Kassi Ashton is set to make her Grand Ole Opry debut March 15. Next week, the Missouri native heads out on the No Bad Vibes Tour with Old Dominion.
You can check out the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s online exhibit, Night Train to Nashville, free on the nonprofit’s website. Formerly a physical exhibit at the museum, Night Train showcases Music City’s R&B roots and how it impacted its music scene.
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Rotimi is doing his thing as an independent artist, but at one point in time, he was signed to G-Unit. Speaking to HipHopDX, he revealed that his departure from the label was a decision he made simply because he was ready to “just do my thing and grow.”
“With G-Unit, 50 Cent gave me my deal in 2014,” he recalled. The singer requested that he be released three years later, and he said the Queens native made no big deal about it.
“We had a conversation, like, ‘Yo, I have an idea that I want to just do my thing and grow,'” said Rotimi. “And as a businessman, he knew that he saw himself in me and said, ‘I’m not going to stop you from doing what you need to do.’”
He thanked 50 for allowing him to break away “because I was able to learn on my own and still have his support.”
“Even after we left, he found his own way to market me and it worked,” Rotimi continued. “So again, anytime he calls me and needs me, it’s all love and it’s always been that way.”
Rotimi, who played Andre Coleman on Power, released Royal Wednesday and Jeep Music Vol. 1 when he was with G-Unit. He’s now signed to EMPIRE and is set to appear in the reboot of the ’90s classic House Party, which he says he was a fan of.
“For us to be part of something like this is just God,” he said.
House Party premieres on Friday.
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De La Soul‘s first six albums will be available on streaming platforms in March, two of which longtime fan Pharrell Williams thinks fans should definitely make time to hear.
Responding to an inquiry during a Q&A session for The Guardian, Pharrell told a fan that the group’s first two albums are important music projects to listen to.
“Everybody needs to get 3 Feet High And Rising and De La Soul Is Dead,” Pharrell responded when asked, “What album, past or present, does everybody need to hear?”
He credited Damon Albarn for understanding the band’s contributions to music and tapping them to be part of a few Gorillaz songs.
“Even when they were going through all their stuff [a disagreement over the rights to their catalog], Damon [Albarn] from Blur put them on the Gorillaz albums, because he gets it,” Pharrell said. “He knows those guys are responsible for making so many of us misfits feel like we actually fit. The De La tribe were the forefathers and founders of the way we see things. I was nearly 16 when 3 Feet High and Rising came out. It was a total game-changer. It changed my life, period. Would I like to work with them? I would do anything for them, they know that. If they don’t, they should.”
De La Soul recently dropped “The Magic Number” on digital music services to celebrate the news of their catalog’s streaming debut.
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(NEW YORK) — Dangerous avalanche conditions are expected through the weekend in Colorado, experts warned, as the state has reported several deadly avalanches so far this season.
“We have seen more avalanches this year than we do during a typical year, and recently they’ve gotten much bigger,” Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, said in a statement Thursday. “We want everyone to enjoy the wonderful public lands in Colorado, and go home alive and well to their family and friends on Monday.”
Early-season snowfall, followed by heavy snow in early December and early January, has created dangerous avalanche conditions, the center said. New snowfall this week and more in the forecast over the weekend adds to the continued threat, it said.
“We are on the cusp of a potentially very dangerous weekend. Dangerous avalanche conditions falling over a holiday weekend is a recipe for potential accidents,” the center warned.
The Colorado Avalanche Information Center has reported more than 870 avalanches since Dec. 26, three of which have been deadly.
On Dec. 26, a father and his three teenage sons got caught in an avalanche while skiing and snowboarding in an area known as the Nitro Chute, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center said. The 44-year-old father was fully buried and died despite life-saving measures, the center said.
On Dec. 31, a father and his adult son were skiing in the backcountry outside of the Breckenridge ski area got caught in an avalanche. The son was fully buried and found dead about two hours after the avalanche occurred, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
Most recently, two snowmobile riders were buried and killed in an avalanche on Mount Epworth on Saturday, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
“We need everyone headed into the backcountry to plan their trip carefully and make sure they avoid avalanche hazards,” Greene said. “We need to stop this deadly trend.”
The Colorado Avalanche Information Center advises checking the avalanche forecast before going into the backcountry and ensuring that everyone carries and knows how to use an avalanche-rescue transceiver, probe pole and shovel. Low-angle terrain without steep slopes overhead is also advised due to the high avalanche potential.
ABC News’ Jeffrey Cook contributed to this report.
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A-ha is celebrating their 1985 debut album, Hunting High and Low, with a new vinyl box set. The six-LP set, dropping February 24, will be made up of the original album, including their huge hit “Take On Me” and “The Sun Always Shines On TV,” along with demos, extended versions, alternative mixes and B-sides.
“Recording Hunting High And Low was such a defining moment and an exciting time in our career and joint collaboration,” the band shares, “so revisiting this body of work now – more than 30 years later – feels like inspiration rather than obligation.”
The set will be housed in a collectable rigid slipcase box, along with a 64-page booklet with photography and liner notes. Fans can preorder it here.
Released in October 1985, Hunting High and Low has been certified Platinum in the United States and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Its hit single “Take On Me” went to number one in the U.S. and 14 other countries, with the iconic video being viewed more than 1.5 billion times on YouTube.
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In an extensive cover story about her life and career, Florence Pugh weighed in to Vogue on the public’s apparent fascination with her now-ended romantic relationship with Zach Braff.
The pair first met when the former Scrubs star and Garden State director cast her in a short film he made; they later became romantically involved. In the three years they were together, many online sniped about the 21-year age difference between the Black Widow star, now 27, and Braff, who will be 48 in April.
“We weren’t in anyone’s faces,” Pugh expressed of their relationship. “It was just that people didn’t like it.”
Florence noted, “They imagined me with someone younger and someone in blockbusters. I think young relationships in Hollywood are so easily twisted because they add to the gossip sites. It’s exciting to watch. And I think I was in a relationship that didn’t do any of that.”
In August of last year, Pugh confirmed to Harper’s BAZAAR that they had split. “We’ve been trying to do this separation without the world knowing, because it’s been a relationship that everybody has an opinion on,” she said at the time. “We just felt something like this would really do us the benefit of not having millions of people telling us how happy they are that we’re not together. So we’ve done that.”
There are apparently no hard feelings between the pair, with Braff saying of the star of his upcoming film A Good Person, “I quite simply think she’s one of the greatest actors of her generation. She’s just magnetic.”
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(NEW YORK) — Stuck in house arrest and awaiting trial, disgraced crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried spoke out on Thursday with the most extensive remarks since his arrest a month ago.
The fallen former CEO of FTX issued a 2,300-word rebuke of fraud and conspiracy charges, replete with charts and graphs. He said that he didn’t steal customer funds, instead blaming the company’s woes on a sharp downturn in the cryptocurrency market.
“I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away,” said Bankman-Fried, who pleaded not guilty last week. He’s tentatively scheduled to stand trial in October.
The account marked Bankman-Fried’s first post on the newsletter platform Substack, which prompts readers to subscribe to receive future messages from Bankman-Fried directly in their inbox.
Federal prosecutors charged Bankman-Fried last month in an eight-count indictment for fraud, conspiracy and campaign finance violations linked to tens of millions of dollars in political donations.
He was released on a $250 million bond in late December, when he traveled to live at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.
Here are five takeaways from the account posted by Bankman-Fried on Thursday:
Bankman-Fried says he ‘did not steal’
In his post, Bankman-Fried contends that he did not steal customer funds, saying instead that he would have offered some of his own assets to help make investors whole before the company declared bankruptcy.
Federal prosecutors and government agencies accused Bankman-Fried of defrauding customers and investors in FTX as well as lenders to his hedge fund, Alameda Research.
Customers sent billions of dollars to FTX believing their assets were secure but, from the start, Bankman-Fried “improperly diverted customer assets to his privately-held crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research LLC, and then used those customer funds to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations,” according to a civil complaint from the Securities and Exchange commission.
In response to such allegations, Bankman-Fried on Thursday denied taking customer funds for personal use.
Further, he said investments made by Alameda Research did not amount to an inappropriate use of customer funds. Instead, the conduct comprised an unsuccessful but legal form of margin trading, in which an individual or institution makes an investment using borrowed funds.
“All of which is to say: no funds were stolen,” Bankman-Fried said.
Customers can still recover their money, Bankman-Fried said
After denying wrongdoing, Bankman-Fried said that he could help undo the damage that resulted from the alleged fraud: Billions in customer losses.
If the company had tried to raise money from new investors before declaring bankruptcy, it could have restored funds to its customers, he said.
Gretchen Lowe, acting director of the division of enforcement at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, estimated last month that FTX customers lost more than $8 billion.
According to Bankman-Fried, the company received billions in offers of additional liquidity when it declared bankruptcy in November, and more than $4 billion came in afterward.
Before FTX declared bankruptcy, Bankman Fried was willing to offer up some of his own wealth, he said. “Nearly all of my assets were and still are utilizable to backstop FTX customers,” he said.
“I think it’s likely that FTX could have made all customers whole if a concerted effort had been made to raise liquidity,” he said.
Bankman-Fried does not provide details of the supposed billions in potential investments.
Moreover, the reliability of Bankman-Fried’s account defies characterizations of shoddy record-keeping at FTX from current CEO John Ray.
Ray, who oversaw the dissolution of Enron, testified before House members on Tuesday that FTX lacked corporate controls to an extent he had never witnessed.
“I’ve never seen an utter lack of record keeping,” Ray said. “Absolutely no internal controls.”
A market crash brought down Alameda Research and FTX, Bankman-Fried said
Financial impropriety is not to blame for the downfall of Alameda Research and FTX, Bankman-Fried said on Thursday. Rather, a crash in the crypto market sent the firms reeling, exposing their leverage and forcing a series of losses that they could not reverse, he said.
“FTX International and Alameda were both legitimately and independently profitable businesses in 2021, each making billions,” Bankman-Fried said. “And then Alameda lost about 80 percent of its assets’ value over the course of 2022, due to a series of market crashes.”
Alameda Research failed to adequately hedge against such losses, leaving the hedge fund with no way to offset the crunch, he said.
While the market downturn likely hastened the demise of FTX, the issue stands apart from the alleged misuse of customer funds.
A tweet from a rival CEO delivered the final blow to FTX, Bankman-Fried said
Bankman-Fried attributed the ultimate failure of FTX to a post on social media from Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of rival crypto exchange Binance.
On Nov. 6, Zhao, often referred to as “CZ,” said in a tweet that he would sell all of the company’s holdings in FTT, a token created by FTX.
The major exit from a crypto heavyweight triggered a wider sell-off, akin to a bank run, placing immense pressure on FTX to meet the sudden demand for customer withdrawals. Due to a lack of funds, FTX halted customer withdrawals altogether.
In his remarks on Thursday, Bankman-Fried described the social media post from Zhao as “CZ’s fateful tweet.”
The message of caution from an industry titan brought about “an extreme, quick, targeted crash,” Bankman-Fried said.
Bankman-Fried did not run Alameda Research, he said
Bankman-Fried asserts that in recent years he did not run Alameda Research, which he founded in 2017.
The contention rebukes allegations that Bankman-Fried abused his role as the de facto head of Alameda Research, the hedge fund that traded with FTX customer money.
The statement from Bankman-Fried conflicts with testimony last month from Ray, the current FTX CEO.
Ray, who is overseeing the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, told House members that no separation existed between the operations of FTX and Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund also founded by Bankman-Fried.
“There were virtually no internal controls and no separateness whatsoever,” Ray said.
“The owners of the company could run free reign,” he added, noting that Bankman-Fried owned 90% of Alameda Research.
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In 2007 ASIA set out on a world tour to celebrate their 25th anniversary, and now one of those shows is being released on vinyl for the first time.
The band announced Fantasia Live In Tokyo 2007, which was originally released on CD and DVD, is set to drop February 24 as a three-LP set, featuring a booklet that includes band photos and sleeve notes. The 18-track LP includes performances of songs from the band’s 1982 self-titled debut album, including hits “Only Time Will Tell” and “Heat of the Moment,” as well as select songs from the 1983 follow-up Alpha, and songs from the band members’ previous bands.
The 25th anniversary tour featured a reformation of the band’s original lineup: lead vocalist/bassist John Wetton from King Crimson, guitarist Steve Howe of Yes, keyboardist Geoff Downes also of Yes and drummer Carl Palmer of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Fans can preorder the album here.
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(SELMA, Ala.) — A tornado delivered “significant damage” to the city of Selma, Alabama, as strong storms moved through the region on Thursday, according to the mayor’s office.
The “large and extremely dangerous” tornado struck Selma at 12:20 p.m. local time, according to the National Weather Service.
Most of Selma’s streets are closed due to downed power lines and trees, according to the mayor’s office.
All Selma students are reported to be safe and at their schools, the office added.
The tornado in Selma is one of at least 18 twisters reported across Alabama on Thursday. Storms are pummeling Alabama, including rough rain 150 miles north of Selma in Hartselle.
The tornado watch remains in effect from Atlanta to Mobile, Alabama, through Thursday evening.
Selma, a famous focal point of the civil rights movement, is located in central Alabama and has a population of about 17,000.
ABC News’ Melissa Griffin contributed to this report.
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(WASHINGTON) — The House on Thursday passed a bill to ban sales from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.
The legislation passed with bipartisan support in a 331-97 vote, with 113 Democrats joining Republicans in backing the measure.
Entitled the “Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act,” the bill would prohibit the sale and export of crude oil from the reserve to any entity under control of the China Communist Party.
Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is “meant for true energy supply disruptions, like those caused by hurricanes and natural disasters, not to help China.”
“Draining our strategic reserves for political purposes and selling portions of it to China is a significant threat to our national security,” she said.
But Rep. Frank Pallone, the energy panel’s top Democrat, said while he does oppose exporting U.S. oil to China, the Republican measure does not properly address the issue.
“If Republicans were serious about addressing this issue, they would have brought forward a bill that banned all oil exports to China,” he said on the House floor.
“If we truly want to address China using American oil to build its reserves, let’s actually take a serious look at that, rather than skirt around the issue because Republicans are scared of Big Oil’s wrath,” Pallone said.
The bill is not expected to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
President Joe Biden last year announced the release of 180 million barrels from the reserve in an effort to bring down energy prices and stabilize the global market. The release sent the reserve to its lowest level since the 1980s.
The move drew criticism by some Republicans, who argued it was a “stopgap measure” that did little to combat high gas and energy prices.
The Biden administration said in December it was beginning to replenish the reserves by buying 3 million barrels of oil.
The Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act is not the only energy bill House Republicans are expected to bring to the floor now that they are in the majority.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said earlier this month that the Strategic Product Response Act was also among the GOP’s priorities in the first few weeks of the new Congress.
The bill would prohibit the non-emergency drawdowns of strategic reserves without a plan to increase energy production on federal lands.
-ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
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