The Women of Beverly Hills 90210 Are BFFs: "The scene was perfectly set for a showdown. Shannen Doherty had just marched into Jennie Garth's 40th birthday bash sporting killer boots and her trademark smirk — looking every inch like Brenda Walsh at her fiercest." YES. "The Beverly Hills 90210 vets, once such mortal enemies that costar Tori Spelling claimed they had a fistfight, strode toward each other and … hugged." Hugged?! Reunited and acting "just like real friends," the former "Kelly and Brenda have called a cease-fire to their 20-year war." Why now? "A Doherty pal attributes the bonding to the simple matter of growing up — and feeling nostalgic for the Peach Pit days: 'It's like high school friends that you fought with but now love. They're a big part of your past.'" OK, sure. "Shannen and Tori were in New York doing press, and they were warm. The '90s were a long time ago." They sure were. At least they all still hate that bitch Valerie (Tiffani Thiessen).
Things You Don't Know About Ice-T (Excerpts):
"I love grape Kool-Aid"
"As a kid, I dreamed of being a bank robber"
"My favorite artist is Prince"
"If I could time travel, I'd go to the Roaring '20s"
"I love all kinds of cereal"
"My most embarrassing moment was getting diarrhea while performing at a concert."
"Harvey Keitel is my favorite actor."
"I prefer to be indoors."
"The first famous person I met was my neighborhood crime boss."
Yesterday, word got out that Beyoncé was launching her own Tumblr. But when one went to the alleged address, beyonce.tumblr.com, you were greeted with a password-protected blog. After hours of guessing everything that the password could/should be ("Beyonce," "NotMichelle," "Houston," "ILoveMyMan," "Illuminati," "HouseofDereon," "CoutureByDereon," "KidsByDereon," "MeAndMyBooBoof," and "SashaFierce"), it became clear we, as a population, were going to have to just sit and wait.
Thankfully, the wait was short-lived (even though it felt like 4eva) because Beyoncé's Tumblr went LIVE this morning. You should Bey excited, but should also Bey careful. Why?
Scoring no. 1s. Breast-feeding in public. Your fave could never! Grade: B Best YouTube Comment: "I sang this song great. Very hard song to sing. Me and Beyonce are the only people who can sing it good." —MrRodriguez1956
Deadline is reporting that Ryan Murphy has netted a deal with Sony Pictures for a music comedy called One Hit Wonders. And your one-hit wonders are — Reese Witherspoon, Cameron Diaz, and Gwyneth Paltrow! They'd all play pop stars who had one big song in the '90s before fading away; now, in the harsh light of day, they decide to form a super group and to make their return. Also: Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island will be writing the songs. Also: Beyoncé is involved somehow (best guess: she'll play the mean-girl reigning pop star who is at first dismissive, but then ultimately supportive in a major way, of the plucky trio's chances of redemption. A backstage awards show group hug is not out of the question here). Murphy will write the script with his Glee team, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, and is hoping to direct after he's done with the long-gestating adaptation of Larry Kramer's AIDS crisis play The Normal Heart.
Bachelor Ben:The Bachelor contestant "Courtney Robertson was running out of tricks to keep Ben Flajnik's attention" after her "skinny-dipping in Puerto Rico" stunt. For a Panama rain forest group date "she shamelessly bared her breasts for an entire afternoon" (better than shamefully baring them?) and "to up the sexual ante" asked him to come over to her room. "Alas, the California winemaker, 28, never showed." After being stood up, "a dismayed Robertson stepped out onto her hotel balcony and tried her luck with a crew of construction workers outside." How did that work? "She danced for them in her bikini, shaking her butt" while they whistled. "She looked like she wanted attention." An attention whore on reality TV? You don't say. "It wasn't about Ben or finding true love. She just wanted to be famous." A sex tape she made with an ex-boyfriend may pop up soon. "It's pretty dirty." She formerly dated Jim Toth (the CAA agent who is now Reese Witherspoon's husband), Desperate Housewives' Jesse Metcalfe, and Entourage's Adrian Grenier, and was "superaggressive," a so-called "stage-five clinger" who "pushes herself onto men" and has "always relied on her body to get what she wanted." "She's like a monkey. She won't let go of one branch until she grabs hold of another — and she's always looking for a better branch. She wants to snag a rich dude." "Her best line is before having sex with a man. She'll ask him, 'Are you ready for your date with destiny?'" While some people claim Courtney is a plant cast to create controversy, sources say, "Roberton's bitchiness is 100 percent genuine."
Beyoncé checked into the hospital Saturday night under the name "Ingrid Jackson": First Sasha Fierce, now Ingrid Jackson. Bey sure has a thing for European names. Maybe it was after the Dutch astronomer Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld.
The baby is a girl named "Blue Ivy Carter": Despite early false reports of "Tiana May."
Gwyneth Paltrow confirmed the name on Twitter: Because she is a close personal friend of Hova. Straight off the block. And a fame whore (to the manor born).
Kanye West is the godfather: Perhaps Kanye's biological clock is responsible for his most recent Twitter outburst about overthrowing the oppressive sociocultural order. Or maybe that night he was just doing a lot of ... thinking.
Back in October, Grantland made a plea: Let's All Stop Complaining When Beyoncé Steals Dance Moves From YouTube. Bey had just faced her latest plagiarism charges, for the “Countdown” video (it was “inspired” by the work of a Belgian choreographer named Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker), but enough was enough. A full exploration of her plagiarism history -- from “Single Ladies” to her Billboard Awards performance -- proved conclusively: awesome stuff happens when Beyoncé steals. That meant Beyoncé officially gets Grantland's coveted “I'm Famous and Awesome Enough Where I'm Allowed To Rip Stuff Off" exception.
The keyword for the Billboard chart in 2011 was "ANTHEMS." Anti-bullying anthems (Selena Gomez, "Who Says"; Katy Perry, "Firework"; Lady Gaga, "Born This Way"), party rock anthems, anthems for regular weekday night non-rock pre-work partying. Tons of pop-rap pap where diet-inspirational verses were soldered awkwardly to soaring adult-contemporary choruses. Videos with cinematic spoken intros (The Script, "For The First Time"; Katy Perry, "The One That Got Away"; Rihanna, "We Found Love") and further attempts, some very successful, to make VEVO the baby big screen it wants to be. These are my personal picks for a top ten from the Billboard 2011 Top 100 chart.
Every week we ask Molly Lambert to dive deep on one of the Billboard top ten songs of the week charts. This week's victim? The R&B and Hip Hop list, which Molly kindly transformed into film adaptations before grading.
1. Jay-Z & Kanye West, "Ni**as in Paris"
Wizards In Paris (G): A CGI-saturated family adventure about Apples (Jay-Z) and Grapes (Kanye West), two koalas on the loose in the City of Lights after stowing away on a luxury cruise (where they romance gold-digging squirrels, upend a millionaires' buffet and eat so many shrimp). Arriving in Paris on a chilly snowy night, the rascally marsupials face racist cabdrivers, a steep conversion rate, and evil time-traveling steampunk stage magicians. The movie climaxes with an exciting chase through the Chanel flagship store and an epic tumble into the catacombs to face off with both the metropolis's fabled wizards and their own fragile furry mortality. Listen:Here Grade: A
For over a decade now, hearing this sound — a modulated male voice saying the word "Bangladesh" — at the beginning of a track has meant one thing: You’re in for a banger. It’s the tag for Shondrae Crawford, a.k.a. Bangladesh, the Atlanta-based producer whose impeccable discography bounces between inescapable radio-rap monsters, blissed-out R&B jams, and miniature pop epics. (His client list: Rihanna, Beyoncé, Eminem, Lil Wayne, T-Pain, Usher, R. Kelly … ) Earlier this week, Grantland got Crawford to tell us the stories behind some of his biggest songs. And that includes the “urban club records” he just gave Justin Bieber.
So if you didn't eat enough for Thanksgiving, here's another Beyoncé video to stuff in your belly somewhere (is this the seventh video this year? No. 9? No. 9 million? I've lost track). The song's called "Dance For You," which is on the deluxe edition of her album, 4, and the video sort of looks like Sin City: Beyoncé, except in a classic noir-style twist the video is not sexy and has no sexy dancing at all. Haha. Kidding! It's all sexy and has lots of sexy dancing. No surprises!
Rihanna’s new album Talk That Talk came out last week and we can all rest assured that its tracks will eventually become ubiquitous and make us fight the urge to dance in a lamestream club and/or Honda Civic. Then they'll aggravate us because we won't be able to escape them. Then we’ll suddenly know all the words and wonder how these songs became so familiar without ever really engaging us. That’s probably just ‘the power of pop music,’ but I sometimes wonder how Rihanna managed to stay relevant with such a dull discography.
The first time I hear any Rihanna song I am perplexed, because it usually isn’t directly accessible. Sometimes it is too anthemic for Rihanna’s simple, range-limited voice, or the original sample is poorly constructed into a new song. How can Rihanna be so successful without one overwhelmingly amazing trait as a singer or performer? She has done little to distinguish herself as an independent female artist with an unique perspective that she genuinely wants to share with the world. She’s not as thematically deliberate as Taylor Swift, but also not as comatose as Britney Spears. How did she go from just capitalizing off the island-beat-goes-mainstream movement to being a full-on pop force (instead of just fading away like Shaggy)?
Landing a verse from André 3000, the Big Foot of hip-hop, is a great way to show your industry pull. The problem here for Jeezy, though, is that Drake’s album just had a brand new 3 Stacks feature, while this “I Do” verse has been floating around for over a year. Come on, ‘Dre: goddamn Ke$hagets a new one, but Jeezy has to settle for scraps?
I've heard it said nothing transforms a man like having a baby girl. So news that Jay-Z and Beyoncé are having a daughter could mean we will never see or hear from the old Shawn Carter again. Old Jay-Z: "hard dick and bubble gum". New Jay-Z: poopy diapers and baby food.
It’s the beginning of a new era in hip hop. The Old Man Rap era. And a lot of emcees are gonna have some ‘splainin’ to do. Hov, to his jeweler’s credit, has always talked more Maybachs and ice, than about his sidepiece and wife. So he won’t have as much umm, err, umm stammering to contend with as, say, Kanye. But here's five songs we still expect to be removed from Lil Hovita’s iPod.
Beyoncé is blonde as shit and properly on her Courtney Stodden in the new video for "Party." You are beautiful, Bey. Turn the makeup gun down two notches. I have no problem with slutty looks, especially from my pop stars, but this isn't my favorite Beyoncé styling. Firstly, this video screams "summer" and it's nearly Halloween, which is why Rihanna's spooky UK youth cultures in a blender video for "We Found Love" seemed so appropriate (pools:summer::fields:fall). The problem with the video for "Party" is that the party doesn't look very fun. It looks staged and totally unspontaneous in every way, even the bunny ears at the end. Beyoncé looks kinda crazy rolling around sexily on every surface in sight, and also like she has one eye on the clock the whole time. The best image in "Party" is Beyoncé in a gold birthday hat.
