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Watch 1st Full Trailer for "What Happened, Miss Simone?", Documentary to Debut on Netflix June 26

By goodblacknews on May 1, 2015
What Happened, Miss Simone?

Netflix and RadicalMedia paired up to produce and release the documentary, “What Happened, Miss Simone?,” directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus (“The Farm: Angola,” “USA” and “Bobby Fischer Against the World”), which will premiere exclusively in all territories where Netflix is available, on June 26.
Made in cooperation with the Estate of Nina Simone, and described as an “epic” documentary, director Liz Garbus’ film interweaves never-before-heard recordings and rare archival footage together, with Nina’’s most memorable songs, incorporating never-before-heard audio tapes, recorded over the course of 3 decades, of Nina, telling her life story to various interviewers and would-be biographers. Rare concert footage and archival interviews, along with diaries, letters, interviews with Nina’’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, friends and collaborators, and other exclusive materials, make this the most authentic, personal, and unflinching telling of the extraordinary life of one of the 20th Century’s greatest recording artists.
Emmy–award nominated cinematographer Igor Martinovic (“House of Cards,” “Man on Wire”) shot the film, and Joshua L. Pearson (“Made in America,” “Under African Skies”) edited. Sidney Beaumont (“Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory”), Jon Kamen (“The Fog of War”), Lisa Nishimura (“The Square,” “Virunga”), Adam Del Deo (“The Square”) and Lisa Simone Kelly serve as executive producers on the film.
The documentary made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
Netflix has released a first full trailer for the upcoming film, which is embedded below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moOQXZxriKY&w=560&h=315]
article by Tambay A. Obenson via blogs.indiewire.com

Bessie Smith Celebrated with Upcoming "Bessie" Biopic and HBO-Sponsored “Bessie’s 81 Theater Tour”

Bessie Smith Celebrated with Upcoming "Bessie" Biopic and HBO-Sponsored “Bessie’s 81 Theater Tour”

By goodblacknews on April 29, 2015

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Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith in “Bessie” (l); Legendary Blues Artist Bessie Smith (r) [Photo via nypost.com]
 
For some reason, a decent portion of today’s entertainment news is all about Bessie Smith.  Which is a great thing, because the under-appreciated “Empress of the Blues” has deserved her due in the media as well as American musical history for well over half a century.  Thanks to Queen Latifah, who committed to bringing Bessie’s story to life after 22 years in development, HBO will air the biopic “Bessie”, written and directed by Dee Rees (“Pariah”), on May 16.  The movie also stars Khandi Alexander, Tika Sumpter, Mike Epps and Academy Award winner Monique as Ma Rainey.
Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 2.53.04 PMNot only did Good Black News have the great fortune to be part of today’s HuffPost Live interview with “Bessie” director Rees (which you can watch by clicking the link above or right here), HBO also announced its launch of a special two-city event series in New York this week honoring the legacy of the blues-jazz singer called “Bessie’s 81 Theater Tour.”
The event, which will coincide with the New York and Los Angeles premieres of the biopic starring Queen Latifah, will feature a workshop lead by Grammy Award-winning producer Bryan Michael Cox and singer-songwriter Stacy Barthe. The workshop will be offered to local artists in an effort to mimic the creative music process once used by Smith and her peers.
“In today’s music, I believe the constant utilization of live instrumentation is missing,” Cox said in a statement emailed to HuffPost. “Whenever that element is injected into popular music in this era, the song usually becomes a hit. One great example of this is Mark Ronson’s ‘Uptown Funk.’”
In addition to the artist workshop, the two-city promotional tour will also feature a music showcase comprised of a series of performances from local artists. It will conclude with a private dinner for native influencers and a surprise performance by an “A-list artist.”
“When thinking about how we wanted to build buzz about the film, we wanted to do something that was completely unique and immersive,” Lucinda Martinez, SVP of HBO Multicultural Marketing said in a press release for the event.
“We’re confident that this event series properly honors the legacy of Bessie Smith by showcasing aspiring songwriters and producers. We want to raise awareness for the film, create connections and offer these young creatives a platform to share their craft.”
The “Bessie’s 81 Theater Tour” will conclude in Los Angeles next month leading up to the May 16 premiere of “Bessie” on HBO.
In the meantime, if you want a Bessie Smith fix before then, we suggest checking out her only appearance on film performing her iconic “St. Louis Blues” below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpVCqXRlXx4&w=420&h=315]
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, Good Black News Founder and Editor-In-Chief

Academy Award Winner Common Joins "Barbershop 3" Cast

By goodblacknews on April 29, 2015
common

 Common has committed to star in the ensemble cast of Barbershop 3, the MGM sequel that New Line will distribute. He joins Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer, who are reprising their roles from the first two movies, and The Best Man franchise director Malcolm D. Lee, who’s helming. Cube Vision is producing and MGM will run production. Bob Teitel and George Tillman Jr. of State Street Pictures are the lead producers. The script is by Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver.

Common has been busy since winning the Oscar for Best Original Song in the film Selma. He is starring in the Rob Reiner-directed Being Charlie as well as the David Ayer-directed Suicide Squad and the Martin Campbell-directed Hunter Killer.
article by Mike Fleming Jr. via deadline.com

DJ Premier Signs On As Music Producer For VH1 Rap Drama "The Breaks"

By goodblacknews on April 23, 2015

Grammy Winning Producer DJ Premier to supervise music on upcoming VH1 movie "The Breaks" (Photo: xxlmag.com)
Grammy Winning Producer DJ Premier to supervise music on upcoming VH1 movie “The Breaks” (Photo: xxlmag.com)

According to Deadline.com, VH1 has announced production of The Breaks, an original movie about the Hip-Hop business set in New York City during the early 90s, that will serve as a backdoor pilot for a potential series. Christopher Edward Martin, better known as DJ Premier, multiple Grammy-award winning member of the seminal rap group Gang Starr, will serve as executive music producer and compose the score.
The Breaks is based on Dan Charnas’ non-fiction book The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop, which covers the rap from its infancy in the 1970s house party and park scene through the staggering financial and cultural milestones of the early 2000s. Set in 1990, the series will follow three friends from different backgrounds attempting to break into the business just as the art form became part of the pop music mainstream.
Given the setting, which happens to mark the middle point of the golden age of hip hop, the rise of gangsta rap, and the height of New Jack Swing, Texas native DJ Premier’s involvement is a huge advantage. In addition to his work with Gang Starr, Premier has been involved with some of the most influential and successful rap and R&B albums of all time, including works by KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, Snoop Dogg, Compton’s Most Wanted, Nas, D’Angelo, The Notorious B.I.G., and Jay Z.
The Breaks follows VH1’s previous TV films, 2013’s CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story, and 2014’s Drumline: A New Beat, both of which saw great ratings for the network. Single Ladies, an original series which ran for three seasons on VH1and is now enjoying a fourth on Centric, started as a two-hour back door pilot. If successful, The Breaks could similarly spawn a full series aimed at the audience of other shows with soundtracks overseen by music titans, like Fox’s Empire, with music production by Timbaland, and ABC’s Nashville, which saw T-Bone Burnett as music producer during its first season.
The Breaks will be written, directed and executive produced by Seith Mann, whose previous credits include episodes of The Wire, Fringe, The Riches, Entourage, and Homeland.  In addition to his production work, DJ Premier is also the host of a weekly show on Sirius XM’s Hip-Hop Nation. Filming for The Breaks will begin in June, and the film is scheduled to air sometime in late fall 2015.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow @lakinhutcherson)

Ice-T Announces Art of Rap Music Festival Kicking off July 18 in Irvine, CA

By goodblacknews on April 20, 2015
Ice T

According to bet.com, Ice-T has announced his very own music festival for this summer. The first-ever Art of Rap Music Festival kicks off July 18 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, Calif., followed by another show July 19 in Northern California at the Shoreline Amphitheater.

Keeping in line with his critically acclaimed Art of Rap documentary from a few years ago, the festival lineup is jam packed with influential rap artists including Ice-T himself, Afrika Bambaataa, Melle Mel, Rakim, Kool Moe Dee, The Game, Bone Thugs ‘N’ Harmony, Doug E. Fresh, Warren G, Kurtis Blow, EPMD, Xzibit,  Biz Markie, DJ Quik and Slick Rick.

Art of Rap FestivalThe Art of Rap Music Festival will feature two stages with more than 25 different artists, as well as break-dancers, graffiti artists and vendors. Tickets go on sale Friday, April 24 at 10 AM PST.

Visit www.ArtofRapFest.com for more information.

article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow@lakinhutcherson)

R.I.P. "Just Got Paid" R&B Singer Johnny Kemp

By goodblacknews on April 17, 2015
R&B singer Johnny Kemp has passed away at the age of 55-years-old.  Born in the Bahamas, Kemp rose to fame after the release of his 1988 hit single Just Got Paid and his involvement in the New Jack Swing sound.  
Kemp was scheduled to be a part of the New Jack Swing performance with Teddy Riley on Tom Joyner’s annual cruise but it has been confirmed that he was not on the ship at the time of his death.
Reach Media Inc. released the following statement:

We have received confirmation that Johnny Kemp has passed away. We do not have any other details. We can confirm he was not on the ship for the Tom Joyner Foundation Fantastic Voyage Cruise.

To see video of Kemp performing his best-known song, click below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl1mQASHc48&w=420&h=315]
article via blackamericaweb.com

R.I.P. Soul Singer and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Percy Sledge

By goodblacknews on April 15, 2015
Percy Sledge made “When a Man Loves a Woman” a timeless hit. (Photo Credit: James J. Kriegsmann)

Percy Sledge, the R&B singer whose soulful ballad of eternal love and rejection, “When a Man Loves a Woman,” topped the charts in 1966, died on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, La. He was 74.

His death was confirmed by Artists International Management, which represented him. Mr. Sledge had liver cancer, for which he underwent surgery in 2014, Mark Lyman, his agent and manager, said.  Mr. Sledge, sometimes called the King of Slow Soul, was a sentimental crooner and one of the South’s first soul stars, having risen to fame from jobs picking cotton and working as a hospital orderly while performing at clubs and colleges on the weekends.“I was singing every style of music: the Beatles, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Motown, Sam Cooke, the Platters,” he once said. “When a Man Loves a Woman” was his first recording for Atlantic Records, after a patient at the hospital introduced him to the record producer Quin Ivy. It reached No. 1 on the pop charts in 1966 and sold more than a million copies, becoming the label’s first gold record. (The Recording Industry Association of America began certifying records as gold in 1958.) Raw and lovelorn, the song was a response to a woman who had left him for another man, Mr. Sledge said. He called its composition a “miracle.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYb84BDMbi0&w=420&h=315]
An album of the same name was released that year, and three more studio albums for Atlantic followed in the 1960s: “Warm and Tender Soul,” “The Percy Sledge Way” and “Take Time to Know Her.”
While Mr. Sledge never again reached the heights of his first hit, “When a Man Loves a Woman” had many lives: as an early highlight of the Muscle Shoals, Ala., music scene; as a movie soundtrack staple in the 1980s, heard in “The Big Chill” and “Platoon”; and in a 1991 cover version by Michael Bolton, which also topped the Billboard chart and earned Mr. Bolton a Grammy.

Although the song, which ranks 53rd on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest of all time, is credited to two of Mr. Sledge’s early bandmates, the bassist Calvin Lewis and the organist Andrew Wright, who assisted with the arrangement, Mr. Sledge said of the melody, “I hummed it all my life, even when I was picking and chopping cotton in the fields.”

John Legend Launches "Free America" Campaign To End Mass Incarceration

By goodblacknews on April 13, 2015

John Legend at Atlanta's Chastain Park Amphitheatre in 2014. (Photo by Robb D. Cohen/Invision/AP)
John Legend at Atlanta’s Chastain Park Amphitheatre in 2014. (Photo by Robb D. Cohen/Invision/AP)

Grammy and Academy Award-winning singer John Legend has launched a campaign to end mass incarceration by announcing today the multiyear initiative, FREE AMERICA.  He will visit and perform at a correctional facility on Thursday in Austin, Texas, where he also will be part of a press conference with state legislators to discuss Texas’ criminal justice system.
“We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country,” Legend said in an interview. “It’s destroying families, it’s destroying communities and we’re the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.”
Legend, 36, will also visit a California state prison and co-host a criminal justice event with Politico in Washington, D.C., later this month. The campaign will include help from other artists — to be announced — and organizations committed to ending mass incarceration.
“I’m just trying to create some more awareness to this issue and trying to make some real change legislatively,” he said. “And we’re not the only ones. There are senators that are looking at this, like Rand Paul and Cory Booker, there are other nonprofits that are looking at this, and I just wanted to add my voice to that.”

Queen Latifah's Bessie Smith biopic "Bessie" Set to Debut May 16th on HBO (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on April 3, 2015
Official Still of Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith in HBO's biopic
Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith in HBO’s biopic (Courtesy: HBO)

Queen Latifah stars as legendary blues singer Bessie Smith in the HBO Films drama “Bessie,” which is directed by Dee Rees, from a screenplay written by Rees, Christopher Cleveland & Bettina Gilois.
With a story by Rees and Horton Foote, the film focuses on Smith’s transformation from a struggling young singer into “The Empress of the Blues,” one of the most successful recording artists of the 1920s.
HBO has announced its movie will debut on Saturday, May 16 at 8PM.
The cast includes Michael Kenneth Williams as Bessie’s husband, Jack; Khandi Alexander as Bessie’s older sister, Viola; Mike Epps as Richard, a bootlegger and romantic interest; Tika Sumpter as Lucille, a performer and romantic interest; Tory Kittles as Bessie’s older brother, Clarence; Oliver Platt as famed photographer and writer Carl Van Vechten; Bryan Greenberg as renowned record producer and music critic John Hammond; with Charles S. Dutton as Ma Rainey’s husband, William “Pa” Rainey; and Mo’Nique as blues legend Ma Rainey.
The film will offer an intimate look at the determined woman whose immense talent and love for music took her from anonymity in the rough-and-tumble world of vaudeville to the 1920s blues scene and international fame, capturing her professional highs and personal lows, and ultimate legend.
Described by HBO as a labor of love for the filmmakers, “Bessie” has been 22 years in the making. The first draft was written by playwright Horton Foote. Queen Latifah was approached by producers Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck to take on the role of Bessie when she was just launching her acting career. She eventually came on board as an executive producer, along with producing partner Shakim Compere.
Director Dee Rees caught HBO’s attention with the buzz around her award-winning film, “Pariah.”
Says Latifah, “I have been excited about this project since the very beginning. When HBO got involved, we were thrilled and we worked together to make something that would capture Bessie’s life honestly and respectfully.”
Watch the telepic’s first full-length trailer below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FhmzwXfgz8&w=560&h=315]
original article by Tambay A. Obenson via blogs.indiewire.com

De La Soul's Kickstarter Campaign for New Album Surpasses Goal

By goodblacknews on April 1, 2015
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De La Soul (DE LA SOUL/KICKSTARTER)

According to theroot.com, it’s been over 10 years since the last De La Soul album was released, but thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, the trio famous for songs such as “Potholes In My Lawn,” “Me, Myself and I” and “Saturdays” will begin recording its eighth album, And the Anonymous Nobody. The group’s goal of $110,000 was met within 48 hours and has since been surpassed by $178,262 for a current grand total of $288,262.

“And the Anonymous Nobody really plays on two ideas,” the group told Rolling Stone.”No egos, no seniority, no bosses, just a group of equal ‘nobodies’ working towards one goal: making music. Second, there’s always a silent champion or brave individual—a ‘nobody’—that steps in saves the day. The person that steps in and stands for something. Something bigger than him … and makes a change. ‘Nobody can save the day!’ Well he sure can! We are those nobodies … stepping in, standing for something and hopefully making a change.”
The new album will also include guests such as David Byrne, 2 Chainz and Little Dragon. Those who helped fund the album will receive rewards ranging from exclusive album tracks to a shopping excursion with De La Soul.
There are still 30 days and several prizes left in the campaign, so if you’d like to donate, click here.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow @lakinhutcherson)