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Joey Badass has been creating quite the acting resume for himself, his latest role being Unique in STARZ’s television series Power Book III: Raising Kanan, executive-produced by 50 Cent. However, as the show is on currently on hiatus, the Brooklyn native has turned his attention toward re-entering the music sector.

After a five-year hiatus, the emcee releases his latest album, 2000, a representation of a new creative era for him. Well, that’s not the only musical era on his mind lately. While attending the 2023 Recording Academy Honors’ Global Impact Awards presented by the Black Music Collective, the entertainer spoke about one of the evening’s honorees, Lil Wayne’s era of music.

While walking the red carpet, Joey caught up with Baller Alert to discuss the evening, his return to music, and more. But when discussing Lil Wayne, he had a fun fact to share with correspondent Angie B.

“I wanted to be signed to Young Money, fun fact,” confessed Joey, when discussing Wayne’s record label Young Money’s impact on music in the mid-2000s thanks to signees like Nicki Minaj and Drake.

“When I was a kid, word. I had a little bar I was like, Lil Diggy and Twista ain’t got nothing on this. I was with the smoke.”

But when is comes down to Wayne’s Cash Money-era which is when he got his epic start in music, or his Young Money-era, Joey prefers the Young Money era. Watch the full clip above.

It’s always bugged me that Matthew McConaughey had to play a rodeo cowboy dying of AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club to win an Oscar, when he’d already given one of the defining performances of an entire decade two years earlier. I’m speaking, of course, of McConaughey’s turn as “Dallas” in 2012’s Magic Mike, whose second sequel, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, opens this weekend.

I can understand audiences maybe not being able to fully appreciate Magic Mike for what it was in its own time. People showed up expecting a fun romp about male strippers with lots of dance numbers, and what they got was more like The Wrestler with pleather speedos. Male stripping and professional wrestling are both heavily kitsch, but both movies are about exploring and examining that kitsch for what it says and what it means rather than simply reselling it. I don’t begrudge anyone for just wanting to see the dicks shake (for those people, there’s Magic Mike XXL), but I also think that bait-and-switch is an acceptable strategy if you’re tricking people into appreciating art.

Magic Mike was a financial crisis movie. Steven Soderbergh (who directed the original and returns for Last Dance) was so unsubtle in making Magic Mike a financial crisis movie, in fact, that it’s only a testament to how good the stripping was that anyone could’ve been so dumbstruck as to miss that this was a financial crisis movie.

Magic Mike was set in Tampa, Florida, which is partly a semi-autobiographical reflection of the fact that ex-male stripper Channing Tatum grew up there, but also partly a reflection of the financial crisis, which hit Tampa particularly hard (to paraphrase Billy Corben, Florida has always been, first and foremost, a real estate scam). Tatum’s character in Magic Mike is an aspiring furniture designer who works in construction and owns a car detailing business, who moonlights as a male stripper. Partly for the money, but also partly because Dallas (McConaughey) has promised him equity in a future club Dallas he’s opening in Miami. “I want to hear you say the word,” Mike says to Dallas in their first scene together, “Equity.”

Basically, Mike wants to own something. Because what was the foreclosure crisis if not the event when so many Americans realized that the houses they “owned” were actually just rented from a bank? There’s a reason that one of the climactic scenes in Magic Mike is Mike trying (and failing) to charm a bank representative into giving him a small business loan. It doesn’t matter how much cash Magic Mike puts on the table, he still can’t trade it for trust or assets. His money is no good here; he can’t escape his circumstances.

Tatum plays the whole thing beautifully and I could write a whole separate essay here about how Magic Mike was the moment when Channing Tatum achieved the actor’s version of his character’s dream in the film — not just starring in it, but owning a piece of it. Producing his own semi-autobiographical starring vehicle that spawned a franchise. Not only was it a smart business move, it was good art. Every heartthrob and sexpot, or maybe just every heartthrob and sexpot’s agent, dreams that they’ll be able to hone their craft — through all the extra opportunities show business naturally affords beautiful people — and one day become real actors. It’s hard to imagine a starker example of that actually coming to pass than Channing Tatum in 2012, who went from a mumbly himbo we loved making fun of (C-Tates, as we called him on FilmDrunk) to two legitimately brilliant performances in Magic Mike and 21 Jump Street (on which he was also a producer).

Channing Tatum feels like everyone’s “local boy makes good.” Yet there’s a reason Magic Mike opens on McConaughey’s character. As both movie characters and public personae, McConaughey represented Tatum’s potential, realized. Casting is probably half of acting, and Matthew McConaughey as Dallas is one of the most cosmically perfect mergers of acting performance and public persona in cinema history. (Maybe the Academy voters just got confused when they gave him the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club instead of for playing a club buyer named Dallas).

McConaughey, a one-time fresh-faced leading man (A Time To Kill) turned rom-com punchline (Failure To Launch?) turned dude known for playing the bongo drums shirtless, opens the film in front of a screaming crowd of women. The first shot of his face is him grabbing his crotch (in leather pants). He asks the crowd, “Can you ever touch this? Well, the law says that you cannot touch. …But I think I see a lotta lawwwwbreakers in the house tonight.”

Iconic. How many movie cold opens have ever gotten you as pumped as this one? McConaughey is not just a great actor and a great character, he’s a human redemption arc, the entire movie in a nutshell represented in a single man. McConaughey is 41 years old and dressed in a wide-open leather vest with leather pants and cowboy hat in this scene. You know how sometimes it feels like you can see smells? McConaughey looks for all the world like a guy you could smell from across the room in this scene, and yet somehow, not in an entirely off-putting way.

The cowboy thing is thematically important, and McConaughey’s drawl, coming from a born-and-raised Texan, is genuine. Magic Mike is a movie about a generation of men who have been, essentially, emasculated by an economic downturn, stripped of the things they’ve been raised to believe are the totems of modern manhood — homeownership, being the primary breadwinner of a household, qualifying for loans — attempting to become whole by acting out these kitschy, over-the-top parodies of masculinity: cowboy, construction worker, Ken doll, Tarzan. And they’re doing it in a profession that, essentially, they learned from women. The opening dance scene cuts on a sound, which turns out to buzz of Mike’s trimmer while he grooms his pubes. When he wears a shirt and tie onstage, it’s a kitschy joke and women through money at him. When he tries to wear a shirt and tie for real in the loan office, it doesn’t work. It’s still a joke.

The boys in Magic Mike are trying to become their idea of what a man is by being, more or less, male male impersonators. They’re all acting out “fake it till you make it,” both as a business strategy and as a lifestyle. Soderbergh and screenwriter Reid Carolin make this about as plain as it could be in a later scene when one of the other strippers describes reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad and going to a Robert Kiyosaki convention. Masculinity is a performance, and “The Kid,” played by Alex Pettyfer, hunky and appealing as he is, has to be taught. Naturally, it’s McConaughey’s character who does the teaching, in Magic Mike’s most enduring scene. If they’d played this to introduce McConaughey’s deserved Best Supporting Actor award on Oscars night, it would’ve brought the house down.

Again, in terms of looks, acting prowess, and public persona (the assumptions we carry into the film about McConaughey before he even says a word), I’m convinced that no other actor on Earth could’ve achieved quite what McConaughey achieves in this scene. He’s teaching The Kid how to perform masculinity, how to own the magical power of his cock and balls and seed (a power Dallas is trying to manifest into reality through sheer force of will), and doing it in a swim cap, spandex t-shirt, drag speedo, and jazz shoes. And he makes you believe. I didn’t even know what jazz shoes were before Magic Mike.

A lot of movies are about “daddy issues,” and Magic Mike isn’t not about those, but it’s more specifically about male mentorship — both the exhilaration and dubious nature of it. McConaughey is about 40, Tatum about 30, and Alex Pettyfer about 20. It’s easy to imagine that they’re basically the same dude at different points in the timeline. Every one of them is basically trying to convey what he’s learned about being a man to the generation just below, which is in turn coming of age in a place and time where not all of the previous generation’s wisdom may apply.

McConaughey in particular is able to evoke this with remarkable economy. Probably my favorite shot of the film is the one or two-second shot of McConaughey’s face when Mike first pushes “The Kid” out onstage for the first time. The Kid, not knowing exactly what to do, turns back to Dallas for guidance. At which point Dallas offers him a reticent, wary nod of conditional approval (the 00:27 mark of this video):

It’s a look of both fear and excitement, anticipation and trepidation. One that says “I know you’re not ready for this and I probably shouldn’t let you do it, but the universe has given you this moment, so sink or swim.”

Whatever your “scene” is, whether it’s music or sports or comedy or whatever, chances are you’ve experienced some version of this moment. I loved it when I first saw it 10 years ago and now I experience it on a few added levels as a father and stepfather. This theme, of trying to follow and set examples simultaneously, the exhilaration and terror of losing control, works doubly or triply well with the actors in Magic Mike. Because it’s true not only for McConaughey/Tatum/Pettyfer as characters in this movie, but also as actors and public personae.

McConaughey is the himbo turned artist in the midst of a redemption arc. Tatum is the himbo just taking control of his own narrative, and Pettyfer is the fresh face in his first blush of himbodom with a future still to be written. In a case of art predicting life, Pettyfer, just like his character in Magic Mike, may have learned the wrong lessons or just fucked up the right ones, and as of yet hasn’t quite had that second act. One of the complex emotions Tatum was surprisingly (at the time) adept at conveying in Magic Mike was Mike’s dawning realization that he might not actually be good for his protege.

Auteur theory says everything is planned by an all-knowing, God-like creator. I’m more of the opinion that true greatness requires more than a blueprint (and sometimes even happens at the expense of one). It requires a confluence of time, place, people, perceptions, and serendipity to come together just so in this unrepeatable way. A kind of “magic,” if you will.

Am I surprised that Academy voters overlooked Matthew McConaughey that year (when the award went to the admittedly brilliant Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained)? I suppose not. A good way to think about movie awards is that they’re essentially just focus groups by another name. If the voters were distracted by Magic Mike’s dick-shaking (its dick-shaving, its dick-pumping…), well, that was partly by design, wasn’t it? A bait and switch that worked too well. I don’t know if Matthew McConaughey’s performance in Magic Mike was underrated, overrated, or properly rated, but it will always stand out to me as an example of how great a great movie can be.

‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ opens this Friday, February 10th, in theaters everywhere. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.

Netflix‘s last attempt at clearing up confusion over its anti-password sharing measures didn’t go over great. Time for round two!

“We know there’s been a lot of confusion about sharing Netflix,” the streaming service tweeted on Wednesday. “A Netflix account is intended for one household, so we’re rolling out new features in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain (and more broadly in the coming months) to give you more control over your account… and yes, you can still watch Netflix while traveling!” Bounty hunters in New Zealand are already searching for the Netflix intern who spun a globe and landed on the country.

Netflix also shared “An Update on Sharing,” which includes measures being taken to prevent parents in New York from sharing their account with their daughter in Seattle. Subscribers will be asked to set their primary location, then “manage who has access to their account from our new Manage Access and Devices page.”

The link also provides information on how to transfer profiles, watching while you travel (“Members can still easily watch Netflix on their personal devices or log into a new television, like at a hotel or holiday rental”), and pricing.

Members on our Standard or Premium plan in many countries (including Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain) can add an extra member sub account for up to two people they don’t live with — each with a profile, recommendations, login and password — for an extra CAD$7.99 a month per person in Canada, NZD$7.99 in New Zealand, Euro 3.99 in Portugal, and Euro 5.99 in Spain.

You can find out more here. Let’s see how it’s going!

Time for round three!

If you’re not familiar with James Corden’s popular “Toddlerography” segment, you’re in for a treat.

As the name suggests, celebrity guests on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” take a dance class taught by kiddy instructors. Sure, the “students” are usually pretty seasoned performers, like Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber, and Jason Derulo, but their experience doesn’t make learning the moves any less intense. Anyone who’s tried to keep pace with a toddler knows it’s a helluva workout.

Billy Porter was the latest guest invited to participate in this wholesome fitness trend, and he did not disappoint.

The acclaimed dancer was at first a tad cocky, ignoring Corden’s warnings that the instructors were “ruthless.” Then again, anyone who looks that good in a black, glittery tracksuit has the right to be.

“That’s cute, James, but I’ll be fine” quipped Porter, just before the first toddler rolled in.

Then, one by one, about a dozen more teeny tiny dancers came in to have Porter and Corden mimic their moves, all set to Harry Styles’ “As It Was.” In other words—it was the greatest dance class ever taught.

The clip ends showing Porter and Corden exhausted from their “intense” workout and rehydrating—Corden with a juice box, and Porter with a martini snuck into his bag.

Seriously, where do the rest of us sign up for this class? Watch the adorable clip below.

We may be just months away from having the first-ever pill to help treat postpartum depression (PPD). The drug, called Zuranolone, was developed by Sage Therapeutics and Biogen, two companies out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The FDA has given the drug’s application priority review and the period ends on August 5, 2023.

Currently, there is only one FDA-approved medication for PPD, Zulresso, which is only available through a 60-hour, one-time infusion and can cost up to $35,000 per treatment.

If the medication is approved, it can also be used to treat major depressive disorder (MDD).

What’s unique about the drug is that it is fast-acting. “We feel a tremendous responsibility to patients with MDD and PPD to deliver a potential new treatment option, which is so desperately needed. Most current approved therapies may take weeks or months to work. We are committed to advancing treatments that could help physicians and patients by addressing depression symptoms quickly,” Dr. Laura Gault, chief medical officer at Sage Therapeutics Inc., said in a statement.

Zuranolone causes full remission of clinical depression within 45 days in 53% of women versus 30% who received the placebo, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry.

u201cFDA works with @SageBiotech to develop treatment plan for postpartum #depression & major depressive disorder. The company has identified 3 potential pathways that could support a filing for zuranolone. Read more at https://t.co/FmxDGWMNi1 @miranabulsi123n#postpartum #drugu201d

— Xtalks Webinars (@Xtalks Webinars)
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The new drug could be a godsend to the 500,000 women who suffer from PPD every year. In these women, what starts as a typical case of the “baby blues” can linger and become more intense and lead to an overwhelming loss of energy, irritability, inability to concentrate or make decisions and thoughts of harming themselves or their babies. It also severely inhibits their ability to care for their newborn child.

Symptoms of PPD can begin as early as during pregnancy and as late as a year after giving birth. In rare cases, it can develop into postpartum psychosis, an extreme mood disorder.

PPD is caused by the intense hormonal changes that happen within a woman’s body before and after giving birth. It can also result from numerous anxieties women feel after giving birth, such as the stress of being a “perfect mother,” the effect that pregnancy has on their bodies, being overtired and a lack of free time.

Zuranolone could also provide faster relief for people dealing with MDD. In 2020, over 14 million Americans were diagnosed with MDD, which creates a persistent feeling of sadness and a loss of interest in things they used to enjoy. It can also affect their ability to have happy, healthy relationships.

In rare situations, MDD can lead to suicidal ideation. Studies show that MDD accounts for up to 89% of all suicides.

If Zuranolone is approved, it will give doctors another vital tool in improving people’s mental health that can relieve debilitating depression in less time. It will also help countless babies that need extra care in their early days from a loving and healthy mother.

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 for free, confidential support.

Chrissy Teigen clapping back at Donald Trump is now a matter of congressional record thanks to a hearing with former Twitter executives on Wednesday. At issue is a 2019 tweet in which Teigen called out Trump for referring to her as John Legend’s “filthy mouthed wife” while notably not tagging the prolific Twitter user.

“lol what a p*ssy a** b*tch,” Teigen tweeted. “tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president.”

While the back and forth with Teigen is pretty indicative of Trump’s time on Twitter before his account was suspended following the January 6 attack, the supermodel’s tweet resurfaced in an embarrassing moment for both the former president and Elon Musk, who along with conservatives, have accused the social media platform of censoring free speech at the request of Joe Biden. (It didn’t.)

According to The Daily Beast‘s Justin Baragona, while still in office, Trump was reportedly so angered by Teigen’s tweet that he demanded Twitter remove it or face consequences, which for the record is a textbook violation of the First Amendment.

“Twitter executives verify to the House Oversight Committee that the Trump White House tried to get Twitter to take down tweets from Chrissy Teigen that made fun of Trump,” Baragona tweeted. “Former Twitter executives, after confirming that Trump threatened the company with regulation and tried to get tweets taken down, testify that the Biden White House didn’t contact them to censor any tweets.”

As video of the hearing started bouncing around Twitter, particularly the part where the phrase “p*ssy a** b*tch” got verbalized inside the walls of Congress, Teigen couldn’t help but respond to the situation.

“I… oh my god,” she wrote along with a clip of executives confirming Trump’s demand to remove her tweet, which apparently hurt his feelings.

(Via Chrissy Teigen on Twitter)

As Top Dawg Entertainment’s leading lady, SZA has shown herself to be one of the label’s most promising acts. But this almost didn’t come to be. In a recent profile for New York Times, the “Nobody Gets Me” hitmaker revealed she initially wanted to join a different hip-hop collective.

In the weeks leading up to the release of SOS, SZA reflected on releasing her debut mixtape, See.SZA.Run. independently 10 years prior. The bulk of the mixtape was Brandun DeShay, a former member of Odd Future.

Odd Future was comprised of several acclaimed rappers and singers, including Syd, Frank Ocean, and Tyler The Creator. At the time, SZA found herself wanting to be part of the group too.

“Quiet as it’s kept, I wanted to be with like, Odd Future,” she said. “I felt more like a Clancy girl.” Christian Clancy and his wife, Kelly Clancy, are the founders of 4 Strikes Management, which has worked with Tyler, as well as Ocean.

Before she got signed, she recalled spending days with her Top Dawg associates in the home of Mac Miller.

She eventually signed with TDE in 2013, reasoning, “Punch believed in me.”

This week, SOS sits at the top of the Billboard 200 for the seventh week. It’s safe to say signing with TDE paid off.

On the heels of dropping the tickets for her 2023 Renaissance Tour, Beyoncé is keeping fans excited with her upcoming Ivy Park x Adidas Park Trail collection and campaign.

Starring everyone from Ice Spice to Devon Aoki, the new drop from Bey’s athleisure company is perfect for the outdoors. Using camouflage, orange, and purple colors on the varied puffers and outfit styles in the current promotional photos, there’s something for every type of weather.

Fans can shop the new Ivy Park x Adidas Park Trail starting tomorrow (February 9) at your local Adidas store or online through the company’s website. However, according to Elle, those who want to immediately purchase the drop need to download the Adidas Confirmed app and wait in a virtual queue.

The following day, February 10, Ivy Park’s new collection will be available through other selected retailers. This could include previously stocked stores like ASOS and Foot Locker, as well as Ssense, Finish Line, and Snipes, per the publication.

According to Adidas’ website, the new drop will have 56 apparel styles between the company’s inclusive sizing, twelve accessories, and three footwear styles.

“The campaign is centered around embracing exploration and adventure to the fullest and guides us to a place of wonder and revelation through time, space and self-transformation,” the site notes. “This experience depicts both the natural and the metaphysical, which can be as literal as an exhilarating walk down a nature path or a city sidewalk or more abstract, exploring inward and discovering new dimensions.”

More information about Beyoncé’s upcoming Ivy Park x Adidas Park Trail is available here.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, love is in the air. However, based on whispers across social media, hip-hop and R&B’s hottest young couple DDG and Halle Bailey may be sending the lover’s holiday apart. The pair began their romance in January 2022 and have been publicly spotted in public ever since, including on the red carpet at the BET Awards.

Rapper and YouTuber DDG has spoken about how the singer has motivated him, centered his love for her in his past music videos, and used his platform to speak out against racist trolls targeting her starring role in Disney’s The Little Mermaid live-action adaptation. However, after fans noticed that DDG was no longer following Bailey on Instagram, they began questioning if the pair had quietly called it quits.

In a now-deleted tweet, DDG wrote, “All girls are the same.” Without context, the internet began to think that the singer had stepped out of the relationship, but Bailey’s oldest sister took to social media to clear Halle’s name. In the video, she said, “you’re not going to come on social media and insinuate that she was doing something that she wasn’t doing. You need to pipe down and get yourself together.”

After pushback, DDG retired to Twitter to seemingly address the rumors of the singer cheating, writing, “The internet so gullible.”

So, did they break up? It looks like the jury is out for now — but all the signs are there. We’ll have to wait until they confirm it one way or another; ’til then, it’s all just speculation.

Brendan Fraser has been making the rounds lately sharing fun stories, and surprising Mummy superfans, all after starring in an acclaimed Oscar-worthy movie. For someone who has been acting for over 30 years, he sure has a ton of fun behind-the-scenes tidbits from the pre-social media days, when privacy still existed.

Fraser recently spoke to Howard Stern about his prolific career, beginning with School Ties, the teen drama that followed Fraser as David, a young Jewish teen who wants to play football in a school of anti-Semitic students. One of those students is Charlie, played by Matt Damon, who learns of David’s religion and challenges him to a fight in the locker room, where the boys wrestle fully nude in the shower.

Of course, with movie magic, it’s easy to assume that they weren’t actually naked, but Stern was surprised to learn that the boys were really bare. When asked if they really shot the scene naked, Fraser said, “Oh yes. Absolutely,” Fraser admitted, much to Stern’s surprise.

School Ties was one of Fraser’s first films, so he added that he wanted to please the director. “It’s scary to do that. When you’re an actor and you’re just starting off, you’re pretty much game for anything. They say ‘jump,’ you say ‘how high?’” he continued.

Despite being naked in the shower with Matt Damon (which sounds like a dream to some, a nightmare to others), Fraser said that he admired how easy it was to shoot. “I appreciated that this isn’t really for wow or a scintillating factor of going, ‘Hey, look at that. Naked people,’” he explained, adding that nudity played an important part in showing the intensity of the moment.

He added, “The point of it was that when Damon’s character says what he says about David, he just reveals who he is. His anti-Semitism and his prejudice is stripped down naked and it’s ugly. And the door is locked and they fight over it like shaved apes that need to be pulled apart because they’ve run out of things to say to one another, and it just turns into an ugly knuckle-dusting fit.” The movie also starred Ben Affleck and Chris O’Donnell.

Fraser’s naked breakout role helped him then land the lead in Airheads, so we all won here! You can check out the rest of the Howard Stern interview here.

(Via EW)