Woman Stuck in 8-Year-Old's Body, 90's R&B Star Proves Posthoumous Albums Shouldn't Exist, White Singer Erases Black Chicago Rapper, Biggest Streaming Releases of 2022 (The Five for 01/21/21)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Apologies, as this is one of the only times I’ve been late on the Tuesday/Friday delivery schedule…my Honda’s windshield cracked in half due to the extreme cold, which really threw off yesterday.
One more note…this issue is too long for Gmail. There’s nothing in this issue I believe was non-essential…so if you’re reading from Gmail, you’ll have to click on the link to finish the issue.
It’s Friday, so let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
A Wharton School of Business prof went viral this week for reporting on the opinions of what constitutes the “middle class.”
One Twitter user linked to New York Times data, showing the median family income of a student from Penn is $195,500. And that’s for the university as a whole.
As for the real number, the Social Security Administration put the average U.S. annual wage last year at $53,383, and the median wage at $34,612.
In the fourth quarter, the Labor Department said median weekly earnings were $1,010, or an annualized $52,520.
As someone who grew up working class, in working class communities…only to have the doors to the most elite circles opened to me via in Chicago, New York and LA (thanks to TV, radio, journalism)…this doesn’t surprise me at all.
It’s easy to dunk on these students, but I’m not sure it’s helpful. They are adults, but they’re very young adults…who have not been shown the wider world, working class life, or (for the most part) any locales outside of major cities…unless those locals are exclusive ski resorts, beach towns etc. full of other rich people.
This is evidenced in a recent article from Business Insider who visited Texas, expecting to hate it…only to discover (gasp) that the people were nice and small towns are interesting and fulfilling places to spend time.
When speaking with locals and the vendors at the festival, I couldn't help but notice how friendly everyone was, especially compared to the notorious aloofness of New Yorkers. After arriving at the festival just before closing, suitcase in hand, multiple people stopped me to ask me where I was coming from, just to spark a conversation. I've definitely never experienced that kind of friendliness while traveling around New York.
Exploring Waco was a different experience than being in Austin or New York, a reminder that there's so much more to Texas than what I was able to experience during my short trip. I can't wait for my next venture westward, where I'll hopefully be able to explore even more of Texas, eat more mouthwatering barbecue, and chat with more friendly locals.
I’m reminded of what my uncle said, as we watched a carload of city dwellers leave Fishhook, IL (who had traveled in for a wedding, and were absolutely horrible to be aorund).
”They’ll never know anything but stoplights and concrete,” David exclaimed, with a hint of sadness in his voice that our ungrateful guests were living in a mental prison, of sorts.
Financial poverty is not having the money to pay the rent.
Mental poverty is not having the ability to see beyond your own experiences.
Both are devastating.
[two]
I previously wrote about the return of Morgan Wallen, a rapidly rising country star who’s career was temporarily derailed after a Ring camera caught Wallen saying the N-word (at his white friend) after a three day bender.
Well, the story has grown even bigger, and is now becoming about something much more than Wallen’s own career.
As arecap, Wallen disappeared from the public eye, made some changes (which included going to rehab to quit alcohol, thank God), and recently returned to performing. The first “comeback” song was a collaboration with Chicago rapper Lil Durk.
According to Durk, Wallen, who’s become a close personal friend, “is not canceled. He aint no racist. That’s my boy. If I say he aint canceled, he aint canceled.”
Social media critics promptly responded by making “cancel Lil Durk” trend on Twitter.
The rapper ignored the outcry and brought Wallen out for a live performance on MLK Day this week,. which caused even further outcry, with major media outlets, including Yahoo, jumping in with coverage of anonymous accounts saying dumb stuff as “news.”
This tweet was a big focus of the story:
Observations:
A. Should we be taking the advice of someone who calls themselves “Sudafed and Scotch” seriously? The account has 42 followers, for the record. (Side note: do not drink those back to back…I’m not a doctor, but I’m not an idiot either).
B. Lil Durk is a Chicago born rapper who lives in LA, on a record label based out of Santa Monica, CA…how and when did he fall under the direct control of Nashville’s music row?
Durk seems to have straightened his life out, but early on in his career the rapper was involved in multiple incidents of gang violence, including very public feuds with other artists, and direct ties to organized crime in Chicago.
How, exactly, did the lilywhite, suburban raised hipsters populating the offices of country music labels force Durk to help revitalize Wallen’s career? Because according to the tweet featured by Yahoo, this is exactly what happened.
I started out my career in country music, and I’ve been to many of the country labels…if there’s a sinister Cabal running the whole thing…it’s certainly well hidden.
The tweet is absurd, but running an article about trolling is (sadly) the state of journalism today.
Wallen recently returned to The Grand Ole Opry, which prompted outrage (whether faux or genuine), from elitist Americana singer Jason Isbell:
For all the talk of “listening” to minority voices…Isbell has no interest in doing such a thing.
In fact, he’s erasing the “lived experience” (as the woke slogan goes) of Lil Durk.
It’s a bad move, because Isbell was instrumental in his wife’s supergroup, The Highwomen (an album I loved, by the way).
The group got a lot of press for being inclusive (one of the members, Brandi Carlile, is gay, and a superstar country artist in her own right).
However, The Highwomen asked black country singer Mickey Guyton to film a music video for a song she guested on…and then shut Guyton out of the production after she had flown across the country, during a very difficult personal time.
Guyton shared her account, which was picked up by Saving Country Music:
I left my ailing husband, who almost died from sepsis, in California just four days after his life-saving surgery because I had been invited to be a part of a female empowerment music video full of these same women. I arrived at the airport exhausted but excited. I checked my itinerary only to find that the entry had been deleted; I had been disinvited. The song was about supporting women in country, yet they disinvited the only charting African American woman in country music. Do they know? Don’t they see that I support them? Do they care? Do they want to see me? The answer is no. Let that sink in.
Isbell isn’t a named member of The Highwomen, but served as lead guitarist on the album, a co-writer on multiple songs and has been instrumental in the creative vision of the group…so he’s not off the hook here.
Wallen said something horrible, but he said it while blackout drunk to nobody in particular. As a result, Wallen lost millions of dollars. He also got sober, met with various community leaders and donated a half a million dollars to various nonprofits. (Isbell also lied to Buzzfeed, claiming Wallen didn’t donate the money—which has been repeatedly debunked).
Isbell, his wife, Amanda Shires and the rest of the Highwomen caused real harm to Mickey Guyton and have faced no consequences whatsoever.
The whole story has become something other than about the reemergence of Morgan Wallen in country music.
The saga has morphed into a story of The Woke Religion, where apparently the privileged, hypocritic, middle aged high Priest Americana singer can erase and condemn the art and experiences of a black young adult from Chicago…in the name of diversity…and anonymous Twitter accounts are credible witnesses to the ritual slaughter.
[three]
An article from Pop Sugar went viral this week, decrying a posthumous album from R&B superstar Aaliyah (who died in a plane crash in August 2001), for not having any female vocalists as guests:
Aaliyah's former manager, Background Records founder Barry Hankerson, told Billboard that the Princess of R&B "would love hearing herself with the current stars of the industry that she cared so much about." I imagine she'd also love hearing herself alongside the powerful leading women in R&B right now. Hankerson added, "Some of the people that Aaliyah liked are on the album. She loved Snoop Dogg, who's done a great record in collaboration with Future. They're going in now to refreshen their vocals. Ne-Yo gave us an excellent song; also Drake. Timbaland produced the track that Chris Brown did. It's vintage R&B with strong vocals." This, again, makes me want to scream. "Vintage R&B with strong vocals" done right would not result in a male-dominated album.
It’s amazing how establishment journalists can take a real issue, then throw in race, gender and/or pronouns into the mix and completely miss the point.
The problem is not the features on this Aaliyah album…the problem is that a blatant cash grab is pushing out half-baked song ideas as an “album” that the original artist never wanted you to hear (at least in their present form).
We know this…because Aaliyah didn’t release them when she was alive. If the singer thought these songs were ready to go…she would have put them out. This isn’t an album that was complete and ready to ship before the tragic plane crash that claimed the R&B star’s life…these appear to be studio rough cuts with guest thrown on for marketability.
This is a common practice when an artist dies…to just scrape together ANYTHING that can be packaged as an album to quickly cash in on the grief and nostalgia of the fan community.
The absolute worst example is the “final album” from The Notorious B.I.G., which released in 2005, eight years after the rapper’s murder.
For nearly an hour and a half, other rappers spit verses around weird scraps of leftover vocal takes (some no more than five seconds long) from the late Christopher Wallace. The results are…painful, embarrassing and dishonoring to BIG’s body of work.
But everybody does it.
R&B singer Anderson Paak took matters into his own hands and inked this message on his forearm, to prevent the poorly executed posthumous album.
It’s sad that it takes a tattoo to prevent labels and managers from completely raking the legacy of a dead artist over the coals for a few more bucks…but permanent ink under the skin may be the only thing that keeps the money hungry from dumping every unused scratch track onto Spotify in the name of higher profits.
When an artist is gone, we should cherish the body of work created during their life…rather than gobbling up the drafts that were cast aside.
[four]
A new series from TLC, I am Shauna Rae, follows the life of a 22-year-old woman who nearly died of brain cancer at age 8. She recovered, but her pituitary gland was destroyed, making further growth impossible and leaving Shauna Rae to live an adult life in the body of a third grader.
I’m not much of a reality TV person, but I have to say the trailer is both heartbreaking and hopeful, showing a young woman who is determined to fight for what most of us take for granted—access to a job, gym membership and other day-to-day amenities, while looking for love and friendship…in a world where her dignity and safety are constantly in question (if you’re 3’10”, there’s always the risk of being harmed).
The series stands in stark contrast to TikTok, the internet hellhole where people demand you accept things about them…which A). aren’t real or B). are real, but should be treated, rather than accepted.
The most disturbing trend is the TikTok movement towards “accepting” Multiple Personality Disorder…which should not be “accepted.” It should be treated as the very serious mental illness it is.
Feigning victimhood takes away attention from people who truly have become victims, like Shauna Rae, who had no say in losing her ability to grow at age 8.
In 2022…victimhood, especially on social media, is a path to fame, attention and sometimes, money (via bogus GoFundMe’s etc. for problems that are more perception than reality).
Shauna Rae is a victim, but she refuses to live like one.
And nobody could benefit more from a show like that than TikToker’s invent problems as a substitute for a personality.
[five]
Variety has an excellent look at the most anticipated streaming titles of 2022, of which the mystery Knives Out 2 definitely has the most buzz (it had better—Netflix paid $450 million for two sequels). Personally, I see this year as the turning point where streaming titles outpace theatrical releases for buzz, viewership and cultural impact.
Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel?! series has an official name: The Rings of Power. If you want to watch a one minute video of smoke or whatever while a voiceover reads a short passage from the original novel…here you go. The series releases this September...and reportedly cost Amazon more than $1.25 billion for production and rights to the intellectual property.
I’m not much for the horror genre, but mix a little mystery in and I’m down to jump out of my seat a few times. Archive 81, The latest project from James Wan (Saw, Aquaman) looks scary…but also wonderfully mysterious. The new Netflix show follows a video editor who’s retrieving archive footage from 25 year old tapes damaged by an apartment fire. The tapes, obviously, reveal a rabbit-hole mystery. The series is currently sitting at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. You can check out the trailer here.
Oscar Isaac (Star Wars VII-IX, Ex Machina) officially joins the Marvel Universe on March 30th with Moon Knight, a PG-13(ish) horror/thriller set in modern day London…where he’s apparently transformed into Mummy Batman, I guess?! Anyway, the first trailer generated a lot of buzz.
Isaac is one of the most talented actors working today, so this one could stretch beyond the typical MCU fanbase.
XBOX dropped a staggering amount of money this week when the gaming giant purchased Activision | Blizzard, the studio behind some of the biggest titles and franchises in the gaming industry, for $68 billion dollars. XBOX lagged behind chief rival Playstation in both console and game sales over the last decade, in large part due to a lack of first party and exclusive titles. Last March, XBOX acquired Bethesda, a developer who’s roster includes Doom, Skyrim, Fallout and other long-running blockbuster franchises.
At the time, the move was hailed as unprecedented…but now the $7 billion price tag in March of 2021 pales in comparison to the cost, and assets, of Call of Duty, Overwatch and World of Warcraft, among the biggest gaming franchises in history.
No official word yet, but as of now it appears XBOX will continue to allow Sony to sell these base games on the Playstation…but will hold key exclusive in-game features for XBOX players only. It’s also likely that some of these top-tier titles will be added to GamePass, XBOX’s $15/month “all you can play” Netflix style service.
MOVIE/MY PICK: I didn’t even realize The King’s Man hit theaters at Christmas, but Amanda and I were able to sneak out for a movie last Saturday. January is a famously thin month for theatrical releasees, so it was pretty much this or nothing.
It’s not a perfect movie by any means(the plot is overly stuffed/complicated), but it’s also one can’t get this one out of my head. A prequel to two modern-day James Bond style…spoofs?!, the series jumps back in time to the founding of The Kingsmen, an independent intelligence operation funded by rich Britons who lost their heirs in WWI and pooled their respective fortunes into a secret organization that would prevent global conflicts.
As an action vehicle, The King’s Man pulls from Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean in equal measure…but there’s more than just dazzling sword fights going on here (and they are dazzling). To borrow from a YouTube review, the movie is “the coolest history book you’ve ever read.” I hold an earned master’s degree in history, and even I was surprised by some of the WWI details.
It’s crazy to see a series that started so silly produce a film that appeals to teenagers and simultaneously drives home the devastating consequences of a war that makes so little sense that it’s difficult to teach in school.
More of this, please.
Until the next one,
-sth