Entertainment News
Coachella Postponed for Third Time Due to COVID-19
Encore? For the third time, the Coachella Music and Arts Festival has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Via Billboard, Coachella’s sister country festival Stagecoach Country has also been pushed back. Coachella takes place almost every year in Indio, California. Last year’s event, scheduled for April, was meant to be headlined by Rage Against the Machine, Frank Ocean, Travis Scott, and Lana Del Rey, before the novel coronavirus waylaid those plans. It was optimistically pushed to October, but that idea only lasted until June before the raging pandemic made it shutter once again. In the process, 2020 became the first year without a Coachella in twenty years. Festival organizers hoped to bring it back this year April 9th-11th and 16th-18th. But even that proved overly sanguine, as...
Fredo Releases New Album Money Can’t Buy Happiness: Stream
British rapper Fredo has dropped his star-studded new album, Money Can’t Buy Happiness. Stream it below via Apple Music or Spotify. Money Can’t Buy Happiness is the second studio album of Fredo’s career, following 2019’s Third Avenue. On his new effort, he links up with Summer Walker for The Fugees-sampling song “Ready” and collaborates with both Pop Smoke and Young Adz for the uptempo number “Burner on Deck”. He also reunites with Dave, his longtime friend and fellow British rapper, for “Money Talks”, which serves as a follow-up single of sorts to their 2018 smash hit “Funky Friday”. In a statement, Fredo explained that he scrapped his original version of Money Can’t Buy Happiness before settling on this current version, in part to portray a more realistic version of himself and his belie...
R.I.P. SOPHIE, Futuristic Pop Producer Dead at 34
Futuristic pop producer SOPHIE tragically died Saturday in an accidental fall. She was 34 years old. According to a statement issued by SOPHIE’s record label, the producer “climbed up to watch the full moon and accidentally slipped and fell.” The accident occurred in Athens, Greece, where SOPHIE had been living. A native of the UK, SOPHIE first made a name for herself in the early 2010s with a series of bubbly, surrealist singles, including “Nothing More to Say”, “Bipp”/”Elle”, “QT”, and “Lemonade”/”Hard”. During this time, she also became a close associate of PC Music, collaborating with label figurehead A.G. Cook as well as with GFOTY and Danny L Harle. SOPHIE’s early success ultimately led to more high-profile collaborations. In 2016, she teamed with the then-budding...
J.J. Abrams to Produce New Cloverfield Sequel
Even if your city has been destroyed by a monster, you’re trapped in an underground bunker, or your space station got sent to a parallel universe, you’ve probably heard of the Cloverfield franchise. The science-fiction anthology series will continue through at least a fourth film, according to The Hollywood Reporter, with J.J. Abrams set to produce a new sequel. The franchise launched in 2008 with Cloverfield, a found-footage monster flick directed by Matt Reeves. Two loosely-connected sequels followed, with both 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) originating as unrelated projects that were acquired by Abrams’ Bad Robot banner and retrofitted for the Cloververse. Unlike those previous follow-ups, the new movie is designed from inception t...
System of a Down’s John Dolmayan Says He’s Been Blacklisted for Right-Wing Views, Blasts Black Lives Matter
System of a Down drummer John Dolmayan made headlines over the past year for his outspoken right-wing politics. In a new interview, Dolmayan says his views have caused him and his various projects, such as his comic book series Ascensia, to be blacklisted. “I’ve been a victim of it,” Dolmayan told Cancelled with Rob Rosen and Desma Simon — a podcast focusing on “canceled” individuals telling their side of the story. “Let’s just say that Ascencia could easily be made into a TV show or movie and I had an agency working on that with me. And that agency [had] to take a step back.” Dolmayan compared it to McCarthyism, the vicious campaign to blacklist or disenfranchise suspected communists in the United States in the 1950s. “So, I’ve already been a victim of this, and it’s no different and...
O.J. Simpson Receives Coronavirus Vaccine
O.J. Simpson is many things, but he is not an anti-vaxxer. The former NFL star-turned-accused murderer received his coronavirus vaccine on Friday. Simpson, who was previously seen partying without a mask, got his shot in Las Vegas on Friday. He was photographed wearing a mask that said, “The Juice” (of course), which he subsequently posted to Twitter. In an accompanying caption, Simpson wrote, “Get your shot. I got mine!!!” Simpson’s lawyer told the New York Post that his client was eligible to receive the vaccine due to his advanced age (he’s 73). “If you’re 70-plus, you’re eligible for the shot — you can schedule your shot and they’ll do it,” Malcolm P. LaVergne said. “There’s no favoritism with him being a celebrity — that has nothing to do with his getting the shot.” As for w...
First Look: Preview the Rob Zombie-Helmed Chapter of Anthrax’s Among the Living Graphic Novel
In November, Anthrax announced the impending release of their own graphic novel, Among the Living, featuring a bevy of famous guest contributors. One of the chapters is being written by Rob Zombie, and we’re teaming up with Z2 Comics for an exclusive first look at five pages of artwork. The graphic novel chapters are inspired by the songs on Anthrax’s iconic 1987 album, Among the Living, with Zombie being joined by such guest writers as Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, My Chemical Romance’s Gerard and Mikey Way, Fall Out Boy’s Joe Trohman, comedian Brian Posehn, and more. Along with the sneak peek at the Zombie chapter comes news that all four current classic members of Anthrax — Scott Ian, Joey Belladonna, Frank Bello, and Charlie Benante — will be contributing to the graphic novel. Ian is pennin...
Death Grips’ Gmail and the Restraining Orders EP, “More Than the Fairy” Finally Added to Spotify, Apple: Stream
It’s been two years and counting since we last got a proper album from Death Grips, but today’s surprise drop should keep fans preoccupied in the meantime. The group’s experimental EP Gmail and the Restraining Orders and one-off single “More Than the Fairy” have finally been added to streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple. Gmail and the Restraining Orders is a 30-minute collection of noise rock that was played prior to Death Grips’ live shows in 2015. The project was then featured in Warp Records’ WXAXRXP radio festival in 2019, before subsequently being released onto YouTube. As for “More Than the Fairy”, this track was initially put out on YouTube in 2016. It notably features bass from special (and very unexpected) guest Les Claypool of Primus. The collaboration is consider...
R.I.P. Hilton Valentine, Guitarist of The Animals Dead at 77
Hilton Valentine, guitarist and founding member of The Animals, has died at the age of 77. A representative for ABKCO Records announced Valentine’s passing on behalf of his wife, Germaine Valentine. A cause of death was not immediately made available. In 1963, Valentine was recruited by Eric Burdon, Chas Chandler, and Alan Price to join what would become The Animals. The UK band quickly made a name for themselves thanks to their high-energy concerts and rock ‘n’ roll covers of Nina Simone, Sam Cooke, and John Lee Hooker. They achieved their first No. 1 single in 1964 with “House of the Rising Sun”, on which Valentine is credited with playing the song’s iconic arpeggio introduction. The Animals’ early success culminated in visit to America in October 1964. As was the case for The Beatles mo...
T.I. and Wife Tiny Issue Statement Denying Accusations of Sexual Abuse
T.I. and Tameka “Tiny” Harris, image via Instagram/@majorgirl Rapper T.I. and his wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris have both been accused of horrendous sexual abuses by former family friend Sabrina Peterson, who says she has anonymously collected dozens of women’s stories. Now, the Atlanta MC and his partner have released a statement “emphatically” denying the claims. Peterson, who runs the Instagram account @TheGlamUniversity, posted a statement earlier this week accusing the Atlanta MC of putting “A GUN TO MY HEAD IN FRONT OF CHILDREN.” While she herself has not accused T.I. of sexual misconduct, she alleges that dozens of women have since anonymously reached out to her. Their stories, which she has collected on her Instagram stories as screenshots of DMs, include being pressur...
SLONK Channels His Inner Blur on New Song “Colin”: Stream
Bristol-based indie rocker Joe Sherrin has been making music under the moniker SLONK for quite some time now, all while playing in other bands like Fenne Lily, Milo’s Planes, and Let’s Kill Janice. Today, he’s sharing a new song called “Colin” and it sees him changing gears from his typical sound to embrace the anthemic side of synth pop. “This song came about a few years ago at a temp job where I didn’t know (and still don’t) what I was actually doing there,” explained Sherrin in a statement. “I knew what type of thing I was supposed to be doing on the computer, but had no idea what it meant or what its purpose was. ‘Colin’ is about the idea staying there forever, told through the eyes of the characters who I worked there with.” As bleak as being trapped in a dead-end job may be, SLONK ma...
The Knife’s Olof Dreijer Remixes Robyn & Röyksopp’s “Monument”: Stream
The Knife had a big 2020, marking their 20th anniversary with a series of reissues, a long-awaited migration to Bandcamp, live performances, and a new anti-nationalist anthem. With the celebration behind them, though, the group’s Olof Dreijer is back to his own work. Today, he’s shared a remix of “Monument” by Robyn & Röyksopp. “Monument” comes from the Swedish collaborators’ 2014 Do It Again EP, but it’s given a completely new spin here. The original pulsed with heavy sultriness as Robyn delivered slow and deliberate lyrics of determination. Dreijer kicks up the tempo considerably, speeding the vocals and panning the audio back and forth. The instrumentation also has been given something of a more classic dancefloor vibe, to the point where you can almost see the flashing lights cutti...
