#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySalt-N-Pepa, Hip-Hop Duo That Spoke Up for Women, Tells Its Own StoryIn a new biopic for Lifetime that they helped executive produce, the rap group that got its start in 1980s New York traces its roots and its conflicts.Pepa, left, and Salt. “Pep called and was like, ‘Girl, we have to do our movie before someone else does,’” Salt said.Credit…Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesJan. 22, 2021, 1:58 p.m. ETWhile selling warranties on washing machines from a Sears call center in Queens, the friends Cheryl James and Sandra Denton came together as a hip-hop duo called Super Nature with the staccato 1985 track “The Show Stoppa (Is Stupid Fresh).” When they first heard it on the radio, they danced together on top of a car. It was just the beginning: James became Salt and Denton became Pepa; the group changed its name and scored 10 hits on the Hot 100, including the ’80s dance classic “Push It” and the ’90s sex anthem “Shoop,” becoming one of the few superstar female acts of hip-hop’s male-dominated golden era.Fixtures on the I Love the ’90s tour circuit in recent years, the twosome tell their story in a new Lifetime biopic, “Salt-N-Pepa,” out Saturday, that captures both the rush of touring the world and the conflicts that broke them up in 2002. The group’s longtime D.J., Spinderella, is a character in the film, too, but the biopic doesn’t cover her unsuccessful lawsuit against the duo, which was filed in 2019. The film — which they executive produced along with Queen Latifah and others — begins and ends on a note of unity, showing their 2005 reunion for a VH1 event.“It was something me and Pep had been shopping around,” Salt said. “Pep called and was like, ‘Girl, we have to do our movie before someone else does.’” Latifah, an old friend, attended meetings where they picked the director (Melvin Van Peebles) and screenwriter (Abdul Williams of “The Bobby Brown Story”).The duo’s “Laverne & Shirley”-style partnership — Salt calm and precise, Pepa loose and boisterous — has endured despite a dispute with the man who helped them get their start, abuse, divorce and plain old Salt vs. Pepa personality conflicts. “We get to tell a 36-years lifetime in like two and a half hours,” Pepa said on a group Zoom interview. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.From left, Monique Paul, Laila Odom and GG Townson in “Salt-N-Pepa.”Credit…LifetimeFor a movie about the journey of two women, your producer and manager Hurby Azor, known as “Luv Bug,” plays a big role as a crucial creative force, especially at the beginning. How much did you grapple with the decision to emphasize his character?SALT Well, the truth is the truth. And Hurby was our guy. He started out being my boyfriend. Being an artist was something that he embodied and transferred over to us. My mom took me to all the Broadway plays, and I took singing lessons and dance lessons, and I did productions at home with my cousins for my aunties. But I didn’t know how to sing. I didn’t play an instrument. When hip-hop came along, it was an opportunity to realize something that I was passionate about — and that was through Hurby.In an early scene, we see Hurby (played by Cleveland Berto) drilling Pepa (played by Laila Odom) to rap without her Jamaican accent, and Salt (played by GG Townson) caught in the middle. How frustrating were those early days?PEPA For me, with hip-hop, it was a way of life — we had these park jams where the turntables are getting electricity from the light poles. When Hurby felt that I was the one that will be Pepa, I was thrown in the studio. Hurby had his vision. He wanted it said, done — this kind of way and no other way. I had a difficult time in the beginning, jumping on the beat. Finally, I got it.SALT Pep always says, “Hurby is our third,” and the chemistry between the three of us was explosive on so many levels. Pep and Hurby used to fight like cats and dogs. It was just an explosion of creativity, of passion, of drama that resonated into a sound, a music, a movement.The opposites-attract part of your personae, as depicted in the movie, is based on reality?PEPA One-hundred percent.SALT I’m an introvert and a little bit of a recluse. What I love about being an artist is the creative process. I love taking something from nothing and bringing it to fruition, I love the response from the audience, but I don’t necessarily love everything that comes along with it — the attention and the chatter. But Pep loves it all.PEPA I’m an extra-extra-extrovert.SALT Someone asked us, when we first met, what intrigued us about one another. What made her interested in me is, she was thinking, “Who is this girl that’s not paying me any attention?”PEPA When we were in college, I was coming in the lunchroom and talking crazy, and I used to see Cheryl in the corner and notice her. It was a chemistry. I was pulled to her.“It’s difficult to be friends and business partners, and anybody in that position can relate,” Salt said.Credit…Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesHow much writing did you both do for the script, and did you work separately or together?PEPA Separately.SALT It was a lot of rewrites. What I found frustrating — I’m just keeping it real — it was quite a few restrictions when you’re making a movie that I was not ready for.PEPA Keep it real, Salt!SALT Legal restrictions, infringing on other people’s rights that people had to sign off on, budget restrictions. What ended up being important was a story of two women in a male-dominated industry who were friends first, who became business partners, who faced a lot of struggles to be heard, to be taken seriously — from the record company to our producer Hurby. We had struggles in our relationships and picked the wrong men over and over.PEPA We get to take ’em back to college, when it all started and we making $200 per show.SALT And splitting it.There was a long period after Salt-N-Pepa’s biggest hits and before Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, when the route for women in hip-hop was limited. How much did you pay attention to that?SALT I remember that question being asked a lot when there was a big, empty space of no women. I have no idea why, other than this is a male-dominated genre of music and business, and we had to come through a Hurby. There was a time when you had to be vouched for by a camp — a man camp. That’s starting to change through social media and all the avenues that people have to put themselves out there, without belonging to a Jay-Z or whoever.How many of the original “Push It” video eight-ball jackets, originally designed by your friend Christopher Martin (Play of Kid ’n Play), do you each own?PEPA The original was stolen backstage at a performance.SALT I remember it being Brixton, London, and someone breaking in the back door of our dressing room. We came in and the door was open and the jackets were gone.PEPA Everything else stayed — the pocketbooks, everything.In the movie, at the time of the split, Salt says, “I have to carve out a space that has nothing to do with you.” Now that you’re back together, is that still important?SALT Absolutely. When I left, I got to deal with a lot of my own issues, my own demons. It’s healthy when you’re in a group to also be able to maintain your individuality. We were doing this since we were 18, 19 years old, and I did not get the opportunity to figure out who I was apart from Salt-N-Pepa. I felt a lot of disconnect after a while, a lot of resentment, a lot of anger coming from Pep that I did not understand. I felt like I was in a spiral of trying to prove myself to her: “Girl, I got your back. Girl, I’m here for you.” Nothing I did or said could remedy what she was feeling. I feel like there was a great miscommunication.PEPA [vigorously playing with her hair] The point is, you and I have never talked — you keep telling me how I feel and say and think. When have you and I talked?SALT I feel resented by you. And your answer —PEPA It’s a feeling I never got to talk through with her. It’s all her feeling with everything. I’m dealing with her boyfriend being the manager! I’m going through a whole situation, too. We were in it together. When you’re feeling all of this, I’m feeling it, too.How unified is Salt-N-Pepa these days?SALT Relationships go through different phases. I know one thing: I love Sandy, and I know that Sandy loves me. It’s difficult to be friends and business partners, and anybody in that position can relate. Sometimes we will be married and sometimes we will be co-parenting the brand and sometimes I will be sleeping on the couch.PEPA But communication is the key to all successful relationships.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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A scheduled gig in a Texas bar which was supposed to be headlined by the ‘Party Up (Up in Here)’ hitmaker will be turned into an event to pay tribute to the late star.

Apr 20, 2021

AceShowbiz –
Fans of late rapper DMX are planning to turn a Texas bar gig into a tribute show.

The rap star, real name Earl Simmons, was booked to perform at the Wildcatter Saloon in Katy on 29 May (21), but following his death on 9 April, devotees with tickets are still planning to gather at the venue to salute their hero.

The owner of the saloon will stage the show with the opening acts booked to open for DMX – Tone Royal and Coozablack & Sin City – and he’s on the hunt for a headliner with close ties to DMX.

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Meanwhile, the late New York MC’s fiancee, Desiree Lindstrom, has shared a touching tribute to DMX on Instagram, writing, “The first night we met and you held me close. I knew I would never let go. I was lost in you and nothing else mattered. My best friend, my baby, my love… truly my everything. Thank you for us.”

Lindstrom also posted a photo of herself and DMX, and thanked him for their four-year-old son, Exodus, adding, “Thank you God for Earl Simmons… forever X.”

Immediately following his death, Lindstrom paid homage to her man with a tattoo of his 2006 song “Dog Love” above a large X.

A public memorial service for DMX will be held on 24 April (21) at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. It will be followed by an intimate church service for the late rapper’s family the following day.

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Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the team behind Cxema parties have shifted its focus, but political engagement is nothing new for the artists.When Slava Lepsheiev founded the Ukrainian techno collective Cxema in 2014, “I thought it should be outside politics and just a place where people can be happy and dance,” the D.J., 40, said in a recent video interview from Kyiv.Until the pandemic, the biannual Cxema (pronounced “skhema”) raves were essential dates in the techno calendar of Ukraine, which has become an increasingly trendy destination for club tourists over the past decade. These parties — in factories, skate parks and even an abandoned Soviet restaurant — united thousands on the dance floor to a soundtrack of experimental electronic music.But as the Cxema platform grew bigger, and Ukraine’s political climate grew more tense, “I realized I had a responsibility to use that influence,” Lepsheiev said, and to look beyond escapism on the dance floor. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February deepened that commitment, and the war has transformed how Lepsheiev and his team think about their priorities and work.“I think this war has destroyed the statement that art could be outside politics,” said Amina Ahmed, 25, Cxema’s booking and communications manager. “Now everything is about politics.”As shelling intensified in Kyiv, the city’s tight-knit electronic music community abandoned clubs and synthesizers to shelter with families, volunteer or enlist in the armed forces.For Maryana Klochko, 30, an experimental musician who was scheduled to play her Cxema debut in April, it now “feels much more important to be a good person than to be a good musician,” she said in a recent video interview from outside Lviv. Klochko has rejected two invitations to perform in Russia since 2014, and now she has decided to stop singing in Russian. “It hurts to sing in the language of the people who are killing my people,” she said.A 2019 party Cxema organized in Kyiv in collaboration with Pan, a Berlin-based record label. Vic BakinMany members of the Cxema team have recently been volunteering in humanitarian efforts, like Oleg Patselya, 21, who has been delivering medicine and food to soldiers at the front lines in Donetsk. Ahmed has been using Cxema’s social media channels to share information about the war. She called countering Russian propaganda with facts from inside Ukraine “working on the informational front line.”Throughout the history of electronic music, from the 1980s house scenes in Chicago and New York, to Britain’s 1990s rave culture and the techno explosion in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, clubs have created safe spaces for marginalized communities and so have been, implicitly or explicitly, political spaces.Lepsheiev started to D.J. in 1999 as part of the buzzy arts scene that emerged in Kyiv after the fall of the Soviet Union. Everything ground to a halt with the 2014 Maidan revolution, when violent clashes between protesters and the police led to the ousting of President Viktor F. Yanukovych, swiftly followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Lepsheiev saw this “cultural vacuum” as an opportunity to start something new, founding Cxema to help revive the city’s arts scene and contributing to Kyiv’s emergent position on the European culture map over the past decade.Now, the war is changing the Cxema artists’ relationship with music itself. “If you hear explosions once or twice, you become afraid of every loud sound,” Klochko said. “It’s stressful to wear headphones because you are isolated, so you could miss an attack.”In the rare moments artists feel safe to listen, they now prefer ambient or instrumental music to their previous diet of club tracks. “At the moment I don’t see the sense of electronic music,” Patselya said. “I feel nothing when I listen to it.”A new micro-genre of patriotic club tracks has even emerged, where President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speeches are grafted wholesale onto a throbbing techno beat.When Russia invaded Ukraine, “I felt this existential question about my skills, like they were no help to anybody,” the producer Illia Biriukov said.Eugene StepanetsThe electro producer Illia Biriukov, 31, has continued to write music through the war. “In the difficult first days in Kyiv, electronic music seemed like a decadence of peacetime,” he said. He left town with his synthesizers and attempted to work on an album. “But against the backdrop of brutal events it was very difficult to focus,” he said. “Making music seemed useless. I felt this existential question about my skills, like they were no help to anybody.”Still, he continued making music, partly as a sonic journal of his emotional state. “But when I listen back to those tracks now,” he said, “they feel too aggressive. I’d like to bring a little less aggression into the world.”Artem Ilin, 29, who has played at Cxema three times, has also kept creating music. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, I could die,” he said. “This pushed me to make music because if I die, it’s OK, but my music will be here and people can listen to it.”How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

The police responded to reports that a large crowd had tried to force its way into the O2 Academy Brixton, one of Britain’s most popular music venues.A large crowd tried to force its way into the O2 Academy Brixton, a popular concert venue in London, to attend a sold-out performance by Asake, a Nigerian Afrobeats singer.Kirsty O’Connor/Press Association, via Associated PressThree people remained in critical condition on Friday after suffering injuries believed to have been caused by a crush the night before during a packed London concert at one of Britain’s leading music venues, the capital’s police force said.A large crowd tried to force its way into the concert, a sold-out performance on Thursday evening by Asake, a Nigerian Afrobeats singer and songwriter, at the venue, the O2 Academy Brixton, prompting the emergency services to respond and forcing the concert to end early.Video from the scene showed crowds surging through the venue’s main entrance as cheers and screams rang out through the throng of fans stretched out into the main road, as well as the police struggling to maintain control even as they wielded batons.“This is so dangerous,” one person can be heard saying.Ade Adelekan, a commander for the Metropolitan Police, the force that serves London, said that the authorities had opened an investigation and that it would be “as thorough and as forensic as necessary.”A total of eight people were taken to the hospital, with four originally considered to be in critical condition. It was unclear on Friday whether the injuries had occurred inside or outside the venue.Speaking outside the Brixton police station on Friday afternoon, Chief Superintendent Colin Wingrove of the Metropolitan Police said that more than 4,000 people had “attended last night.”The show was advertised as sold out, and the venue has a capacity of nearly 5,000, according to its website. It was not clear whether the chief superintendent was referring to just people with tickets or also including those who tried to enter venue without them, and the police did not respond to questions about the matter.Video footage and testimonies from people who said that they were at the venue on Thursday evening showed chaotic scenes.Akin Oluwaleimu, 53, went to the concert with his 14-year-old daughter, where they encountered a “rowdy” atmosphere outside, according to the BBC, adding that he saw two women who had fainted and were carried away. “We didn’t get inside,” he said. “When we were leaving we were told the show had been stopped.”The episode led to the abandonment of the concert, the last of three sold-out shows at the venue by the 27-year-old Asake, whose much-anticipated debut album this year was well received in both Britain and the United States.“My heart is with those who were injured last night,” Asake said in a statement posted on Instagram, noting that he had not heard from the O2 Academy Brixton about what had caused the disruption. He said he was sorry that the concert had been cut short. “I pray you get well soonest,” he added.The O2 Academy Brixton did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Mayor Sadiq Khan of London said in a Twitter post that he was “heartbroken that this could happen to young Londoners enjoying a night out in our city.”“I won’t rest until we have the answers their loved ones and the local community need and deserve,” he added.During his statement outside Brixton police station on Friday, Chief Superintendent Wingrove confirmed that an incident captured on video in which a police officer was “apparently seen to push a member of the public” was under internal review. He also said that another member of the public had been arrested in connection with an assault on a police officer. The police station in Brixton, South London, lies only about 100 yards from the venue, and a cordon was in place Friday, with the normally bustling road alongside closed to traffic.Above the building’s entrance, a “sold out” sign was still visible, and garbage lay strewn across the street outside.London is home to a large African community, and the Afrobeats genre has grown increasingly popular in the capital in recent years, with artists frequently selling out packed shows. More

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Mike Campbell is not planning to regroup the Heartbreakers in the near future as he is still mourning the death of the band leader, three years after his passing.

Nov 27, 2020
AceShowbiz – Tom Petty’s longtime sidekick Mike Campbell isn’t quite ready to regroup the Heartbreakers three years after the band leader’s death.
The guitarist admits he’s sure he will consider a reunion “at some point in the future,” but he’s still heartbroken about his longtime pal and collaborator’s passing in 2017.
Campbell tells Rolling Stone he’s well aware Petty wanted to hit the road and perform his Wildflowers album in its entirety, and so that’s something that might happen.

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“I’m not ready emotionally to have the Heartbreakers in a room and go ‘1, 2, 3, 4…’ and look around and Tom’s not there,” Mike explains. “I need to grieve a little more to get to that point in time, but I’m not against the idea. I do miss the guys, but Tom left a huge hole in the band.”
“It would have to be almost a voice from beyond, almost like, ‘Guys, do this for me’. If I got that message, I would present it to the other guys. But it hasn’t been that long. We’re still grieving very deeply. It’s a big loss.”
Campbell and fellow longtime Heartbreakers bandmate Benmont Tench recently worked with Petty’s daughters and Rick Rubin, among others, and put together the “Wildflowers & All the Rest” box set, which was released last month (Oct20). It featured home recordings and previously unreleased tracks, while Campbell and Tench lovingly recalled working with Petty on the album for the liner notes.

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