06/17/2008
Music News: Rihanna To Star In Gay-Themed Mama Black Widow, Plus Yaz, Robyn, Lollapalooza 2008
Robbie Daw presents a weekly pop music update here on Towleroad! Robbie runs his own site called Chart Rigger.
"One early evening during the first week of February in 1969 I visited Otis Tilson. He was an incredibly comely and tragic homosexual queen with whom I had been acquainted for most of the twenty-five years that I had been a black pimp in Chicago, Illinois."
Thus begins Robert "Iceberg Slim" Beck's classic and long-out-of-print 1969 novel, Mama Black Widow, a fictional memoir of a "black queen adrift with his brothers and sisters in the dark ghetto world of pimpdom and violent crime." In addition to Mos Def and Macy Gray, Rihanna has been cast in the film adaptation, due out in 2009. Mama Black Widow will be her acting debut.
Darren Grant, director of music videos by Destiny's Child ("Bills, Bills, Bills", "Survivor") and Jewel ("Standing Still") is directing the film. As for "comely and tragic" Otis, Brian J. White is cast in that role. White previously played gay in the 2005 Sarah Jessica Parker flick, The Family Stone, and the leader of a step-dancing fraternity in last year's Stomp The Yard.
Want a second chance at tickets to Yaz's sold-out Reconnected Tour?
Robyn will be Madonna's opening act for eight of the Material Girl's August and September European dates.
Coldplay's new album, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, gets its U.S. release today. The set was made available in England last Thursday, and over its three-day sales weekend moved 302,000 copies and easily topped the U.K. chart on Sunday. Meanwhile, minor controversy arised recently when Brooklyn band the Creaky Boards claimed Chris Martin and Co. knicked the melody of one of their songs, claiming the Coldplay frontman was seen grooving in the audience last year at one of their New York shows.
Duffy apparently left in tears after a run-in with Johnny Rotten. On a more positive note for the Welsh singer, she's rumored to be recording the new James Bond theme.
Five years after Hotel Paper, Michelle Branch's third solo album to be released by year's end.
The Lollapalooza 2008 lineup and schedule has been posted.
TODAY'S NEW RELEASES:
Katy Perry's One Of The Boys. Her single "I Kissed A Girl" is currently the top download at iTunes.
Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace, the eighth studio album from The Offspring.
Remixes for Alanis Morissette's single, "Underneath," featuring turns by Josh Harris, Morgan Page and John Dahlback.
Nostradamus, a concept album revolving around said prophet, by Judas Priest.
Sphere: Related ContentPosted 5:15 PM EST by Robbie in Music, Music Recommendations, Rihanna, Robyn | Permalink
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Never heard of Mama Black Widow until now but I'm suddenly VERY eager to look into it. Thanks for the introduction, Robb-D.
Posted by: Chas | Jun 17, 2008 5:26:28 PM
I haven't been a metal fan since, oh, ninth grade. But that Judas Priest concept album about Nostradamus intrigues me. It's partly because Rob Halford, the lead singer of Judas Priest, is gay and apparently lives in Phoenix. I keep hoping to run into him at Applebees.
Posted by: crispy | Jun 17, 2008 5:45:45 PM
Rob Halford is the Metal God and I would gleefully worship at his altar. \m/
Posted by: Chas | Jun 17, 2008 5:59:10 PM
Just read the first 10 pages of Mama Black Widow on Google books and if the adaptation is any good the movie should be a cultural blast. Kudos to all involved in getting this one green lit/made.
Posted by: Giovanni | Jun 17, 2008 6:12:29 PM
robyn, rihanna, duffy...
are there any chick singers anymore who have last names or must they all go single-named as if they were the offspring of baby mamas?
Posted by: alguien | Jun 17, 2008 6:33:44 PM
Why is Towleroad promoting Christian homophobe, Katy Perry, singer of "Ur So Gay"?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hKHysOO1Mes
"Sure, it’s just a song, but wrapping your homophobia in post-post-irony new wave ’80s kitsch as if no one is going to call you out on your desperate attempt at publicity. Nonetheless it’s the ‘you’re so gay’ chorus that bugs the shit out me, attaching the term ‘gay’ to all that is bad, horrible, negative and wrong. How sad that the trump card was to pen this song, to unleash your homophobia, as if calling a fellow out as gay you were somehow feminizing him? What’s wrong Kate, couldn’t get the term FAGGOT past the record label?"
More here: http://www.jockohomo.com/datapanik/?p=2401
Posted by: John in Manhattan | Jun 18, 2008 10:00:40 AM
"Mama Black Widow"
Black gay male (who may also be Transgendered) presented on the screen as one of the main characters in the story. A story written by a black man with a very limited view of homosexuality (and a limited view of drag queens). Of course, some say that the story isn't really about a homosexual character's perspective on his and his family's experience in racist America--that it's actually an allegory which explains racist America's destruction of the black family--specifically "black manhood". Well, we'll see.
I don't like straight writers who are hostile to me writing about me, and I don't like straight filmmakers who are hostile to me presenting me on film. I don't think they understand ME.
"Well, Derrick, 'Mama Black Widow' isn't about you, dear"
If it's a straight black man's view of black faggots, and what societal circumstances--he thinks--create black faggots; then, yes, it is about me.
Yeah, I'm a little paranoid about this film.
Posted by: Derrick from Philly | Jun 18, 2008 11:02:45 AM