Man claiming to voice FN Meka, controversial AI rapper dropped by Capitol Records, says label “used me… then ghosted me”

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).

“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.

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.

August 30, 2022Swalwell then shared a memo his staffer wrote regarding the threat. The caller allegedly asked for Swalwell’s location, asked to speak to the congressman, and, when told the congressman wasn’t available, went on a rant on gay issues.“[The caller] said he is a gay man, but he doesn’t take it up the ass, he gives it,” the staffer wrote in a memo summarizing the call.

Sydney Sweeney‘s time in the harsh scrutiny of the spotlight regarding her mom’s controversial 60th birthday party isn’t over yet.

A homeowner who caused a stir constructing a barricade to stop people parking on his street is now so ‘famous’ people flock to meet him. Derek Woodacre, of Commonside Road in Mosley Common, said that since the news broke that his roadblock had been removed people from ‘across Manchester’ have come to visit him and see the site for themselves.

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.

The artist who voiced controversial ‘virtual’ rapper FN Meka has denied claims that he has been leading the project, adding that he has been cut out of the financial gains the company behind the venture, Factory Now, has made.Previously anonymous, rapper Kyle The Hooligan came forward as the voice of FN Meka yesterday, after Universal’s Capitol label severed ties with the project following accusations of racism.“They came to me with this AI shit and was like would I want to be the voice of it, and I thought it was going to be some collaboration”, he said in a video on Instagram. “They promised me equity in the company, percentages, all this stuff, so I’m thinking, ‘OK, this about to be some collab, something different for me, so I can do my music and do some AI stuff with this FN Meka character”.Capitol announced that it had signed FN Meka earlier this month, releasing a single, ‘Florida Water’, featuring Gunna.