Diddy for GQ. He wants To Be An “Unapologetic Warrior For Black Culture”?
Brother Love, formerly known as P. Diddy, said that he’s on a new wave right now. The hip hop mogul said that his primary focus is to be a warrior for black culture. Er, am I missing something, but Love, haven’t you always been?
In an article with GQ, Love was asked what kept him hungry considering the 48-year-old really has a “can’t stop, won’t stop” work ethic.
“My culture,” he said. “I want to be an authentic, unapologetic warrior for black culture and the culture of the street and how it moves. My thing is most importantly to change the narrative of the black race. I can’t relate to anything that isn’t about that.”
He tweeted this sentiment as well, making sure that all who didn’t catch the article would at least catch a highlight on social media.
And if you’ve ever seen a televised interview of Love, then you know that when he said this to the GQ journalist, he probably said it with the most serious face. This fits into my idea of Love already being unapologetic, so what’s with him saying he wants to be unapologetic when he already is?
Piggybacking off wanting to be a warrior for black culture, he said that he wants to develop an app that will allow users to locate black and black-friendly businesses in any given city or neighborhood.
“This is not about taking away from any other community,” he said. “We’ll still go to Chinatown. We’ll still buy Gucci!” He laughed. “But the application will make it possible for us to have an economic community. It’s about blacks gaining economic power.”
Apparently, Love wants to be unapologetic by using his own capital and investing it back into the black community. The multi-million dollar entrepreneur, who is behind brands like Ciroc and Sean John, now realizes that bringing attention to fellow black entrepreneurs will enable them to rise in the ranks. And not only the entrepreneurs but the whole community. That’s true unapologetic blackness! OK, I see you, Love!
Love went on to say that he’s been talking to fellow hip hop mogul Jay Z about this new endeavor. They have been seriously discussing what “black excellence” means, and this app would be one of the ways they would be able to contribute to, what I believe is a “black excellence” movement, right now.
And what’s not on the “black excellence” agenda is passiveness. Love said that he’s over that concept. It’s time to start “charging.”
“We’re into psychological warfare,” Love said. “The difference is, we’re not trying to hurt nobody.”
#RHoA: Eva Marcille Celebrates Royal-Themed Baby Shower With Fiance Michael Sterling
Gearing up for baby in a big way! Eva Marcille celebrated her pregnancy — and soon-to-be little boy — at a vibrant baby shower on Saturday, March 17, and she detailed the affair.
The 33-year-old Real Housewives of Atlanta star and her fiancé, Michael Sterling, were showered with love from family and friends during the “Prince Michael” themed party. “I did royal blue, purple and gold color scheme to bring in that Royal feeling,” she told Us of the decorations. Marcille’s longtime pal, Andrae Crenshaw from Drae Shaw Entertainment, hosted the bash at 433 Bishop in Atlanta, Georgia. The stunning event was planned by ellyB Events / Eliana Baucicault.
Marcille, who announced her pregnancy in a sweet Instagram post in November 2017, also shares a 3-year-old daughter, Marley Rae, with her ex-boyfriend Kevin McCall.
#EMPIRE; Season 4 Spoilers: Porsha Pits Against Scheming Cousin
Porsha's (Ta'Rhonda Jones) ambitious cousin, Mercedes (to be played by Porscha Coleman), is set to arrive in town in the second half of the current season of "Empire."
According to Deadline, Coleman has been tapped by the FOX series for a recurring role in the new installment. She will play Porsha's cousin, a singer/rapper who has big dreams of making it in the industry. Mercedes is a tough cookie whose personality will not endear her to others, but it will not stop her from getting what she wants. Porsha's position as assistant to the Lyon madam is perfect to jumpstart her career. It looks like the cousins will have some tough times ahead, especially Porsha, who will have the added burden of keeping Mercedes in check.
Meanwhile, another new face to be introduced in season 4B is Rhyon Nicole Brown, who will play a pivotal role. She will be Maya, the child of Cookie's (Taraji P. Henson) fellow inmate, Poundcake. Shortly after being born, Maya was said to be abducted from her mother. She was then adopted by an upper-middle-class couple. Growing up, Maya developed her love for dancing and classical music. She is beautiful but stubborn and her appearance will bring back painful memories for Cookie of her stay in prison.
Previously, it has been reported that veteran actress Alfre Woodard would be playing the role of Cookie's mother, Renee. In the storyline, Cookie is estranged from her parent. She grew up with her dad and had very little contact with her mom. Renee is expected to make waves in Cookie's life, especially when she and her family are facing difficult times. Last midseason finale, Lucious (Terrence Howard) vanished. Claudia (Demi Moore), his nurse, abducted him and brought him to a remote house deep in the woods. Cookie is out of mind with worry, knowing the Claudia is crazy and obsessed with the love of her life.
"Empire" season 4 will return on Wednesday, March 28 at 8 p.m. EST on FOX.
#NEWMUSIC from Meelah, Formerly of 702, ‘Desert Love’
Former 702 singer Meelah returns with the buzz record, ‘Desert Love,’ a sultry and seductive offering that sees her reminiscing about when the love was good.
“Desert Love” is a small teaser of what Meelah has planned for her fans as she readies her long-awaited debut album for later this year.
Meelah said “Timing is everything. Releasing a project has been a long-awaited moment for me so when SoulStar Music Group approached me I was truly humbled and excited to record my debut solo album,” says Meelah on her forthcoming album (not yet titled).
LISTEN HERE
The singer, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and mom of one is looking forward to officially launching her solo career after having had much success in 702. Stay tuned for more to come from this super talented vocal sensation.
#HIPHOPNEWS: U-God Criticizes RZA's Leadership Of Wu-Tang Clan In New Book
U-God has opened up about the problems within Wu-Tang Clan in his new book RAW: My Journey Into The Wu-Tang. Rolling Stone has published an excerpt from the autobiography in which U-God blames many of the issues on RZA’s decision-making and leadership.
In the excerpt, U-God describes how the group’s united mentality splintered over the years. He explains that revenue distribution became a major point of contention and criticizes the management of RZA’s brother, Mitchell “Divine” Diggs.
“Right now, it just looks like the Wu brothers are not on the same page, going at each other’s throats, missing shows, and all that,” U-God writes. “But, to me, it’s really years of BS catching up to RZA. See, he put his family in charge of shit, and for years, we would go on the road but the money came up short. Whether it was because [RZA’s brother and Wu-Tang Production CEO] Divine overpromised or cut a deal he couldn’t deliver, or he made bad management decisions, I don’t know.”
U-God paints a picture of RZA getting top-flight representation for solo endeavors while the Wu-Tang was stuck with “B- or C-list” management. He also expresses frustration with operations like Wu-Wear, which he says the original members invested in but never received any return on investment despite the clothing line’s popularity, and the handling of Wu-Tang’s iconic logo.
“Many people don’t know this, but DJ Mathematics drew that logo on the back of a napkin back in the day,” he writes. “RZA quickly trademarked it, and to this very day his brother beefs when any of the original members attempt to use it. That to me is crazy — I mean, I understand if someone was using it without the group’s permission, but the members of the group itself? Wow, that’s just crazy … Divine always told us, ‘Y’all can’t use that W without paying a brand fee, and if a promoter calls your manager direct to book a Wu-Tang show, best believe they’re paying that brand fee!’ Ain’t that a motherfucker!”
According to U-God, RZA became a control freak. RZA allegedly wanted to be in charge of everything from the budget to writing hooks. U-God cites the creation of Wu-Tang’s 2000 single “Gravel Pit” as a major example of RZA’s dictatorial leadership. Instead of allowing Method Man and U-God to write the hook as planned, RZA did it himself. In U-God’s eyes, RZA lost his way as a leader.
“Trying to exert too much control over grown-ass men leads to problems,” he writes. “RZA doesn’t know how to let go and let motherfuckers be grown men anymore, like he used to back in the day, when it was four or five motherfuckers touring the country in an old Mitsubishi Scorpion. Somewhere along the way, he forgot to let his soldier do what he initially recruited us to do and coached us to do. He forgot that you don’t tear down your soldiers, you build your soldiers up. Because when they rise up, they bring you with them.”
Despite all these issues, U-God says Wu-Tang members are able to put aside their differences and come together when necessary. He also acknowledges that leadership is necessary but the leader should be open to ideas.
Read the entire excerpt in Rolling Stone or in U-God’s autobiography, which is in stores now.
Austin, Texas Mark Anthony Conditt, who police say was behind a wave of bombings in Austin and south-central Texas, killed himself early Wednesday in what investigators described as an explosion inside his car, leaving them scrambling to determine whether any bombs remain and if he acted alone.
Federal agents went to the bomber's home Wednesday while police interviewed his roommates.
Fred Milanowski, the special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Houston office, said one room in the house had components for making similar bombs to the ones that exploded in a string of incidents this month. There was also similar homemade explosive material in the room.
No finished bombs were found, he said. Conditt detonated a bomb in his vehicle before dawn on the side of Interstate 35 in Round Rock, north of Austin, as police approached him, authorities said.
Even in announcing his death, though, police warned a wary public not to let down their guard.
"We don't know where this suspect has spent his last 24 hours, and therefore we still need to remain vigilant to ensure that no other packages or devices have been left throughout the community," Austin police Chief Brian Manley said.
Why are Beyonce and Jay Z in Jamaica? Are they filming a new Video?
TMZ caught these shots of the couple doing a motorcycle tour through Kingston, Jamaica. Jay's at the wheel, while Bey's hanging on behind him ... rocking pink boots and fishnet stockings.
We're told they're shooting video content that will be used for their upcoming On the Run II Tour. The neighborhood they're cruising around is called Trenchtown, made famous by Bob Marley ... who lived there and frequently sang about it.
We're told they'll be shooting at Tuff Gong, Bob Marley's home and studio. Jay was on Jamrock just last year ... when he recorded with Damian Marley for the 4:44 album.
The OTR II tour kicks off in June.
Tessa Thompson will Reunite with Chris Hemsworth for 'Men in Black' Reboot
Chris Hemsworth is going to be reuniting with his Thor: Ragnarok co-star Tessa Thompson!
Earlier this month, it was announced that Chris would be starring in the Men in Black reboot and now, Tessa will be joining him!
Details about the reboot are being kept under wraps, so not plot lines are known right now.
Men in Black hit theaters in 1997 and starred Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. The movie will not feature their characters of Agents K and J, but will feature new characters in the same sci-fi world, THR reports.
Robin Thicke & Pharrell Williams LOSE ‘Blurred Lines’ Appeal, Must Pay Marvin Gaye’s Family $7.3M
In March 2015, a Los Angeles jury found Robin and Pharrell guilty of ripping off the legendary singer‘s 1977 hit, “Got to Give It Up” with their chart-topping smash, “Blurred Lines.”
[Read Also: Robin Thicke & Pharrell Williams Lose ‘Blurred Lines’ Lawsuit – Ordered To Pay Marvin Gaye’s Family $7.3 Million!]
Reuters reports: By a 2-1 vote, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Gaye’s 1977 song “Got to Give It Up” was entitled to “broad” copyright protection.
Circuit Judge Milan Smith said the jury verdict in favor of Gaye’s family and against Thicke and Williams could stand because there was “not an absolute absence of evidence” of similarity between the two songs.
The court also restored the jury’s finding that Clifford Harris, a rapper known as T.I. who contributed a verse to “Blurred Lines,” should not be liable for infringement, saying the trial judge erred in overturning that verdict.
Britney Spears Is the Face of KENZO’s New Campaign
Last September, KENZO debuted its La Collection Memento N°2 line, which was dedicated to the brand’s original creator, Kenzo Takada, as well as his first foray into denim back in the 1970s.
For the fashion imprint’s newest campaign this spring, the brand has tapped famed photographer/director Peter Lindbergh and pop superstar Britney Spears, as the new face of the label. Highlighting some of the standout denim pieces from the collection including jackets, caps, sweatshirts, footwear, and more, the line incorporates KENZO‘s signature motifs such as the tiger, the Great Wave of Kanagawa and bamboo tiger print.
Captured in Los Angeles, the cheeky and vibrant campaign is essentially a perfect combination for KENZO’s La Collection Memento N°2.
You can purchase the featured items at KENZO’s online store now, with prices ranging from $95 USD to $680 USD, while availability at retailers worldwide begins on Wednesday, March 21.
In other style news, U.P.W.W. releases more reflective workwear pieces and you can cop them here.
Sacramento police fatally shoot unarmed man holding cellphone in backyard
Relatives have identified the man as Stephan Alonzo Clark, 22, according to The Sacramento Bee. His fiance, Salena Manni, the mother of his sons, ages 1 and 3, said his first name was Stephon.
"We're mourning right now and so we need our time to mourn," she said Wednesday as the family gathered in his grandparents' home.
Police say the man was spotted breaking at least three vehicle windows Sunday night. Sheriff's deputies in a helicopter say they saw him break a neighbor's sliding glass door.
Two arriving officers chased him into the backyard of his grandparents' home, where he was staying. The department says he refused orders to stop and show his hands. He advanced toward the officers holding an object extended in front of him, the department said. The officers thought he was pointing a handgun and opened fire, fearing for their safety, the department said.
No gun was found and only the cellphone was found near his body when more officers arrived and approached him about five minutes after the shooting, the department said.
"He was at the wrong place at the wrong time in his own backyard?" Clark's grandmother, Sequita Thompson, told The Sacramento Bee. "C'mon now, they didn't have to do that."
"I know there could have been another way. He didn't have to die," Clark's older brother Stevante told CBS Sacramento.
The department could not say how many times Clark was hit, and the coroner's office was not releasing information until his relatives were notified. The department said the two officers have been with Sacramento police for two and four years, but each has four years' previous experience with other law enforcement agencies. Both are on paid administrative leave.
Clark routinely helped care for his grandparents at their home in south Sacramento, his cousin, Sonia Lewis, told Capital Public Radio.
Protesters took to the street on Monday night, gathering near the scene of the shooting on 29th Street. "It's very upsetting, it's very saddening to see people that look like you get killed over and over again in your city," said Tanya Faison from the Sacramento chapter of Black Lives Matter.
City Councilman Larry Carr decried the loss of life and said police must provide timely information. The department is required to release video from the helicopter and the officers' body cameras within 30 days.
Mark Zuckerberg Weighs In On Cambridge Analytica, Acknowledges “Mistakes” And Pledges “This Won’t Happen Again”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in for the first time on reports that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm advising the Trump campaign, had gained unauthorized access to millions of users’ personal information.
RelatedAmazon Passes Alphabet To Become The Second-Largest U.S. Company
Zuckerberg said the social media platform has an obligation to protect its users’ data and outlined the steps Facebook is taking to crack down on abuse of its platform.
“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”
The Facebook co-founder outlined a plan to investigate all third-party apps with access to private information, restrict developers’ access to data to prevent future abuses and to make it easier for Facebook users to understand how apps are accessing their information.
“I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community,” Zuckerberg said. “While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.”
The company’s stock has been reeling since The New York Times’ bombshell report on Sunday that the firm, infused with a $15 million investment from Republican donor Robert Mercer, had harvested the private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission.
The scandal wiped out $50 billion in market capitalization this week before Facebook’s stock began to recover today, rising as much as 5% before closing at $169.39, up a fraction. Meanwhile, there have been calls on Capitol Hill for an investigation.
“The silence from Zuckerberg and [COO] Sheryl [Sandberg] has put gasoline into the fire, and, I think, it just added to the noise coming out of the beltway, as well as the European Union, as the regulatory chatter continues to elevate,” said Daniel Ives, BGH Insights’s chief strategy officer and head of Technology research.
Zuckerberg offered a chronology of events: noting that when Facebook launched, it envisioned apps as enabling social activity — that your calendar should show friends’ birthdays or a user’s address book would show their pictures. To do this, he said, it enabled users to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them.
In 2013, Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app that some 300,000 people installed, sharing their data and information about their friends. Zuckerberg said that, the way the Facebook platform worked at the time, that meant Kogan had access to “tens of millions of their friends’ data.”
Facebook changed the rules in 2014, to dramatically limit the data apps could access — in the interest of prevent abuse, Zuckerberg said. That meant apps like Kogan’s “could no longer ask for data about a person’s friends unless their friends had also authorized the app.” It also required app developers to request approval before extracting sensitive data.
A journalist from The Guardian newspaper contacted Facebook in 2015 to report that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. That was a violation of Facebook’s policies prohibiting developers from sharing data without people’s consent — so Kogan’s app was banned from the platform. Facebook also demanded that Cambridge Analytica “formally certify” it had deleted all the data.
Last week, the social network learned from The New York Times, The Guardian and Channel 4 that this may not have happened — resulting in an immediate ban from the platform. Cambridge Analytica says the data has been deleted and agreed to a forensic audit by a firm Facebook hired to perform confirm this claim.
“This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook,” Zuckerberg wrote. “But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that.”
Zuckerberg described the steps Facebook would take to prevent bad actors from accessing people information in this way. He said the social network will investigate apps that had access to large amounts of information before the company changed its policies in 2014 to reduce data access. It will audit any app with suspicious activity and ban any developer or platform that refuses to submit to this audit.
“If we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps,” Zuckerberg said. “That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well.”
Facebook will further restrict developers’ data access to prevent other kinds of abuse. It will reduce the data provided to an app when you sign in the user’s name, profile photo and email address. It also will require developers to get approval to ask for access to a user’s post or private data.
In the coming month, Zuckerberg said Facebook will make it easier for users to understand what data apps are accessing. A new tool, to appear at the top of the News Feed, will make it easy to remove an app’s permission to access private data.
AND FINALLY FROM THE CRAZY PEOPLE SHOPPING AT WALMART FILES
‘IT TAKES TIME’
What really amazes me is you know it definitely takes a lot of time and effort every morning to make your hair look that bad. Like you go out of your way to landscape it into a tall pile of garbage.
EGGPLANT NATION: Meet Ignacio
Meet That Latin HEAT Ignacio! So you know what to do. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PICS and remember they’re NSFW!
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HAVE A GREAT DAY EVERYBODY!!!
EFREM
