(NOTE LANGUAGE) According to French Montana, 50 Cent was once a mastermind who profited off feuds he created. He described that particular era during a recent appearance on the My Expert Opinion podcast.
“50 was picking on n***as to pick on n***as,” French alleged. “At one point, he was the biggest genius in the music industry. He would just pick on you and drop a mixtape. Pick on you and drop an album.”
That process, he added, was a “marketing scheme for other artists to use.”
“I mean, people did it before him, but he became the mastermind,” said French. “He became the warlord of that. That’s definitely a blueprint for a lo of n***s to learn.”
50’s name came up in the conversation when podcaster Math Hoffa asked French about their past beef, which has since been resolved.
“Man, let me tell you something,” French said in a 2021 Drink Champs episode. “I have no problem with 50 no more after he dropped this BMF joint. That’s my favorite shit. Whatever me and 50 ever had – shout out to 50. Yeah, me and him, everything is over after BMF. That’s the best work ever.”
50 later reacted, saying, “That was the right answer French, well handled. What beef, I don’t remember.”
The world of American Idol is in mourning after CJ Harris, who competed in the show’s 13th season, died of a suspected heart attack. He was 31.
People reports Harris was rushed to the hospital on Sunday night after experiencing a medical issue. The Walker County coroner confirmed his death, saying he was taken to the Walker Baptist Medical Center in Jasper, Alabama, and CPR efforts failed to revive him.
Harris made it into the top six during his 2014 run on the show, with judges Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick Jr. praising his stage presence and improvement. Harris later toured with his fellow American Idol alums in celebration of the show’s 13th season. He famously performed with his idol Darius Rucker at The Grand Ole Opry in 2014.
He told fans on January 1 that he had new music on the way. It has yet to be revealed what his estate intends to do with his unreleased songs.
NOTE LANGUAGE) Living Colour’s Vernon Reid was understandably shocked when he learned of Jeff Beck’s passing last week, sharing a series of profanity-laced tweets about the news. Now he’s opening up a bit more about what Beck meant to him and the legacy he left.
In a conversation with Variety, Reid noted that Beck’s death from bacterial meningitis “blindsided” the guitar community. He mentioned other shocking rock deaths, like Chris Cornell and Stevie Ray Vaughan, but noted, “This is undoubtedly one of the worst.”
Reid calls Beck a “fearless guy,” explaining, “He was one of those rare prodigy people that actually kept developing. He was in the top (rock) ranks like a Jimi Hendrix or Van Halen or Jimmy Page, but he was also uniquely himself like a Robert Fripp — he could be both those things. He went forward in a way that would frighten normal people.”
Reid discussed how he was first introduced to Beck, and shared that some of his favorite songs were Beck’s version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” and the instrumental ballad “Where Were You.” As for their relationship, Reid explains, “I didn’t spend as much time as I would’ve liked to with him, but he was always incredibly gracious and, and he was a really friendly dude.”
“Now, it’s like the idea that Prince is a character of the past — it’s crazy,” Reid concludes. “He was a living person doing his thing in real time. And it always comes down to: We were fortunate to even have them with us. At some point you go, ‘Sh**, I was on earth with this person when they were doing their thing.’”
Billy Joel was back at New York’s Madison Square Garden Friday night andRolling Stonereports he took some time out of his residency to pay tribute to the late Jeff Beck, who died Tuesday at the age of 78.
“He was a musician that I always loved. He was the best. Jeff Beck just passed away…,” Joel told the audience at his 86th MSG show. “I couldn’t let the night go by without doing something by Jeff.”
Billy then performed the track “People Get Ready,” which Beck recorded with Rod Stewart for for Beck’s 1985 album, Flash.
He paid tribute to Beck again later in the evening after the night’s last song, “You May Be Right,” with the band playing a jam session that morphed into “Going Down,” a track that appeared on the Jeff Beck Group’s 1972 self-titled third album. Noted Billy, “we should have rehearsed this today.”
Following the news of Beck’s death, Billy posted a tribute to him on social media, calling him “one of my heroes,” and noting, “I was fortunate to meet him recently and I’m very grateful now that I was able to tell him how much I admired his musical skill. This is the end of an era.”
(A previous version of this story published on 1/16/23 misspelled Jeff Beck’s name in the headline. The text above has been updated to correct the error.)
(NEW YORK) — As more questions arise from the discoveries of government documents found in President Joe Biden’s offices and home, elected officials and government watchdog groups are expressing concerns about the security of important documents.
The latest news comes months after it was revealed that former President Donald Trump had several boxes of top-secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago ranch last summer.
John Cohen, an ABC News contributor and former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, spoke with ABC’s “Start Here” Monday about the probe and how government documents are handled.
START HERE: John, I should point out you were acting under President Biden, you resigned last spring when Biden’s full-time pick was about to be confirmed…but you know this space very well. How do documents like this just keep popping up?
JOHN COHEN:I worked in the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and, as you pointed out, the Biden administration, and I had security clearances. I had broad access to classified information. In fact, during some of that time, I also was in charge of offices that conducted security investigations or worked to safeguard classified information. And unless you are working in an organization like the CIA or another intelligence community organization, where all you’re working with is classified information, and these types of security violations are not really that uncommon when you are working with large quantities of documents and you are co-mingling classified reports with unclassified documents. It is not uncommon for there to be situations where, inadvertently, people will mix them together and walk out of a SCIF or secured facility with a document they shouldn’t have. And when that happens, there is a very well-established process known as a security investigation.
And with a security investigation, we’ll look at real quickly: How sensitive were the documents? Were they clearly marked? How were they mishandled? Meaning, was it an accident or was it inadvertently inadvertent or was it intentional if it was intentional? The investigation will then try to determine was that intentional mishandling for nefarious purposes. We’ve had situations where people remove classified information because they were writing a book. In other cases, people remove classified information because they intend to give it to a foreign adversary. The latter obviously being much more serious. So all of that is pretty customary when looking at a security violation or an instance where there’s been mishandling of classified information.
START HERE:Well, customary seems like the weird word, though. You mentioned a SCIF, which are these like secure locations. So are those documents always supposed to be viewed in those secure locations, or is it allowable for a public official to take those home, maybe to an unsecured house or a garage or whatever and look them over there? What are the protocols with the classified stuff specifically?
COHEN:The short answer is, it depends. There are various grades of classified information. Some of it requiring much more stringent handling processes. And there’s other classified information where you can lock it up in a desk. It is not uncommon for individuals with classified information, if they have the right storage in their homes, to be able to take classified information at home. Some people actually have SCIFs built into their homes if they have appropriate permission. So what we don’t know from some of the breathless reporting that we’ve heard thus far is what were these documents that were discovered in the garage, in the Biden residence and in the office? Were they confidential, which really, from a national security perspective, really wouldn’t be that significant.
Most of the security enforcement of the protocols that have to do with protecting and safeguarding that material is on the honor system. Meaning typically the only way that the security officer would know that someone walked out of the office with it – with a top secret or a secret document – is because the person who did it reported it.
START HERE:Oh, there’s no, like, sign out system of, ‘Hey, Hey, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, you had this in your office. You need to sign this out while you take it home.’ That doesn’t exist.
COHEN:There is a very small subset of classified information that there is a sign-in and sign-out process. But for the overwhelming majority of confidential, secret, [and] top secret information, there is not that type of tracking system.
START HERE:Is that a problem, John, from your perspective as somebody who’s led these investigations? Does that need to be revamped or are we cool with that?
COHEN:I think it’s a huge problem. This is why we tend to have so many issues. But think of it this way: There are literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people across the federal government and outside of the federal government with security clearances.
The government over the last five, six, seven years has made strides in identifying behavior that could be suspicious on these government systems. So, for example, if you are working at an intelligence organization and your job is to analyze intelligence on Russia, but the computer system flags you because you’re downloading and printing a lot of intelligence on terrorist organizations, that may result in some type of review. But this idea that every classified paper document is being tracked? That’s just not how the system works.
Think of it this way: I don’t know what your desk is like, but mine’s pretty messy. And when I was working in some of my offices, I would have stacks of paper that were unclassified, stacks of paper that were classified, and I literally had a staff person who every day looked to see what was going into my briefcase to make sure that I didn’t accidentally miss a classified piece of information and accidentally bring it home.
START HERE: And I was about to say who touches these documents is also a thing, right? Because I imagine President Biden is not the one moving his cardboard boxes around when he leaves his job as VP.
COHEN:No, and that’s going to be a huge part of this security review is who actually packed those boxes, you know, were there cover sheets on this information? I’ve heard some reports that said that these were individual pages. Well, were those pages marked? Did they say top secret or classified? On top of it, Were they portion marked, meaning were there little marks in front of each paragraph that said they were classified?
You know we know that the documents in Mar-a-Lago had those cover sheets, right? Those brightly covered cover sheets with big letters stamped on it that said top secret, sensitive, [or] compartmented intelligence. But, we have not heard yet whether cover sheets were on the material found in the Biden home. So, there’s a lot to learn still. Security violations sound very, very nefarious, but in many cases, they’re just accidents.
In many cases, they’re people who were a little bit careless or maybe didn’t, weren’t as careful as they should be. And they accidentally mixed up some papers. They got packed in a box and they got stored away. And that will be another thing that will be looked at and is being looked at in the Mar-a-Lago case involving former President Trump as well is when those documents were secured at those locations who had access to it.
START HERE:You just talked about thousands or hundreds of thousands of documents floating around. I mean, Bush, Clinton, Carter, should they be checking their houses right now? How like how much of an issue do you think this is with other former presidents and vice presidents?
COHEN:I suspect that because of the visibility that the Biden case and the Trump case have generated, that you have a large number of former government officials, whether they be former presidents or others who are looking in their basement at boxes that they’ve stored there since the last government.
START HERE:Do you have boxes full of classified documents we should know about right now, John?
COHEN:Hey, Brad, when I left last time, I didn’t want to bring anything with me. The only thing I took was a bottle of wine that one of my staffers gave me. I left everything else there.
Taylor Swift continues to make history with Midnights. It is now the first album to spend its first 12 weeks atop Billboard‘s Top Album Sales chart.
The album debuted on the chart when it was first released on October 21, 2022, and stayed in the top spot since. According to music tracker Chart Data, Taylor started this week in the #1 spot again and, with that, accomplished a feat never seen before.
“Midnights becomes the first album in history to spend its first twelve weeks of release at #1 on the Top Album Sales chart,” it announced Monday morning.
Billboard compiles its weekly chart based on sales, both physical and digital copies.
This accomplishment comes on the heels of another one of Taylor’s historic firsts thanks to her new album. It was announced earlier this month that she’s officially the first and only act to appear on Billboard‘s Artist 100 chart for eight individual years.
Amy Grant is crediting her hubby, Vince Gill, with helping her get through the tough times following her July bicycle accident, telling Peoplethe country star “made every day of the journey okay.”
“The biggest thing was in the two months after the wreck, it was really depressing,” she shares. “Everything canceled, and I just said, ‘What if I’m never all the way back?'”
“And he said, ‘Things happen to people every day, and you just have to take [it] one day at a time, and we’re here, and I love you,’” she continues. “And that just kind of made every day of the journey okay. And I do feel fantastic.”
As for her recovery, Grant says she still has memory issues and struggles with low stamina, but notes, “They said a 12 to 18-month recovery for a head injury.” She adds, “But I’m telling you, I’m glad for every day.”
Amy spoke to People on the red carpet at Music Center in Los Angeles’ event paying tribute to music exec Jerry Moss. Variety reports she performed her classic “I Will Remember You” at the event.
One of the most lucrative deals in Amazon’s history is likely stalled, after fan favorite Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson‘s infamous written rant about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle late last year.
In a now-deleted December 16 piece he wrote for The Sun, the car expert and TV presenter went on a tear against the former Suits actress, saying he was “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.” He later called it a “clumsy reference to Game of Thrones” in an apology tweet.
The Sun also apologized and deleted the piece, which was slammed by readers as misogynistic and vile.
However, Variety reports Amazon wasn’t pleased in the least about the firestorm caused by the host of their shows Grand Tour and Clarkson’s Farm, and has taken away his keys.
The trade reports the streamer has “parted ways” with Clarkson and won’t be producing any more episodes of the shows that weren’t already underway.
Clarkson issued a lengthy new apology via social media Monday, noting he personally emailed the so-called Runaway Royals on Christmas morning. “I said I was baffled by what they had been saying on TV but that the language I’d used in my column was disgraceful and that I was profoundly sorry.”
He also expressed he was horrified to read what he’d written, noting, “I really am sorry. All the way from the balls of my feet to the follicles on my head. This is me putting my hands up. It’s a mea culpa with bells on.”
According to the Financial Times, Amazon shelled out some $250 million to work with original Top Gear hosts Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.
Tom Morello didn’t feel any rage when he saw Jack White perform in Los Angeles last Friday. Instead, he dubbed the White Stripes/Raconteurs/Death Weather rocker to be a “national treasure.”
In an Instagram post over the weekend, the Rage Against the Machine guitarist shared his review of the concert, declaring that White “rocked the [venue] to the ground.”
“One part crushing Zeppelin riffs & untethered improvisation, one part Prince-like fearless band commander, one part soft hearted sweet singing Willie Nelson, and one part angry honey badger poked with a sharp stick,” Morello writes of White’s performance. “White’s playing and performance was completely unpredictable, untamable, wild and awesome.”
White played LA as he winds down his Supply Chain Issues tour, which he first launched last April in support of his two 2022 solo albums, Fear of the Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive. He’ll play two more intimate headlining shows in Nashville this week.
Morello, meanwhile, recently lent his trademark shredding to the new Måneskin song “Gossip,” which dropped Friday.
(WASHINGTON) — After House Republicans demanded the White House turn over a log of visitors from President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, where classified documents have been discovered, the White House said Sunday that such a record does not exist.
“Consistent with past precedent of every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement. “But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them.”
U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told ABC News that they also do not maintain visitor logs of private residences, though the Secret Service does provide security screenings for visitors.
The agency has access to the visitor logs of official government buildings such as the White House and the vice president’s residence, Guglielmi said. Those visitor logs are kept by the National Archives.
In a letter to White House chief of staff Ron Klain on Sunday, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the new House Oversight Committee chairman, requested visitors logs at the Wilmington residence dating from Biden’s inauguration to the present, with a deadline of Jan. 30.
The committee is also seeking all documents related to the search of Biden’s homes “and other locations by Biden aides for classified documents,” Comer wrote.
“President Biden’s mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardized our national security,” Comer wrote. “Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents.”
White House spokesman Ian Sams initially acknowledged the letter to ABC News but did not directly say if the administration would comply.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has declined to substantively answer questions on the matter, referring nearly all inquiries on the classified documents to the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department, which is investigating.
Biden’s attorneys have said that classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president were found at a former office in Washington, D.C., as well as at his home in Wilmington.
A lawyer for him said last week: “We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the President and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”
Comer has also asked the National Archives to provide all communications between the agency, the White House and the Justice Department regarding the classified documents discovered at Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center. ABC News has asked the National Archives if it plans to comply with the request from the Oversight Committee.
Comer’s letters to the White House and the National Archives were not accompanied by subpoenas.
Biden returned to Washington from Delaware on Monday and ignored further questions on the documents and the investigation. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday said he was appointing Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of the classified materials.
Over the weekend, White House special counsel Richard Sauber said that five more classified pages — in addition to a one-page document discovered on Wednesday — were found on Thursday in Wilmington and are now in the Justice Department’s possession.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., the No. 3 Democrat in the chamber, called the controversy “certainly embarrassing.”
“It’s embarrassing that you would find a small number of documents, certainly not on purpose. They don’t think it’s the right thing and they’ve been moving to correct it, working with the Department of Justice, working with everyone involved, with the archives. And so from my perspective, you know, it’s one of those moments that obviously they wish hadn’t happened,” she said on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“But what I’m most concerned about,” Stabenow added, “this is the kind of thing that the Republicans love.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last week that he sees Congress having a role in investigating the matter, separate from the Justice Department.
