Kerry Washington and those lovely, pouty lips of hers are posted on the cover of Uptown Magazine… Via UPTOWN: On what drew her to Django and the controversy around the movie: “I’ve never seen slavery dealt with this way before in film. So often it’s a white character who’s the savior of black people.” “We should have a plethora of visions and interpretations of who we are as a nation.” But she admits, “This is not necessarily the film I would make about slavery.” On growing up in the Washington household and her multi-culti family: She still remembers the lively, sometimes heated, discussions on race and society around the dinner table. “My family’s very multiethnic,” she says. “When we get together for the holidays, it is the U.N., across the board.” On the culture shock when she enrolled in an upper east side private school: Prior to Spence, Washington thought her working-middle-class family was balling. “We had a microwave and two cars. We had a dishwasher before anyone in the building,” she says. “And then you go to this other world, and it’s, ‘Oh, we’re taking a helicopter to your house in the Hamptons?’ For a lot of classmates, I knew the only other black women they’d known were their domestic help.” On leaving the entertainment business: “Sometimes I feel like I can’t do this anymore.” Almost once a year, her hair and makeup folks hear it: “I am done! I’m so done.” On why she’s no saint: “If you look at my body of work, I’ve always taken huge risks. I’ve played prostitutes, drug addicts, pimping lesbians. I do work I’m drawn to.” Make sure you cop the issue when it hits newsstands and peep more pics below:
Check out their freaky-deeky photo shoot inside.. Gloria Govan And Matt Barnes Cover Urban Ink Magazine Newlywed reality show couple Gloria Govan and Matt Barnes are leaving little to the imagination with their spread in this month’s Urban Ink magazine. The “Basketball Wives L.A.” banger and her baller-boo hubby look to have channeled their inner Evelyn and Chad, who also posed for a strikingly similar cover for the same publication back in their better days that didn’t include slorebag side pieces and head-butting battles. Check out a tatted up Matt getting a handful of Gloria’s nekkid goodies in the rest of the pics from the Urban Ink shoot on the flip.
It’s comeback season for Clifford ! The rapper/actor is set to drop his new album “Trouble Man: Heavy Is the Head” next month and in preparation he’s making his rounds with the media. In an interview with Billboard Magazine , T.I. talks about doing his time, making a comeback and his plans for the future: You’re turning in the album tomorrow. How does it feel? [laughs] It’s a blessing. It’s a blessing to be at this stage in my career and continue to have, I guess, enough relevance to have an anticipated project. I’m real proud of it — I just hope everybody else will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. Originally, you were looking at an early fourth-quarter, late third-quarter release. Now, here we are moving into December. Why the date shift? It wasn’t ready. I knew that this was a moment for me, and I had to dedicate the necessary time, attention and energy to ensuring that it would be of the classic proportion that I feel the fans deserve. I could have settled. I could have put an album out in September, but I still was on probation, which would have limited the amount of travel that I could do. So that was another factor that was extremely important. And all the songs that I’ve done since then, they take it over the top. You mentioned the significance of this album for your career. Can you talk a bit about that? It goes without saying that it’s hard to attain a certain level of success. And it’s hard to maintain this level of success and even more difficult when one is separated from your environment, especially if you’re separated from the environment due to negative reasons. So coming back, most people aren’t able to. And if you try to come back and you don’t make it, it’s probably lights out. To half-a$$ and take it lightly could end up catastrophic. There are those who say that when rappers go to jail it makes them hot. What’s your take on that? I tell you what: If it did, I’d give it back in a second for the time that I lost. I can say that it has made me more famous, and people probably know my situation more than they know my music. However, it also interrupted a lot of very lucrative and noteworthy opportunities. In my case, I lost as much as I gained, probably. You lost a lot of corporate sponsorships along the way. How are you finding those conversations today, now that you’ve been out for a year? A lot of people are open to it. Everyone knows that America has a short-term memory and they’re very forgetful and forgiving. I mean, I haven’t even went out and checked. Don’t get me wrong. When it’s time to sponsor events for us, we don’t have a shortage of takers. A lot of people want to be associated with our brand to create awareness of their brand, and they recognize our relevance and our influence on the marketplace. Now as far as people calling to make me the face of their brand, there has been nothing that I have taken seriously as of yet. People have inquired about building brands around my face and about building brand-new brands from scratch more so than associating me to an existing brand, with the exception of the Atlanta Hawks. We’ve had this very, very positive working relationship with the Atlanta Hawks for quite some time, and just recently they called me to broadcast two quarters of the Hawks game when they played the Miami Heat for Fox Sports South, and I had fun. They would like to further the relationship and see how we could do more together. There’s obviously a good track record for music and NBA partnerships. You know what? Right now, I’m so focused on “Trouble Man,” I’m not even really looking past Dec. 18. For this to be the absolute best body of work it could be, I had to turn stuff down. I had to have tunnel vision. Of course, I broke away for a month or two and I went and I did a movie. And I did a season of “Boss.” But when I was doing that, when my attention was divided, the music wasn’t working. So it required me to totally shut everything else off and dedicate myself 100% just in building this album. And that’s the mind-set that I’m in: how to create the most awareness and anticipation for this album to be a classic. Do you have your eye on a big spring tour? Yeah, definitely. I just got to see what the most lucrative, reasonable opportunity is for me. I would like to focus more on my international presence. Due to my circumstances, a lot of people that know my music, know who I am and want to see me, but haven’t had the opportunity because I haven’t been afforded the opportunity to travel abroad. Now that I can, I would like to strengthen my international presence. I’ve never been to Africa. I’ve never been to China. Aside from seeing the world and living life, it’s leaving a lot of money on the table. For an artist of my caliber, the global awareness of T.I. being a multiplatinum artist is probably the weakest of all the other multiplatinum artists simply because I haven’t gone. Usually when most people take time to go do a tour, I do a movie. When they do international dates, I do a movie. And that’s why I’m probably the strongest in film of the multiplatinum artists because I took the time to do movies rather than touring abroad. So it’s a balance. Just like Justin Timberlake, he took time off music completely to only focus on film, and that’s probably why he’s the most strongly recognized singer-slash-actor in the game today. You put time into things and cultivate these opportunities and the amount of effort and energy you put in is the amount of result you’ll see back from it-if you’re any good at least. What is it about acting do you enjoy? Is it the process? The payday? The exposure? To be honest, all of the above. Well, I can’t say the payday. I ain’t had a huge payday yet. But it’s a different level of respect associated with it and it surprises people. I enjoy shocking the isht out of folks. And at this level in my career, I can make an outstanding, phenomenal album, I can release an insanely successful and critically revered single, but people are going to say, “Ah, yeah, that’s T.I., he’s been doing that for years.” Now, if I happen to be in a critically acclaimed film nominated for a Golden Globe or an Academy Award, then people are surprised and shocked. Through the years, you’ve mentioned different people being supportive of everything you’ve gone through, including Eminem. Who else has been there to help? As you mentioned, of course, Em. He was extremely supportive and inspirational during that time. Busta Rhymes, Puffy, Lyor Cohen, Russell Simmons, Nelly, David Banner, Charlie Mack, Will Smith. Will actually went as far as getting in touch with [attorney general] Eric Holder and the Obama administration trying to see if we could get some kind of release. He was very politely told that was not possible. [laughs] Really? It was the last time I was going back, and I was going to court for my probation violation. He was in deep discussions about it. And he’s been a huge contributor to the administration, and I mean not just in finances, I’m talking about time and other kinds of efforts, so it ain’t like his words were falling on deaf ears. But I understood. I didn’t even expect no help. I didn’t expect nobody to be able to help me. I knew I made my bed and I knew I had to lay in it. Pure comedy. Can you imagine what Bill O’Reilly would have had to say if Obama had given T.I. a pardon? We’re really feelin’ Tip’s latest single and are hoping the new album is all at that same level. Will you be picking up Trouble Man when it lands in stores?
Seems like Kerry’s career is bangin’ now that she’s got a hit TV show, a new role in Quentin Tarantino’s film “Django Unchained”, and an upcoming interview on “Oprah’s Next Chapter”. Inside the magazine, Kerry talks about playing Olivia Pope on ABC’s ‘Scandal’; “She’s phenomenally successful, able to control her world and makes things happen with clarity and force in her profession”. She says she wouldn’t have been able to play Broomhilda in Django Unchained if she didn’t have her day job; “I don’t know if I would have been able to play [her]. She has strength I knew nothing about. Tarantino is a director who’s not intimidated by blood and gore and violence and the darker side of the human soul”. When asked about roles Black women in Hollywood often get, Kerry says, “I can see how it’s not particularly feminist to play the princess in the tower, waiting to be saved. But as a black woman – we’ve never been afforded that luxury. There was no man coming to save you; it wasn’t part of the story. In some ways, this telling is a statement of empowerment.” Hit the flip for more spreads from her feature in ELLE and let us know what you think about Kerry’s new career moves. Do you think she’s moving in the right direction when it comes to the roles she chooses in hollywood?
A Bare-Bodied Rihanna Covers GQ Magazine Rihanna and allllll her “diamonds” are shining bright on the cover of GQ magazine’s “Men of the Year” issue. Ratchet Rih-Rih steals the shine from the guys as the only woman to make the magazine’s “men of the year” list and leaves little to the imagination with only her hands and a leather jacket covering her seemingly magnetic million dollar tatted up torso and bare bee stings. We can’t show you the entire cover ’cause we’re no fun, but you get the idea. And if not, you can see the whole thing when it hits stands later this year. Image via Twitter
Tiny’s lil’ self is on the cover of Juicy and she’s talking about love and marriage inside. The magazine takes you on a tour of Tiny and T.I.’s Georgia Mansion while she dishes on her upcoming talk show, ‘Tiny Tonight’, managing her kids’ careers, and taking care of her rapper boo-thang. Asked about how she keeps her marriage spicy, Tiny says… “We’ve been through all kinds of scrutiny like, ‘Why are they together?’ ‘Why does he want her?’ If we can [survive] all that and not give a damn what anyone thinks, then we can show them that we’re normal, too.” We’re gonna give Tiny a quick lil’ shout out for her cover and for holding things down with all this Matriarch has going on! Images via Juicy Magazine
Kontrol Girl is debuting with the OMG Girlz posted up on the cover. The magazine will feature fashion, beauty, and entertainment-related articles with a positive spin. In their interview, OMG Girlz member Miss Baby Doll talked about how it felt to be a girl group in the industry right now: “It is such a great honor and blessing to be one of the only girls groups out right now, and as more girls groups come along, we are more than excited to convey the message of girl power.” She added, “We have all been very involved with the writing process for the album as well.” The magazine’s set to drop later this week. Images via twitter/kontrol girl
