In 2023, the Brooklyn Public Library’s ‘The Book of HOV’ exhibit drew more than 600,000 visitors to learn about Jay-Z’s one-of-a-kind life and career. That exhibit is now being celebrated in book form with ‘The Book of HOV: A Tribute to Jay-Z,’ out today through Assouline, collecting unseen photographs, selected …
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The double standard is almost as old as hip-hop itself. A decorated filmmaker gets laurels for his or her latest bullet-laden gangster movie. A rock or country star is proclaimed a songwriting genius for violent tales of man’s inhumanity to man. But rappers are held to a different standard, their …
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For at least the past two years, Fiona Apple has served as a volunteer court watcher, virtually watching proceedings in Maryland in order to ensure criminal justice accountability. Now, with the National Courtwatch Network set to expand its reach, Apple has provided narration and the score for a PSA about …
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O n the morning of Dec. 9, 2022, a young woman named Zoë awoke and found herself to be in avenger mode. Strictly speaking, a disguise may not have been necessary for the doling out of justice Zoë had planned for that day. But it had been a year and …
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Memphis police doused Tyre Nichols with pepper spray, and brutally punched and kicked him as the 29-year-old cried out for his mother, video of the fatal beating on Friday revealed. The four videos [Warning: graphic images] the city released show the violent attack on Nichols following a traffic stop on …
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When Tyre Nichols‘ mother remembered her son, she remembered a man who “loved sunsets” and had a passion for photography and skateboarding. She spoke during a press conference on Friday ahead of the video footage released later that afternoon showing Memphis Police fatally beating Nichols following a traffic stop on …
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A man on death row in Texas is appealing his sentence to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that a video clip of him chatting with a Comedy Central comedian was used improperly as evidence against him during his trial. In 2015, comedian Jeff Ross visited a Texas jail to film …
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Pieper Lewis, the Iowa teen who killed her alleged rapist, will face a judge on Friday for the first time since escaping from the women’s shelter where she was serving a probation sentence. Lewis was sentenced to probation in a deferred judgment after pleading drown from murder to manslaughter. She …
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Fiona Apple accused Prince George’s County, Maryland officials of cutting off Zoom access to court watchers after several (including herself) filed affidavits in support of a lawsuit brought against the county’s allegedly unlawful pretrial services process. Apple has served as a court watcher for the past couple of years, working …
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Swift Justice, an inmate at the Fountain Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, went to prison at the age of 17. Today, he’s 47, with 20 more years to go on a half-century prison term he got before he was an adult. “In Alabama, it’s lock ‘em up and throw away …
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