Rapper talks to Mixtape Daily about Sex, Drugs & Video Games ; LP out now as free download. By Rob Markman David Banner Photo: MTV News Don’t Sleep: Necessary Notables Album : David Banner’s Sex, Drugs & Video Games Key Cameo : “Amazing” (featuring Chris Brown) Essential Info : David Banner knows a thing or two about making hit records, and he promises that his latest album, Sex, Drugs & Video Games, will feature some pretty over-the-top music and some pretty notable guests as well. Chris Brown , Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg will all appear on the LP, which Banner is offering as a free online download on DatPiff.com . Sex, Drugs & Video Games, which dropped on Tuesday (May 22), is technically a free album, but Banner is accepting donations on his DavidBanner.com website to help artists exist outside of big corporations. “What I am trying to do is make the two most important parts of the musical equation … important again: That’s the artist and that’s the fans,” Banner told MTV News back in March of what he dubs the 2M1 Movement. “Corporate entities have made the artists and the fans feel like they’re not important, where without them, it all would fall.” Banner’s goals are progressive, and a good number of his LP’s collaborators operate and are successful within the major-label system. In theory DB’s distribution method could be a conflict of interest for some, but because of Banner’s relationships with the artists he works with, he doesn’t foresee any issues. “I don’t necessarily involve people in my politics. I would tell Chris all the time, Dude, I don’t necessarily want you to be connected with the things that I believe in, because I know there is a certain sacrifice with the things that I believe,” he said. “Only thing I tell people is the record is hot and it’s my album. … Whether I connect these songs to a movement or not, it doesn’t matter because if you strip the movement off of my album, it’s jammin’.” “Amazing,” Banner’s current club banger, features Chris Brown on the hook. Though the Mississippi rapper/producer is sending a message with this album, the song is just about having a good time. “Everybody that’s around me, that supports me, they know what I stand for, and then I think vicariously through me they’re actually able to express some of things that they may not want to express in their own career,” he said. What’s your favorite track off of David Banner’s new album? Let us know in the comments. For other artists featured in Mixtape Daily, check out Mixtape Daily Headlines . Related Artists David Banner Chris Brown Lil Wayne
Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles’ The Dictator is indefensible and hilarious, an unruly thing that invites you to laugh at things you feel you shouldn’t. I’ve heard people — even some who like the picture — referring to The Dictator as offensive, and one of the guys sitting behind me at the screening laughed at some jokes and remained awkwardly mute during others. After one of these pauses — the vibrations of his uneasiness were traveling right through my seat back — I heard him say to his pal, “I’m not sure how I feel about this.” But as the end credits rolled he announced joyously, “That was great!” as if he’d endured an enema cleansing that made him feel a whole lot better afterward. Cohen has many gifts as a performer, and with The Dictator he reveals yet another one: He knows how to flush stuff right out of you. Cohen’s invented character du jour is a despot named General Admiral Haffaz Aladeen, ruler of the equally made-up North African state of Wadiya. Aladeen hates the West, hates Jews and regularly calls for the execution of anyone who undermines his authority, by, say, questioning his firm belief that nuclear missiles should be pointy and not rounded. His chief adviser is his Uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley), who chafes under Aladeen’s authoritarian rule and seeks to undermine him. After Aladeen survives an assassination attempt, Tamir persuades him to go to New York to address the United Nations, which has been sticking its nose into his sordid doings. Once he gets to the city — he makes his grand entrance on the back of a decorated camel — he’s kidnapped, stripped of his protruding steel-wool beard and medal-and-scrambled-egg-encrusted uniform, and forced to live as an anonymous immigrant with a tenuous grasp of the English language. It’s at this point that he meets Zoey (Anna Faris), a peacenik mighty-mite who runs a whole-foods store and who, in her desire to be fair and generous to all peoples, attempts to understand his motivations as he spouts all sorts of racist and sexist invective. Meanwhile, Aladeen — who has adopted the name Alison Burgers, for reasons so ridiculous that they’re better left unexplained until you see the film — attempts to reclaim his stature with the help of scientist and Wadiyan exile Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas), who agrees to help him regain his mojo by bulking up in the nukes department. Cohen’s targets here include people who fly planes into buildings for religious reasons, people who hate Jews, and women with hair under their arms. As they used to say on Sesame Street , one of these things is not like the others, but those of you who like to cultivate fragrant jungles in your armpits will just have to deal. The satire in The Dictator is sharp but not exquisitely pointed, and the movie is better for it: It’s clear enough where Cohen’s sympathies lie — his jokes have a kind of sick buoyancy, instead of hammering you with their politics. Cohen’s humor is political, though in the end it may really only be humanitarian. At home in Wadiya, amongst his riches, his servants and his high-cost prostitutes (one of whom is Megan Fox, gamely playing herself), Aladeen likes to play video games, including a Wii-style amusement called “Munich Olympics.” I groaned, along with much of the audience, when he hit the “play” button, but there’s anger in the joke as well as audacity. Cohen doesn’t suffer bullies gladly, which makes a character like Aladeen an irresistible canvas for him. The Dictator is a written-and-rehearsed picture, unlike the extended prank Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan , and it’s probably the better film. As he did on that picture (and the more wayward Brüno ), Cohen again pairs with director Larry Charles, who’s acutely in tune with his rhythms. Charles — who has worked extensively in TV as a producer and/or writer on shows like Seinfeld , Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm , and who also directed the gloriously woolly 2003 Bob Dylan fever dream Masked and Anonymous — has by this point proved to be a great midwife for the ideas of oddball intellects. He gives some shape and heft even to Cohen’s silliest gags, like the one in which it’s explained that Aladeen amended the Wadiyan language so that “negative” and “positive” are the same word — this bit of silliness occasions a great little cameo for Aasif Mandvi as a doctor who’s trying to give a patient the result of his AIDS test. Add to that the pleasure of watching Cohen in all his long-legged, language-mangling glory: The Dictator works both as satire and as comedy, and the two don’t always mingle so easily. Cohen has a way of slinging lines that’s as casual as a cook flipping meat patties in a burger joint. “The police here are such fascists!” he says, aghast at the behavior of New York City cops, but he’s really just setting us up for the kicker: “And not in the good way!” By the time Aladeen has been in in New York for a while, his sartorial choices have been unduly influenced by crunchy-granola Zoey, to the point where he thinks nothing of wearing Crocs in public. When Nadal uses this footwear choice as evidence of how far Aladeen has fallen, the has-been tyrant can only agree: “Crocs,” he says dejectedly, “the universal symbol of men who have given up hope.” Cohen may be playing an autocrat, but he doesn’t let his ego run roughshod over his fellow actors. Anna Faris gets less screentime than Cohen does, but she stands up to him admirably, maybe because she’s willing to go just as far as he is for a laugh, even a painful one. As Zoey, a no-makeup martinet with firm ideas about equality among all peoples, she captures perfectly the tyrannical smugness of the tiny but powerful nation of white people known as Park Slope, Brooklyn. The Dictator , for all its liberal leanings, doesn’t let anyone off the hook, not even well-intentioned liberals. Cohen comes right out and says things that most of us, in polite conversation, wouldn’t dare. He knows it’s the impolite conversation that really gets things moving. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
President Barack Obama fielded questions about the economy, gay marriage, Fifty Shades of Grey – all the key issues – with the women of The View this week. He corrected Elisabeth Hasselbeck when she described the President’s and Mitt Romney’s position on gay marriage as essentially the same. Not so, he says. Obama discussed the JP Morgan banking crisis and much more in what was a pleasant, but ultimately forgettable and unnecessary visit to the daytime gab-fest. There were some substantive policy discussions during his brief visit, but the highlight, at least from THG’s perspective, was Obama dishing on celebrity gossip . Watch him answer a pop quiz from Joy Behar below: Obama on The View
This is a busy time for the Smith family. Will Smith is about to star in Men in Black III . Willow Smith is dyeing her hair left and right. And now Jaden Smith has released a new track titled “Give It To Em.” Raps Jaden in the single: Young, black with accessories/And I’m doing well, never seen a penitentiary/‘Cause they can’t sentence the greatest MC they’ve ever seen/No i’m not, but if you’re going to bother me, then you better be. Alright then! Jaden will next continue his film career by starring in M. Night Shyamalan‘s After Earth . Give his latest song a listen below. Jaden Smith – “Give It To Em”
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul announced Monday that his campaign will no longer spend money on future nominating contests due to lack of funds. Ron Paul is the final challenger to Mitt Romney still running at all. The Texas Congressman wrote the following letter to supporters: “Our campaign will continue to work in the state convention process. We will continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future.” “Moving forward, however, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted. Doing so with any hope of success would require tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have.” The 76-year-old Paul encouraged his legion of supporters to continue their efforts in the presidential race as well as down-ballot races across the country and stressed that he will continue working to win delegates. “In the coming days, my campaign leadership will lay out to you our delegate strategy and what you can do to help, so please stay tuned,” Paul wrote. Two weeks ago, Paul and his supporters cheered the candidate’s delegate wins in Maine and Nevada, but as Yahoo News reported, those wins didn’t necessarily move Paul any closer to winning his party’s nomination. Paul has long touted a strategy to rack up delegates as a way to become a part of this summer’s convention process, absent an outright win. In any case, he is not dropping out of the race in the absolute sense, just no longer actively spending money in the remaining GOP contests. How many delegates Ron Paul continues to win during state delegations and what role that gives him at the RNC remains to be seen. Whatever happens, he’s left an indelible mark on the race.
Controversy over Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie abated Friday as he turned investors’ attention to more important matters at a presentation in Palo Alto, Calif. Chief among them? Improving Facebook’s mobile application . About 200 investors showed up at an IPO presentation to quiz Zuckerberg about generating revenue from mobile users, crucial for long-term fiscal growth. Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, said overall advertising is gaining steam, with most marketers increasing their spending with Facebook. The executives, who appeared on stage alongside CFO David Ebersman, highlighted social ads as an important tool for Facebook to tackle mobile challenges. The ads, incorporating information about Facebook users’ friends who “like” certain products, are better-suited to the smaller screens of smartphones. More than half of Facebook’s users currently use it from phones. As Facebook collects more information about its users, such as location data, Facebook will be able to offer more relevant mobile ads, executives said. Facebook aims to raise about $10.6 billion via its initial public offering, dwarfing Google’s recent IPO and giving it a market value around $96 billion. The Facebook IPO marks a watershed moment for the new generation of startups that are challenging established players such as Google and Yahoo. Consumers’ online time – and advertising dollars – are very much the future. With 900 million users, Facebook is the world’s dominant social network. Zuckerberg, the 28-year-old CEO, was Time Magazine ‘s Person of the Year in 2010 and was depicted in the fictionalized 2010 movie The Social Network .
In the mid-90s, author Toni Morrison famously referred to Bill Clinton as “the first black President” based on his empathy, efforts to foster broad socioeconomic equality and commitment to issues important to African-American community at large. Newsweek plays off this quote in its new cover story on President Barack Obama. Following Obama’s public support of same-sex marriage , he has been dubbed The First Gay President … in a manner of speaking of course: While Obama’s statement was groundbreaking and bold, will his “coming out” on behalf of gay marriage even make a different in November’s election? “If you were going to cast your vote based on a candidate’s position regarding same-sex marriage, you were already going to vote for Obama [or] Romney based on that,” Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank said on ABC’s This Week . “I literally don’t think anybody’s vote was changed one way or the other.” In any case, Obama’s end to “evolving” on gay marriage will continue to generate critical comment, and not all of it positive, even from the left. “His embrace of gay marriage was not a profile in courage,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote, taking issue with adulation shown toward the President (such as on the cover above) more than anything. “Even when he does the right thing, by the time he does it and in the way he does it, he drains away excitement and robs himself of the admiration he would otherwise be due … Why doesn’t he just do the exhilarating thing immediately?” “Why does he have to be dragged kicking and screaming to principle?” With Obama’s face pictured looking skyward and a rainbow-colored halo above his head, the controversial cover leads to a story written by openly gay writer Andrew Sullivan, a self-described political conservative. The boundary-pushing May 21 Newsweek issue featuring Obama, available Monday, comes after Time magazine’s breastfeeding cover last week, which featured an attractive 26-year-old mother nursing her toddler son. The cover sparked strong reactions across the world last week and led a Newsweek spokesperson to tell the New York Post that the magazine’s editor Tina Brown had viewed the cover as a challenge. “When Tina saw the Time cover, she laughed and said, ‘Let the games begin,'” the spokesperson told the Post . Game on.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney apologized for alleged pranks he pulled in high school, but denied they constituted bullying of gay students. A Washington Post piece insinuated that pranks the likely GOP nominee pulled during his years at a Michigan all-boys high school targeted his gay peers. Romney admitted during a radio interview that he did some “dumb things” but that “homosexuality was the furthest thing from his mind” in school. He laughed off most the 45 year-old anecdotes during the radio interview. “I’m not going to be too concerned,” he said. “I played a lot of pranks in high school and they describe some that, well, you just say to yourself … in high school I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that, or offended, obviously I apologize.” “But, overall, high school years were a long time ago ,” said Romney. Asked if he remembered cutting the hair of one of his classmates at the Cranbook School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., who was “presumed” to be gay because the candidate did not like his long hairstyle, Romney responded, “You know, I don’t.” “I don’t remember that incident,” Romney said, noting, “homosexuality was the furthest thing from my mind back in the 1960s, so that was not the case.” “As for pranks, I don’t remember them all, but again, you know, [in my] high school days I did of stupid things. I’m afraid I gotta say sorry for it.” Romney asserted several times that the Post article noted that the students who reported having pranks played on them “didn’t come out of the closet until years later,” suggesting that the pranks couldn’t be motivated by homophobia. Despite his opposition to gay marriage , a more moderate Romney made overtures to the gay community as a candidate for office in the past.
President Barack Obama today became the first sitting president to announce support for same-sex marriage, making his position on the subject clear. In a sit-down interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, Obama completed what has been a long and often dubious “evolution” on the controversial topic. “I’ve always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly,” Obama told Roberts in an interview that will air Thursday. Obama’s announcement, on the heels of North Carolina’s Amendment 1 ban on gay marriage in that state, was made after much soul-searching. “Over the course of several years, I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, and I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together,” he said. “When I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married .” The statement constitutes an act of political bravery on the president’s behalf, as 29 states have now banned gay marriage constitutionally. It’s also a major victory for the gay rights community, which has been pushing him to declare his support for marriage equality for years. Just last Sunday, Vice President Joseph Biden told NBC’s Meet The Press that he was personally comfortable with same-sex marriage. With the issue back in the news, the pressure on Obama intensified. The White House originally insisted over the weekend that Biden clarified his statement as being in reference to civil rights for gay couples. But the explanation was largely dismissed as a political dodge, a way for Obama to support for marriage equality without having to declare it himself. No longer. The president finally chose to speak out Wednesday in the wake of the North Carolina ban, with the White House hastily scheduling an interview. “It’s interesting, some of this is also generational,” the president said. “You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same sex equality or, you know, believe in equality.” “They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently.” “It doesn’t make sense to them and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.” The president’s support of same-sex marriage will have little political impact, at least from a practical standpoint, as most states have tackled the issue legislatively and/or judicially, outside the realm of the federal government. Symbolically, the impact is much more profound. As the first president to support marriage equality, he sets the bar for its social and political acceptance and retains the ability to shape public opinion further. What do you think of President Obama’s support for gay marriage?
Dancing With the Stars bid farewell to two of its top six competitors on last night’s results show. Did the four favorites survive, or were there surprises? It was really anyone’s game. A week after scoring a perfect 30, Maria Menounos and Derek Hough found themselves in second-to-last place Monday. Roshon Fegan, who narrowly avoided elimination, climbed to second, while only six points separated William Levy in first from Melissa Gilbert in last. So which four celebrities are moving on to the semifinals? Roshon and Chelsie Hightower were the first couple to be eliminated. Even after having one of their better weeks, it wasn’t enough for the young pair. “I’m definitely very happy that I can add ballroom dancing to my super-duper dance moves,” Roshon told co-host Brooke Burke-Charvet in response. “I’m so proud of you,” his partner Chelsie said. “He was such a joy to work with and came to work everyday willing to work and with such a great attitude.” “I’m happy to end it on a high note and I’m happy I had you as my partner.” The second couple eliminated on Tuesday were … Melissa Gilbert and Maksim Chmerkovskiy. “I can’t even describe what a learning and growing experience it’s been. It’s been a real blessing and a joy,” said the actress, on her 48th birthday. “I’m amazed that I even made it this far, and the things that I was able to do and the things that were able to overcome to have been here on this day, does make it a really incredible birthday,” Gilbert added. “Maks has been amazing, an incredible teacher, an incredible friend.” And so it goes. Levy, Menounos, Katherine Jenkins and Donald Driver are on to the final four, where it will again be anyone’s game next week! What do you think? Did America get the DWTS results right?
