretty pink lip.
Lupita Nyong'o channeled her mother for her Jungle Book role
+5
Flawless: Lupita looked radiant in the long-sleeved shirt-dress which fell below her knees. The bold colored silk frock cinched her waist and flowed loosely from her petite frame, which she paired with floral printed pumps
The talented actress was recently nominated for a Tony Award for her role in the Broadway smash hit Eclipsed where she plays 'The Girl'.
The play, set in 2003, tells the story of five women near the end of the Second Liberian Civil War.
It is almost entirely set in a small one-room shack where three of the women are being held by the Commanding Officer of a rebel faction, who basically uses them as sex slaves.
+5
Talented actress: The star was recently nominated for a Tony Award for her role in the Broadway smash hit Eclipsed where she plays 'The Girl'
The CW Orders Three New Series, Including the Archie Comics Drama Riverdale
By Kaitlin Thomas
staff
In March, The CW renewed its entire current lineup for the 2016-2017 season, an act that left many wondering about the state of the network's pilots. Well wonder no more! On Thursday, the network ordered to series new drama Riverdale, based on the characters of the Archie comics, a reboot of the film Frequency, and the hourlong comedy No Tomorrow. They'll be joined by the second season of Supergirl, which the young-skewing network picked up from corporate sibling CBS. Additionally, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the network has canceled Julie Plec's viral outbreak drama Containment after one season.
Here's a breakdown of the new series coming to The CW next season:
Riverdale, which hails from super-producer Greg Berlanti (Arrow, The Flash, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, The Mysteries of Laura, and Blindspot) is based on theArchie comics but will be live action. Set in present day, the series has been described as being a subversive take on Archie (KJ Apa), Betty (Lili Reinhart of Surviving Jack), and Veronica (Camila Mendes), and their small-town life. Cole Sprouse, Luke Perry, Marisol Nichols, Mädchen Amick, and newcomers Ashleigh Murray and Madelaine Petsch also star.
The hourlong Frequency is a reboot of the feature film starring The Flash's Peyton List as a female detective who discovers she is able to communicate with her father who died 20 years earlier. Supernatural's Jeremy Carver is in charge, with the film's screenwriter Toby Emmerich on board as an executive producer. Riley Smith, Mekhi Phifer, Lenny Jacobson, Anthony Ruivivar, Devin Kelley, and Daniel Bonjour also star.
The third and final new series coming to The C-Dubs is an hourlong comedy from the team behind Jane the Virgin. No Tomorrow is based on a Brazilian format and stars Tori Anderson and Galavant's Joshua Sasse as a straight-laced woman and a carefree man who fall in love. Sasse's character lives life to the fullest because he believes the apocalypse is coming any day now, and so together they embark on a quest to check things off their individual bucket lists before the end of the world.
ABC's New Talking Dog Comedy, Hayley Atwell Drama, and More
By Tim Surette
ABC got a head start on its 2016-2017 schedule today and made a handful of new series pickups, many of which are in the vein of ABC's preference for slightly wacky. I mean, a dog that doesModern Family-style confessionals is pretty odd, right?
You'll see those in Downward Dog, a new comedy starring Fargo's Allison Tolman as a "struggling millennial" whose life is seen from the point of view of her dog Martin. And we'll get his takes from said "confessionals," i.e., the dog looking at the camera and talking. This is a real show in 2016. And heck YEAH, we have a clip:
Also picked up to series was the pilot formerly known as The Second Fattest Housewife in Westport. It stars Mike and Molly's Katy Mixon as Katie Otto, a "confident, unapologetic, plump wife and mother of three" who raises her family in the uppity town of Westport, Connecticut, where "perfect" families do the same. Except we get to hear what Katie really thinks of them through voiceover. Hint: it's not kind!
On the drama side, ABC will continue the story of Romeo and Juliet with Still Star-Crossed, which is a really terrible title for a show. It's a period drama from Shonda Rhimes' ShondaLand production company and follows the famed Montague and Capulet families after their famous kids bite it. Wade Briggs, Anthony Stewart Head, Zuleikha Robinson, and Lashana Lynch star. But is there a clip? You bet!
ABC also ordered Time After Time, which sounds like Sleepy Hollow's slow cousin. It starsFreddie Stroma, the hunky British bachelor from UnREAL, as young H.G. Wells, the author of War of the Worlds and other famous sci-fi books, as he is transported to modern-day Manhattan to chase downJack the Ripper. Say what? What is going on over at ABC? Is the show-approval department stoned? Here's a clip so you know I'm not lying.
And finally, though ABC canceled Marvel's Agent Carter, it's keeping the show's star in the family (oh btw, ABC canceled The Family, too). Hayley Atwell will star in Conviction as a former first daughter and current lawyer who is offered a job by a New York District Attorney (ABC makes a note that he's "sexy") to join his Conviction Integrity Unit in order to avoid charges for cocaine possession and ruin her mom's chance at a Senate run. Oy. Roll the clip!
[UPDATE] ABC has also made a series order for Notorious, a legal drama starring Piper Peraboand Daniel Sunjata that's based on the real lives of famed criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos and cable news producer Wendy Walker. Here's a clip:
On the comedy side, ABC made a late pick up of Imaginary Mary, which stars Jenna Elfman as a woman who meets the love of her life, a divorced dad. But as she makes the plunge and decides to join his family, the unhinged imaginary friend (voiced by Rachel Dratch) she made up as a kid makes a reappearance to help her through the major transition. Clip it!
These shows join the previously picked up Designated Survivor, which stars Kiefer Sutherland as a man who is hastily made president of the United States after a terrorist attack.
ABC will unveil its full 2016-2017 primetime schedule on Tuesday, May 17.
ONE BIG HAPPY
Supergirl Is Renewed for Season 2, But It's Moving to The CW
By Kaitlin Thomas
staff
Get ready for the traditionally sunny skies of Supergirl to be replaced by rainy days, gloomy nights, and maybe even a few hundred abandoned warehouses full of tarps and bad guys. The superhero drama starring Melissa Benoist has been renewed for a second season but will move to CBS's corporate sibling The CW, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series, which started strong but later tapered off in the ratings to average just 10 million viewers in Live+7 numbers, was CBS's most expensive freshman series.
In order to lower the cost of production, the series will move filming from Los Angels to Vancouver, where the bulk of The CW's programs are already filmed. In addition to fellow DC Comics series Arrow, The Flash, and DC's Legends of Tomorrow, all of which are also produced by Supergirl super-producer Greg Berlanti, the dramas iZombie,Supernatural, and The 100 are also all filmed in Vancouver.
The move, which has been rumored to be happening for a while now (Supergirl was originally pitched to The CW but the network opted to pass), could mean there's a higher potential for crossover episodes, like the one this season which saw The Flash's Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) travel to Kara's (Benoist) world and blow her mind with his lightning-fast ice cream delivery system. According to THR, Calista Flockhart, who plays media mogul Cat Grant, has agreed to stay with the series despite being adamant about working in L.A. But will the rest of the cast also agree to pick up and pack for moist Vancouver?
ABC Renews American Crime, The Catch, Dr. Ken, and The Real O'Neals
ABC got just a tad bit busy today, spending Thursday afternoon releasing tidbits of news every five minutes or so instead of everything in one easy piece, and no I'm not mad at that or anything. Let's take a look at the good news here: http://www.tv.com/shows/a...rime-2015/" href="http://www.tv.com/shows/american-crime-2015/">American Crime, The Catch, and new comedy http://www.tv.com/shows/t...al-oneals/" href="http://www.tv.com/shows/the-real-oneals/">The Real O'Neals will all be returning next season, https://www.thewrap.com/a...kups-2016/" href="https://www.thewrap.com/abc-pilot-pickups-2016/">says The Wrap.
American Crime was thought to be dead in the water, but it will get a third season to stuff ABC's trophy case. A ratings black hole, American Crime was beloved by critics and anyone who bothered to watch it, but never hit as a mainstream success. From John Ridley, American Crime is an anthology that looks at a different event each season and how it affects the lives of everyone involved in it.
The Catch also received a surprise renewal and will return for a second season. The series stars Mireille Enos as a private investigator who gets swindled by her fiancé and spends the rest of the series cracking cases and tracking him down. Executive-produced by Shonda Rhimes, The Catch was a disappointment for ABC both in ratings and among critics. But hey, the power of Shonda is alive and well, and it will be back.
The Real O'Neals is the lone ABC freshman comedy to return for a second season. It follows a Catholic family whose individual secrets (the youngest son is gay! The daughter is a kleptomaniac! The Parents are getting a divorce! etc., etc.) threaten to tear the family apart, but wouldn't you know it? It makes their bonds even stronger.
[UPDATE] ABC has also ordered a second season of Dr. Ken, so the apocalypse should be right around the corner.
What's Streaming Now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu
The TV world is a-changin'. Remember when we were making fire with straw and rocks, chasing wooly mammoths with pointy sticks, and watching television over antennas and cable? Ugh, we were savages. Thankfully, the future has rescued us and television works for us whenever and wherever we want it.
But with all the streaming options out there, you need to figure out what to watch on your new doodad that supports Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Below, we'll compile lists of everything that's coming and going each month so you can spend less time browsing and more time binging.
NETFLIX | Parks and Recreation Season 7, Hart of DixieSeason 4
AMAZON PRIME | Fortitude Season 1, The Man in the High Castle, Season 1
HULU | Dawson's Creek Seasons 1-6, Battlestar Galactica Seasons 1-4
What to Watch This Weekend: The Season Finales of The Vampire Diaries, Hawaii Five-0, The Family,The Last Man on Earth, and Quantico
By Andy Daglas
6 hours ago
What to watch on Friday, May 13...
SEASON 7 FINALE, 8pm, The CW The Vampire Diaries The gang pulls out all the stops to save Bonnie in “Gods & Monsters,” but the key to success may be Caroline and Alaric’s twin daughters. Meanwhile, Enzo hopes to keep Bonnie preoccupied by bringing her back to the cabin, but of course even a plan that simple goes completely pear-shaped.
SEASON 28 FINALE, 8pm, CBS The Amazing Race The final leg of the race sends the three remaining teams from Shenzhen to Santa Barbara in “The Only First That Matters.” Before a winning duo is determined, the competitors will have to climb up a mountain and jump off a 150-foot-high building.
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE, 8pm, Showtime Just Let Go: Lenny Kravitz Live The rocker heads out on a six-month tour including dates in Paris and New York. Along the way, the personal and artistic relationship between Kravitz and his band is explored.
SEASON 6 FINALE, 9pm & 10pm, CBS Hawaii Five-0 “Pa'a ka 'ipuka i ka 'upena nananana (The Entrance Is Stopped With a Spider’s Web)” finds the team trapped in a dilapidated building in Oahu’s Chinatown, where they must protect a wounded Gabriel, steer clear of deadly assailants, look for an escape route, and from the sound of things, probably battle a mini-boss at the end. Then in “O ke ali’I wale no ka’u makemake (My Desire Is Only for the Chief),” McGarrett and Danny go undercover as drug pilots in an effort to stop a meth epidemic, but Danny must break his cover after McGarrett is severely injured.
9pm, NBC Grimm Fearing that his fight with Black Claw may cost him everything, Nick relies on Monroe and Rosalee for moral support in “Bad Night.” Meanwhile, Adalind reckons with a hard choice as she protects her children, Renard steps up his campaign game, Hank and Zuri’s relationship takes a turn, and Wu struggles to wrap his mind around his new reality.
9pm, The CW The Originals New visions of the impending prophecy clue Freya into the next fearsome foe coming for the Mikaelsons. Elsewhere in “Give ‘Em Hell Kid,” Vincent and Kol jaunt off to the ancestral world in hopes of putting the kibosh on the witches and reclaiming New Orleans, while Klaus and Elijah confront a reeling Marcel in the wake of a plan gone devastatingly wrong (like, more so than usual).
STAND-UP PREMIERE, 10pm, Epix Michael Ian Black: Noted Expert The comedian tackles parenting, gender roles, guilty pleasures, and other topics in a set at New York’s John Jay College.
10pm, Cinemax Banshee Lucas and Brock intensify their search for Declan Bode, the Brotherhood assumes a war footing, Kurt looks to defend Maggie, and Job settles a score with a Camp Genoa enemy. Meanwhile in “Truths Other Than the Ones You Tell Yourself,” Calvin vents his frustrations at the office, which does not bode well for the local photocopiers.
10pm, Syfy Wynonna Earp With Henry fixated on vengeance, Waverly’s engagement party takes a dangerous turn in “Walking After Midnight.” In less festive hazards, Wynonna teams up with the second most common species in the TV ecosystem, the Unexpected Ally (inopinatus amicus), to hunt down the most common species in the TV ecosystem, the Killer Who’s Targeting Young Women (homicida misogynous).
LATE-NITE: – Kit Harington, Rose Byrne, and Blake Shelton on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, 11:35pm, NBC – Matt Bomer, Zach Woods, and Nick Griffin on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 11:35pm, CBS
Prince's closest friends are pictured arriving at secret memorial service with an exclusive guest list that included both his ex-wives, Dita Von Teese, Spike Lee and Nile Rodgers
Dozens of Prince's closest friends attended a memorial service Wednesday
His ex-wives Manuela Testolini & Mayte Garcia were among the mourners
Dita Von Teese, Spike Lee, Anna Fantastic & Nile Rodgers were also there
They celebrated Prince's life by watching old performances on a big screen
The touching service was held in secret at a theater in Los Angeles
PUBLISHED: 02:02 EST, 13 May 2016 | UPDATED: 04:17 EST, 13 May 2016
From the women he loved to the musicians he inspired, and a host of big names, Prince's friends gathered at a secret ceremony to celebrate his life on Wednesday.
Both of Prince's ex-wives Manuela Testolini and Mayte Garcia, as well as his former flame Anna Fantastic, listened to his iconic music and watched old performances by the pop superstar on a big screen in Los Angeles.
In a ceremony celebrating Prince the icon, but remembering Prince the man, mourners listened to his iconic music, talked of the friend they had lost, and watched as he lived again on screen.
Also among Prince's gathered friends at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater were Spike Lee, Nile Rodgers, Dita Von Teese, Larry King and Gwen Stefani.
Scroll down for video
+10
Mourners: Prince's ex-wife Mayte Garcia (left) was among the guests at a secret ceremony celebrating the pop superstar's life
+10
Dita Von Teese was also among the star-studded crowd at Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles
+10
+10
Old flame Anna Fantastic arrived at the ceremony on her own on Wednesday as Prince's nearest and dearest paid their respects
The two-and-half-hour service began with a rendition of Prince's single Sometimes it Snows in April, performed by musician Greg Phillinganes.
The song was a fitting choice, following Prince's unexpected death on April 21, aged just 57.
Even Prince himself addressed the star-studded crowd, with a screening of his Oscars acceptance from 1985, when he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for his film Purple Rain.
Dozens of Prince's closest friends attend secret memorial service
Spike Lee was among those who spoke at the ceremony, telling guests that another Brooklyn event would be hosted in Prince's honor on June 7, which would have been the late musician's 58th birthday.
Sharing a picture of his outfit in advance, he wrote: 'Purple beret and purple Kobe's for Prince memorial tonight in El Lay.'
+10
Spike Lee was among those who spoke at the ceremony, telling guests that another Brooklyn event would be hosted in Prince's honor on June 7, which would have been the late musician's 58th birthday
+10
The only colour: In honour of his friend's signature colour, Spike Lee dressed in purple, sharing a picture of his beret and shoes online
+10
Nile Rodgers wore a purple tie in a touching tribute to Prince, who died last month at his home in Minnesota
+10
In a ceremony celebrating Prince the icon, but remembering Prince the man, mourners listened to his iconic music, talked of the friend they had lost, and watched as he lived immortal on screen
Others to address the packed Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles included both of Prince's ex-wives - Manuela Testolini, and Mayte Garcia.
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science President Cheryl Boone Isaacs make the opening remarks, while Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, Prince's keyboard player Morris Hayes, talk show host Tavis Smiley, and Prince's former backing singers Wendy and Susannah Melvoin also spoke.
Gwen Stefani, Dita Von Teese, Larry King, record producer Bobby Z, R&B singer Mavis Staples, and singer Jill Jones were amid the mourners, who listened to performances by Esperanza Spalding and Janelle Monae.
Laryy King's wife Shawn shared a picture of the programme - which featured a picture of Prince - and wrote online: 'Attended a wonderful Celebration of Prince's life with his friends and family tonight. Beautiful man. Beautiful life.'
Not present at the service were Prince's siblings, with his sister Tika and five half-siblings revealing in a statement that they were planning their own service, following an initial celebration soon after his death.
Prince died at his vast estate in Minnesota last month and is rumored to have overdosed on prescription drugs. A post-mortem examination took place and a pathology report is expected soon.
+10
In memory: A photo of the memorial service programme was shared online by Shawn King, wife of Larry, who called it a 'wonderful celebration'
+10
In memorial: Prince's life was celebrated in a memorial service in Los Angeles on Wednesday evening
New upcoming Releases
Artist: Martina McBride
Album: Reckless
Released: 2016
Style: Country
Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: Fallen Angels
Released: 2016
Style: Folk Rock
Artist: Emily Jane White
Album: They Moved In Shadow All Together
Released: 2016
Style: Folk Artist: Lera Lynn
Album: Resistor
Released: 2016
Style: Indie Folk Artist: Keith Urban
Album: Ripcord
Released: 2016
Style: Country
Artist: Wynonna Judd
Album: Love Can Build A Bridge Songs Of Faith, Hope and Love
Released: 2016
Style: Country
Artist: The Staves
Album: Sleeping In A Car
Released: 2016
Style: Indie Folk Artist: Amber Rubarth
Album: Scribbled Folk Symphonies
Released: 2016
Style: Folk
Artist: Corinne Bailey Rae
Album: The Heart Speaks In Whispers
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Lucian Piane and RuPaul
Album: RuPaul’s Drag Race The Rusical
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: 2 Brothers On The 4th Floor
Album: The Very Best Of
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Radiorama
Album: The 2nd Album Remastered
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Radiorama
Album: Desires and Vampires 30th Anniversary Edition
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Brenda Russell
Album: Two Eyes
Released: 2016
Style: Soul
Artist: Chris Mann
Album: Constellation
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Sammie
Album: Indigo
Released: 2016
Style: R&B
Artist: Cyndi Lauper
Album: Detour
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Lostboycrow
Album: Sigh For Me
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Meghan Trainor
Album: Thank You
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Katie Webster
Album: The Swamp Boogie Queen I’m Bad
Released: 2016
Style: Soul
Artist: Mike Posner
Album: At Night, Alone
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: JMSN
Album: It is
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Ben E. King
Album: The Complete Atco-Atlantic Singles Vol. 1 1960-1966
Released: 2016
Style: Soul
Artist: Sia
Album: Spotify Sessions
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Javier Colon
Album: Gravity
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Gary’s Gang
Album: Keep On Dancin’
Released: 2016
Style: Soul
Artist: Lack Of Afro
Album: Hello Baby
Released: 2016
Style: Soul
Artist: Haley Reinhart
Album: Better
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: Venice
Album: Brunch Buffet
Released: 2016
Style: Pop
Artist: The Goo Goo Dolls
Album: Boxes
Released: 2016
Style: Alt Rock
Artist: Sarah Vaughan
Album: Musical Moments To Remember Sarah Vaughan That Dreamy Blues Remastered 2016
Released: 2016
Style: Jazz
Artist: Stevie Ray Vaughan
Album: Blues You Can Use Live
Released: 2016
Style: Blues Rock
Artist: John Coltrane
Album: The Roulette Sides
Released: 2016
Style: Jazz
Artist: Bill Evans
Album: Some Other Time The Lost Session From The Black Forest
New topic
Printable
Report post to moderator
Goldenvoice
e’
Lera Lynn's latest album is titled 'Resistor.' 
