Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée has died at age 58, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
His longtime producing partner Nathan Ross confirmed his passing to THR. Vallée reportedly passed away suddenly at his cabin outside Quebec City. A cause of death is not yet known.
The filmmaker was known for directing the Matthew McConaughey film Dallas Buyers Club, for which McConaughey won the Best Actor Oscar, as well as HBO’s critically acclaimed series Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects.
Vallée, who also executive produced Big Little Lies, won two Emmys for the series in 2017: Outstanding Limited Series and Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series.
“Jean-Marc Vallée was a brilliant, fiercely dedicated filmmaker, a truly phenomenal talent who infused every scene with a deeply visceral, emotional truth,” HBO said in a statement to THR. “He was also a hugely caring man who invested his whole self alongside every actor he directed.”
(WASHINGTON) — As the “extraordinarily contagious” omicron variant surges across the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that COVID-19 cases will likely continue to climb.
“Every day it goes up and up. The last weekly average was about 150,000 and it likely will go much higher,” Fauci told ABC This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
While Fauci said studies show omicron is less severe in terms of hospitalizations, he stressed, “we don’t want to get complacent” because “when you have such a high volume of new infections, it might override a real diminution in severity.”
“If you have many, many, many more people with a less level of severity, that might kind of neutralize the positive effect of having less severity when you have so many more people,” he explained. “And we’re particularly worried about those who are in that unvaccinated class … those are the most vulnerable ones when you have a virus that is extraordinarily effective in getting to people.”
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced a plan to distribute 500 million free at-home rapid tests to Americans beginning in January. The tests will be delivered by mail to Americans who request them. A website to request the tests will launch in January, according to the administration.
But the omicron surge created a massive rush for tests as Americans prepared to see relatives for the holidays, and they instead faced empty pharmacy shelves and massive test lines.
On Wednesday, ABC News’ World News Tonight anchor David Muir, asked Biden if that was a failure.
“I don’t think it’s a failure,” Biden replied in the exclusive interview. “I think it’s — you could argue that we should have known a year ago, six months ago, two months ago, a month ago.”
“I wish I had thought about ordering” 500 million at-home tests “two months ago,” he told Muir.
Biden added “nothing’s been good enough” when it comes to the availability of at-home tests.
When Karl asked about the comments, Fauci admitted to This Week he is frustrated with at-home test availability and said “we’ve obviously got to do better.”
“The beginning of the year, there were essentially no rapid point of care home tests available. Now, there are over nine of them and more coming,” Fauci said. “The production of them has been rapidly upscaled, and yet because of the demand that we have, which in some respects, Jon, is good, that we have a high demand because we should be using testing much more extensively than we have.”
“But the situation where you have such a high demand, a conflation of events, omicron stirring people to get appropriately concerned and wanting to get tested as well as the fact of the run on tests during the holiday season — we’ve obviously got to do better,” he continued. “I think things will improve greatly as we get into January. But that doesn’t help us today and tomorrow.”
Karl also asked about the FDA last week granting emergency authorization to both Pfizer and Merck’s antiviral pills to treat COVID-19.
“Is this really the breakthrough that you’ve been waiting for?” Karl questioned.
“That’s part of the comprehensive approach to this outbreak. Vaccines and boosters, masks and now very importantly, a highly effective therapy is really going to make a major, major difference,” Fauci replied. “We’ve just got to make sure that there’s the production of enough of that product that we can get it widely used for those who need it as quickly as possible.”
“I assume that will be a top priority going forward, right? I mean, possibly including Defense [Production] Act … and the like?” Karl pressed.
“Absolutely, Jon, absolutely,” Fauci said. “We’ve got to get that product into the mouths of those who need it.”
Only 61.7% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to CDC data. Many Americans remain against COVID-19 vaccines over one year into their use.
The omicron surge doesn’t appear to sway unvaccinated Americans. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll this week, just 12% percent of unvaccinated Americans polled said the variant makes them more likely to get a vaccine.
Former President Donald Trump showed his support for vaccinations, who has spread conspiracy theories about vaccines and didn’t get vaccinated publicly, showed his support for COVID-19 vaccines in a Wednesday interview with The Daily Wire’s Candace Owens, saying, “The results of the vaccine are very good. … People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”
Karl asked Fauci whether Trump’s supporters might listen to that message.
“I think that his continuing to say that people should get vaccinated and articulating that to them, in my mind is a good thing. I hope he keeps it up,” Fauci responded.
Fauci also said he was surprised when Trump was booed by some of his supporters in Texas last weekend after the former president revealed he’d gotten his booster shot.
“I was stunned by that,” Fauci said. “I mean, given the fact of how popular he is with that group, that they would boo him, which tells me how recalcitrant they are about being told what they should do.”
The COVID-19 pandemic eased its grip on theaters all over the world for much of the year, allowing box office returns to be much more generous than in 2020 — though still light-years from the Avengers: Endgame heights of 2019.
However, with the Omicron variant in the air, literally, it appears Spider-Man may be the first superhero truly immune from COVID-19. Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s debut spun a staggering web at the box office, scoring the biggest opening weekend ever for Sony and earning an estimated 587.2 million dollars worldwide — the third-biggest global opening of all time. An estimated $253 million of that global tally came from domestic ticket sales, making Spider-Man: No Way Home also the third-biggest domestic opening in history and the biggest-ever December debut. It was also the first pandemic-era film to bow with more than $100 million.
As of December 26, Spider-Man: No Way Home also topped the worldwide box office list, earning 1.05 billion dollars worldwide after a little more than a week in theaters, making it the biggest box office smash of the year and the first film to earn more than a billion dollars globally since 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Elsewhere on the yearly chart, some other films that were theater-only releases in the U.S. performed better than expected, like Sony’s Spider-verse adjacent Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Ryan Reynolds‘ pandemic-delayed Free Guy. The flicks earned the #3 and #9 slots on 2021’s top ten highest-grossing films list domestically
Movies like Black Widow, Disney’s Jungle Cruise and A Quiet Place Part II performed decently, but likely saw their movie ticket take trimmed by the films’ being available simultaneously on streaming services. Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson sued Disney, claiming her movie’s box office — and her bottom line as a producer — was affected by Disney+’s streaming strategy. The suit was eventually settled, apparently amicably, and ScarJo mentioned she’d stay in the Marvel Studios family by producing future content, even though her Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow perished in Avengers: Endgame. Disney is the parent company of Marvel and ABC News.
Overseas, some weaker domestic performers like the pandemic-delayed James Bond adventure No Time to Die performed well; foreign theater-goers were more comfortable getting back to the theaters throughout the summer and fall, prior to the emergence of Omicron. Daniel Craig‘s last outing as 007 made more than $612 million from overseas audiences. Likewise, Marvel Studios’ Eternals added more than $236 million to its total take from overseas audiences; F9 made more than $553 million overseas; and Black Widow earned an additional $183 million from the foreign box office.
China, meanwhile, minted its own blockbuster with The Battle at Lake Changjin, a nationalistic war film about China’s defeat of U.S. soldiers in a battle of the Korean War. The film earned more than $902 million on China and Asia, second only to Spider-Man: No Way Home for the year.
2021’s top ten movies in the U.S. (as of 12/26/2021)
1. Spider-Man: No Way Home — $467,331,855 U.S. gross earnings
2. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings — $224,543,292
3. Venom: Let There Be Carnage — $212,527,511
4. Black Widow — $183,651,655
5. F9: The Fast Saga — $173,005,945
6. Eternals — $164,508,664
7. No Time to Die — $160,772,007
8. A Quiet Place Part II — $160,072,261
9. Free Guy — $121,626,598
10. Ghostbusters: Afterlife — $120,460,060
2021’s top ten movies internationally (as of 12/26/2021)
1. Spider-Man: No Way Home — $587,100,000 overseas gross earnings
2. The Battle at Lake Changjin — $902,196,534
3. Hi, Mom — $822,009,764
4. No Time to Die — $613,262,000
5. F9: The Fast Saga — $553,223,556
6. Detective Chinatown 3 — $686,257,563
7. Venom: Let There Be Carnage — $288,500,000
8. Godzilla vs. Kong — $367,300,000
9. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings — $207,686,762
10. Eternals — $236,181,075
As promised, Eric Clapton debuted a brand-new song titled “Heart of a Child” over the holiday weekend.
The melodic acoustic ballad, which was released on Friday, Christmas Eve Day, is available now as a digital download and via streaming services. In addition, and an animated music video for the tune has premiered at Clapton’s official YouTube channel.
Clapton co-wrote “Heart of a Child” with Robin Monotti, an Italian film producer and architect who identifies as a pro-vaccine-safety advocate, and with whom Eric apparently shares similar anti-lockdown views.
The song’s lyrics seem to be directed toward a man who is feeling dejected because he’s being criticized by others, and has recently lost a close friend for some unclear reason.
“We lost of the love of a man, I was proud to know/ They locked you down, boy, made you grieve alone,” Clapton sings. “Turn off the TV, throw your phone away/ Don’t you remember what your daddy used to say?/ Don’t break the heart of your child/ Don’t let your fear drive you wild.”
The clip features a series of enigmatic images appearing as spray-painted graffiti on walls, billboards and other public places. The images include a pair of hands reaching toward each other, musical notes, a rock band, a bride and groom, a boy with a heart with a crack in it, ominous giant hands reaching to grab a man from behind, a man chained to a TV set and a mobile phone, a young man with a gun in one hand and sadly holding his head with his other hand, and an eye with a tear dripping from it.
For more information about “Heart of a Child,” visit WheresEric.com.
(NEW YORK) — With the number of COVID-19 cases surging in New York, workers in the entertainment industry, many of whom are freelancers, are worried about the prospect of another shutdown.
At least 12 Broadway shows have canceled performances due to performers and staff testing positive. Three Broadway shows, “Jagged Little Pill,” “Waitress” and “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” announced they will close their doors permanently, after detecting multiple positive COVID-19 cases.
While understanding of the precautions, entertainment workers — many of whom have been in a precarious position for nearly two years as the live performance industry has been heavily impacted by the pandemic — are left worried this holiday season about their financial futures, especially without the safety net of benefits that had been provided in 2020.
“Eliminating the ushering salary would take a huge hit on anyone’s finances. I don’t think anyone’s really doing this just for fun, they’re doing it because they really need the money,” Rachel, an usher for a Broadway show who did not want her last name or the name of her employer used, told ABC News.
The production Rachel works for has not yet canceled a performance during this surge, and she said she feels confident in the safety protocols in place, including regular testing and indoor mask mandates, especially given the number of people she interacts with at work. But, given the rapid spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant, Rachel is still worried about the prospect of shows getting canceled.
“It’s just inevitable. It’s just a matter of time at this point. With how things are spreading, to me, it seems almost impossible to avoid,” said Rachel.
When the pandemic first hit, Rachel said she was put on furlough and was able to take advantage of unemployment benefits until the industry reopened. These pandemic-era unemployment benefits — a federal supplement on top of states benefits — are no longer available.
The prospect of shows closing again scares Rachel, who said she, like many of her colleagues, needs to work another part-time job along with ushering to cover her costs.
“It would be probably devastating because it would be a matter of going back on to unemployment in order to get paid. But at this point, there are no pandemic-like increases for the unemployment, so [it] would definitely not be enough for me to cover my expenses,” Rachel said.
Though she needs the money she gets from ushering, she said she would feel more comfortable if workers would be able to take a temporary break through the holidays.
“Would it have prevented any spread? I don’t know. Would it make me feel better? Yes. Would I lose lots of money? Yes,” Rachel said.
Elizabeth, who asked that her last name be withheld, is a freelance opera singer and has had several performances at Carnegie Hall canceled this week due to people testing positive for COVID-19, many despite being fully vaccinated and boosted. She said one of her colleagues will be missing all her Christmas shows. Christmas season is usually a high-volume time for musicians with many holiday shows going on.
Elizabeth and her wife, Sara, who both currently work in the entertainment industry, were able to stay afloat during the pandemic because of an accounting job Sara had.
Sara, who also asked that her last name be withheld, took the accounting job just before the pandemic hit and stayed there for a year. Due to her fibromyalgia, the job left her feeling burned out and sick. She left that position and took a six-month break when Elizabeth’s work started to pick up.
Elizabeth, who still had a part-time teaching job throughout most of the pandemic, lost a large portion of her income because of shutdowns. That left her only qualifying for six weeks of unemployment benefits.
During the six months Sara had taken off work, the two burned through savings they had.
“We weren’t expecting it to be bad again. We’ve just started rebuilding, financially,” Sara said. “I took this job, and she’s finally getting work again. And now we’re starting to see her first cancellation was this week.”
Three of Elizabeth’s shows this week were canceled, in addition to two more shows in January.
“It’s definitely scary. Because this time if things shut down again, we don’t have a safety net,” Sara said.
The couple said they would not be able to afford losing any of their pay.
Even now, their finances are very tight and they are having to cut costs on essential things, like health care. Sara should be going to the doctor every month for checkups but she hasn’t been since September.
“I’m getting medication still, but I’m not seeing the doctor as much as I should. I just haven’t been going,” she said. “We’re crossing our fingers and hoping nothing bad happens.”
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.4 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 816,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 61.7% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Dec 27, 7:23 am
Israel begins testing 4th vaccine dose
Medical staffers at Tel HaShomer hospital near Tel Aviv, Israel, have begun receiving a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose.
About 150 staffers were taking part in the trial, which began on Monday morning. They’ll be monitored for a week.
The Ministry of Health has yet to announce a final decision on a fourth jab. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office last week said on Twitter that it had instructed the government to “prepare for an extensive operation.”
“This is wonderful news that will assist us in getting through the Omicron wave that is engulfing the world,” Bennett said in a statement.
-ABC News’ Bruno Nota
Dec 27, 7:27 am
New York subway scales back service amid COVID surge
Subway trains in New York City will run less frequently than usual this week amid a spike in COVID-19 cases.
“Like everyone in New York, we’ve been affected by the COVID surge,” New York City Transit Authority officials wrote on Twitter.
Officials said the subway was dealing with staff shortages and service would be scaled back until Thursday.
“We’re taking proactive steps to provide the best, most consistent service we can,” officials said on Twitter. “That means you may wait a little longer for your train.”
Dec 27, 2:58 am
Australia records first omicron death, as daily cases top 10,000
A man in his 80s who died near Sydney, Australia, was the country’s first known death linked to the omicron variant, health officials said on Monday.
“The man was a resident of the Uniting Lilian Wells aged care facility in North Parramatta, where he acquired his infection,” New South Wales health officials said in a news release. “He had received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and had underlying health conditions.”
The country’s new daily cases topped 10,000 on Sunday, local media reported on Monday.
In New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, new coronavirus infections dipped to 6,324 on Sunday, down from a record 6,394 new cases on Christmas Day, according to health officials.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden honored those grieving loved ones lost during the pandemic in their joint message to Americans on Christmas Day.
The Bidens evoked classic Christmas themes, such as “the promise of hope and renewal” during “this season of joy,” but acknowledged that many are practicing “finding light in the darkness, which is also perhaps the most American of things to do.”
“We pray for you to find strength from sorrow and purpose from pain,” the Bidens said.
During their first Christmas in the White House, the Bidens reflected on the “enormous courage, character, resilience” displayed by Americans in the past year, lauding those who “show how our differences are precious and our similarities infinite.”
“This sacred season is yet another reminder that we are a great nation because we are a good people,” they wrote.
The president and first lady later met virtually with service members to thank them for serving far from home on Christmas.
Commander, the Bidens’ new German shepherd puppy, lied on the couch between them during the meeting.
The Bidens also spread Christmas cheer on Friday by visiting children at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., the first time in history a sitting president accompanied the first lady on the traditional Christmas Eve outing, according to the White House.
Also on Friday, the Bidens called into the phone line run by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which tracks Santa Claus’ path across the globe. During the call, a father directed a vulgar insult toward the president.
The man, who identified himself as “Jared,” spoke to the Bidens about his children before saying, “Let’s go, Brandon,” before the call ended. The statement, popular among conservatives who oppose the president, has become code for the phrase, “f— Joe Biden,” stemming from a reporter misinterpreting a chant after a NASCAR race.
The Bidens attended mass virtually on Friday, according to a White House official. They attended the Christmas Eve mass from the White House’s East Room, the official said.
Two years into the pandemic and amid another surge in positive cases with the highly transmissible omicron variant, Biden told ABC News World News Tonight anchor David Muir in an exclusive interview earlier this week that “nothing’s been good enough” when it comes to the availability of at-home coronavirus tests.
The Biden administration has purchased 500 million at-home tests to distribute to Americans for free, but they will not be available until after the new year.
Biden expressed regret to Muir for not ordering the tests sooner, saying he wished he would have thought to do it two months ago.
(CAPE TOWN, South Africa) — South Africa’s Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, an anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, died on Sunday. He was 90.
“The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa,” Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, said in a statement.
Tutu, a crusader for equality and racial justice, died in Cape Town, South Africa, the president’s office said.
He rose to global prominence as a leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, struggling against a political and social system of minority rule that he saw as cruel and unjust. Amid a violent and turbulent time, Tutu was known for his sermons calling for non-violent action. He was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.
“Tutu was saluted by the Nobel Committee for his clear views and his fearless stance, characteristics which had made him a unifying symbol for all African freedom fighters. Attention was once again directed at the nonviolent path to liberation,” according to the prize committee.
After apartheid ended in 1994, Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a body whose daunting mandate called for investigating the country’s history of oppression, applying justice where necessary and helping the entire population step as one into a brighter future.
Under Tutu, the commission sought a middle ground between launching courtroom trials for “all perpetrators of gross violations of human rights” and total amnesty for them, Tutu wrote in a memoir, No Future Without Forgiveness, published in 1999. The commission granted amnesty to those who offered full disclosures of the crimes committed.
“Our nation sought to rehabilitate and affirm the dignity and personhood of those who for so long had been silenced, had been turned into anonymous, marginalized ones,” Tutu wrote. “Now they would be able to tell their stories, they would remember, and in remembering would be acknowledged to be persons with an inalienable personhood.”
In leading the commission, Tutu “touchingly and profoundly demonstrated the depth of meaning of ubuntu, reconciliation and forgiveness,” Ramaphosa said on Sunday.
“Desmond Tutu was a patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead,” he said. “We pray that Archbishop Tutu’s soul will rest in peace but that his spirit will stand sentry over the future of our nation.”
Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on Oct. 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, South Africa.
He was a teacher in South Africa before becoming a priest, a vocation that led him to study at King’s College London in the mid-1960s. He moved between the United Kingdom and South Africa for the next decade, holding teaching and theological leadership positions, according to the college.
St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg appointed Tutu as dean in 1975, making him the first Black priest to hold the position. Ten years later, he became the first Black bishop of Johannesburg. He was named archbishop of Cape Town a year later, elevating him to the highest position in the Anglican hierarchy in Africa, according to a biography posted by King’s College.
“On behalf of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, the whole faith community, and I make bold to say, on behalf of millions across South Africa, Africa and the world, I extend our deepest condolences to his wife, Nomalizo Leah, his son, Trevor Thamsanqa and to his daughters, Thandeka, Nontombi and Mpho. And all of their families,” Thabo Makgoba, Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, said in a statement on Sunday.
On the morning of April 27, 1994, when all South Africans were allowed to enter voting booths, a day that would mark both the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela as president, Tutu rose early at the archbishop’s complex in Cape Town, he wrote in his memoir.
He drove from his residence in a “leafy upmarket suburb” to Gugulethu, deciding “that I would cast my vote in a ghetto township,” an action he described as symbolic.
“How do you convey that sense of freedom that tasted like sweet nectar for the first time? How do you explain it to someone who was born into freedom? It is impossible to convey,” Tutu wrote. “It is ineffable, like trying perhaps to describe the color red to a person born blind. It is a feeling that makes you want to cry and laugh at the same time, to dance with joy, and yet fearful that it was too good to be true and that it just might all evaporate. You’re on cloud nine.”
In 2020, Taylor Swift made headlines by putting out two critically acclaimed new albums. In 2021, she continued to make headlines — for, among other things, re-releasing her old albums.
Here are the highlights of Taylor’s year:
–Taylor started off 2021 by winning her third Album of the Year Grammy for folklore. That made her the first female artist ever to win Album of the Year three times, after her wins for 2008’s Fearless and 2014’s 1989.
–One of the year’s hottest new artists, Olivia Rodrigo, gave songwriting credit to Taylor on two tracks on her number-one album, SOUR, because she’d interpolated or otherwise borrowed melodic elements from two of Taylor’s songs.
–The first of Taylor’s re-recorded projects,Fearless (Taylor’s Version), came out in April and topped the Billboard album chart, making it the first re-recorded album to do so. The 26-track project included six “From the Vault” songs written around the same time as the original album, and featured guest vocals from country stars Maren Morris and Keith Urban.
–Red (Taylor’s Version), Taylor’s re-recording of her 2012 album, came out in November, with a whopping 30 tracks, plus guest appearances from Phoebe Bridgers, Ed Sheeran and country superstar Chris Stapleton.
–Red (Taylor’s Version) featured a 10-minute version of fan favorite “All Too Well.” Taylor wrote and directed a short film to go with the song and also appeared in it, along with stars Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien. “All Too Well” hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, setting the record for the longest song ever to top that chart.
–In addition to re-recording her own music in 2021, Taylor appeared on one song on the expanded edition of HAIM’s album Women In Music Pt. III, and on two tracks from Big Red Machine‘s album How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last.
–In 2021, Taylor also won the BRIT Awards’ Global Icon trophy, and the Songwriter Icon award from the National Music Publisher’s Association. Her 2020 documentary Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions won a Gracie Award.
–In October of 2021, Taylor inducted one of her musical heroes, Carole King, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and performed one of King’s compositions, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” during the ceremony.
–In November of 2021, Taylor received yet another Album of the Year Grammy nod, this one for evermore.
(Note: All Too Well short film contains uncensored profanity.)
There was no shortage of wild moments in 2021. From the ongoing feud between Drake and Kanye West to Nicki Minaj‘s claims about the COVID-19 vaccine, some of the biggest names in hip-hop got people chatting.
Here are three of the craziest moments in hip-hop this year.
—Kodak Black throws money overboard: The 24-year-old rapper posted a video of himself throwing money off of a yacht and into the ocean. And it wasn’t small change, either. The money tossed overboard added up to approximately $100,000, according to My Mixtapez, which re-posted the clip.
–Drake and Kanye West beef: The feud originally ignited in 2018 after Pusha T accused the Certified Lover Boy of using a ghostwriter in the song “Infrared,” which West produced.
The beef continued this year when Drake dissed Kanye on Trippie Redd‘s track, “Betrayal, with the lyrics, “All these fools I’m beefin’ that I barely know / Forty-five, forty-four (burned out) let it go.” Kanye responded by posting, and then deleting, Drake’s home address on Instagram.
Drake and Kanye two finally squashed their beef in November and performed together in December at the Free Larry Hoover benefit concert.
–Nicki Minaj and the COVID-19 vaccine: After the “Super Bass” rapper revealed that she didn’t attend the Met Gala because she wasn’t vaccinated, she later made claims about a cousin of hers refusing to get the vaccine after “his friend” got the shot and suffered an alleged reproductive side effect.
“My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent,” Nicki tweeted. “His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding.”
Medical experts stress the COVID-19 vaccine does not cause impotency, nor does the booster.
— DaBaby gets cancelled: The rapper came under fire for making controversial HIV/AIDS remarks at the Rolling Loud festival in Miami over the summer. He was dropped from a bunch of other music festivals after that, including Lollapalooza and New York’s Governors Ball. He issued an apology and later met virtually with Black leaders from HIV organizations.
