Maxwell croons for an erotic encounter with the lady he’s missing as he finds himself alone in a vast desert in the video for his new single, “Off.” The sensual track is the first release from his upcoming BLACKsummers’NIGHT album, coming out spring of 2022.
As previously reported, the three-time Grammy winner received the Legend Award at the Soul Train Music Awards, which aired Sunday night on BET. In accepting the honor, he said, “The radio was the window to my dreams. And to be able to stand here before all of you and to be part of the community of R&B and soul music is truly the award that I’ve always wished for, but this literally is blowing my entire mind.”
Maxwell also performed a medley of his hits on the show, including “… Til the Cops Come Knockin’,” “Bad Habits,” “Lifetime,” “Sumthin’ Sumthin’,” “Ascension,” and “Off.”
The “Fortunate” singer will headline the NIGHT tour in 2022 featuring Anthony Hamilton and Joe. They will perform 25 shows, beginning March 2 in Dallas. Other cities will include New Orleans, Charlotte, Memphis, Chicago, Detroit, and Oakland, and the tour will wrap up in Miami on May 8. Tickets are now on sale at Ticketmaster.com.
(BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.) — The wife of a famed music executive was killed during a possible home invasion in Beverly Hills.
Officers from the Beverly Hills Police Department responded to the 1100 block of Maytor Place just before 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, where they found a victim with a gunshot wound to the head, according to the department. The suspects were no longer on the scene, police said.
The victim was identified by a source close to the family as Jacqueline Avant, the wife of music executive and film producer Clarence Avant. Jacqueline Avant was transported to the hospital, where she later died, police said.
Jacqueline Avant, 81, may have been killed as the result of a home invasion, the source told ABC News. A back sliding glass door was shattered, Beverly Hills Police Chief Mark Stainbrook told ABC News.
It is unclear if anything was taken from the home, Stainbrook said. It is unclear who broke into the home, how the events unfolded and how long the suspects were there.
Clarence Avant, who is featured in the 2019 Netflix documentary “The Black Godfather,” was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in October. Clarence Avant, 90, was popular among A-list celebrities such as Oprah, Jay-Z and even former President Barack Obama.
Police read a statement from the Avant family Wednesday afternoon during a press conference, which described Jacqueline Avant as “an amazing woman, wife, mother, philanthropist, and a 55-year resident of Beverly Hills.”
Beverly Hills Police detectives will use all available investigative methods to follow up on leads, Stainbrook said.
Additional information surrounding the incident were not immediately available.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday began to hear historic arguments over a Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, asks the justices directly to reconsider the precedent set by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
This means that the justices, a majority of whom are conservative, have the real opportunity to lessen the right to an abortion or possibly overturn the landmark case that made abortion a federally protected right nearly half a century ago.
Legal scholars are raising the alarm that if the court should decide to uphold the Mississippi ban, it could clear the way for new restrictions on abortion across the U.S.
ABC News legal analyst Kate Shaw, a professor at Cardozo Law School, told ABC News’ “Start Here” that as many as 30 states would restrict abortions if Roe gets overturned.
“It’s certainly possible that there will be a majority of justices on board to just overturn Roe and Casey and rule that the Constitution doesn’t protect a right to terminate a pregnancy,” Shaw said. That would leave each state to decide for itself, and “a number of states already have laws on the books that go into effect immediately.”
According to a report from The Guttmacher Institute, 21 states have these so-called trigger laws, some of which include bans on abortion after six or eight weeks of pregnancy, effectively banning all abortions. Several other states without trigger laws, according to Shaw, would likely “move very quickly” to prohibit abortion should Roe be overturned.
Shaw said she believes that the court could reach a compromise solution that still would allow Mississippi to enforce its 15-week, and even though that also “would be a dramatic change in the constitutional law of abortion, but that they do that without overturning Roe and Casey, simply suggesting that Roe and Casey undervalued the state’s interest in protecting potential life, and thus that this viability line should be reconsidered.”
Such a ruling could give states more power to restrict abortions, Shaw continued, “but it would not allow them to prohibit or criminalize all abortions.”
This report was featured in the Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021, episode of “Start Here,” ABC News’ daily news podcast.
“Start Here” offers a straightforward look at the day’s top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday declined to comment on the claim former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows makes in an upcoming book, according to the Guardian, that Trump had a positive COVID-19 test three days before their first presidential debate.
ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked Biden, who was 78 and, like Trump, unvaccinated when they shared the stage in the September debate, if he believes Trump put him at risk of contracting the potentially fatal virus.
Biden paused, and then responded with a smirk, “I don’t think about the former president.”
Later, White House press secretary Jen Psaki took a different tone — slamming Republicans and Trump allies she said had appeared to withhold the positive test result.
“What is not lost on us is that no one should be surprised that currently in Congress, as we’re looking at the government staying open, you have supporters of the former president, supporters of the former president who withheld information, reportedly, about testing positive and appeared apparently at a debate, also held events at the White House, reportedly, with military veterans and military families,” she said.
She said the White House did not know about Meadows’ claim prior to the story breaking in The Guardian.
The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who notably was the target of Trump’s ire for his messaging surrounding the virus, also said he “certainly was not aware of his test positivity or negativity” when ABC News Correspondent Karen Travers asked him about the revelation at the afternoon White House briefing.
“I’m not going to specifically talk about who put who at risk, but I would say, as I’ve said, not only from an individual but for everybody, that if you test positive, you should be quarantining yourself,” he said.
The Guardian , which says it obtained a copy of Meadows’ upcoming book, reported that Trump test positive on Sept. 26, sending shockwaves through the White House, before a second COVID-19 test came back negative, according to the Meadows account.
ABC News has not independently confirmed the book’s contents.
According to the debate rules, each candidate was required “to test negative for the virus within seventy-two hours of the start time” of the Sept. 29 debate in Cleveland, Meadows recalls understanding in the book, according to The Guardian.
But Trump, then 74, was determined to go to the debate and face Biden, regardless, according to the account.
“Nothing was going to stop [Trump] from going out there,” Meadows writes, according to the excerpt in The Guardian.
Trump’s reportedly positive, then negative, in tests were taken on the same day of the now-infamous packed Rose Garden ceremony, described as a “superspreader event,” in which Trump announced he would nominate now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
At least 11 guests, including press secretary Kellyanne Conway, former New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie, Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and University of Notre Dame President John Jenkins, tested positive afterward.
Meadows called Trump, who was on Air Force One at the time, with news of the positive test before calling back that he tested negative after another screening.
Trump went on to headline a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania, that evening, and held public events at the White House in the coming days.
Meadows has dodged questions surrounding Trump and COVID-19 since the president tweeted in the early hours of Oct. 2 that he tested positive, at the time, repeatedly refused to tell reporters when he had last tested negative.
Two senior Trump officials later told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jon Karl they had heard Trump tested positive before the debate but Meadows told Karl several months ago that was not true.
“Some people say you first got — you got an initial positive test even before the debate. Is that true or is that not true?” Karl asked Trump in a March 18 interview at Mar-a-Lago for his new book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.”
“No,” Trump responded. “No, that’s not true.”
In a new statement on Wednesday, the former president called the reporting “fake news” — but did not flat out deny that he had tested positive before the debate.
“The story of me having COVID prior to, or during, the first debate is Fake News. In fact, a test revealed that I did not have COVID prior to the debate,” he said.
Notably, Meadows did not write explicitly, according to The Guardian excerpts, that Trump had COVID-19 before the debate but that he had an initial positive test that was followed by a more reliable negative test.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack on Wednesday will recommend the full House hold former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark in contempt for refusing to cooperate with their investigation in the latest effort to ratchet up pressure on the former president’s aides and allies.
The move comes as Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s fourth and final chief of staff, agreed to cooperate with the panel, turning over thousands of pages of records and agreeing to appear for a deposition in the coming days.
The full chamber could vote to hold Clark, the former acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, in contempt as soon as Thursday, making him the second Trump associate after Steve Bannon to be reprimanded by Congress for refusing to cooperate with the investigation.
After a House vote, the Justice Department would determine whether to prosecute Clark as it has Bannon, who was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for spurning the panel’s subpoena.
Bannon has pleaded not guilty and faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine for each charge.
Unlike Bannon, Clark appeared before the committee with his attorney on Nov. 5, in response to a subpoena for records and testimony.
But he left after 90 minutes, after refusing to answer any questions, citing claims of executive privilege, which the committee has disputed, and Trump’s ongoing legal challenge to the panel’s inquiry.
Clark declined to answer direct questions about his knowledge of Georgia election law and his conversations with members of Congress, both of which committee members argued would not be covered by any claims of executive privilege.
The committee also sought to question him about Trump’s efforts to get the Justice Department to investigate baseless claims of election fraud.
Ahead of the Capitol riot, Clark played a prominent role advancing Trump’s efforts to challenge the election results inside his administration. He circulated a draft letter inside the Justice Department to urge Georgia’s governor and top Georgia officials to convene the state legislature to investigate voter fraud claims.
On Tuesday, committee members spent four hours interviewing Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a source familiar with the interview confirmed to ABC News.
Raffensberger was the target of a pressure campaign from then-President Trump and his aides and allies last year over the results of the presidential election in Georgia. Joe Biden was the first Democrat to carry the state in a presidential election in nearly three decades.
ABC News’ Alex Mallin, Katherine Faulders and Ben Siegel contributed to this report.
Double Soul Train Awards winner Jazmine Sullivan is taking her Heaux Tales on the road.
The “Need U Bad” singer announced that she will headline The Heaux Tales Tour, named after her latest album, which will kick off in February 2022.
“Ask and you shall receive. The Heaux Tales Tour is finally here. I can’t wait to see all of you there,” Jazmine commented as she revealed the tour itinerary on Instagram. She will perform 34 shows, beginning Valentine’s Day, February 14, in Vancouver, Canada, followed by a show February 15 in Portland, Oregon. Other tour stops include Oakland, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Cleveland and Detroit. The trek wraps up March 30 in Chicago.
Pre-sale began Wednesday on Ticketmaster.com, and the public sale starts this Friday at 10 a.m. local time.
Sullivan won Album of the Year for Heaux Tales, and the Best R&B/Soul Female Artist honor, at the 2021 Soul Train Music Awards, which aired Sunday from the Apollo Theater in New York City. Last week, she was nominated for three Grammys: Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Song for “Pick Up Your Feelings,” and Best R&B Album for Heaux Tales.
(NOTE LANGUAGE) In Black Panther, Michael B. Jordan‘s battle-scarred alter-ego Erik Stevens/Killmonger famously faces off with Chadwick Boseman‘s T’Challa, saying, “I’ve lived my entire life, waiting for this moment!” In real life, Jordan is saying the same thing, in a feature piece with The Hollywood Reporter.
The actor, producer and director of the upcoming Creed III isn’t letting his moment pass, either.
“My ambition has intersected at this moment where I have the experience and knowledge to direct…and [the ability] to maximize it by having a production company,” Jordan says. “It’s my turn to make my impact while I have the energy and strength.”
The 34-year-old adds, “It’s the moment I’ve waited for my entire life. This is it.”
Jordan, whose Outlier Society production company is backing the third Creed film, in addition to other projects, notes, “To be young, Black and successful — and disruptive — in this industry, there’s a certain navigation to get to the place I need to get to.”
He adds, “This is the most open that things have been for somebody who’s in favor right now, and you try to…stay in it for as long as you can.”
Jordan explains that taking a leading role for director Denzel Washington in the December 25 release A Journal for Jordan was a chance to get a master class in both acting and directing before Creed III started shooting.
“Denzel perfected ‘leading man,'” he says. “He was like, ‘I’m going to f***ing dominate this one thing and master it.”
The actor also has another role model in Will Smith. “He says all the time that he doesn’t feel like he’s the most talented, but he works the hardest,” Michael says.
Fresh off her role in the hit Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Awkwafina has reportedly taken a role in the monster movie Renfield, opposite Nicolas Cage, who will portray Dracula.
Deadline, which broke the news of Cage’s casting, also revealed the rapper-turned-Crazy Rich Asians scene-stealer’s participation.
The movie, directed by The Tomorrow War‘s Chris McCay, centers on the titular henchman of the classic Dracula tales. X-Men movie veteran Nicholas Hoult will play the title character, a “zoophagic maniac,” obsessed with eating living creatures to absorb their life force.
Based on the classic Universal monster movies, the story for Renfield was written by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, whose Skybound Entertainment company is producing. Rick and Morty veteran Ryan Ridley penned the script.
Incidentally, Renfield was first announced two years ago; at that point, actor-turned-Bohemian Rhapsody director Dexter Fletcher was set to direct.
David Lee Roth & Dave Grohl in 2015; Kevin Mazur/WireImage
Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin are adding some hops to their Hanukkah Sessions celebration for night four with a cover of Van Halen‘s “Jump.”
The performance pays tribute to VH vocalist David Lee Roth, who is Jewish.
“Quite possibly the loudest and proudest of hard rocking Jews, David Lee Roth has gone on record crediting his Bar Mitzvah preparation as his earliest vocal training,” Grohl says. “He became a rockstar the day he became a man.”
You can watch the “Jump” cover streaming now on YouTube. Be sure to stick around for Kurstin’s ripping keytar solo.
Grohl and Kurstin launched The Hanukkah Sessions in 2020 with covers of eight different Jewish artists for each night of the holiday. This year’s series has so far included Lisa Loeb‘s “Stay (I Missed You),” Ramones‘ “Blitzkrieg Bop” and Barry Manilow‘s “Copacabana.”
Hard to believe it’s been 15 years since Gwen Stefani released her smash-hit album The Sweet Escape, but here we are. If you forgot, Gwen made sure to remind her fans the significance of December 1.
“Happy 15th birthday to my second solo album!!” she celebrated on Instagram, and shared several key photos from the album’s cover shoot. She also reflected on the impact The Sweet Escape had, calling it “such a milestone in my career.”
Gwen signed off by telling fans, “I hope it’s still satisfying ur sweet tooth all these years later.”
TheSweet Escape debuted on December 1, 2006 and is RIAA-certified Platinum after selling over 1.7 million copies in the U.S. It produced the hit songs “Wind It Up,” “4 in the Morning” and the album’s title track.
Also, here’s a fascinating fact: The album’s original working title was Candyland, which is also the name of a song that was meant to appear on the track list. Because Gwen decided to keep “Candyland” in the vault for a little longer, she changed the title to match the album’s second track.
Gwen has yet to officially release “Candyland” as a single, but there are supposed B-side versions of the song floating around online, if you’re curious.
