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Six powerhouse women – Doja Cat, Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, LISA of BLACKPINK, Queen Latifah and Raye – will perform at the 2025 Oscars on Sunday, March 2, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood. The show also will feature a special appearance by the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
Erivo and Grande are 2025 Oscar nominees for their roles in Wicked. Queen Latifah was nominated in 2003 for her role in Chicago.
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Erivo and Grande are expected to open the Oscar telecast with one or more songs from Wicked. All of the songs featured in Wicked were taken from the Broadway musical, so none were nominated for best original song, but the score by John Powell and Stephen Schwartz was nominated for best original score. Wicked received a total of 10 nominations.
The other women are expected to participate in “performances celebrating the filmmaking community and some of its legends.”
When the Oscars announced that this year’s nominees for best original song would not be performed on the telecast (but that there would instead be a single spot focused on the songwriters of those songs), some feared that music would get short shrift on the awards show. This announcement proves that that is not the case.
Oscar producers historically have focused on the best original song nominees, but they have been known to pivot when doing so would yield a prized booking. Three years ago, the Oscars featured a performance of the Encanto song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks, even though that song had not been submitted for Oscar consideration and was not nominated.
Raye performed her song “Oscar Winning Tears,” from her album My 21st Century Blues, on the Grammy telecast on Feb. 2, where she was a best new artist nominee. Raj Kapoor, executive producer and showrunner of the 2025 Oscars, was an executive producer of this year’s Grammy telecast as well. These bookings constitute major coups for the British star, who swept the Brit Awards a year ago.
Kapoor and Oscars executive producer Katy Mullan will continue to announce talent joining the show leading up to the ceremony.
Hosted by Conan O’Brien, the 2025 Oscars will air live on ABC and stream live on Hulu on Sunday, March 2, at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, with the official live red carpet show airing at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT.
As Little Monsters everywhere gear up for the release of Lady Gaga’s hotly anticipated new album Mayhem, Mother Monster herself is giving them a glimpse of what they can expect from the new LP.
In a new interview for InStyle, Gaga spoke with Spotify’s head of global editorial Sulinna Ong ahead of her Little Monster Press Conference for the streamer. During their conversation, the “Abracadabra” singer shared a sneak preview of two songs — “The Beast” and “Perfect Celebrity,” respectively — that are featured on her new album.
Speaking about “The Beast,” Gaga revealed that the lyrics of the song see her “singing to a werewolf” that represents her. “The lyrics are: ‘You can’t hide who you are, 11:59, your heart’s racin’, you’re growling, and we both know why,’” Gaga revealed. “And somehow that gothic dream is not just about me in a relationship with this person that’s about to turn, but what if I was to just sing it to myself and the beast is Gaga?”
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When talking about “Perfect Celebrity,” Gaga mentioned that the concept of “duality” present in both her videos for “Disease” and “Abracadabra” continue in the new track’s lyrics. “The lyric is: ‘I’ve become a notorious being, find my clone, she’s asleep on the ceiling,” she said. “It’s this idea that we all, in a way, have our real selves and then our clone version that we project to the world. So there’s a lot in Mayhem about multiple yous or multiple mes and what it’s like to have those things be at odds with each other all the time.”
As for the inspiration behind her new project, the singer pointed directly to ballroom culture as a driving force that found its way into the album’s music and lyrics. “I grew up in New York City and I also was a student of Paris Is Burning when I was really, really young. And I was always inspired by the tremendous amount of grace, freedom, expression and joy of ballroom culture,” she said. I was lucky enough to be around some dancers that were a part of that life.”
Gaga continued, adding that she felt it is a “privilege” to be a member of the dance community, and to be embraced by those who have built such lasting institutions. “There are these spaces in the world where there’s an ability for the community to express and experience joy, even when life is not treating them that way,” she explained. “And I am still so inspired by it and to this day, it felt like a relevant thing to bring up in the [“Abracadabra”] video because it’s about resilience. I can’t think of a place where I’ve seen more resilience than in a ballroom.”
The news comes just one week after Gaga unveiled the tracklist for Mayhem (due out March 7 via Interscope), including singles “Disease,” “Abracadabra” and “Die With a Smile,” as well as the two new tracks she teased. Spotify’s Little Monster Press Conference — during which Gaga’s fans will have the opportunity to ask Mother Monster their own questions — is set to take place Thursday, March 6, at 6 p.m. ET, simulcast across Spotify’s social media accounts.
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The Harlem home of the iconic New York Amsterdam News will soon become a museum as well as a community space.
For over a century, the New York Amsterdam News has been one of the staunchest voices of the Black community.
A new project will take its Harlem newsroom into a new phase, converting it and other floors in the 115-year-old location on Frederick Douglass Boulevard into a historic museum and community space. The paper is still in operation, in a digital format that reaches 135,000 monthly visitors on average, and runs a print edition of 40 pages that’s released on Thursdays and available for $1.
The project was conceived and is being carried out by the Amsterdam News Educational Foundation, the nonprofit organization that currently owns the building. The first floor is set to be a community cafe and lounge, and the newsroom would move to the second floor, being leased out to the publication. The third and fourth floors of the building will compose the museum and gallery space, with part of the fourth floor to be renovated to look like a newsroom in the 1930s. There will also be an archival room set up for visitors and researchers. The foundation currently has raised $450,000 to plan and design the museum project.
“We want to celebrate the pivotal role both The New York Amsterdam News, and the Black press writ large, have played in advancing civil rights in our country,” Editor-In-Chief and publisher Elinor Tatum said in an interview from the newsroom space where she still works from on the second floor. She took over the reins from her father, Wilbert Tatum in the 1990s. The newspaper’s nine editors and reporters are currently spread out in different cities, having worked remotely since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The publication is still beloved in the community, particularly due to Blacklight, the first investigative unit at a Black legacy newspaper. Blacklight is overseen by executive editor Damaso Reyes with two grant-funded reporters assigned to it. For Reyes, it’s a platform to build on a legacy that includes Malcolm X’s first published opinions and its claim of coining the phrase “Hip-Hop” in the 1980s. “I want to give opportunities to young journalists of color that I didn’t have,” he said of the unit.
Selena Gomez is giving the glory of the Only Murders in the Building cast’s 2025 Screen Actors Guild award to costars Steve Martin and Martin Short. The day after their murder-mystery Hulu series took home outstanding performance by an ensemble at this year’s SAG honors Sunday (Feb. 23), the singer-actress shared a couple older photos […]
Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts will hit the road this summer for the Love Earth European/North American world tour. The first leg of the tour will kick off in Europe on June 18 at Dalhalla in Rättvik, Sweden before moving on to gigs in Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
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The outing will then jump to the U.S., beginning with an August 8 show at the PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, N.C., hitting Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto, New York, Chicago, Denver and Vancouver before winding down on Sept. 15 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, with more dates to be added at a later time.
Young, 79, will be accompanied by the Chrome Hearts band, featuring his longtime collaborator keyboardist Spooner Oldham, as well as Promise of the Real members Micah Nelson on guitar/vocals, Corey McCormick on bass and Anthony LoGerfo on drums. The group released the noisy anthem “Big Change” in January, a grungy warning shot about a major revolution whose outcome is a jagged question mark.
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“Might be a politician/ Tryna say something new/ Might be your decision/ Now you’ve got to see it through/ Looks like a collision,” Young hollers in the tune whose video features the outspoken singer marching through the woods wielding an American flag and a giant boom box. “Ain’t the worst that you could do/ Might be bad, might be good/ Big change is coming to you,” Young warns.
Young debuted the Chrome Hearts band during a show last year and has said an album from the group is tentatively slated for release in April.
Tickets for the tour will go on sale on Tuesday (Feb. 25) via an exclusive pre-sale for Neil Young Archives members, followed by a general on-sale that launches on Friday (Feb. 28). To protect the prices set by Young, a release said that the tour will use Ticketmaster’s Face Value Exchange for all resales and make tickets mobile only and restricted from transfer. According to the release, this will mean that if fans buy tickets and cannot attend they will have the option to re-sell them to other fans at the original price using TM’s Face Value tool; this applies to all shows except those in Illinois, New York, Utah, Virginia and Canada.
Young has also partnered with Farm Aid — which he co-founded in 1985 with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp — to bring HOMEGROWN Concessions to the summer tour, which will bring sustainably produced, fair-priced family farm food served on compostable serviceware to venues.
After a lifetime of regular touring, Young took a break from the road during the COVID-19 pandemic and had planned to be back on stages for a huge tour with his long-running Crazy Horse compatriots in summer 2024 before cancelling the dates a few weeks in due to an unspecified health issue.
Check out the dates for the Young and the Chrome Hearts’s 2025 summer tour below.
June 18 – Rättvik, Sweden @ Dalhalla
June 20 – Bergen, Norway @ Bergenhus Fortress
June 22 – Copenhagen, Denmark @ Tiøren
June 26 – Dublin, Ireland @ Malahide Castle
June 30 – Brussels, Belgium @ Brussels Palace Open Air, Palace Square
July 1 – Groningen, Netherlands @ Drafbaan Stedpark
July 3 – Berlin, Germany @ Waldbühne
July 4 – Mönchengladbach, Germany @ Sparkassenpark
July 8 – Stuttgart, Germany @ Cannstatter Wasen
Aug. 8. – Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion
Aug. 10 – Richmond, VA @ Allianz Amphitheater at Riverfront
Aug. 13 – Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music Theatre
Aug. 15 – Cleveland, OH @ Blossom Music Center
Aug. 17 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage
Aug. 21 – Gilford, NH @ BankNH Pavilion
Aug. 23 – New York, NY @ Northwell at Jones Beach
Aug. 24 – Bethel, NY @ Bethel Center for the Arts
Aug. 27 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
Sept. 1 – Denver, CO @ Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
Sept. 5 – George, WA @ The Gorge
Sept. 6 – Vancouver, BC @ Deer Lake Park
Sept. 10 – Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater
Sept. 12 – Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheater
Sept. 15 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
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Paradise, the thrilling political drama featuring Sterling K. Brown, will see the adventures of Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins continue for another season. Hulu has announced that Paradise will be coming back to the streamer as the acclaimed first season is still underway.
Paradise, a Hulu Original series from Dan Fogelman centers on Sterling K. Brown’s Xavier Collins, which is set in modern times with much of the happenings in the show occurring in an underground bunker in Colorado. Without giving away too much of the plot, Collins is hoping to uncover the circumstances surrounding the death of the president, who is played by James Marsden. Julianne Nicholson, Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Aliyah Mastin, and Percy Daggs IV also star in the series.
Our brother site CASSIUS via the Black Watch segment says the “show is teeming with all sorts of twists and turns and even some sci-fi elements.”
According to a Deadline report, Paradise wraps its first season on Hulu on March 4 and will move to ABC for a full first season showing on April 17.
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Leanne Lucas, the instructor whose Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance and yoga class became the target of a deadly stabbing in Southport, England, last year, is speaking out about the attack for the first time.
In a sit-down interview with BBC posted Monday (Feb. 24), Lucas recalled from start to finish how then-17-year-old Axel Rudakubana — who in January pleaded guilty to the murders of three young girls and the attempted killings of 10 other people at the July 2024 class — burst into her studio with a knife. As he began attacking the children in the room, Lucas sprang into action calling the police and urging the rest of the class to run to safety.
That’s when she says Rudakubana turned on her, leaving her spine, head, ribs, lung and shoulder blade severely injured. “I just knew that if I didn’t get out, everyone was going to die,” Lucas told the broadcaster with tears in her eyes. “I thought that he wasn’t going to stop until he killed everyone. I thought that he wanted to kill us all.”
Rudakubana was sentenced to 52 years in prison, with Judge Julian Goose adding in his January ruling that the teenager would likely “never be released.” In addition to critically wounding multiple people, Rudakubana killed 9-year-old Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 7-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and 6-year-old Bebe King.
In the interview, Lucas recalled the agony of helping the rest of the children escape while enduring the pain of her injuries, for which she was later hospitalized. She noted that police have told her that the surviving children would not have made it out of the class alive if not for her and fellow organizer Heidi, who also assisted the fleeing children at the scene — but Lucas still feels guilt over the three girls she couldn’t save.
“That gives nothing for the children who did die … that doesn’t take that away,” Lucas told the BBC. “I just don’t know what else I could have done.”
The dance class was just one of countless Swift-themed events local organizers all over the globe put together during the “Anti-Hero” singer’s Eras Tour last year and in 2023. Before the attack started, Lucas remembers her students happily making friendship bracelets and chatting in a circle, with 9-year-old Aguiar apparently saying shortly before her death, ‘This is the best day of my life.’”
Swift personally spoke out about the killings one day afterward, writing in a statement, “The horror of yesterday’s attack in Southport is washing over me continuously, and I’m just completely in shock …”
“The loss of life and innocence, and the horrendous trauma inflicted on everyone who was there, the families and first responders,” she added at the time. “These were just little kids at a dance class. I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.”
About a month later, Swift hosted some of the survivors and their families at her London Eras shows and personally greeted them backstage at Wembley Stadium.
Lucas told the BBC that she still has to take life “an hour at a time” amid her grief, but that Aguiar, Stancombe and King are the reasons she keeps going. “The only reason to survive is the fact that I did get out, and I am alive,” the instructor said. “The fact that the girls aren’t, I’ve got to stay alive for them. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
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Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse for Diddy on a legal level, the “Bad Boy For Life” rapper was dealt a big setback when his own lawyer shockingly quit his defense team last Thursday (Feb. 20).
According to The New York Post, Anthony Ricco filed a motion in court to depart from his six-man defense squad for reasons unknown. Still, Ricco’s request to leave Diddy’s defense team will not be granted until the judge overseeing the case signs off on the motion after finding “sufficient reason” to let the lawyer walk away from the disgraced music mogul.
Per The New York Post:
“Under no circumstances can I continue to effectively serve as counsel for Sean Combs,” Ricco wrote in the Manhattan federal court affidavit. “It is respectfully but regrettably requested that the court grant the relief requested.”
The lawyer didn’t elaborate on why he wanted to step down but noted the decision came after speaking with Combs’ lead counsel Marc Agnifilo.
The attorney suggested the cause for his affidavit’s “brevity” is because he didn’t want to divulge any information protected by attorney-client privilege.
But he told the judge “there are sufficient reasons” for asking to be let off the case.
This low-key reminds us of that scene when Keanu Reeves quit representing his pedophile client in the middle of a trial in The Devil’s Advocate. Just sayin’.
Ricco assured the judge that his request to leave the case would not delay the trial date of May 5, as Diddy will still have five other lawyers fighting on his behalf.
One can only wonder why Anthony Ricco had a sudden change of heart about representing Diddy in this high- profile case. Unfortunately, we may never find out.
What do y’all think about Anthony Ricco deciding to quit Diddy’s legal team? Let us know in the comments section below.
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At a recent concert, Lil Wayne straight-up cut Birdman off mid-speech, and it went viral. Birdman, doing what he does best—talking big about the Cash Money legacy—was in the middle of his usual talk-heavy moment when Wayne wasn’t having it.
Out of nowhere, Wayne hit the DJ with a quick “Alright, let’s go, let’s go,” and just like that, the DJ dropped the next song, completely cutting Birdman off.
You could see it all over Baby’s face—he was definitely caught off guard and a little embarrassed. For years, Birdman has been the one with the mic, dropping knowledge and flexing his influence, but in that moment, Wayne took control. It was almost like he was saying, “Alright, enough talk, let’s get to business.” The two have had their fair share of drama over the years, from the whole Cash Money situation to public disputes, but seeing them on stage together was still a powerful moment.
Yeah, it might’ve been a little awkward for Birdman, but it was a sign of where their relationship stands now. Even with all the past issues, Weezy isn’t letting anyone run the show when he’s in the building—whether it’s his father/mentor or not. It was a reminder that despite their history, there’s still respect, but Wayne’s running the show.
Lil Wayne just dropped the bomb that Tha Carter VI is finally coming on June 6th, and the internet’s going wild. Fans have been waiting for this moment ever since Tha Carter V dropped back in 2018. The Carter series has been a game-changer in hip-hop, and this next chapter is looking like it’s about to be fire. Wayne is back in full swing, we can expect nothing but heat—new flows, crazy bars, and that classic Weezy vibe. After years of waiting, the hype for Tha Carter VI is real, and June 6th can’t come soon enough.
Warner Music’s independent music distribution and artist services arm, ADA, has partnered with Three Six Zero Recordings to handle global distribution for all new releases from the label, the companies announced on Monday that (Feb. 24). Three Six Zero Recordings represents multi-platinum acts like WILLOW, Jaden and The Prodigy, as well as artists such as […]