Human voice of ‘AI’ rapper FN Meka says he was cut out of the project

Harry Styles is encouraging fans to vote in the forthcoming midterm elections in the US.The pop star has partnered with the non-profit voter registration organisation, HeadCount, to help to encourage his followers to get involved in the elections in November.The elections will decide which seats will go to the two main parties in both houses of Congress.“In 2020, 78 per cent of the people that HeadCount registered turned out to vote, so we know these artist partnerships are effective,” HeadCount’s co-founder and executive director Andy Bernstein told Billboard.“Having the support of individuals like Harry Styles has a tremendous impact. This is especially important for the midterms, which often receive less media attention than the presidential elections.

Adam Benzine Guest Contributor Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras slammed the heads of the Venice and Toronto film festivals for “engaging in a kind of whitewashing” by programming glossy documentaries from the Clinton family. Her comments come as TIFF this week hosted the Canadian premiere of Poitras’s “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” a documentary about the artist and activist Nan Goldin, and just days after the film won Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion. It is the rare doc to land slots at the superfecta of Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York, and Poitras said she thought “long and hard” about whether or not to voice criticism at the same venues feting her latest work. Nevertheless, she said, “journalists need to ask hard questions.”

Jessie J has penned an emotional post as she finished her tour and reflected on a serious car crash that almost cut her career short two years ago. The 34-year-old finished her tour at Brazil’s Rock In Rio festival after playing dates in London, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and New York. In the now-deleted post, the Price Tag singer told fans she “never thought she would tour again” following the accident in 2020, which caused her lose her voice, suffer bouts of extreme tiredness and pain, as well as tissue and nerve damage.

Global anime destination Crunchyroll will release the anticipated One Piece Film Red in the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 4.

Disney’s Pixar today named the lead voice actors for its upcoming animated feature, Elemental. The film’s director Peter Sohn and producer Denise Ream, who previously collaborated on The Good Dinosaur, announced the castings, as they brought to the stage actors Mamoudou Athie (Jurassic World Dominion) and Leah Lewis (The Half of It).

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Elon Musk keeps finding new reasons why he believes he can back out of his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter. In a Sept. 9 letter to Twitter, Musk’s lawyers called out the social network’s separation agreement with Peiter “Mudge” Zatko — its former head of security who was fired in January — under which Twitter made severance payments to Zatko and his counsel totaling $7.75 million. That, according to Musk’s legal team, violated a provision of the acquisition agreement under which Twitter agreed to not “grant or provide any severance or termination payments or benefits to any Company Service Provider other than the payment of severance amounts or benefits in the ordinary course of business consistent with past practice” without first getting approval from Musk. The definition of “Company Service Provider” includes Twitter’s former employees, per the letter.

“They’re trying to kill me! They hate me! They just don’t like women,” a giggling Tucker Carlson said in a high-pitched tone on Fox & Friends this morning. He was mocking a recent GQ cover interview in which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said, among other things, “My experience here has given me a front-row seat to how deeply and unconsciously, as well as consciously, so many people in this country hate women. And they hate women of color.”

Young survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing are flying to New York to speak at a United Nations congress for victims of terrorism.

EGOT winning The Voice coach and model/cookbook author/social media star through a number of ups and downs over the years, including Teigen’s bullying scandal in 2021, the 2018 fallout between Legend and Kanye West, and the recent joyful news that Legend and Teigen are expecting another child. Not long after revealing the pregnancy, Legend has now opened up about his family’s miscarriage, as well as the decision he had to make about West.

John Legend thinks some musicians are "afraid" to voice their honest opinions. The 43-year-old star and his wife Chrissy Teigen have both been outspoken about various political and social issues over recent years - but John feels some artists remain afraid of losing fans. He shared: "The artists who feel like they can’t talk about what they believe, they’re probably more stressed than I am - they’re afraid they’re going to lose fans.

“Photography was always a way to walk through fear,” says Nan Goldin in her raspy voice as photos fill the screen. Nuzzled within the textures of the snapshots live friends, lovers, and drifters, all eternally preserved through the eyes of the consecrated artist who rose to prominence in the 80s thanks to her visual chronicling of queer life and culture in New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

The scourge of the opioid crisis has been documented in the press and in government reports; the culpability of the Sacklers, the multi-billionaire pharmaceutical family whose former company Purdue made the painkiller Oxycontin, has been successfully dramatized. The Sacklers are everywhere in Laura Poitras’ gripping documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, but they are supporting players.

We all know Johnny Depp to be rather out of the box when it comes to how he conducts himself. However, Kate Moss just revealed one way he surprised her in a totally unASSuming way…

Ben Croll As Unifrance’s Daniela Elstner sees it, the wealth of talent in this year’s Venice slate imparts a good bill of health for the French industry writ large. “Today, festival directors look to France in a slightly different way,” Elstner says. “We can find eminences like Frederick Wiseman alongside [emerging talents] like Alice Diop. That’s the strength of a good selection: You need names, you need surprises, you need to mix it up.” Alongside Diop and Wiseman (whose “A Couple” is in French, if not a majority French production), this year’s Venice roster also includes “Other People’s Children” from Rebecca Zlotowski and “Our Ties” from Roschdy Zem — together forming a delegation perhaps more notable for the fact that none had competed in Venice before than for the almost incidental gender parity of the mix.

Shia LaBeouf has been the subject of intense controversy over the past several years. From his multiple arrests and reports of erratic behavior to the more recent allegations of physical abuse from one of his ex-partners, the actor is seemingly always in the crosshairs.

Jane Park joined The Voice winner Craig Eddie, Scots boyband Just The Brave, River City’s Tom Urie and more at the opening of a new Manhattan style restaurant in Glasgow.

The man who previously spoke up for the controversial FN Meka project – Anthony Martini – has announced that he is no longer involved with the ‘virtual’ rapper or the company behind it, Factory New.Following the accusations of racism that were made against the project – which resulted in the rapper being dropped by Universal Music’s Capitol label earlier this week – he says that he “should have done more diligence before joining” the venture, and also admits that there was much less AI involved in the creation of the virtual rapper and it’s musical output than previously claimed.Although previously named as a co-founder, Martini says that he joined Factory New in 2020, after the release of the first two FN Meka singles, ‘Moonwalkin’ and ‘Internet’.He also claims that he only learned this week that Kyle The Hooligan, the rapper who voiced those tracks and seemingly wrote their lyrics, had been cut out of the project, insisting that “while I was involved, artists on the project were always compensated fairly and participated in the revenue from their work”.Capitol announced that it had signed FN Meka earlier this month, releasing the single ‘Florida Water’, featuring Gunna.

Former TOWIE star Frankie Essex gave birth to her twins, whom she shares with boyfriend Luke Love, in May and has since revealed to the world that they’ve named their little bundles of joy Logan and Luella. In her exclusive column for OK!, Frankie’s discussed a range of topics in regards to motherhood – from her first social outing with the twins and a blackout at her home when they were just a few days old, to returning to the gym and moving in with cousin Chloe Sims while their family home is being renovated. This week, Frankie talks about “feeling more human again” as the twins drop their 2am feed, and the mum community she’s found herself to be a part of since the birth of the babies.

AI star FN Meka and in turn has accused Capitol Records of ghosting him after he was promised equity in the label.Kyle The Hooligan has posted notes and videos in which he claims that the Universal-owned label have left him “high and dry” and shared information that purports to prove that he is the formerly unknown voice behind the viral robot rapper.FN Meka, made in collaboration with Factory New, was dropped by Capitol less than a fortnight after launching after its critics highlighted the way the project trivialised elements of Black culture and used them for shock value. The label alluded to this in a formal apology shared online earlier this week by The New York Times’ Joe Coscarelli.Meka was marketed as the “world’s first” AI rapper to sign to a major label, with Ryan Ruden, Capitol Music Group’s executive vice president of experiential marketing and business development, saying that the project “meets at the intersection of music, technology and gaming culture” and “is just a preview of what’s to come”.Capitol released its first FN Meka single, ‘Florida Water’, on August 12, which featured guest vocals from real life rapper Gunna and ancillary involvement from gaming streamer Clix.But controversy followed when Meka, who’d garnered more than 10million TikTok followers, was seen to use the N word and appeared to make light of police brutality.