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Pop Culture

What’s On at Flavorwire: Links You Should See

By Lillian Ruiz on

The folks at IBM Research got bored with studying atoms, so instead they made stop motion animation with them. Queen Bey cannot be bothered to recognize peasants real-life royals at her concert. Royal or not, when Bey asks you to sing along, you sing along. Speaking of royalty, this roundup of Game… Read More

Pop Culture

Staff Picks: Flavorwire’s Favorite Cultural Things This Week

on

Need a great book to read, album to listen to, or TV show to get hooked on? The Flavorwire team is here to help: in this weekly feature, our editorial staffers each recommend the cultural object or experience they’ve enjoyed the most in the past seven days. Click through for our picks, and tell us what you’ve been loving in the comments. … Read More

Celebrity

When Celebrities Sue Celebrities: A History

By Jason Bailey on

The news that Donald Trump is dropping — for now, anyway! — his monumentally stupid (even for him) lawsuit against Bill Maher may be good for the humorless blowhard and reality TV star, but it’s disappointing for late-night comedy writers and celeb jurisprudence fans. C’mon, admit it: that would’ve been a fun trial, if for nothing else than Maher’s testimony. At any rate, while we’re waiting to see if Trump holds true on his threat to return to the matter at a later date, here’s a look back at other instances of celebrities — real and C-list — who’ve taken each other to court. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. R. Kelly’s epic hip-hop opera, Trapped in the Closet, is apparently going to be adapted as a Broadway musical. Also: There are 85 additional chapters in the series that Kelly hasn’t even debuted yet. [via Gawker]

2. If you happen to be visiting London over the next few weeks, James Franco will… Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we had a good laugh exploring this A to Z guide to R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet.” We were grateful for these Thanksgiving cards from our favorite fictional characters. We thought this lazy logic sounded about right. We broke down the stats for… Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Gird your loins: A new comedy created by former Daily Show showrunner Josh Lieb and comedian Nick Thune that is currently known as “Untitled Hipster Project” is headed to NBC. The basic premise? “A decidedly un-hip anthropology student finds himself living with – and studying – the wild, untamed hipsters of Brooklyn, New York.”… Read More

Music

Why I Can’t Stop Worrying and Learn to Love R&B

By Tom Hawking on

Everyone has been going batshit about the new Frank Ocean record over past the month or so, and rightly so, because it’s that rarest of beasts in 2012: a good R&B record. Over the last 15-20 years, contemporary R&B has been this writer’s single most loathed genre, a point of view that’s led to the occasional argument with friends and colleagues over the years. And for all that the genre seems to be undergoing a creative renaissance of late, it’s hard to abandon two decades’ worth of deep suspicion at the drop of Frank Ocean’s hat — especially when there’s still so much awful pap being released (viz. the Trey Songz record that drops this week, for instance). Still, lest I be accused of being a hater, then, here’s an explanation: why I can’t stop worrying and learn to love contemporary R&B. … Read More

Pop Culture

Watch Gary Oldman Read from R. Kelly’s New Autobiography

By Caroline Stanley on

Gary Oldman just keeps giving us new reasons to love him. A few weeks ago he did a hilarious PSA for Jimmy Kimmel Live in which he implored professional athletes to stay far, far away from the big screen; last night he donned a very fancy tux and returned to the late-night show to deliver a dramatic reading from R. Kelly’s new autobiography Soulacoaster: The Diary of Me. Not that we’re all that surprised given the rich source material, but it’s pretty fantastic — particularly that bit about “letting it do what it do.” Click through now to watch what might be Oldman’s finest performance since his Oscar-nominated turn in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. … Read More

Music

These Are the Bands That Make You Totally Undateable

By Tom Hawking on

A couple of weeks back, our esteemed literary editor Emily Temple surveyed the books that might make you beat a hasty retreat if you saw them on a potential date’s bookshelf, or in their handbag. The post got plenty of heated comments, and it also got us thinking about the other place you might look to snoop on a date’s cultural credentials: their record collection (or, failing that, their iPod.) And so, as we did for books, we asked around Flavorpill central to find out which artists might, if discovered on a potential date’s playlist, put an end to that date pretty damn quickly. We received plenty of responses, and the entirely personal, subjective, and often hotly debated results await after the jump. … Read More

Music

A Selection of the Most Genuinely Terrifying People in Hip Hop

By Tom Hawking on

In a world where hip hop dominates the music business, its roots as a genuinely challenging genre seem a world away. This is one of the reasons why we’re so excited to get our hands on The Money Store, the debut album by Death Grips, which follows their killer mixtape Exmilitary from last year. It’s a reminder of the fact that when hip hop abandons its tiresome obsession with idiot materialism and posturing, it can still sound vital and relevant. And it also got us thinking about the days when there were some truly, and even refreshingly, frightening people working in the genre — so here are some artists who’ve terrified the establishment and/or your correspondent over the years. (And no, we’re not including Big Lurch — PCP-catalyzed cannibalism is a whole category of its own.) … Read More