Get Outkast carved on to Stone Mountain, demand fans
If the signatories of a recent petition end up having their way, Atlanta natives Big Boi and André 3000 will be immortalised in stone, riding in a Cadillac alongside the Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson, Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis. Creators of the petition want to see Outkast etched on to the face of Stone Mountain, and are looking for 7,500 signatures before taking the issue to Georgia state house, Georgia state senate and governor Nathan Deal. At the time of writing, they’re 33 signatures away from their goal.
A Scottish man trolled everyone after T in the Park
It all started with a tweet. Free-flowing and punctuation-less, Scott Johnston’s sentence described the horror of being trapped in a tent bag in a rapidly emptying festival field. Then, things got really weird. The Scottish police force and transport authority responded to the tweet, asking Johnston to get back in touch with them. Not long afterwards, another tweet announced he was free and had “never been so happy to see the rain”. All an elaborate ruse? Or some friends having a bit of fun while packing up? Even with this Scottish newspaper story, we may never know.
@Tinthepark hi im somewhere in green 7 someone has packed me into a tent bag for a joke and I can't get out I don't have much battery left
— Scott Johnston (@ScottJohnston8) July 13, 2015
Ariana Grande won’t be charged for licking those donuts
Finally, there may be an end in sight to the bizarre pop story gift that kept on giving. Last week, singer Ariana Grande apologised (twice) for licking display donuts in a shop and saying “I hate America”. Now, her sugary sins have been absolved, at least in the eyes of the law: the owner of the donut shop in question doesn’t want to press charges against Grande.
50 Cent was ordered to pay $5m in a sex tape case …
50 Cent took the concept of revenge porn and potentially made it worse. Who knew that was possible? Last Friday, the rapper and entrepreneur was ordered to pay a woman named Lastonia Leviston $5m (£3.2m). He’d narrated a sex tape that she’d made with her partner and it was distributed online without her consent.
Leviston isn’t an ex-lover of 50’s, but she has a child with rapper Rick Ross, with whom 50 has been feuding for years. Apparently a great way for 50 to hit out at Ross involved making sexually explicit remarks about Leviston, in character as “Pimpin’ Curly”, and generally exhibiting nasty behaviour towards a woman.
… Before he suddenly filed for bankruptcy
Three days later, 50 Cent filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That’s essentially an official title for a bankruptcy that protects your assets from liquidation, and gives you a chance to get your financial affairs in order. 50 Cent called the bankruptcy a “strategic business move”. It’s one that places him in the company of artists such as Tom Petty and Meat Loaf, according to our brief history of pop music bankruptcies.
Pharrell and Robin Thicke won back $2m in the Blurred Lines case
I meant it when I said, back in March, that this case wasn’t really over. On Tuesday a judge shaved about $2m off the $7.4m in damages that Pharrell and Robin Thicke were ordered to pay Marvin Gaye’s family in the Blurred Lines copyright infringement case. Record label Universal, on the other hand, will still be considered liable for distributing Blurred Lines. The label is due to pay Gaye’s family 50% of the song’s future songwriting and publishing royalties revenue.
A newspaper sent a cartoonist to cover a Foo Fighters gig
Gig photographers aren’t best pleased with Foo Fighters at the moment. The band’s controversial photography contracts have been deemed restrictive and disempowering for photographers, leading one paper to use fan-shot pictures and another to send a cartoonist to sketch the band instead. If this is what it takes to start a conversation about photographers handing over the rights to their images after one use, and fighting for named credits, then so be it.
Taylor Swift brought more powerful women on stage
Swift loves surrounding herself with other famous women. She did it in her cameo-filled Bad Blood video. And she did it when she brought Serena Williams and models Cara Delevingne and Karlie Kloss onstage during her Hyde Park British Summer Time performance in London in June. Last Saturday, in New Jersey’s Metlife stadium, she was joined onstage by the US’s winning World Cup football team. Predictably, the audience chanted “USA” after the team left the stage.
Neil Young said he’d start pulling his music off streaming services
Neil Young, creator of high-res audio player Pono, doesn’t believe in music streaming. According to two Facebook posts shared on Wednesday, “streaming is the worst audio in history” and Young’s no longer interested in making his music available in such low quality. At the time of writing, several of his albums were still on Spotify, but he wrote that his tunes were “being removed from all streaming services”.
A tweet may have scuppered Maroon 5’s China tour plans
So much for the band’s scheduled Beijing and Shanghai concerts in September. Fans have speculated that one of the band members’ recent tweets in support of the Dalai Lama may be linked to the gig cancellations, though the official word from promoter Live Nation mentions nothing of the sort. China’s ruling communist party has described the Dalai Lama as a “wolf in monk’s robes”. In the past, performers who appear to affiliate themselves with the spiritual leader have been reprimanded by the government or temporarily banned.
