April 02, 2020
By Stacy M. Brown
NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
It turns out the social media beef between Public Enemy icons Chuck D and Flavor Flav was a hoax.
“April Fools” – sort of.
Chuck and Flavor today released brand new music, and the relationship between the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legends remains as tight as ever.
In an exclusive interview with National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., broadcast live on Facebook and at BlackPressUSA.com, Chuck D debuted the group’s new single, “Food as a Machine Gun.”
The single features a reunion of Chuck D and Flavor Flav.
“It’s the most important rap record ever,” the superstar stated.
Chuck D called the record important because it arrives at a time when many still take hip-hop for granted, and that includes African Americans and the artists themselves.
“Last year, I finished a four-year tour of the world with Prophets of Rage, and we played to packed stadiums and I watched Rage Against the Machine do a five-night run to sold out crowds in the [Madison Square] Garden. I saw how loyal their fans were and how wild they are. How much they loved their rock stars,” Chuck D stated.
“With hip-hop, our fans aren’t like that, and the artists are led by their having to get breadcrumbs.”
He said the media and others had taken away the narrative from hip-hop.
“Now, it’s time to take the narrative back from those who have side-swiped it. They need to be eliminated,” Chuck D added.
In February, news outlets reported that Flavor had been fired from Public Enemy after a dispute erupted between him and Chuck over the group’s performance during a Bernie Sanders campaign rally.
Flavor’s lawyers released a statement saying that the rapper hadn’t consented and was against the group supporting Sanders.
Things appeared to have heated up in the feud after Chuck took to Twitter and seemed to “out” Flavor as having a substance abuse problem.
However, Chuck explained to the NNPA Newswire that, while Flav does enjoy a Hennessy and chaser a little more frequently than what he believes a 60-year-old should, there’s never been an accusation of drug abuse, in contrast to the meaning that many took way from Chuck’s tweets on social media.
“Flav’s name was dragged through the mud so much in 2018 and 2019, so I had to do something to bring him up,” Chuck explained to NNPA Newswire.
“My name is kind of Teflon, but his wasn’t, so I thought this was a way of bringing him up. I had people say, ‘why are you doing stuff to Flav?’ I responded that ‘you aren’t supporting him. What are you doing to support him?”
Further, Flav wasn’t fired because “you can’t fire a partner,” Chuck D stated. “It shows you that people don’t pay attention.”
He called the banter between him and Flav a “hoax that ain’t no joke.”
“It’s a serious hoax,” he said.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, Chuck and Flav have worked tirelessly on the new CD.
Chuck also has worked on a second CD that includes several friends from the hip-hop community. Both CDs were released simultaneously.
With a degree in the Arts, Chuck has also applied his talents as a graphics, sketch and caricature artist.
He chronicled the past month in a journal filled with narratives and sketches, including eye-opening renderings of Prince, Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, Notorious BIG, and many others.
“I was dismayed about how the whole narrative of hip-hop went into the area where we only talk about dead rappers,” Chuck D stated.
“Common gave probably the most incredible performance I had ever seen on television at the NBA All-Star Game in February, and you only heard crickets,” Chuck noted.
“Pop Smoke got killed, and the media was on it, and his records rose up the charts. We went through this with Nipsey Hustle. The narrative is that you’ve got to be a dead rapper to be relevant in the news, and that’s disrespectful.
“I want to use this as a teachable moment. All of that stuff with Flav and Bernie Sanders and the lawyers was all part of a plan. I wanted to see what happens when you present a bad look. And, it worked. I was trending for a bad look, and I thought that for more than 30 years, Public Enemy has given you nothing but good looks.
“We made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but this situation with Flav got us trending more than we did then. Thirty years after I made ‘Fear of a Black Planet,’ the digital age is fixed on what they see. I was on stage with Bernie Sanders, and nobody can tell you what they heard,” he said.
Because people tend to be more visual today, Chuck said he thought he’d chronicle the past 30 days. He didn’t anticipate a pandemic.
“Just thought I’d show things in pictures with the book, and the coronavirus came along, and there was even more to do,” he stated.
The book is titled, “There’s a Poison Going On,” but the name was decided upon long before the pandemic, Chuck assured.
“It’s ironic because, for the whole month of March, there’s been a poison going on for real,” he stated. “Maybe, people will pay attention to a good look the next time and not always a bad look.”
March 26, 2020
By Lindsey Bahr
AP Film Writer
“The Banker” is an odd title for this film. It has the effect of underselling a fascinating story about a black business savant that was inspired by real events. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Bernard Garrett (Anthony Mackie) became a real estate mogul in Los Angeles and (eventually) the owner of a bank in his Texas hometown at a time when all the cards were stacked against him. At the very least, “The Banker” doesn't seem like the best way to describe Bernard, his accomplishments or even reflect what it's is about: the de facto and legal ways that African American were excluded from fairly participating in real estate and business.
That's all to say, don't let it dissuade you from giving this solid film a chance when it hits AppleTV Plus on Friday. Directed by George Nolfi (“The Adjustment Bureau”), “The Banker” is a fairly traditional biopic with a civil rights bent and some caper elements. With lush period costuming and a terrific cast, including Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson as his business partner Joe Morris, Nia Long as Bernard's wife Eunice and Nicholas Hoult, it might just be the perfect easy watch for anyone looking for fresh streaming content.
We're introduced to Bernard as a precocious youngster living in 1930s Texas. He's ambitious and self-taught and eavesdrops on the men whose shoes he's shining to learn some business acumen. His father commends his intellect but advises him to dream smaller.
The film then cuts to 1954 Los Angeles where Bernard, always bedecked in a well-fitted suit, goes on the hunt for investment properties. “No” is a word he hears often, until he meets Patrick Barker, an Irish property owner played by Colm Meaney, who sees potential in Bernard's strategy of buying properties in white neighborhoods that are adjacent to black neighborhoods and gives him a chance.
They start doing business together, but there's a catch: Although Bernard has all the good ideas, he's forced to stay in the shadows of every deal knowing that his skin color would be a deal-breaker for many in 1950s Los Angeles. When his partnership with Patrick comes to an end, he and Joe Morris have to essentially Eliza Doolittle a white working class youngster (Hoult's Matt Steiner) – who barely knows how to add – to be the face of their real estate empire. Joe, Eunice and Bernard teach Matt sophistication in a particularly amusing section of the film: How to golf, how to eat shellfish, how to drink nice scotch and how to negotiate deals with captains of industry.
It's invigorating at first watching Bernard and Joe play puppet master in order to buy the building that houses the bank Bernard couldn't even get a meeting with. The plan works and they're all getting rich. But their scheme starts to get away from them as Bernard's ambitions grow and Matt pushes for some actual responsibility (thanks in no part to a one-dimensional gold-digging wife). Getting rich isn't Bernard's only goal after all: He also wants to affect change for black people in the United States. Unfortunately, he underestimates just how vindictive the establishment in Texas is when they find out that he's the real owner of the bank.
The engine of the film slows to a half in these Texas scenes, perhaps because it decides to shift much of its focus to Matt and by that point, you're merely watching everything that they've built crumble. By the time the credits roll, you feel like you never exactly got to know anything deeper than surface level about Bernard and Joe.
“The Banker” was supposed to come out in theaters at the end of last year, a late-game, long-shot awards hopeful, that was pulled when accusations of misconduct were levied against Bernard Garrett Jr., a producer on the film, by his half-sister. His name was removed from the credits, but two of Bernard Sr.'s wives who are not depicted in the film then took issue with the accuracy of the story and timeline. The filmmakers responded that the story is based on Garrett's own audio recordings from 1955.
That truth might never come to light, but taken on its own, “The Banker” is a pleasant watch. And who wouldn't benefit from a little Mackie and Jackson banter right now?
“The Banker,” an AppleTV+ release is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “some strong language including a sexual reference and racial epithets and smoking throughout.” Running time 120 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
March 26, 2020
The City News Service
An all-star salute Prince that was filmed two days after this year's Grammy Awards ceremony will be broadcast April 21, the Recording Academy announced today.
“Let's Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince” will air at 9 p.m. on CBS, and will also be streamed on CBS All Access.
The tribute, filmed Jan. 28 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, is hosted by comedian/actress Maya Rudolph, who also performs with her Prince cover band, Princess.
Also performing in the tribute are John Legend, Beck, Morris Day and the Time, Prince's band the Revolution, Sheila E., Common, Gary Clark Jr., Foo Fighters, H.E.R., Juanes, Chris Martin, Mavis Staples, St. Vincent, Usher and Earth, Wind and Fire.
Usher and Sheila E. also performed a tribute to Prince during January's Grammy Awards ceremony at Staples Center.
Also appearing on the special will be Fred Armisen, Naomi Campbell, Misty Copeland, FKA Twigs and Jimmy Jam.
Prince, who died in April 2016, earned 38 Grammy nominations in his career, winning seven – including one for his seminal album “Purple Rain.”
He received the Recording Academy's President's Merit Award in 1985, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 and received an Icon Award at the Billboard Music Awards in 2013.
March 26, 2020
By City News Service
One of the daughters of the late actor Kristoff St. John has filed a new petition to administer her father's estate.
Paris St. John, 27, filed her first petition a month after her father's 2018 death. A judge later appointed her and the actor's father, Christopher, to act as temporary special co-administrators through May 29. A permanent administrator will be named later.
The actor's father alleges his son left a handwritten will before he died that states he wanted his personal savings and money to be shared between Paris and another daughter, Lola, at a split of 25% and 75%, respectively.
Dated Aug. 12, 2017, the will requests that the actor's father be made executor of the estate.
Last June, Paris St. John filed a petition challenging the validity of the will. She has also maintained a neutral third party should administer the estate.
The judge has not decided on the will's validity.
St. John, who played Neil Winters on “The Young and the Restless” for almost 30 years, died at age 52 of hypertrophic heart failure on Feb. 3, 2018, at his Woodland Hills home.