S Reignite

  Earlier this month, the 65 th annual Grammy awards took place in Los Angeles and saw former member of One Direction and now successful solo artist, Harry Styles win Album of the Year for his third album Harry’s House . After he won there was immediate debate online about whether Beyoncé’s sixth album Renaissance was snubbed for the award. This argument was fuelled by fans who noted Beyoncé has never won the Album of the Year Grammy despite her influential albums Beyoncé (2013) and Lemonade (2016) being nominated in this category. In my opinion Beyoncé isn’t being snubbed by the Recording Academy, she is being pigeonholed. Although Beyoncé is the most decorated female artist in Grammy history, many of her wins have come in the R&B categories including, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It), which to me is clearly a pop song. Adding to this, in the summer when Renaissance lead single Break My Soul came out, I was surprised t...

  In the latest edition of his video series Let’s Argue , where music reviewer Anthony Fantano discusses the hot takes of his Patreon members, one supporter referred to his Twitch chat as ‘a toxic environment that feels like a very unwelcoming place for some people to participate in.' This video is a compilation of Let’s Argue’s that Fantano has posted on to his Patreon . The video was released shortly after the eye-raising beef between the YouTuber and rap superstar Drake which saw the Canadian direct messaging the reviewer on Instagram and telling him his ‘existence was a light 1’, attempting to poke fun at Fantano’s own rating system. Fantano, whose main channel is called theneedledrop, disagrees with the hot take explaining that he and his moderators take great care to remove racist, bigoted, and hateful people from his chat. He then goes to share that he doesn’t think his Twitch chat is particularly better or worse than any other content creators and that chats on the...

  ‘Let’s disagree to agree because quotes are my thing.’ - Rodrigo I miss John Cena. I miss watching him in the ring or cutting promo and I don’t even watch the WWE religiously anymore. I’ll read one headline every once in a while, that makes we question that company that I used to love dearly, but I still want to see John in the ring. Right now, as many before him, Cena is trying to be a superstar on the silver screen.   His latest role is smoke jumper Superintendent Jake “Supe” Carson in Nickelodeon’s Playing with Fire. When putting out a cabin fire Carson rescues three siblings. But when a flood arrives and their parents can’t come pick them up, Jake and his fire team must navigate having three rowdy children in their depot. The trailer showcased Carson’s action hero team of smoke jumpers and although it didn't strike me as nothing new, it still seemed entertaining, and at times it was. Keegan – Michael Key from Key & Peele fame was the main proponent of comed...

Through my YouTube recommended I have recently discovered Youtuber Kelly Wakasa who does short form well edited, entertaining videos that show case his charismatic personality. But despite having 450k subscribers his comments are littered with people calling him underrated and I don’t understand why. Youtuber Kelly Wakasa  has over 400k subscribers  The amount of people on Y ou Tube as both consumers and content creators has increased dramatically in recent years. More and more of these   c reat o rs are reaching the milestones  of 100k, 1 million and 10 million. Veteran Youtuber PewDiePie received a ruby bro fist to mark 50 million and has since obtain over 50 million more.  But amidst all these large numbers the smaller ones are beginning to get undervalued, even those that aren't so small. It’s easy to look at Wakasa’s subscriber count and only see it  as numbers on a page but in reality that is at least four hundred and fifty thousand individuals that...

‘not every situation calls for your patented approach of "shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more and then when everybody's dead try to ask a question or two." – President Grant In the run up to release of the live action remake of Aladdin in which Will Smith played Genie, the rapper turned actor constantly slated Wild Wild West , stating that despite the potential the film had and how much he promoted it he regards it as one of his worst films. Having only watched the film once before when I was probably too young to do so, I knew little about the Western yet hearing Smith constantly talk negatively of it intrigued me. So, when Comedy Central showed the film I thought I’d take the opportunity to watch it and see if it’s as bad Smith portrays it.   He’s not entirely wrong. The film chooses to use smoke and explosions as a way to move from one scene to the next instead of finding a logical way for the reluctant pair of U.S Marshals Jim West and Artemus G...

In 2015 Barclays ran a series of adverts that taught people LifeSkills such as to keep your email address professional and how to use your social media to get a job. There’s a lot pressure on job hunters to make sure that their social media is presentable with a bad social media history and a promotion of unpopular ideas nowadays costing people their jobs. However, what is still deemed unprofessional for employees seems to be fine for brands. At least three years ago American fast food chain Wendy’s started joining in on the social media fun by sending comedic clapbacks to it followers on Twitter. Since then companies have invested so much more into their social media marketing. A method brands, predominantly fast fashion brands, take is to tweet along with their customers about the most popular TV shows. In the United Kingdom this means tweeting about summer smash hit and winter flop Love Island . Despite the many complaints people have had about the show Brits sti...

After the release of Eminem’s 11 th studio album Music to Be Murdered By , I recalled a discussion about whether the Detroit native could make an album similar to that of  Jay-Z’s 4:44 .  In Jay-Z’s 13 th studio album, he is open with his listeners as he raps about infidelity within his marriage with singer Beyoncé, fathering a daughter and the miracle of having twins.   The album received three Grammy nominations in the 60 th Annual Grammy Awards and Jay-Z’s mature and vulnerable lyrics were praised by critics. The question then arose, if Eminem could create an album of the same stature.  The themes of marriage and children that Jay-Z delve into on his latest solo album, Eminem has been talking about throughout his career. Having been in an on-and-off relationship with Kim Scott since the age of 15, which includes two marriages, and having his daughter Hailie at the age of 23 with little money, they have always had an influence on his music. ...

                                            ‘You gotta learn to balance it Ty.’ - Ronald Many of us aspire to be able do everything and be able to perfectly balance it all. It’s the same for Tyler Williams who juggles his grades, being a wrestler, having a girlfriend and playing the piano. Although, at one-point Tyler makes us and himself believe that he’s got it all under control, when thing falls out of balance his life quickly spirals out of control. From the trailer , I imagined the film would be more focused on Sterling K. Brown’s character, Ronald Williams - Tyler’s father, and in some ways it is. He intimidates his son and forgets his daughter until they both end up lashing out from his control. Waves begins with Tyler and his girlfriend Alexis Lopez singing in his car as the camera rotates around them. The camera spinning upon first look is a cool techniqu...

‘It was a depression so low and flat that I couldn't even envision suicide as a solution.’ Flynn The debut novel by Bobby Hall aka rapper Logic has its moments of ingenuity but those moments are overshadowed by over explanation and uninventive dialogue. From the opening chapter, it is obvious that Hall wants elements of his writing to shock and scare the reader, as expected from a psychological thriller, as he introduces a cliff hanger, but unfortunately this is the first of many unsuccessful attempts to intrigue the reader. This coupled with the over explanation of characters such as Ronda who works in the supermarket or action in the novel, impedes on the readers ability to engage and enjoy the story. Also, there were moments when Hall proudly broke the fourth wall. The first time I found it to be whimsical writing style but as it appeared more often it became another element that impeded on the action of the novel, causing me to lose more interest in the story th...