Featuring a half-playful, half-serious verse from fellow Chicagoan wunderkind Chance The Rapper, and bridge assistance from Pharrell Williams’ sleeper apprentice, Buddy, “Church” continues BJ’s humble stumble down the path of righteousness, a theme threaded throughout his music since he first came on the scene as a solo artist in 2012. With every possible temptation (“She say she wanna drink, do drugs and have sex tonight / But I got church in the morning”), he rights himself. We all meander, and slip and fall, and let certain morals fall by the wayside. “Church” is a reminder that while we’re only human, we can control our own destinies. Sounds like something we all go through. Are you feeling this one?? NPR
Derrick Rose Accused Of Gang Rape Bulls Baller Derrick Rose is in the hot seat today, as a new lawsuit filed by one of his former girlfriends alleges that at the end of their two-year relationship, the player lured her to his home, laced her drink with a drug , and eventually forced her to have sex with him and two of his friends. Via TMZ : Derrick Rose is being sued by a woman who claims the NBA superstar and two of his friends drugged and gang raped her. The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, says she and Rose dated from 2011 to 2013. During that time, Rose allegedly tried to pressure her to masturbate in front of him, allow him to have sex with her friends and engage in group sex with strangers, all of which she says she refused. Rose’s accuser says the two continued to date until August 2013, when Rose and two friends, Ryan Allen and Randall Hampton (who is also Rose’s personal manager), invited her to Rose’s Beverly Hills house. She says there, they slipped a drug into her drink with the aim of raping her. The plaintiff says she escaped the house with a friend, but later that night, Rose and his friends broke into her apartment and gang raped her while she was incapacitated. She says she remembers only “flashes” of the incident, but can remember the defendants forcibly raping her. She claims she waited for two years to file the suit because she was “ashamed and embarrassed” of what happened and concerned her “conservative family” would find out. She wants unspecified damages. We’ve reached out to an attorney for Rose, but so far … no word back. YIKES. These are some TERRIBLE charges! Wow…it will be really interesting to see how this all shakes out.
Derrick Rose Accused Of Gang Rape Bulls Baller Derrick Rose is in the hot seat today, as a new lawsuit filed by one of his former girlfriends alleges that at the end of their two-year relationship, the player lured her to his home, laced her drink with a drug , and eventually forced her to have sex with him and two of his friends. Via TMZ : Derrick Rose is being sued by a woman who claims the NBA superstar and two of his friends drugged and gang raped her. The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, says she and Rose dated from 2011 to 2013. During that time, Rose allegedly tried to pressure her to masturbate in front of him, allow him to have sex with her friends and engage in group sex with strangers, all of which she says she refused. Rose’s accuser says the two continued to date until August 2013, when Rose and two friends, Ryan Allen and Randall Hampton (who is also Rose’s personal manager), invited her to Rose’s Beverly Hills house. She says there, they slipped a drug into her drink with the aim of raping her. The plaintiff says she escaped the house with a friend, but later that night, Rose and his friends broke into her apartment and gang raped her while she was incapacitated. She says she remembers only “flashes” of the incident, but can remember the defendants forcibly raping her. She claims she waited for two years to file the suit because she was “ashamed and embarrassed” of what happened and concerned her “conservative family” would find out. She wants unspecified damages. We’ve reached out to an attorney for Rose, but so far … no word back. YIKES. These are some TERRIBLE charges! Wow…it will be really interesting to see how this all shakes out.
Napa Valley Wine Train Apologizes For Kicking Off Black Group Black women’s book club group — including one 83-year-old woman — were harshly removed from a California vineyard tour after white patrons accused them of being too loud on their train ride. The Napa Valley Train company has now publicly apologized for the incident. Via CBS : Executives of the Napa Valley Wine Train have apologized to members of a book club that were kicked off its train recently for laughing too loudly. The group said they were kicked off because of their race. The 11-member book club, composed almost entirely of African-American women, was told to leave the train Saturday mid-trip after several passengers complained about how loud the women were being. “We didn’t do anything wrong,” club member Lisa Johnson, told KTVU Monday. “We still feel this is about race. We were singled out.” News of the incident spread quickly and drew harsh criticism of the company after Lisa Johnson, a leader of the Sistas on the Reading Edge Book Club, told her story on social media. Many tweeted about the incident using the hashtag #LaughingWhileBlack Do you think the apology is enough??
Sincere Says Love & Hip Hop Hollywood Is Too Scripted Yet another Love & Hip Hop cast member is calling out the show as a work of total fiction . Sincere, cast member on Season 1 of Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood says he had such a big issue with the “character” producers were forcing him to portray that he actually bowed out of the second season of the show. Via RadarOnline : Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood has been dogged by claims of fakery ever since Joseline Hernandez said the show was faked during a deposition earlier this year. At the time, her costar Sincere defended the VH1 series, insisting it was “not fake,” but now he’s speaking out exclusively to RadarOnline.com to reveal that the show is getting to be too much like a “scripted” drama — and that’s why he secretly quit! Fan fave Sincere revealed to Radar that he quit the show after filming for just two months of the second season. “I actually got out of my contract,” he confirmed to Radar. “They have me cast in a different way.” “The way I was cast was different than how they portrayed me,” he claimed. “They had me be a shit-stirrer. I’m a businessman. They wanted me to be viewed a different way. I didn’t like what was going on.” Hinting at fakery behind the scenes, he said, “Who knows, I think scripted TV is coming back in a big way …” Wow…reality TV is scripted. We are so shocked right now… Oh, well. Was anyone actually checking for him like that though?
MTV Announces Performers At 2015 Video Music Awards Right on the heels of announcing that Kanye West will receive this year’s Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award , MTV is lifting some more of the mystery surrounding the 2015 Video Music Awards. With the performing lineup a complete secret until news leaked that The Weekend would be hitting the VMA stage a few weeks back, the network revealed the rest of the people who’ll be performing between Miley handing out moon men. Peep the clip: Looks like they’re leaving us in the dark about two more surprise appearances until tomorrow. What do you think of the lineup thus far?? Will you be watching???
Caitlyn Jenner Halloween Costume Hits Retailers A new costume has hit stores, emulating Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out cover of Vanity Fair. Naturally, people are calling it both transphobic and hilarious. Via NBCnews : It’s nowhere near October, but one ensemble is already on track to be named the most controversial Halloween costume of 2015. Social media users were out in full force on Monday criticizing several Halloween retailers for offering a Caitlyn Jenner costume reminiscent of the former-athlete’s Vanity Fair cover earlier this year. While Jenner’s supporters condemned the costume as “transphobic” and “disgusting” on Twitter, Spirit Halloween, a retailer that carries the costume, defended the getup. “At Spirit Halloween, we create a wide range of costumes that are often based upon celebrities, public figures, heroes and superheroes,” said Lisa Barr, senior director of marking at Spirit Halloween. “We feel that Caitlyn Jenner is all of the above and that she should be celebrated. The Caitlyn Jenner costume reflects just that.” Despite the company’s stated intentions, transgender activists are lashing out. Those Halloween stores sure know how to ride a wave to make a buck off what’s trending! This one is pretty insensitive though. Would you dress up as Caitlyn Jenner for Halloween??
Kylie Jenner Blamed For Teenagers Getting Plastic Surgery In a world of high-definition everything, the pressure is on for everyone to always look their best. For a celebrity, with cameras, both their own and that of the paparazzi, constantly on them, plastic surgery is often the answer — sometimes before the person is even old enough to vote. Via Fox News : For regular, non-famous people who don’t live in the public eye, Instagram can be stressful enough already. Not only do your friends’ lives seem more fun, but their skin looks smoother, their waists slimmer. According to The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, nearly 18,000 teens ages 13-19 got a form of Botox in 2013. There seems to be ever more pressure for young people to look perfect. Are our public standards of beauty so new? Getting nipped and tucked certainly isn’t. Younger women altering themselves isn’t exactly novel, either. What’s new, though, is how common it is. The 2014 Annual American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Survey blamed “the rise of the selfie,” and there may be something to that. We’re taking more pictures of ourselves and each other than ever before and our exhibitionist lives are leading to a pressure for beauty that is starting at an ever younger age. We use Photoshop, Instagram filters and other enhancements to project our best looks to the world. Plastic surgery doesn’t seem so crazy as the next step anymore. We’re perfecting our best angle in every picture we snap and changing ourselves to improve on it. One of the most visible examples of this is Kylie Jenner who, at the age of 16, went from an awkward but still very pretty teenager to an unrecognizable bombshell. Though she only admits to having her lips plumped, speculation is that her butt, breasts and nose have all been done as well. Kylie addressed her changed lips during an episode of her family’s hit show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” In it, she said she had always felt insecure about her looks and so she had fillers put in to boost her lips. Plastic surgery or nah?? But… Would you allow your teen to get plastic surgery???
White Women Use Make Up To Imitate Winnie Harlow’s Vitiligo Canadian model Winnie Harlow has started an online debate about blackface after a group of white women thought it was necessary to use dark make up to imitate her skin disease… Via EOnline : Harlow—who competed in Cycle 21 of America’s Next Top Model under the name Chantelle Brown-Young—has a skin condition called vitiligo, which causes loss of color in blotches. After placing fifth in Tyra Banks’ reality competition series, Harlow, 21, booked campaigns with Desigual and Diesel. She currently appears on Ebony’s September cover with fellow America’s Next Top Model aluma Fatima Siad, plus Samantha Archibald, Milan Dixon, Diandra Forrest and Marquita Pring. As Harlow makes a name for herself in the fashion industry, some people have attempted to copy her skin condition in an effort to tribute to her. The fans, some of them Caucasian, have applied makeup to look more like Harlow. However, some critics have argued that what fans are really doing is putting on blackface. Amid controversy, Harlow released a statement via Instagram. “My response to this is probably not what a lot of people want but here it goes: every time someone wants fuller lips, or a bigger bum, or curly hair, or braids does Not mean our culture is being stolen. Have you ever stop to realize these things used to be ridiculed and now they’re loved and lusted over. No one wants to “steal” our look here. We’ve just stood so confidently in our own nappy hair and du-rags and big asses (or in this case, my skin) that now those who don’t have it love and lust after it. Just because a black girl wears blue contacts and long weave doesn’t mean she wants to be white and just because a white girl wears braids and gets lip injection doesn’t mean she wants to be black. The amount of mixed races in this world is living proof that we don’t want to be each other we’ve just gained a national love for each other,” the model told her followers. “Why can’t we embrace that feeling of love? Why do we have to make it a hate crime?” The tweet that started it all: Check out Winnie’s response below: My response to this is probably not what a lot of people want but here it goes: every time someone wants fuller lips, or a bigger bum, or curly hair, or braids does Not mean our culture is being stolen. Have you ever stop to realize these things used to be ridiculed and now they’re loved and lusted over. No one wants to “steal” our look here. We’ve just stood so confidently in our own nappy hair and du-rags and big asses (or in this case, my skin) that now those who don’t have it love and lust after it. Just because a black girl wears blue contacts and long weave doesn’t mean she wants to be white and just because a white girl wears braids and gets lip injection doesn’t mean she wants to be black. The amount of mixed races in this world is living proof that we don’t want to be each other we’ve just gained a national love for each other. Why can’t we embrace that feeling of love? Why do we have to make it a hate crime? In a time when so much negative is happening, please don’t accuse those who are showing love and appreciation, of being hateful. It is very clear to me when someone is showing love and I appreciate these people recreating, loving and broadcasting something to the world that once upon a time I cried myself to sleep over #1LOVE Why can’t white people just ever have a seat?? Hit the flip for more…
Wiz Khalifa Pinned By Police For Hover Wheels Wiz Khalifa was taken down by a group of cops at LAX yesterday…all for riding one of those hover-board/personal wheels all the rappers, athletes, and cool people of social media are riding. Apparently airport officers had a problem with the rapper using the wheels on airport property…but Wiz refused to get off his device, insisting that he wasn’t hurting anyone and that cops were not about to tell him what to do for no reason: As it tends to go with police, that confrontation escalated quickly into police pinning Wiz down with multiples knees to the back and demanding that he stop “resisting.” Wiz’s crew caught it all on camera. Flip the page… Instagram/Twitter
