Music

Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel marked their 10th wedding anniversary on Wednesday, and Justin posted a sweet tribute to his wife on Instagram to mark the occasion.

“10 years ain’t enough! You make me a better husband and father every day!” Justin wrote. “I love you so much you beautiful human! Run it back!”  The captioned accompanied a series of photos of the couple throughout the years: posting on red carpets, on a mountaintop, in a vineyard, chilling at home and eating pasta a la Lady and the Tramp.

Jessica posted her own series of photos with the caption, “Being married to you is the adventure of a lifetime! Run it back, baby. RUN IT BACK. I love you.”

The actress also revealed in her Instagram Story that the couple renewed their vows this past summer in Italy, where they were married in 2012.  She noted that she was wearing Giambattista Valli for the renewal ceremony — the same designer who made her wedding dress.

After high-profile relationships with Britney Spears and Cameron Diaz, JT was first spotted with Jessica in 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival. In early 2011, they reportedly took a three-month break but reunited that fall; Justin proposed that December. The two welcomed their first son, Silas, in 2015 and a second son, Phineas, in 2020.

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Cardi B took the stand Wednesday to fight a $5 million lawsuit claiming the artwork from her first mixtape left a man “humiliated,” Billboard reports. 

The artwork in question is from Cardi’s debut mixtape Gangsta B**** Music, Vol. 1 and features the rapper in the back of a vehicle, taking a sip of beer, staring into the camera with her legs spread wide as she hold’s a man’s head between them, appearing to perform oral sex on her. 

The man in the artwork is a Black male model, however, the tattoo that appears on his back belonged to Kevin Michael Brophy Jr. and was photoshopped onto the model’s body after he discovered it during a Google search.

The mixtape was released in 2016 and Brophy sued in 2017 for millions, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover and that his right to privacy was violated and painted him in a “false light,” the outlet adds. 

While taking the stand, Cardi told Brophy’s attorney, A. Barry Cappello, “This is not about taking anything down. Y’all have been harassing me for $5 million.”

“It’s not Mr. Brophy’s back. It doesn’t look like Mr. Brophy at all,” she said. “There has been not one receipt he has provided in the court claiming, ‘Hey, that’s you on Cardi’s mixtape.'”

The “Up” singer also made note of Brophy’s claim that his image played a factor in her success over the years, stating that she works hard for her two kids and it’s “really insulting to me as a woman that a man is claiming responsibility.”

Testimony will continue Thursday with a verdict due on Friday or Monday.

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Reba McEntire says finding love wasn’t her priority when she and her now-boyfriend, Rex Linn, reconnected in 2020.

That January, they crossed paths while Reba was filming an episode for Young Sheldon. The two first met three decades prior, in 1991, when they were both actors in the cast of the Kenny Rogers-led The Gambler Returns. When Rex asked her to dinner after her Young Sheldon shoot, Reba wasn’t expecting much to come from it — at first.

“He made me laugh my butt off on our first date, which we didn’t even know was a date,” Reba explains to People.

What followed was a long, slow courtship that largely took place virtually, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. That slow-and-steady relationship-building style helped lay a solid foundation for their love story, the country star points out.

“He’s the love of my life,” she adds. “We’re pretty much inseparable.”

So much so that they’re now co-starring in ABC drama series Big Sky as husband and wife characters Sunny and Buck, the proprietors of Sunny Day Excursions in small-town Montana.

“To play husband and wife, it’s natural for us,” Reba continues. “Rex and I rehearse all the time to make sure that when we step on that set, we’re not wasting anybody’s time. We’re professionals.”

Big Sky airs Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

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Fat Joe is fully aware of his identity as a Latino man, but he’s also conscious of his association to Black culture.

The Grammy-nominated rapper attributes his relationship with the Black community to growing up around Black people. 

“My projects, my neighborhood was predominantly Black,” Joe said on an episode of the NPR podcast The Limits. “My grandmother’s neighborhood was 99.9% Black, where there was no popular Latinos or nothing … And so when I’m born, I’m not listening to salsa and all that — I’m listening to Gloria Gaynor. I’m listening to Stephanie Mills. I’m listening to ‘I Will Survive.’ That’s what my house was playing, right?”

Joe said his blond hair and green eyes certainly confirmed his Latino roots, but hip-hop’s origin in the Bronx meant Joe grew up “thinking” he was Black. 

“It wasn’t until I went to high school and met another Latino brother that was a real dude, and he said, ‘Yo, come hang out with me in my hood.’ And 10 blocks away was like another world,” Joe recalled.

The 52-year-old rapper is proud of his association with both cultures. He said what’s really gratifying is his connection to his childhood community all these years later.    

“Fat Joe’s a guy who made it from nothing, that the streets can still touch,” he said. “You know, when Mr. Williams wants to repair his church in the Bronx, they know how to find Fat Joe.”

Joe continued, “It’s been a big job of mine to be in the community and helping the community, and giving them inspiration and giving them hope. The day I can’t be in my hood, or any hood, I don’t even want to live.”

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Ellie Goulding is the proud mom to son Arthur Ever Winter Jopling, whom she welcomed in May 2021. But in a new interview, she reveals she was “in denial” about her pregnancy as she was working on her new album, Higher Than Heaven, due out February 3.

Speaking with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Ellie explains she wrote most of the album after the COVID pandemic lockdown, during which she and everyone she was working with was “in this kind of strange haze of the fact that we’d all been forced into this very strange situation … everyone seemed to be on the same page that they wanted this escape from reality.”

And Ellie wanted to escape from the reality that she and her husband, Caspar, were expecting their first child. “I was pregnant and I was desperately … I was in denial about being pregnant,” she reveals. “Trying to be like, ‘It’s nothing,’ and just hiding it.” 

“That was kind of part of my defense mechanism that I just wanted to escape … it’s a scary thing, finding out you’re having a child,” she says. And that feeling ended up influencing the entire album.

“That’s exactly what this album is. It requires a certain amount of pain to go through to write what I write,” she tells Zane. “This album is ultimate escapism about being completely, insanely in love. There’s a lot of sexuality in there.”

She adds, “It’s almost like a psilocybin-induced love.” In case you’re not familiar, psilocybin is the psychedelic compound found in so-called magic mushrooms. Maybe that’s why the album’s called Higher Than Heaven?

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A Very Backstreet Christmas, the first holiday album from Backstreet Boys, is out now. Backstreet’s Howie Dorough says he’s relieved — not just because the album was postponed from 2021, but because they’ve literally been trying for decades to record it in the first place.

“I feel a big weight lifted off of all of our shoulders,” he laughs. “This is something that…we’re going on almost 30 years, I think. Every Christmas we keep on saying ourselves, ‘When are we going to do that Christmas record?’ And…we just never had the proper time to be able to do it.”

But as Howie notes, “The one positive thing that came out of COVID…was the blessing of giving us time to actually make this record.”

Due to production deadlines, Backstreet had to record in the middle of the summer, but Howie says their producer helped them get in a holiday mood: “[The studio] was all decorated with Christmas tree and stockings and the Yule log and stuff like that up on the screen, so it was quite easy,” he says.

The album mixes religious and secular favorites like “O Holy Night” and “Last Christmas” with three originals.  Howie says when it came to picking the classics, all five members had “a lot of opinions,” so they stuck to the data.

“We said, ‘Everybody go and put down your top 15 songs,'” he explains. “And we did…almost like an Excel sheet, where the ones [with] the most votes…are the ones that made it.”

Backstreet fans definitely approve of the finished project.

“Nick [Carter] and I went on a live chat on Instagram, and the response from the fans was just overwhelming,” says Howie. “It seems like they really love it…I hope it was worth the wait!” 

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News of Blink-182‘s reunion with Tom DeLonge led to a jump in the band’s streaming numbers.

According to Billboard, U.S. streams of the “All the Small Things” outfit’s catalog increased to 3.87 million on October 11 — the day the reunion news broke — from 1.73 million the previous day, marking a spike of 124%.

By the time Blink released their comeback single “Edging” the following Friday, streams reached a total of 6.22 million.

“Edging” marks Blink’s first new material with DeLonge in over 10 years. Following DeLonge’s departure from the group in 2015, Blink released two albums — 2016’s California and 2019’s Nine — with Alkaline Trio frontman Matt Skiba on guitar.

With DeLonge back in the band, Blink will launch a worldwide tour in 2023. A new album is also in the works.

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Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford recently revealed to ABC Audio that former guitarist KK Downing will be performing with the group when the band is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on November 5.

In a new interview with the Detroit Metro Times, founding Priest bassist Ian Hill discusses whether he thinks the reunion could lead to Downing, who has had a contentious relationship with his former bandmates since quitting the group in 2011, rejoining the metal legends.

“I think time is not on our side for that, you know? Never say never, put it like that,” Hill says. “[Downing is] gonna be there at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame anyway. He’s gonna get up and play some songs with us there. It might kickstart something, I don’t know. On the other hand, he might pull us all apart.”

Judas Priest will be inducted into the Rock Hall in conjunction with receiving the Music Excellence Award, rather than being included in the regular Performer category, something that Halford has admitted annoyed him.

Hill says he thinks the rest of Judas Priest are “on the same page” with their singer.

“[W]e’ve been in the game now for 50 years, and I think heavy metal is … a little bit overlooked because it’s not in your face every day,” he notes. “Obviously pop music and rap music, country music, it’s like every day you get in your car, you drive to work and you’re getting the same 40 songs thrown in your face all the time. Heavy metal, on the other hand, you have to go look for it.”

Meanwhile, Judas Priest continues the fall U.S. leg of their 50 Heavy Metal Years tour on Wednesday night in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

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Killswitch Engage has announced a trio of holiday-themed concerts to close out the year.

The shows will take place December 28 in Sayreville, New Jersey; December 29 in Huntington, New York and December 30 in Worcester, Massachusetts. 

“It’s been a while since we’ve been able to do a holiday show so let’s fix that,” says frontman Jesse Leach. “We are stoked to announce these three ‘holiday-themed’ shows, which will surely be fun and maniacal. Expect things to be out of control and crazy!”

“The sets, the stage, and the vibe will be like no other Killswitch show you have seen!” he adds. “This will be a perfect send off for us as we head into the studio for our new record!”

For ticket info, visit KillswitchEngage.com.

KsE’s most recent album is 2019’s Atonement. The band is currently on tour with Lamb of God.

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