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      Raids turn up legal heat on Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in sex-trafficking investigation

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 3 days ago - 20:55

    Federal investigation comes amid multiple lawsuits including singer Cassie accusing him of rape and physical abuse

    The rapper and mogul Sean Combs is facing mounting legal troubles after federal agents searched his properties in Los Angeles and Miami as part of a sex-trafficking investigation.

    On Monday morning, US Department of Homeland Security agents in tactical gear and armored vehicles raided two of Combs’s mansions as part of an investigation by federal authorities in New York, sources told the Associated Press.

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      Raging fires and block-rockin’ parties: back to the Bronx – in pictures

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 20 March - 07:00


    Joe Conzo Jr spent his teenage years with a camera strapped to him, capturing everything from protests to hip-hop battles in his local neighbourhood

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      The 90s hip-hop T-shirt is back – with a twist

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 18 March - 06:00

    Where once rap tees were used to promote stars like Biggie and Tupac, now the trend for displaying your own face is all the rage

    Ariana Atwater, a customer service associate at Bloomingdale’s in New York City, grew up in the US south, where “rap tees” – shirts highlighting hip-hop’s biggest artists – were nearly ubiquitous. The 32-year-old remembers buying Bow Wow and Jeezy garb, but last autumn, she added a far less famous face to her wardrobe: her boyfriend, Aaron.

    Atwater customised a $30 (£25) shirt with his name in huge, orange ombré text above images of his face and wore the shirt as a surprise for his birthday. “I just wanted to find something cool and cute to celebrate him,” she says.

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      Tierra Whack: World Wide Whack review – witty, wild and from the heart

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 17 March - 09:00

    (Interscope)
    The Philadelphia rapper takes her Missy Elliott-gone-Sesame Street vibe to a darker place on her debut album proper

    Hailed as her generation’s answer to Missy Elliott, Philadelphia rapper Tierra Whack has been celebrated not just for her lyrical dexterity but for her commitment to goofiness. Her exuberant debut mini-album, Whack World (2018), clocked in at 15 one-minute tracks; a clutch of EPs and some standalone singles consolidated her effervescence across different genres.

    Last year’s award-winning thriller/spoof documentary about Whack, Cypher , also attested to the weirdness that the creative nonconformist has experienced during her rise. She has trailed World Wide Whack , her official debut LP , with a trio of tracks – one ditty about her smell ( Chanel Pit ); a funky cut about singing in the shower ( Shower Song ); and a moving tune about feeling “broken”. The track’s title, 27 Club, refers to Whack not joining the set of artists who died at that age (she is now 28).

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      ‘I write about weird stuff, like a party full of giraffes’: Tierra Whack, America’s most creative rapper

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 14 March - 13:32 · 1 minute

    She’s a muse to Beyoncé, a champion of Lego and raps about her imaginary friend – but behind the whimsy is a street-hardened MC confronting grief and depression

    • This article contains discussion of suicide

    There’s a video of Tierra Whack filmed when she was 15, dressed in dull pink knitwear on the corner of a Philadelphia street, surrounded by older guys smoking weed. “Rapping is my destiny / Especially for these hysterectomies who be testing me / You deaf to me / You’re not hearing what I’m sharing like an uncaring parent …” Words pour out of her in an a cappella freestyle to camera, more performance poetry than rap, voice morphing from one persona to another – one of those mic-drop, jaw-drop moments where you see a new star gather light in real time.

    Twelve years later, and the knitwear is bright and expensive, she’s a muse to Beyoncé and has become one of the most singular rappers and singers in America. Her 2018 debut album, Whack World, felt like a piece of performance art with 15 multi-genre tracks each exactly one minute long; her feature film last year, Cypher, flipped the tired fly-on-the-wall music documentary format into a satirical horror movie about conspiracy theories and selling out. While many rappers align themselves with luxury brands, Whack did a campaign with Lego, and her brilliant second album, World Wide Whack, out this week, shows off that whimsy on songs about an imaginary friend, dates at the cinema and singing in the shower. But it is also devastatingly honest about her experience of depression. “I’m 28 now – I was supposed to kill myself when I was 27,” she tells me in the London offices of her record label. “But I decided to keep going.”

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      Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA to headline 2024 Glastonbury festival

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 14 March - 08:00

    Coldplay become act to headline most times with their fifth top slot, while Shania Twain is booked for the Sunday teatime ‘legend’ set as the lineup is announced

    Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA will headline Glastonbury 2024, a diverse spread of A-list artists matched by a strong supporting lineup across the festival including Little Simz, LCD Soundsystem and Burna Boy, plus Shania Twain in the always-jubliant “legend” slot.

    Much loved by Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis who once said they can “call in and do the milking any time” on his Worthy Farm site, Coldplay continue their longstanding relationship with the festival, becoming the first act to headline the Pyramid stage five times. They launched themselves into pop-rock’s big leagues with their first headline performance in 2002 when they had only released one album, and have since headlined in 2005, 2011 and 2016, as well as doing a livestreamed performance to an empty Pyramid stage field in lieu of a 2021 festival cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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      ‘I feel free in Irish’: from the Oscars to the Baftas to Sundance – why Gaelic is everywhere

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 13 March - 16:02

    Paul Mescal spoke Gaeilge at the Baftas, Cillian Murphy at the Oscars. Films are being written in it, dramas acted in it – and rappers are translating drug lingo into it. Our writer hails an extraordinary renaissance

    Grindr, Saghdar agus Cher is a modern play about hook-ups, dating apps and going on a bender. But the most current thing about it may be that the piece, staged by LGBTQ+ collective Aerach Aiteach Gaelach, is performed entirely in Irish.

    “We just wanted to show that these things are happening in Irish,” co-writer Ciara Ní É says of the drama, which lands in Dublin this week. “We have slang, we have messy nights, and it’s all as Gaeilge ” – that is, in the Irish language. “It’s real in that sense,” she continues. “These things happen around the country regularly.” The title only barely needs translating (“saghdar” means cider), but the show itself is unapologetically in the native tongue. “It has English subtitles. We do try to be accessible,” says Ní É.

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      Romeo and Juliet review – beatboxing lovers in full flow

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 12 March - 06:00

    Polka theatre, London
    A hip-hop take on the tragedy finds the feud blowing up on social media and the balcony scene remixed for FaceTime but it lacks pathos

    Two hours’ stage traffic becomes one in this modern hip-hop take on Shakespeare, designed for children from Year 5 upwards and set in the Polka’s borough of Merton. Created and directed by Conrad Murray and Lakeisha Lynch-Stevens from Beats & Elements theatre company, it excels when depicting headlong romance and the rival gangs’ combustible grudges.

    The script and songs’ use of rhyme often reflects the original play’s rhythms, although precious few of its lines or phrases are incorporated which is a shame as the opening number Star-Crossed Lovers does so with skill. While the storytelling falters in the production’s home straight, this is a dynamic hour that would benefit from audiences’ prior knowledge of the tragedy and provides a stimulating complement to Shakespeare.

    At Polka theatre, London , until 14 April

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      Far from the Norm: Until We Sleep; Ballet National de Marseille & La(Horde): Roommates – review

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 10 March - 10:00

    Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome; Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
    Botis Seva’s new show is so murkily atmospheric that its meaning proves elusive. Elsewhere, a compelling if mixed programme of short works from French collective (La)Horde

    If there is difficult second album syndrome, a similar affliction seems to be affecting the choreographer Botis Seva . Just announced as an associate artist at Sadler’s Wells, the London-born Seva is a supreme dance-maker, someone who has honed hip-hop dance into his own expressive, communicative form for his company Far from the Norm .

    But there has been a long gap between the powerful Blkdog (2018), which is still touring worldwide , and his new Until We Sleep , which had its UK premiere last week at the Brighton Dome Corn Exchange. It reveals Seva’s astonishing ability to shape images, with dancers pinioned in cones of Tom Visser ’s smoky light, a backdrop of illuminated florescent shards marking the stages of what seems to be a journey.

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