Rapper-singer Cordae has announced that his upcoming second studio album, From a Bird’s Eye View, will feature a star-studded lineup of guest artists, including Stevie Wonder.
Wonder contributes to a track called “Champagne Glasses” that also features veteran rappers Nas and Freddie Gibbs.
Other artists appearing on From a Bird’s Eye View include Eminem, Lil Wayne, H.E.R. and Roddy Ricch. The 14-track project will be released Friday, and can be pre-ordered and pre-saved now at CordaeMusic.com.
From a Bird’s Eye View is the follow-up to Cordae’s 2019 debut album, The Lost Boy.
(NEW YORK) — A winter storm is expected to bring up to 8 inches of snow across the Midwest beginning Thursday evening.
Winter storm watches are in effect for parts of South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa into Friday.
The system is expected to move southeast this weekend.
Some southern states, including Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, could see snow and ice.
The storm may then move up the East Coast, potentially bringing wintry impacts to the Northeast Sunday night through Monday.
In the meantime, the Northeast, which saw its coldest day in nearly three years on Tuesday, will experience another cold blast Saturday, with wind chills plunging below zero in New York City and across New England.
Michael B. Jordan surprised his girlfriend, Lori Harvey, with an early birthday party Monday. The model turns 25 on January 13, however, the Journal for Jordan star decided to have a celebration for her three days in advance at Nobu Malibu in California, according to Page Six.
Harvey’s manager, Tre Thomas, announced at the party, “[Michael] loves you and can’t be here tonight, but enjoy your night. It’s on him.” Although a specific reason was not given for Jordan’s absence, it is believed he was busy working on Creed III which he is starring in and directing.
The model shared several videos in her Instagram Story, walking into a room decked out in balloons, including a big silver “25” for her milestone birthday. The tables are adorned with beautiful white floral arrangements, as well as custom menus that read “Lori’s 25th.”
“Thank you for my surprise party baby @michaelbjordan,” the model wrote on one post. “Sisters,” she wrote for another photo which featured Normani and actress Ryan Destiny from grown-ish.
In other news, Lori’s father, Steve Harvey, says he will not star in another comedy special because cancel culture has killed comedy.
“Nobody can say anything he wants to — Chris Rock can’t, Kevin Hart can’t, Cedric the Entertainer can’t, D.L. Hughley can’t. I can go down the list. The only person that can say what they want to say on stage is Dave Chappelle because he’s not sponsor-driven,” Harvey said Tuesday during the Television Critics Association press tour, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Finally, following Michelle Obama‘s appearance on the season debut episode of black-ish, more guest stars are lined up. Babyface, Magic Johnson, Vivica A. Fox, Simone Biles, Daveed Diggs, and more will appear in the eighth and final season, Deadline reports.
In Adele’s video for “Easy On Me,” she’s seen leaving one house, driving in a car, and then sitting in a room with red walls, billowing curtains, stacked up chairs and a chandelier. If that looks like your dream home, you’ll be glad to know that it’s currently on the market.
The New York Post reports the Canadian estate where the video was filmed is on the market for $4.3 million. Located about an hour-and-a-half from Montreal, the 173-acre estate includes six different structures, including a castle, a vineyard, a chapel, a guesthouse and a garage, as well as a grove of maple trees with “11,000 taps,” which are used to collect one of Canada’s most famous exports: maple syrup.
The video was filmed in the dining room of one of the structures: You can see the curtains, the chandelier and the red painted walls in the photos that are part of the listing, but of course, the chairs aren’t stacked up, there’s no sheet on the floor and there aren’t any papers flying around, either. However it does have a large portrait of Adele on the wall.
According to the Post, the listing describes the estate as a “spectacular multi-generational site with many houses for your family and friends.” It’s currently owned by a Canadian entrepreneur.
The “Easy on Me” and “Hello” videos were both directed by Montreal-born Xavier Dolan.
Netflix has reportedly given the green light to two sequels to Red Notice, the streaming platform’s hit film starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot.
The action comedy, which features Reynolds as a wily art thief who forms an unlikely partnership with Johnson’s FBI profiler to catch Gadot’s criminal mastermind, debuted in November, and became the most-watched movie in Netflix’s history.
It still sits in the top slot on Netflix’s global rankings.
While the end of the film clearly set up a sequel, it wasn’t confirmed until now. Deadline reports Netflix is ready to shoot two Red Notice follow-ups back-to-back in early 2023, provided the trio of stars can sync up their busy schedules.
Also returning is writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber.
Deadline points out that Universal Pictures initially balked at the budget of the globe-trotting adventure film — which included hefty salaries for its three stars and for Thurber — before Netflix jumped into the mix as producer and distributor. The gamble certainly paid off, as the streaming giant now officially has a franchise on its hands.
Exposure to COVID-19 has forced Roddy Ricch to cancel his performance scheduled for this weekend on Saturday Night Live.
A spokesperson for NBC confirmed to Variety that the Grammy winner was exposed to a team member who has COVID-19.
“The Box” rapper dropped his second studio album, LIVE LIFE FAST, on December 17, featuring Future, 21 Savage, Kodak Black, Ty Doll $ign, Lil Baby, Gunna, and Takeoff from Migos. The 18-track project is the follow-up to his 2019 RIAA double-Platinum debut album, Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial. Ricch recently celebrated “The Box” from that album being RIAA-certified Diamond with 10 million in sales.
It was announced Tuesday that the Compton, California MC will be one of the headliners of the annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival begin held June 16-19 at the Bonnaroo Farm in Manchester, Tennessee.
Could Pete Davidson‘s next celebrity hookup be …Oscar? The Saturday Night Live cast member, whose dating history reads like a showbiz Who’s Who, is reportedly in talks to possibly host the 94th Annual Academy Awards.
Page Six reports producers of the telecast — which will have a host for the first time since 2018 for this year’s show — are reportedly in contact with Davidson’s team.
“He gets a demographic that is hard to get,” a source explains to the publication. “He is in a good space, his career is doing well and he is on the rise. He is a sex symbol, unlikely, but he is big with a certain generation.”
As evidence of the latter, a New Year’s Eve special the actor and stand-up comic co-hosted with Miley Cyrus attracted 6.3 million viewers, particularly those in a younger demographic that has in recent years escaped Oscars producers.
What certainly would not hurt in that department is that Davidson is reportedly dating reality show royalty and mogul Kim Kardashian, who has some 278 million Instagram followers — roughly 267 million more potential viewers than the last Oscars broadcast attracted.
As previously reported, Spider-Man series star Tom Holland was also contacted by producers of the Oscars telecast as a possible host. Given his popularity with potential younger viewers — not to mention that of his Emmy-winning girlfriend and Spidey co-star Zendaya — it’s even more evident the telecast is hoping to, to use a Hollywood term, “skew younger” this time around.
The 94th Annual Academy Awards will air March 27 on ABC.
(NEW YORK) — A naturopathic therapist who operates out of El Paso, Texas, has been charged with distributing multiple performance-enhancing drugs to at least two athletes for the purpose of cheating at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo, federal prosecutors in New York said.
The charges against Eric Lira are the first brought under the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, a measure signed into law in December 2020 that outlaws doping schemes at international sports competitions, including the Olympics.
Lira, 41, allegedly obtained misbranded human growth hormone and the blood building drug erythropoietin in advance of the Tokyo Games from sources in Central and South America. According to the criminal complaint, he distributed them to two athletes who were identified only as “Athlete-1” and “Athlete-2.”
“At a moment that the Olympic Games offered a poignant reminder of international connections in the midst of a global pandemic that had separated communities and countries for over a year, and at a moment that the Games offered thousands of athletes validation after years of training, Eric Lira schemed to debase that moment by peddling illegal drugs,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said.
The complaint quoted from encrypted communications in which Lira and Athlete-1 allegedly discussed the drugs.
On June 13 “Athlete-1 wrote to LIRA, ‘So I took 2000ui of the E [erythropoietin] yesterday, is it safe to take a test this morning?’ LIRA replied, ‘Good day [Athlete-1] . . . . 2000 ui is a low dosage.’ Athlete-1 replied further, ‘Remember I took it Wednesday and then yesterday again / I wasn’t sure so I didn’t take a test / I just let them go so it will be a missed test,’” the complaint said.
Athlete-1 was suspended from Olympic competition on July 30, 2021, after she was found to have used human growth hormone, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She was banned from the 100m semi-finals, a description that matches Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare.
Lira is also accused of conspiring with others to violate drug misbranding and adulteration laws, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
He made his initial appearance via Zoom before Judge Miguel Torres in Texas on Wednesday, the day he was arrested.
Lira said he has not yet hired an attorney but plans to. The judge appointed a public defender to at least handle his next court date Tuesday.
(BRUSSELS) — A new round of talks between Russia and NATO countries aimed at averting a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine have again ended with little progress, with the two sides still at an impasse over Russia’s demands for security guarantees.
Russia met with 30 NATO member states at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, the second of three diplomatic meetings organized this week in Europe between Russia and Western countries amid fears raised by Russia’s massing of 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border.
In Wednesday’s talks, NATO offered Russia to hold a series of meetings to discuss arms control and other confidence building measures in an attempt to persuade it to lower tensions around Ukraine. The alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said it had proposed talks on limiting missile deployments and troop exercises as well as how to improve communication and transparency. He told reporters afterward that Russia said it needed to time to consider the offer, but it had not rejected it out of hand.
“We are ready to sit down,” Stoltenberg told journalists. “And we hope Russia is ready to sit down and hold these meetings.”
But NATO unanimously rebuffed Moscow’s core demands for formal guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the alliance will pull back its forces from countries in Eastern Europe that joined after the Cold War. Russia and the United States held talks on Monday in Geneva where Moscow pressed those demands and which the U.S. rejected as impossible.
NATO and the U.S. said they would never compromise on what they called the alliance’s “core principles,” after Russia’s negotiators, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko and Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin, presented the same demands again at Wednesday’s meeting.
“Together, the United States and our NATO allies made clear we will not slam the door shut on NATO’s open-door policy,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who led the U.S. delegation, said after the meeting, calling them a “non-starter.”
But while Russia’s key demand was again rejected, the door to a diplomatic solution remains open, U.S. and NATO officials said.
“There was no commitment to deescalate, nor was there a statement that there would not be,” Sherman added, even offering some praise for the Russian delegation for sitting “through nearly four hours of a meeting where 30 nations spoke — and they did — which is not an easy thing to do. I’m glad they did it.”
She and Stoltenberg said Russia now had a choice to make whether to engage with dialogue, saying she hoped the Russian negotiators would now go back to President Vladimir Putin and they would choose “peace and security.”
Russia made the sweeping demands over NATO in two draft treaties in December after building up troops close to Ukraine for months. That buildup, along with bellicose rhetoric and plans for “internal sabotage,” according to U.S. officials, raised fears that Putin may be preparing to launch a renewed attack on the country after he seized Crimea and launched a separatist war in 2014.
Russia has denied it is planning to attack Ukraine, despite the buildup on its border. Amid the diplomatic efforts, it staged live fire exercises on Tuesday with 3,000 troops and hundreds of tanks in three regions neighboring Ukraine.
The U.S. and NATO have hoped that Russia might accept more modest offers, such as limiting missile deployments and troop exercises. But Russia’s negotiator, Grushko, insisted again Wednesday that Russia could accept nothing less than the guarantees on Ukraine and NATO, calling it “imperative.” No progress on arms control or confidence-building measures could be made without progress on Moscow’s core demands, he told reporters afterward.
Grushko said Russia was now waiting for NATO and the U.S. to send written responses to the Russian proposals and that it would then make a decision on how to proceed.
Russia has complained for decades about NATO expansion into countries formerly dominated by Moscow under the Soviet Union. The Kremlin now alleges that NATO assistance to Ukraine means the former Soviet country is becoming a defacto part of the alliance. The U.S. and NATO say Moscow’s demand is an attempt to reimpose its Soviet-era sphere of influence on Eastern Europe and that it violates a fundamental right for countries to choose their security alliances.
Grushko said deescalation was “absolutely possible,” but he warned that the alliance’s enlargement into Eastern Europe had become “unbearable” for Russia, warning if Russia felt threatened it would use “military means.”
“We have a range of military-technical measures that we will use if we will feel a real threat to our security,” Grushko said. “And we already are feeling it, if they are looking at our territory as a target for guided, offensive weapons. Of course, we cannot agree with that. We will take all necessary measures in order to fend off the threat with military means, if political ones don’t work.”
But Grushko also spoke positively about the talks, saying for the first time he believed Russia had “managed to convey to the members of the alliance that the situation is unbearable.”
Stoltenberg said Russia could not have a veto over Ukraine joining the alliance, saying Russian claims to feel threatened by Ukraine were also wrong.
“Ukraine is a sovereign nation. Ukraine has the right to self-defense,” he said. “Ukraine is not a threat to Russia. To say that Ukraine is a threat to Russia is to put the whole thing upside down.”
Western officials have been trying to understand whether the threat of a Russian attack on Ukraine is real or a bluff to strengthen Moscow’s hands as it makes its demands. Sherman suggested that remained an open question, perhaps even for the Kremlin itself.
“Everyone, Russia most of all, will have to decide whether they really are about security, in which case they should engage, or whether this was all a pretext,” she said. “And they may not even know yet.”
While the buildup, including the new live-fire exercises Wednesday, could still be a negotiating tactic, some Western officials and independent experts also worry that Russia might be engaging in the talks intending for them to fail, so as to use that as a pretext for a military intervention.
“The United States and our allies and partners are not dragging our feet. It is Russia that has to make a stark choice: deescalation and diplomacy, or confrontation and consequences,” Sherman said. “If Russia walks away, however, it will be quite apparent they were never serious about pursuing diplomacy at all.”
On Thursday, the talks will move to a third round at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a Cold War-era forum that includes all of the continent’s countries, the U.S. and Canada and several in Central Asia. Those talks are expected to yield even fewer results, with 57 member states participating in an open dialogue.
The Kremlin has suggested it will make a decision whether it is worth continuing talks following this week’s meetings. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Tuesday said Moscow did not “see a substantial reason for optimism” so far but that for now it was not drawing any conclusions.
(WASHINGTON) — In a major development, the House Jan. 6 select committee on Wednesday asked GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy to voluntarily cooperate with its probe.
In a letter, the committee asked him to voluntarily provide information.
It is not compelling him to provide information or sit before the committee at this time.
Chairman Bennie Thompson said in the letter that he believes McCarthy has relevant information that could speak into the facts, circumstances, and causes leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Thompson also wants information from McCarthy about events in the days before and after Jan. 6.
“You have acknowledged speaking directly with the former President while the violence was underway on January 6th,” Thompson writes.
“The Select Committee wishes to question you regarding communications you may have had with President Trump, President Trump’s legal team, Representative Jordan, and others at the time on that topic,” Thompson writes.
McCarthy has made multiple statements about Jan. 6 and about his conversations with Trump that day.
ABC News has reached out to McCarthy’s office for comment.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
