Yet again, another "Karen" video has gone viral, this time coming out of Torrance, California. The incident began when a young Asian woman filming her exercise routine quietly said “Jesus” after being unnecessarily bumped into by a middle-aged white woman. The white woman, now dubbed “Staircase Karen,” quickly became enraged, threatening the younger woman and going off on a racist tirade.
“Next time you talk to me like that, you're gonna get your ass kicked by my family, they're gonna fuck you up!” she exclaimed. After making this threat she then demanded her to “Go back to whatever fucking Asian country you belong,” adding “You bitch! This is not your place, this is not your home, we don't want you here!”
“Staircase Karen” then challenged the woman to post the incident on social media, saying "I hope you do because every fucking person will beat the crap out of you from here on out.” Undeterred by this threat, the video has now gone viral on twitter, with some declaring her “Karen of the Year.”
While twitter users have gotten a good laugh out of the incident, law enforcement and public officials are taking the event much more seriously. Torrance Mayor Patrick Furey launched a police investigation in the name of “public safety,” stating that this type of racist behavior will not be tolerated.
Mark Heap and Dawn French sign up for new sitcom by ‘This Country’ writer
Dawn French and Mark Heap are set to star in a new sitcom for the BBC titled Can You Keep a Secret?
The actors will play a married couple in the show, and when William Fenton, played by Heap (Spaced, Brass Eye) dies, French’s Debbie quickly moves through her grief and progresses on to thinking about the insurance payout.
That is because William is not in fact dead – a clerical error sees him declared as deceased when he is still alive. The couple take advantage of the situation, cooking up a scheme to claim a hefty payout, with William having to hide out in the loft for a few months until the money arrives.
![Dawn French](https://newhitsingles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Dawn-French.jpg)
The six-episode series will be directed by Simon Hynd (Ghosts, Motherland) and is written by Simon Mayhew-Archer (This Country).
“At last, a sitcom where I can keep my top on,” French said in a press release. “Mostly.”
“Can You Keep a Secret? hilariously delves into a rarely portrayed stage of the family life cycle, blending classic sitcom elements with an exhilarating farcical crime twist,” said Jon Petrie, director of BBC Comedy. “With Dawn French and Mark Heap leading the cast, this is an irresistible new comedy and I can’t wait for BBC viewers to see it.”
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No broadcast date has been confirmed for the show.
In April, French shared her opinions on cancel culture, saying, “We are expected to present ourselves as perfect.”
The comedian had been told to “catch up” after holding a podcast conversation about J.K. Rowling’s controversial comments about the trans community. “We’re all talking about inclusivity and favouring difference and all the rest of it,” she went on to say. “And that’s all great, I love the idea of that, but that’s not how we’re living.”
“We’re living the opposite of that – we’re massively intolerant, quick to blame, litigation, bullying and trolling and all of this dreadful stuff which has got nothing to do with understanding how other human beings operate.”
French continued: “We are people who know we make mistakes, we know we have shortcomings, we know all this stuff but because we are expected to present ourselves as perfect and only celebrate all the perfect things, it’s just wiped out any margin for error.”
“I don’t like that – I’ve never been cowardly, I hope, but I’m starting to be that because I’m being circumspect about what I will support or not in case it causes trouble.”
Michaela Coel and ‘Succession’ scribe Jesse Armstrong are making a new series together
Michaela Coel has announced her first new series since I May Destroy You, which she is working on with Succession showrunner Jesse Armstrong.
Coel’s new series is titled First Day On Earth, a new 10-part drama set to air on BBC One and co-produced by HBO in association with A24. Armstrong will serve as an executive producer on the show.
Coel plays British novelist Henri, who goes to her parents’ home country of Ghana after she’s offered a film job there. It doesn’t just offer the opportunity for change she’s crying out for, but a chance to reconnect with her estranged father.
![Michaela Coel](https://newhitsingles.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/michaela-coel-spencer-hewitt.jpg)
However, per a synopsis, “neither the job nor her father turn out the way she expected, and soon Henri has to deal with danger and hypocrisy, form new friendships, lose her illusions, and create a new sense of identity – one that might leave her stronger, but could also break her.”
“I am delighted to be working with VAL, the BBC and HBO again, and to partner with A24; thanks to all of their combined taste, care and expertise, I feel our show is in great hands,” Coel said in a press release. “The process of creating FDOE thus far has been a beautifully intimate experience, and I am excited to embark on the next phase to eventually offer this as another televisual gift for anyone willing to accompany Henri on what will be a wild odyssey!”
Filming on First Day On Earth will begin next year.
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In a four-star review of I May Destroy You, NME wrote: “It’s an eye-opening, game-changing new show from one of Britain’s brightest talents. Coel plays her character brilliantly, with defiant wit and nuance. The awful things that happen to Arabella aren’t reserved for people in fictional stories or clichéd horror movies. I May Destroy You urges us to take care of ourselves – because if we don’t, who else will?”
Cedric Burnside Hill Country Love
Almost halfway through Hill Country Love, Cedric Burnside untangles a skein of blues from his guitar and starts singing, “Here I go, bout to walk through the door/I see people, all over the floor/I can’t blame them, the music is hot you know.” The opening of “Juke Joint”, one of the many high points of Burnside’s new album, does much to position his songwriting, and his music, within the rich tradition of hill country blues, placing it firmly in the juke joint: old rural weekend venues where black communities would gather to drink, eat, hang out and play music. It’s no surprise, then, that photographer and scholar Bill Steber once called juke joints the “kiln where the musical fires burned brightest” in the Mississippi Delta.
DAVID BOWIE IS ON THE COVER OF THE LATEST UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE
For Burnside, the juke joint is emblematic of both the development of hill country blues, and the community spirit that informs his music. He’s particularly well placed to carry that history: his grandfather was legendary hill country blues musician, RL Burnside; his father, Calvin Jackson, was a drummer who played with the likes of Jessie Mae Hemphill and Junior Kimbrough. All were key players who brought hill country blues into the late 20th and early 21st century. Burnside started playing with his grandfather, who he calls Big Daddy, in his mid-teens; negotiating the road as a youngster opened his eyes, and when he’d return to school after touring, his fellow students would say he “talked like a fifty-year old”, Burnside laughs.
Being around such musicians also helped Burnside understand, at an almost molecular level, the histories of hill country blues, and the way those histories inform how this seemingly sui generis music comes together. Fundamentally, it builds out of fife and drum blues, a form of music where a cane fife (a small flute) player leads a troop of drummers. This music was first documented for a wider listenership by Alan Lomax, who ‘discovered’ Sid Hemphill, one of the key sources of hill country blues, in the early ’40s. From that music, and subsequent fife and drum corps like Othar ‘Otha’ Turner and his Rising Star Fife and Drum Band, you get the single-minded stream of melody and polyrhythmic complexity that makes Hill country blues so unique.
If anyone can be singled out as being responsible for bringing hill country blues to wider attention, though, it’s Mississippi Fred McDowell, whose Lomax recordings are among the foundational texts of modern blues. Burnside tips his hat to McDowell several times on Hill Country Love, giving remarkably faithful, spirited performances of McDowell classics “You Got To Move” and “Shake Em On Down”. On both, Burnside goes acoustic, the slide burring beautifully against the strings as Burnside sings these songs with deft confidence and a sensitivity to the curious corners of the melodies; he’s obviously drunk deeply from McDowell’s archive of recordings, and he knows how to mobilise that knowledge and understanding to stay faithful to the music’s past, while carving his own initials into the music too.
But the connection with McDowell, for Burnside, is even more intimate and immediate. “Him and my Big Daddy was really good friends,” he says. “They played house parties together; they drank moonshine together. He was one of the ones that I really wish I could have got to meet and shake his hand. That’s one of the reasons why I put ‘Shake Em On Down’ and ‘You Got To Move’ on the album. My Big Daddy used to play those songs.” One thing that keeps doubling back, throughout Hill Country Love, is the remarkably interwoven community that is hill country blues, the way the Burnside and Hemphill dynasties are so core to the music and its development, and the way this history feeds itself and creates parameters for the music that are, however, never limitations.
You can hear those connections and parameters most clearly, perhaps, in the closing “Po Black Maddie”, where Burnside takes on a song from his grandfather’s catalogue and makes it his own. It’s one of the album’s most bravura performances, the guitar playing limber and lithe as Burnside and his band ride the song’s mantric riff and structure to the skies. It’s also an excellent example of what makes this music so special and unique – it’s fixed to a point; the music is hypnotic, droney, repetitive, but not reductively so, and it creates its own energy, its own head of steam, through such stark repetition. “I think that’s one of the good things of hill country blues,” Burnside reflects, “that drone, that hypnotic beat. It’s always going. No matter where the music goes, that beat is still there.”
If there’s a key to Hill Country Love’s 14 songs, it’s perseverance, when it comes both to the music, and to the life that sustains it. On “I Know”, Burnside’s cat’s-claw guitar figure is shadowed, beautifully, by Patrick Williams’ harmonica, keening away in the back of the mix, before stepping forward for a solo that draws as much as it can out of a child’s clutch of notes. A run of songs midway through the album weave together tightly to create parallels between dedication to one’s faith, and dedication to one’s music: “Closer”’s clipped guitars are tracked by Burnside’s rich voice, while “Love You Music” is carried by a riff that’s strangely filigree, while drummer Artemas LeSueur, the understated heartbeat of Hill Country Love, shifts from deep, sly toms, to martial clamour on the snare.
“Toll On They Life” feels like the album’s centrepiece, though, the simple poetry of Burnside’s lyrics cracked open by a surprising, unexpected chord change that leads the song into new terrain, briefly: the flourish feels like light chiming through carriage doors. Throughout, Burnside is quietly observational, taking in the way “People get mad when things don’t quite go the way they want/They do crazy things out of spite”; soon he’s warning, “People will lie in your face/To get things to go they way.” What’s remarkable about Burnside’s delivery here is the way it see-saws between a kind of dispassionate observation and an understated, yet stern judgement – something he can flick between in the simple curve of a syllable.
Lest this all sounds too heavy, Burnside’s also able to cut loose, to follow a groove to its natural conclusion. “Funky” does just what it says, with a railway rhythm from LeSueur matched by a grinding guitar riff and Burnside’s itchy, tetchy repetition, like a dancefloor mantra, of the title’s imperative. “Smile” is slower, but the chipped guitar riff with its decisive cut-offs, traced in outline by sleepy harmonica and the deep prowl of the bass, has a sensuous, smoky sway. Luther Dickinson’s bass playing on the album can slip by at times, but it’s a keen, grounding weight to the songs, giving them real heft.
Dickinson’s also co-producer of the album, along with Burnside himself. Recorded in a rather prosaically described “old building in Ripley, Mississippi”, you get the sense here of two friends at play; this is music created with ease, songs that are uncluttered, with no fuss or flash, but plenty of commitment. It’s another compelling achievement for a blues artist whose institutional recognition – a Grammy for best traditional blues album for 2021’s I Be Trying; the Mississippi Governor’s Arts Award for Excellence – actually makes perfect sense. As the keeper of the flame of hill country blues, Burnside’s earned it, and then some.
Beyoncé shares ‘Cowboy Carter’ album artwork and responds to backlash over country music
Beyoncé has revealed the official album artwork for ‘Cowboy Carter‘ and has addressed the backlash over her venture into country music.
The pop icon shared the name of her upcoming eighth studio LP ‘Cowboy Carter’ via her official website on March 12. The site’s landing page featured a photo of a horse saddle with a red, white and blue sash that read “Country Carter.” Many believed that the photo of the saddle was the official album artwork.
Today (March 19), Beyoncé took to her official Instagram account to share the actual artwork for the LP. The photo sees the singer in a white cowboy hat with long platinum blonde locks while wearing a red, white and blue leather outfit holding an American flag and wearing a “Country Carter” sash while sitting upon a white horse.
The artwork was shared in celebration of the ten day countdown until the album’s release on March 29.
“This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive. It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history,” wrote Beyoncé in the post’s caption.
She continued: “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me. act ii is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”
The singer also revealed that there are “a few surprises on the album” and shared that she hopes that fans will be able to hear the “heart, soul, love and passion” she poured into the album.
“I focused on this album as a continuation of RENAISSANCE…I hope this music is an experience, creating another journey where you can close your eyes, start from the beginning and never stop. This ain’t a Country album.” she concluded. “This is a “Beyoncé” album. This is act ii COWBOY CARTER, and I am proud to share it with y’all!”
The album is available for pre-save/pre-order here. Limited edition coloured vinyl pressings in red, white, blue and black are available as well as two limited-edition CDs with alternative cover photos featuring half of her face on display. The LP serves as the second instalment of what is expected to be a trilogy of ‘Renaissance’ albums.
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Her latest singles ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ and ’16 Carriages’ will be featured on the album. Beyoncé unveiled the two tracks during this year’s NFL Super Bowl LVIII and announced the that her eighth album would be arriving this month. She made history by becoming the first Black woman to top the US country chart with ‘Texas Hold’ Em’.
In other news, Dolly Parton seemingly let slip that Beyoncé has covered her hit song ‘Jolene’.
While talking about Beyoncé’s pivot to country music in an interview with Knox News, Parton was asked about rumours that Beyoncé will include a cover of ‘Jolene’ on her new album. “Well, I think she has,” Parton said to Knox News. “I think she’s recorded ‘Jolene’ and I think it’s probably gonna be on her country album, which I’m very excited about that.” Parton added: “I love her! She’s a beautiful girl and a great singer.”
Kelly Rowland also responded to rumours on whether Beyoncé‘s new album will feature a Destiny’s Child reunion.
Rowland spoke to hip-hop commentator Big Tigger on the Atlanta radio station V-103 to promote the Tyler Perry-produced Netflix film Mea Culpa, in which she has a lead role. Tigger asked Rowland if the recent rumours about ‘Act II’ being “either rock-based or a [Destiny’s Child] reunion,” to which the 43-year-old replied “that is her business to talk about, not mind” before winking.
Peter KingKing: From Rhythm to Soul – A Fusion of Music and Business Brews Sweet Melodies
Los Angeles-born singer-songwriter Peter KingKing defies easy categorization. He's a multi-faceted talent who blends musical passion with sharp business acumen. While managing car dealerships across the country, KingKing finds solace and artistic expression through his soulful music.
KingKing's love affair with music began in his youth. The melodies of the guitar and the rhythmic pulse of the drums became his haven. This early influence translates into his music today, where his lyrics paint vivid portraits of love, longing, and life's complexities with raw authenticity.
His music resonates deeply because it cuts through the noise and connects directly with the listener's core. "Sweeter Than," his latest release, exemplifies this artistic power. It's a captivating exploration of infatuation, weaving a narrative of love and yearning with the skill of a seasoned storyteller. The track's infectious beats and catchy hooks perfectly capture the universal experience of desiring something just out of reach.