HOT: Fighting for Country
Country artist Sturgill Simpson’s latest album hit No. 1 on the Billboard album charts, but he’s never expected to be embraced by the Country-music establishment. Now he’s sure he won’t be after a scathing social media post he wrote about the Academy of Country Music naming an award after Merle Haggard went viral. Simpson claimed the award was exploiting the late Haggard (who had a distaste for commercial Country’s business side) and to truly honor him, the biz should start promoting better music instead. After the post, Simpson followed up by saying he knew he was now going to be “blackballed from the industry,” which was “perfectly fine” with him.
WARM: Ice Cube Definitely Doesn’t Endorse Trump
A Twitter account that tweets pro-Donald Trump news recently posted edited video clips from an interview with rapper Ice Cube that (the tweet declared) showed him endorsing the GOP candidate (by saying he “looks like a boss to everybody and Americans love to have a boss”) and denouncing Hillary Clinton (by criticizing old comments in which she called African-American youths “superpredators”). Within hours, Cube politely responded with a tweet saying, “I will never endorse a mothafucka like Donald Trump! EVER!!!”
COLD: Ex-Mayor Critiques Pop Star
It may not have been as bad as Donald Trump politicizing the shooting death of a pro basketball player’s cousin, but former NYC mayor and ardent Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani found an “outside the box” way to dog-whistle potential Trump voters… and connect with young folks by referencing pop culture! The perceptive cultural critics at Fox & Friends showed Giuliani a brief clip of Beyoncé’s MTV Video Music Awards performance, then told him it symbolized “cops killing black people.” Giuliani called the singer’s performance “a shame,” and felt the need to boast that as mayor he “saved more black lives than any of those people you saw on stage” with his policies.