Why Are Americans Ignoring Trevor Noah?
Willa Paskin | Slate
“But if you watch The Daily Show night after night, you get the sense that the writers have adjusted their tactics for a very different kind of host—a Potemkin Jon Stewart, someone smooth and ingratiating who is reaching for unconverted viewers, instead of an inveterate political satirist preaching to the deeply informed.”
DJ Khaled’s Journey of Success Started Long Before Snapchat
Ryan Pfeffer | Miami New Times
“On paper, Khaled’s career doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. He’s released eight full-length albums but doesn’t actually rap on any of them. He’s perhaps the most quoted figure in hip-hop, able to create viral catch phrases with an ease that marketing executives dream about ... He’s a human pop-up ad who, to many, is known simply for shouting his own name like a hairy brown Pikachu.”
Zinger! Kristaps Porzingi Is Silencing Doubters and Taking Over New York
Lee Jenkins | Sports Illustrated
“It is an act of contortion almost as acrobatic as a lefthanded floater in a crowded lane. The NBA is populated by outsized humans, but there is something especially supernatural about the length of Porzingis, which can’t simply be characterized by wingspan measurements at predraft workouts.”
I’m So Damn Tired of Slave Movies
Kara Brown | Jezebel
“When movies about slavery or, more broadly, other types of violence against black people are the only types of films regularly deemed ‘important’ and ‘good’ by white people, you wonder if white audiences are only capable of lauding a story where black people are subservient.”
Up the Anti: How Rihanna Rewrote the Rules of Pop
Peter Robinson | The Guardian
“The timing of her arrival and rise sidestepped the tailing off of the Perez Hilton-type celebrity culture of the mid-2000s and centered on direct-to-fan communication that allowed artists to control their own image. For some acts, this requirement to let the world into their affairs was far from ideal, but nobody on the pop landscape has defined their image as well as Rihanna.”
Letter of Recommendation: Cracker Barrel
Jia Tolentino | The New York Times Magazine
“The nostalgia sold by Cracker Barrel alongside every plate and trinket requires no previous emotional stake in the South as an institution … The aggression in Southern culture is heightened by the fact that it often passes as gentility. But Cracker Barrel makes the South seem, just briefly, like the front-porch paradise it believes itself to be.”
Why is Martin Shkreli Still Talking?
Allie Conti | Vice
“Echoing comments he made to the Wall Street Journal, Shkreli tells me he regrets playing a ‘character’ on TV and Twitter ... But at the same time, he realizes that the villain people love to hate gets more airtime. And attention is something he desperately, achingly craves. ‘A great bad guy is your best act,’ he says.”
