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Beyonce Knowles congratulates her collaborator with a bouquet of flowers and a sweet note after their collaboration jumps to the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100.
May 28, 2020
AceShowbiz – Beyonce celebrated her latest U.S. number one by sending flowers and a sweet note to her collaborator, rap newcomer Megan Thee Stallion.
The ladies landed the Billboard Hot 100 crown on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 as their “Savage Remix” toppled Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande’s “Stuck With U” hit, and Beyonce was quick to congratulate Megan for the achievement by having a beautiful bouquet delivered to her home.
Megan shared a short video clip of the gift on her Instagram Story timeline and revealed the personalised note which came with the blooms.
It read, “Congrats on your number one queen. Love B.”

Beyonce sends flowers to Megan Thee Stallion
The present left Megan truly touched as she credited her idol’s feature for lifting the single to the top.
“We did that,” she captioned the post. “thank you queen @Beyonce.”

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She gained fame making sculptures of male rockers’ genitals, an attention-getting gimmick that she grew to regard as art and that became part of rock ’n’ roll lore.“Do I have a favorite?” the artist Cynthia Albritton once said of her signature works. “No, I love them all.”But, she added, in a 1995 interview with The Evening Standard of London, “other people are most interested in the Hendrix.”The Hendrix, also sometimes referred to as the Penis de Milo, is a plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix’s genitalia. Ms. Albritton, better known as Cynthia Plaster Caster, made the piece in 1968, an early entry in what would become a series of more than 50 phallic casts, most of rock musicians, and ultimately part of rock ’n’ roll lore.There are songs about her, including Kiss’s “Plaster Caster.” That was also the title of a 2001 documentary film about her work. In addition to Hendrix, Zal Yanovsky of the Lovin’ Spoonful, Eric Burdon of the Animals, Wayne Kramer of the MC5 and Jon Langford of the Mekons are among those represented in her collection.Ms. Albritton died on April 21 at a care facility in Chicago. She was 74. Chris Hellner, a close friend, said the cause was cerebrovascular disease.What became her claim to fame started as an assignment for an art class she was taking at the Chicago branch of the University of Illinois in 1966. The professor told students that their homework was to make a cast of “something that could retain its shape, something solid,” as Ms. Albritton put it in a 2012 video interview with Rock Scene Magazine.Accounts have varied, but most say that her first subjects were two male friends. Soon, though, she had moved on to rockers, since she was, as she acknowledged, one of those fans who liked to chase the famous.“Originally I saw it as a great ruse to divert rock stars from the other girls,” she told The Evening Standard. “Only by accident did it become an art form. I take it seriously, though there is an absurd side. But I’m laughing with them, not at them.”In the anything-goes era of the late 1960s, Ms. Albritton didn’t have much trouble finding rockers willing to be immortalized, especially after Frank Zappa heard about what she was doing and promoted her efforts (though declining to be cast himself). She did, however, have trouble finding the right medium, trying a variety of substances and methods before hitting on dental mold.If the sculptures started out as a lark, the subjects who cooperated with her saw something more in her efforts.“Hers was a revolutionary art in a time that demanded revolutionary work,” Mr. Kramer, who had his sculptural session in the late 1960s, said by email. “She smashed the barriers of sexual conversation and helped open up people’s minds to the endless possibilities of art.”Mr. Langford, who was cast about 20 years after Mr. Kramer and is an artist as well as a musician, had a similar assessment.“I think Cynthia was a brilliant conceptual artist who made her art with great humor, a deep love of music and a reckless disregard for societal norms,” he said, also by email. “It was fun and deadly serious at the same time — a mad science experiment, really.”Ms. Albritton, whose works were eventually taken seriously enough to be exhibited at galleries, acknowledged that technical difficulties left her collection not as complete as it might have been.“I’m sorry to say I’ve had some mold failures on some very groovy people,” she said in the 2012 interview.Mr. Kramer related some details of his casting session.“Personally, I thought being asked signaled my arrival as a bona fide member of the rock and roll community,” he said. “A real career milestone! Sadly, on the night of my casting, Cynthia was ‘short handed’” — that is, the assistant whose job was to make sure the penises were erect wasn’t there.“Timing was crucial, and on this night it all fell apart,” Mr. Kramer said. “I was left to attempt to reach my full manliness alone, and I failed miserably. My finished cast ended up as a small plaster representation, a mere shell of what could have been. I think it’s one of the funniest of the collection, as do so many others. And, no matter, I’m proud to be included.”Cynthia Dorothy Albritton was born on May 24, 1947, in Chicago. Her father, Edward, was a postal clerk, and her mother, Dorothy (Wysocki) Albritton, was a secretary. For decades Ms. Albritton would not give her last name in interviews because she didn’t want her mother to know what she was up to.She grew up in Chicago, a big stop on the circuit for touring rock bands major and minor. She was particularly drawn to the British bands, she said — “cute British boys with long hair and tight pants.” Pamela Des Barres, in her 1987 memoir, “I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie,” wrote that Ms. Albritton seemed an unlikely person to get zippers unzipped.“She was painfully shy,” she wrote, “and I couldn’t imagine her with the alginate and plaster, buried in Eric Burdon’s crotch area, but I saw the casts for myself, and was wowed by the artistry involved.”Ms. Albritton, in a 2005 interview with The Sunday Age of Melbourne, Australia, said Zappa’s backing was key.“Frank was just the most important person in my life, my mentor and my supporter and my dear friend and shoulder to cry on,” she said. “He was the first person in the world to tell me I was an artist.”But her connection to Zappa, who died in 1993, resulted in a court case. At one point, after her home was burglarized, Ms. Albritton turned her sculptures over for safekeeping to Herb Cohen, a music industry figure who had business dealings with Zappa. She had to sue him to get them back, a case she won in 1993.She leaves no immediate survivors.Ms. Albritton continued to make male sculptures over the years — the actor Anthony Newley was among the nonmusicians in her collection — and eventually added women’s breasts to her repertory.“Breasts have been ignored for too long,” she said in the 1995 interview, possibly satirically. Her breast subjects included Sally Timms of the Mekons and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. In 2009, the conceptual artist Rob Pruitt presented her with the Rob Pruitt Award at an irony-heavy performance event called “The First Annual Art Awards” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.Ms. Albritton said that in recent, less exploratory decades, finding willing subjects had gotten more difficult. But she remained interested.“As long as there are talented musicians with appendages,” she said in a video in 2011, “I’ll be available for my casting call.” More

He was at the Hamden Town Center Park in Hamden, Conn., when he collapsed onstage on Friday night.The rapper Fatman Scoop, whose hoarse and booming voice brought an electric energy to songs by Missy Elliott and Mariah Carey, and who performed the underground club favorite “Be Faithful,” died after collapsing onstage during a performance on Friday. He was 56.A statement from the rapper’s family posted to his Instagram account confirmed his death but did not provide a cause. The post described him as “the undisputed voice of the club” and as a performer with an infectious stage presence.A video taken at the concert, at the Hamden Town Center Park in Hamden, Conn., appeared to show people performing CPR behind equipment on the stage.Lauren Garrett, the mayor of Hamden, said that paramedics had attempted lifesaving measures.Fatman Scoop, whose birth name was Isaac Freeman III, rose to prominence and international recognition after the song “Be Faithful,” in which the rapper performs over beats by the Crooklyn Clan, became the No. 1 single on the U.K. Billboard singles chart in 2003, more than four years after the track’s initial release.The song, which primarily samples “Love Like This” by Faith Evans, is a constant thrum of bass lines and lyrics from Fatman Scoop as he works to hype up a crowd.“You got a $100 bill get your hands up; you got a $50 bill get your hands up” are the opening lines to the track that goes on to rhythmically instruct a crowd to make noise.Questlove, the drummer for the Roots and the author of “Hip Hop Is History” (2024), wrote his appreciation on social media for the song and Fatman Scoop: “I want to thank FATMAN SCOOP for being an embodiment of what hip-hop was truly about,” he wrote. “To just forget about your troubles and live in the moment and allow joy in.”Fatman Scoop was born on Aug. 6, 1968, and grew up in Harlem, learning the art of hip-hop from his peers and those already making noise in the scene.“I am a disciple of Doug E. Fresh,” Fatman Scoop said in a 2023 interview with Urban Politicians TV, speaking of the New York City rapper who is also known as the Human Beat Box. “He was the neighborhood star.”“Everything that I learned, pretty much, I learned from Doug,” he added.Fatman Scoop was formerly a D.J. on Hot 97, an FM radio station in New York, which described him as a “legendary hype man and radio personality” in an online tribute. It said he helped usher a digital era for the station, bringing a video camera to what had been strictly a radio operation.Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.Missy Elliott recognized his impact in a tribute on social media on Saturday, saying “Fatman Scoop VOICE & energy have contributed to MANY songs that made the people feel HAPPY & want to dance for over 2 decades.” More

“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” the soprano Sondra Radvanovsky said after a recent rehearsal of Luigi Cherubini’s “Medea” at the Metropolitan Opera. “Everybody knows this opera because of Maria Callas.”Callas may loom over the legacy of this opera — her various recordings from the mid-20th century dominate the work’s discography — but her star power was never enough to bring it to the Met, which is staging it for the first time only now, with a new production by David McVicar opening the company’s season on Tuesday.Like many people, McVicar was unfamiliar with the opera until he began to study it for this production. It’s a rarity within a rarity — a seldom performed work from a composer who, despite celebrity and respect in his time, is known today for just a sliver of his output, if at all. A tourist at Père Lachaise, the cemetery in Paris where Cherubini is buried, is more likely to visit the neighboring grave of Chopin.“Every version of Medea has a slightly different narrative and slightly different accretion to the myth,” the director David McVicar said.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesBorn in 1760, a French-assimilated Italian who straddled music’s Classical and Romantic eras, Cherubini premiered his “Médée” in 1797 from a French libretto inspired by both the Euripides and Corneille tragedies. It’s a version of the Greek myth in which she, having helped Jason retrieve the Golden Fleece, exacts revenge on him after he abandons her.“Every version of Medea has a slightly different narrative and slightly different accretion to the myth,” McVicar said. “Euripides introduces the idea of the murder of the children for the first time, and the Baroque opera introduces myriad subplots, and twists and turns. This goes back to Euripides. It’s a Classical piece but also gothic: It belongs to a period of gothic Romanticism in arts and literature.”“Medea” has remained on the outskirts of the repertory for its difficulty.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesAfter the premiere, “Médée” didn’t catch on, and wasn’t the most beloved of Cherubini’s operas among fans like Beethoven. And his reputation after his death, in 1842, was certainly not helped by portraits — however accurate — such as the one in Berlioz’s memoirs, which include a scene of Cherubini, decades after “Médée” and by then the director of the Paris Conservatory, behaving with fussy villainy.But his fortunes changed in the 20th century. In 1909 “Médée” arrived at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, in an Italian translation, called “Medea,” that replaced the spoken French dialogue with new recitative. That version, which McVicar described as “bigger boned and more concise,” was revived in the 1950s by Callas, who went on to perform it widely, including at La Scala and the Royal Opera House in London.For that reason, the work is most familiar as “Medea” — which is how the Met is presenting it, in the Italian translation — though it has remained on the outskirts of the repertory for its difficulty, taken on by a select group of singers including Leonie Rysanek, Gwyneth Jones and Montserrat Caballé.Radvanovsky, center, with Ekaterina Gubanova, left, who sings Neris, and Axel and Magnus Newville, who play Medea’s children.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesThe Italian version replaced the spoken French dialogue with new recitative.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesMcVicar referred to the opera as a soprano version of “Hamlet” because once Medea enters, she more or less never leaves the stage, in various states of distress and fury.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“You need to have somebody who can sing it,” said the conductor Carlo Rizzi, who is leading the Met production. “If you have that, you do it. If you don’t, you don’t do it. It’s as simple as that.”Hikers, he added, might take on Mont Blanc or Kilimanjaro; but fewer will try Everest. McVicar, for his part, referred to the opera as a soprano version of “Hamlet” because once Medea enters, she more or less never leaves the stage, in various states of distress and fury.At the back of the stage is an enormous, angled mirror that reflects the action from an aerial perspective.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesIt’s a challenge that appealed to Radvanovsky. The idea for the Met’s production came in the wake of another season-opener, Bellini’s “Norma,” which featured the same trio of Radvanovsky, McVicar and Rizzi. She said that Peter Gelb, the house’s general manager, told her he was happy with her performance and asked what she would like to do next. “‘Medea,’” she answered.“Peter said, ‘Are you sure?’” Radvanovsky recalled. “And I said yeah because after ‘Norma,’ where can one go?”She felt that it was a logical fit for her voice — a way to combine her Met history of bel canto works, like Donizetti’s Tudor operas, and verismo classics like Puccini’s “Tosca.” The question was which language she would sing it in. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, had wanted to do the French original and was at first attached to this production, but it was decided that they would follow Callas’s tradition, a better fit for both Radvanovsky and the Met.Following Callas’s tradition was a better fit for both Radvanovsky and the Met.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“I think both are valid,” McVicar said of the two versions. “But you have to be mindful of the house and the cast that you have. The French can work, but you need a much smaller theater, like the Opéra Comique in Paris. And frankly, the dialogues aren’t very good; they’re clunky and old-fashioned.”McVicar joined the production, not only because he and Radvanovsky have a long, fruitful relationship together in opera, but also because a work like “Medea” is where, he said, he feels most at home.“I’m very much identified here with big Italian war horses because I can do them,” he added. “But is that where my interests lie? I’d have to say no. I’m much more interested in something in the hinterlands, like this.” (That’s why he’d also like to work on Janacek operas in the future, with Radvanovsky, whom he could see in “The Makropulos Case.”)Radvanovsky, left, and McVicar. The stage design is deceptively minimal.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesWith a team in place, the premiere was planned for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto — this “Medea” is a coproduction with that house, as well as with the Greek National Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago — but the pandemic upended that. Instead, the first run will be at the Met, and McVicar ended up designing it during the most restrictive lockdowns, when he couldn’t work in person with his usual collaborators. What started as a practical move, though, ended up being his way to stay sane, and creative, he said.McVicar returned to the opera’s origins, and thought about how its tensions and turmoil — “the sheer chaos that Medea is capable of unleashing,” he said — fits with its time, coming out of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, as well as Directoire style.That gave the production its look, with costumes “from the Directoire period, roughly speaking, and a real sense of gothic decay,” McVicar said. His stage design is deceptively minimal: a thrust corner with sliding doors that open to reveal both spare scenes and episodes of opulence. At the back is an enormous, angled mirror that reflects the action from an aerial perspective but also serves as a screen for special effects made from projections on the floor — “literally smoke and mirrors,” as he put it.The angled mirror onstage also serves as a screen for special effects.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesThe score, too, can seem simpler than it is, Rizzi said. It’s not written for a very large orchestra, and it doesn’t contain isolated melodies that the audience will leave the house humming. “That doesn’t mean it’s a bad opera,” he added. “It’s a different opera.”A conductor could interpret the music as Classical, but Rizzi has been working with the Met Orchestra to bring out the mercurial tumult that courses through Cherubini’s instrumental writing. The opening Sinfonia alone, he said, “is not a planting of a stake, it’s a wave of a tsunami.”Much of the opera’s shifting character also relies on Radvanovsky as Medea, who in McVicar’s staging is portrayed with expressive physicality. “She can be serpentine, or what we’ve been calling the Hulk, or a goddess,” Radvanovsky said. “It’s exhausting.”“I could not have thought of a better role to be singing right now than Medea,” Radvanovsky said. “It’s the best therapy you can ask for.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesStill, she added, this is a role that a soprano can’t approach with fear — neither of its history nor of its demands. As an actor, she has drawn on experience that parallels the action of the opera: recently, the dissolution of her marriage and the death of her mother. “I could not have thought of a better role to be singing right now than Medea,” she said. “It’s the best therapy you can ask for.”Beyond the music, Radvanovsky has been working with a personal trainer. “I wear a corset onstage, which is great for singing, but then you combine that with Pilates moves,” she said. “I have to be strong, in the best shape my body can be in. We talk about things as a sprint or a marathon. This opera is a marathon.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times More

Ms. Ventura, Mr. Combs’s ex-girlfriend, said he threatened to use tapes of their sexual encounters, known as “freak-offs,” to control her behavior.Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, told a jury in Manhattan on Wednesday that her life with Sean Combs had its moments, but was largely filled with beatings, threatened blackmail and even a rape.During more than five hours of testimony in Mr. Combs’s sex trafficking and racketeering trial, Ms. Ventura recounted how he had stomped on her in the back of his car and how she suffered a gash above her eye when he threw her against a bed frame.She also recounted how, after the pair had dinner in 2018, Mr. Combs raped her in her living room.“I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she testified.At the end of her testimony, Ms. Ventura said through tears that after she had broken up with Mr. Combs, the trauma remained and she enrolled in treatment for drug abuse. Even so, she said, she contemplated taking her life by walking into traffic. She said her husband stopped her.Ms. Ventura told the court she stayed with Mr. Combs despite beatings and other abuse partly because of the nagging, persistent fear that videos of their sexual encounters with male prostitutes, the hundreds of “freak-offs” that she said Mr. Combs enjoyed watching and recording, would be posted online.Hers was not idle anxiety based on what she viewed Mr. Combs might be capable of, she said, but the consequence of repeated threats he had made to use the material to damage her if she deviated from his wishes. In one case, she described sitting beside him on a flight when he displayed for her videos that she thought had been destroyed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More