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It feels like just a few months ago that Nelly and Ashanti announced their engagement along with Ashanti’s pregnancy—and that’s because it was, in fact, just a few months ago. The “Hot In Here” rapper and the “Rock Wit U” singer announced their engagement in April of this year, which is why some might find it surprising that the celebrity couple was actually married—in December of last year.
That’s right, documents obtained by PEOPLE show Nelly and Ashanti actually jumped the broom on Dec. 27, 2023.
Yeah—y’all got some ‘splaining to do.
Nah, it makes sense that the couple might have wanted to keep their marriage out of the public eye while it was happening. Even iconic R&B and rap artists have a right to privacy when they really need to exercise it. And considering that the 49-year-old and the 43-year-old first started dating in the early 2000s before breaking up in 2013 and rekindling that flame a full decade later, it would make sense if they just wanted to sit back and enjoy their union post-limelight.
Anyway, when Ashanti recently sat down for an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she still didn’t talk about her marriage that already happened, but she did discuss the “beautiful, intimate moment” when Nelly proposed to her, and she talked a lot about celebrating Mother’s Day for the first time.
From PEOPLE:
In May, Ashanti celebrated her first Mother’s Day as an expecting mother, sharing the festivities on Instagram. In the photos, she posed with Nelly and other family members cradling her bump and smiling.
“This Mother’s Day was so special,” Ashanti captioned the post. “Having our families together as we are about to embark on such an incredible journey was amazing. Wishing all of the amazing Moms and Moms to be a beautiful Mother’s Day…!!!! 😆😆😆😆❤️🙏🏽🥳 #grateful 🙏🏽🥰”
She added: “Yeah yeah I know I’m late… it was so much food I got distracted 🤣🤣 Ps… I only had 1 plate tho 🤣🤣👀”
Congratulations to Nelly and Ashanti on your marriage and your soon-to-come bundle of joy! We wish you continued happiness.
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Welp, apparently, Stephen A. Smith isn’t the only one who is still salty about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock and having the audacity to still be enjoying a successful acting career two years later.
Actor Rob Schneider is also really upset about Smith and his return to Hollywood glory, which came with his massively successful latest addition to the Bad Boys franchise with Martin Lawrence. Schneider—who is best known for being the guy literally no one would know if Adam Sandler hadn’t kept putting him in movies—recently made an appearance on the Kyle & Jackie O morning show where he had some choice words for the Fresh Prince, who was probably somewhere minding his own business, or joining much of the rest of the world in asking, “Who TF is Rob Schneider?”
“Will Smith is a twat,” Schneider said. “Will Smith has been hiding the fact of who he really is and it was exposed that night — that he’s really an a*shole.” (Side note: For those who were wondering, “twat” is one of those words Black people don’t really get offended by because only white people use the term. See also the C-word. These are just words we don’t say or come across often, which makes them pretty corny. Maye this is why they’d rather just call us the N-word.)
“Will is a douchebag,” Schneider went on to say. (Also, “douchebag.” That’s another one we just don’t use.) “The thing is, that’s how politically correct that Academy is, that they were so cowardly — because if I would’ve done that, they would’ve hauled me out to prison. They were so worried about being racist, they were like, ‘We can’t be.’”
“It’s violence, is what it is,” he continued. “The color of your skin, or your religion, doesn’t matter — if you commit a crime in front of other people, you get hauled out of there.”
Apparently, the Deuce Bigalow actor (oh yeah—he was in that movie) is another aggrieved and delusional white man who thinks being Black is an advantage for people accused of violence. This shouldn’t be a surprise considering Schneider is an anti-woke conservative who likely has a larger issue with a Black actor slapping another Black actor and bouncing back from it than he does a demonstrably bigoted presidential candidate who is looking for a second term after he caused a riot at the U.S. Capitol after trying to cancel democracy through provably false voter fraud propaganda.
It’s unclear what kind of response Schneider was hoping for by force-feeding us his opinion on Will Smith, but all he succeeded in doing was getting the whole internet to tell him he’s a talentless has-been who is jealous of Will because he’s never been anywhere near the vicinity of his relevance and would have never been relevant at all if Sandler hadn’t carried him on his back for his entire career.
Let’s take a look at some of these brutal reactions on X:
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Yeah, Schneider should have just sat there and ate his food. Like—who even are you, bro?
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Going from flying first class, or even on a private jet, back to economy can be a shock, so maybe Kanye West can provide insight? The “Power” rapper was recently spotted flying commercial with his wife, Bianca Sensori, for a trip to Japan.
It seems like Ye can still get his sleep on with little legroom, though, as he was seen napping during the flight when a fellow passenger, or stalker—just saying, snapped a shot of the couple in economy class.
Per Page Six:
TikTok user Brandon Doggett posted a clip last week of the “Gold Digger” rapper and the Yeezy architect crammed into two seats in the first row of a small plane.
Although the seats were at the very front, the couple did not appear to be in business class.
Of course, social media has jokes considering that Yeezy was allegedly a billionaire before he decided to go full antisemite, which caused him to lose his lucrative deal with adidas, which meant a massive hit to his bank account and net worth.
As for the quick clip, it aligns with what the couple was wearing when they arrived at Narita International Airport in Japan slate last week (June 9), which included a personalized “Ye” robe. Reportedly, rather than kicking it in a mansion or that insanely large ranch in Montana (that he’s trying to sell), West has been laying his head at a two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom penthouse in West Hollywood, CA that costs him a cool $20,000 a month.
But hey, the guy might be just like all of us, or not.
Hey, ain’t nothing wrong with saving a buck, right? Check out some of the reactions in the gallery.
2. Struggle couture?
4. This ain’t new.
5. Alrighty then…
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Stephen A. Smith promised us that he would have more commentary regarding his insistence that Will Smith still owes “the Black community” an “explanation” for slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars in 2022. Now that he has heard the response of the Black community, most of whom told him to speak for himself and that Will doesn’t owe us anything, he is sharing those thoughts, but it really isn’t helping his case.
Seriously, maybe he should have kept this in the drafts.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get over what Will Smith did to Chris Rock,” Smith began. “But that doesn’t mean I have to, and it doesn’t give me a license to negatively impact Will Smith.”
Now, Smith could have stopped right there, and all would have been fine. After all, it’s OK that he still hasn’t gotten over it, and it’s nice that he acknowledged that his personal inability to get over it doesn’t give him “license to negatively impact” Will, whose latest Bad Boys film has proven to be massively successful despite the controversy surrounding the Fresh Prince of Belair actor. (Although, really, Strephen does have every right to say what he has to say about Will regardless of whether or not it “negatively impacts” him, as we all have a right to our opinions.) But Where the sports analyst loses me is when he implies that Will owes Black people a special apology due to the impact of white racism.
“It was a blemish on all of us because I know how much white America reveres Will Smith and the thinking along the lines in my mind was, ‘Hell, if he did that, what would the rest of us do?’” Smith went on to to say after suggesting that the slap may have prevented Black director Antoine Fuqua from receiving an Oscar for Emancipation. “There are certain things that happen in the lives of an individual where those incidences are used as a license to castigate the rest of us.”
So, it appears that Stephen A. Smith isn’t so much bothered by what Will did to another Black man as much as he is afraid of the optics of it, which is to say he’s in fear of the white gaze. In Smith’s initial remarks, he speculated that Will “wouldn’t have smacked Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher, Bill Burr or a host of others.” While that may or may not be true, it’s definitely true that if Ricky Gervais had slapped Bill Maher on the Oscars stage, we wouldn’t be having a conversation about how it might negatively affect the careers of other white actors, comedians and directors. That’s not even a thought that would come up because that logic simply doesn’t apply to white people of any profession.
But Smith isn’t lecturing white people for allowing this glaring double standard to persist, and he certainly isn’t lecturing the myriad of white comedians and media personalities who went full fire and brimstone on Will after the slap but never have that same energy in response to the hideous anti-social behavior displayed by their fellow Caucasian celebrities. Instead, Stephen A. Smith is lecturing Will Smith about what he owes Black people for exacerbating the anti-Black racism of white people—much like Chris Rock did when he declared at the end of his “Selective Outrage” comedy special: “I got parents, and you know what my parents taught me: Don’t fight in front of white people.”
Besides the fact that Stephen (and probably Rock as well) is mad at the wrong thing and possibly the wrong person, maybe he should be dealing with his feelings about Will, the slap and his fear of the white gaze by working them out with a therapist instead of on national television.
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One thing to know about former Destiny’s Child singer Kelly Rowland is that she is not the one—or the two, three, four or five. In fact, you might as well just stop counting.
Source: Stephane Cardinale – Corbis / Getty
On Tuesday, the Mea Culpa actor—who let it be known in February that she won’t be hosting any network’s little TV show if her dressing room isn’t up to par and her needs aren’t being met—also let it be known that she won’t be treated any kind of way by a security guard at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
Here’s what happened, according to HuffPost:
Unverified video showed what apparently riled up the “Mea Culpa” actor. Rowland, beaming in an eye-catching red dress, smiled, waved and played to fans and photographers.
She’s motioned by one crowd-control person to move on and Rowland continues to enjoy the attention. Again the guard motions for her to move forward.
Rowland climbs the stairs and takes the hand of a companion and turns back to wave to fans again. Two other security guards close in to hasten her ascent and Rowland appears to touch the shoulder of one of them as if to tell her to back off.
She then points at her and continues to reprimand her. Another security guard intervenes as Rowland appears to talk firmly and point. Finally, she enters the Palais.
On one hand, security guards do have a job to do, and if the crowd is getting moved along, celebrities shouldn’t be exempt. On the other hand, they probably wouldn’t have tried to do Beyonce like that while she was interacting with fans, and there are certainly a lot of—how should I say it—melanin-deficient celebrities who security also would have likely been more accommodating for.
Also—come on y’all—look how fine she was in that red gown.
Nah—go on and let Kelly strut, security.
Now, some people might be debating whether or not Rowland was out of line, but when it comes to the collection of digital Black voices formerly known as Black Twitter, there really is no debate. Kelly Rowland is just one of those people we don’t play about.
Here are some of the best responses in support of Kelly. Yeah, we rock with Kelly over here. Y’all better stop trying her.
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Music producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, one of numerous alleged victims who have accused Sean “Diddy” Combs of acts of sexual violence and other abuses, has dropped multiple high-profile defendants from a lawsuit he filed against the Bad Boy mogul in February.
According to Hip Hop DX, the list of defendants in Jones’ lawsuit initially included Universal Music Group and its chairman Sir Lucian Grainge, who the suit alleged “aided and abetted” Diddy in his alleged sexual abuse. But those names have been withdrawn from the filing and the claims against them and against Motown Recordings have been dismissed with prejudice, meaning claims against them cannot be refiled.
Jones’ legal representation was pretty vague on why Grainge and the two music companies were dropped from the suit, although the now-former defendants had all filed motions to have their cases dismissed.
“All of the claims against Grainge, Motown and UMG Recordings (the ‘UMG Defendants’) in the [second amended complaint] are lacking in any legally cognizable basis,” the filing read. “Every claim is premised on the untenable strict liability theory that when one enters into a commercial contract, the payor under that contract becomes liable for anything that the recipient of payment does with the payment.” Apparently, Jones’ attorneys eventually agreed.
From Hip Hop DX:
Lil Rod’s attorney Tyrone Blackburn said in a sworn declaration filed in court: “Based on my examination of all of the papers submitted in support of both motions to dismiss, which addressed the issues I had, I have concluded that there is no legal basis for the claims and allegations that were made against the UMG Defendants.”
He added: “As such, I have determined that the proper course of action is for all of the claims and all of the allegations to be withdrawn immediately.”
It’s worth noting that UMG has also petitioned to be removed from a lawsuit filed by another Diddy accuser identified as Jane Doe, and that filing also appears to make the core argument that the company isn’t responsible for anything Diddy did, if he did it.
“The Complaint’s allegations, if true, are certainly disturbing,” the filing read. “Plaintiff makes no allegation supporting vicarious liability for battery or assault (nor could she).
“Plaintiff’s NIED [negligent infliction of emotional distress] claim also fails because she has not alleged any duty owed to her by UMGR, and nowhere in Plaintiff’s Complaint does she allege that UMGR’s conduct was extreme and outrageous, as she is required to do as a matter of legal sufficiency,” it continued.
As much as Diddy has been trying to play it cool online, there is no hiding the fact that he is drowning in scandals, legal woes and professional uncertainty, and one can imagine there will be more people close to him who will either need to jump ship or sink right along with him.
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Amazon readers can explore captivating stories and topics for up to 50% off for print bestsellers and up to 80% off for Kindle books. Plus, there are savings of up to 80% on many audiobooks with Audible.
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At the end of last month, sneakerheads went crazy for Travis Scott’s first signature Jordan Brand sneaker, the “Jumpman Jack.” With the success of the silhouette (sold out immediately), Jordan Brand is ready to drop new colorways as heads seem to love what Travis and Jordan done cooked up in the lab.
According to Nice Kicks, a new black and mocha colorway of the “Jumpman Jack” is set to release later this year. Though sneakerheads were really hoping the black, sail and red version would be next, it seems like the mocha’s are next in line to get some play.
Per Nice Kicks:
Living up to its name, the upcoming Jordan Jumpman Jack features a predominantly dark mocha upper in suede with a black mesh base, black leather Swoosh, and a matching black midsole/outsole combination.
The Travis Scott x Jordan Jumpman Jack “Mocha” releases in 2024 for $200 via SNKRS and select retailers.
We lowkey would’ve rather have gotten the black, red and sail colorway. But it is what it is.
Are you going to be copping (or trying to at least) the new “Mocha” colorway of the Travis Scott “Jumpman Jack”? Check out pics of the other colorways, and let us know which one you prefer in the comments section below.
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A$AP Rocky is staying active with his creative director role at PUMA. A new motorsport collection is on the way.
As reported by Hypebeast, the Harlem, New York, native is deep into his fashion bag this summer. This week, A$AP and Global Apparel announced a new drop that draws from racing but is just the right speed for everyday wear. Included in the collection is a two-piece sweatsuit, gloves, t-shirts and an update to the Inhale OG sneaker, which was originally released in 2000. The goal was to bring the flair of on-track performance, therefore, most of the pieces show some wear and tear. For instance the Padded Balaclava was designed to look like a standard racing helmet and features a removable visor and a bungee closure.
The self proclaimed Fashion Killa detailed his enthusiasm about the forthcoming drop in a formal statement. “This Miami collection aims to give fans the chance to have their own race suit from the helmet down to the shoes,“ said A$AP. “Other sports have uniforms available for the consumer and I wanted to bring that to the F1 category. For the visuals, I wanted to demonstrate how as adults we can lose sight of the dreams and imagination that we had as kids, and really love how it all came together.”
The collection is available beginning in the U.S. at 10 a.m. EST on May 3 on PUMA’s website. You can preview the collection here and view the promotional trailer below.
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Missy Elliott is returning to the big screen as part of an untitled musical project created by Pharrell Williams and Michel Gondry.
According to reports, superstar Missy Elliott is making a return to the big screen with a role in a musical helmed by Pharrell Williams and Michel Gondry. The unnamed project will be directed by Gondry, best known for directing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The four-time Grammy Award winner shared the news with her millions of fans in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday (April 30). “Ayyyyye,” she wrote, accompanied by emojis of flames, a dancing woman and hands up giving a high-five.
The film’s coming-of-age plot takes place during the summer of 1977, with the setting being inspired by the Atlantis Apartments in the Virginia Beach, Virginia, neighborhood where Williams grew up. The star-studded cast also includes Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Halle Bailey, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Academy Award nominee Brian Tyree Henry. The script is being written by Martin Hynes (Toy Story 4) and Steven Levenson (FX’s Fosse/Verdon), as Pharrell Williams is producing with Mimi Valdés through i am OTHER, and Gil Netter is producing through Gil Netter Productions.
For Elliott, it’s her first time appearing on the big screen in a sizable role since appearing as the character Missy (who performed a duet of “Car Wash” with Christina Aguilera) in the 2004 DreamWorks animated film Shark’s Tale. The singer/songwriter/rapper also appeared as herself in the 2003 film Honey, starring Jessica Alba and was in two episodes of the Fox musical drama, Star, in 2017.
The role comes as Missy Elliott is set to go on her first headlining tour this summer. The Out of This World Tour — The Missy Elliott Experience will also feature Ciara, Timbaland and Busta Rhymes. It opens in Vancouver, Canada, on July 4 with dates in 24 cities across the United States and Canada including Seattle, Oakland, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Tampa, Atlanta, Detroit and Toronto with the finale in Rosemont, Illinois, on Aug. 22.