HOT: Not a Chance to Take
After delivering a speech in which he called out the U.S. government after receiving the Humanitarian Award at the BET Awards, Chance the Rapper took on a tastier enemy. In response to a Hostess tweet that compared the greatness of “Chance the Snacker” (groan!) to that of the company’s Apple Streusel Coffee Cakes and featured a photo of the snack with the real Chance’s trademark “3” cap, the rapper tweeted “Give me my coin.” Not ready for an endorsement deal (or not wanting to do battle with Chance endorsee Kit Kat), Hostess deleted the original tweet. Chance recently donated $1 million to Chicago Public Schools, so if he did get some of that sweet Twinkie dough, at least it would likely go to a good cause.
WARM: Music Stunt Bombs
Just as it’s ill-advised these days to carry a pressure cooker down a dark street late at night (midnight pot-luck dinner be damned!), it’s probably not the optimal time to publicize your band’s new cassette release with a stunt involving randomly hanging it on a wall somewhere, particularly if the “cover art” features a typed note about firebombing and destroying buildings. A Noise band called LSD Fundraiser found out the hard way after a chunk of an entire New Zealand city’s downtown area was shut down for hours and the bomb squad was called. Police offered little comment, but reportedly are investigating someone related to the odd stunt.
COLD: Tune or Tuning?
Radiohead was the source of some recent “fake news” that went viral as true. Given the band’s experimental bent, few immediately questioned the validity of a prank screenshot that looked like the BBC’s news site and stated that thousands of fans mistook Radiohead members tuning their guitars at a festival as a new song. “Minimalist, but also complex, emotionally raw, but still able to push the boundaries of what music can be,” read a “fan” quote in the trolling tweet. Making it even odder: the original screenshot came from the account of a flower delivery service.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 5, 2017.
