Keke Palmer Teams up With McDonald's to Surprise Future Black Leaders With $220,000

Keke Palmer (center) strikes a pose with the Future 22 leaders.

Keke Palmer continues to champion black business owners, entrepreneurship and leadership.

Just months after partnering with Amazon to support Black women business owners in honor of Women’s History Month, the 28-year-old singer and actress recently teamed up with McDonald's to recognize future Black leaders who are affecting change in their communities.

As the spokesperson for Future 22, a program designed to honor 22 visionaries who are “shattering ceilings and breaking barriers to create meaningful change in communities across the country” according to the company, Palmer surprised the group with checks for $10,000 apiece at last weekend’s ESSENCE Festival of Culture in New Orleans.

Palmer, who got her start as a child actress before transitioning into more mature roles and adding a burgeoning singing career to her portfolio, said in a statement that it was an honor to celebrate the leaders.

“They are creating bright futures for themselves and the next generation – and, really, all of us – and the excitement on their faces during the McDonald's surprise gave me joy," she said.

The recipients of the cash were varied and included everyone from a STEM educator who is leveling the playing field for Black and brown children in computer science to a financial literacy champion who is bridging the financial gap in inner cities, according to McDonald’s.

Palmer also participated in a fireside chat with the Future 22 leaders moderated by McDonald's Senior Director of Cultural Engagement, Elizabeth Campbell. She provided tips on staying true to one's mission, finding balance while changing the world and paving the way for others, among other topics.

"This year's Essence Fest theme was Black Joy, and we couldn't wait to celebrate all 22 leaders and bring them to New Orleans, in honor of their accomplishments," said Campbell of the event.”

She added, “It was more special than imagined, representing our commitment to feeding and fostering the communities we serve."

Denzel Washington, Simone Biles Among 17 Medal of Honor Recipients

Gymnastics legend Simone Biles is among 17 Presidential 

Medal of Honor Recipients Announced Friday. 

Gymnastics superstar Simone Biles and actor Denzel Washington are among the 17 people slated to be given the nation's highest civilian honor next week.

President Joe Biden made the announcement Friday that the duo would be among those to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The award is presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.

"These seventeen Americans demonstrate the power of possibilities and embody the soul of the nation – hard work, perseverance, and faith," President Biden said in a statement revealing the selections.

He added, "They have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities – and across the world – while blazing trails for generations to come."

Biles is the most decorated American gymnast in history, with a combined total of 32 Olympic and World Championship medals. She is also a prominent advocate for athletes’ mental health and safety, children in the foster care system, and victims of sexual assault.

Washington is an actor, director, and producer who has won two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, two Golden Globes, and the 2016 Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also served as National Spokesman for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for over 25 years.

Joining them on the list are US Soccer star Megan Rapinoe, and several posthumous honorees, including Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, and Dr. Julieta García — the first Hispanic woman to serve as a college president — amongst others.

The awards will be presented at the White House on July 7.

Click here for a complete list of the recipients. 

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes History as Supreme Court's First Black Woman Justice

Credit: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

Justice Stephen G. Breyer (Retired) administers the judicial oath to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in the West Conference Room at the Supreme Court Building. Her husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, holds the Bible.

For the first time in its 233-year history, the Supreme Court has a black woman among its sitting justices.

On Thursday 51-year-old Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in to replace the justice she once worked for as a law clerk — Justice Stephen Breyer. Justice Breyer administered the judicial oaths to her before his retirement became effective at noon, along with Chief Justice John Roberts.

“With a full heart, I accept the solemn responsibility of supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States and administering justice without fear or favor, so help me God,” Jackson said in a statement issued by the court. “I am truly grateful to be part of the promise of our great Nation. I extend my sincerest thanks to all of my new colleagues for their warm and gracious welcome.”

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has officially made history by becoming the 1st Black woman to be sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice! I am overwhelmingly proud to experience this well-deserved and powerful moment! #BlackExcellence pic.twitter.com/bkWkIFZfhP

— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) June 30, 2022

Jackson is the court's 116 justice and in replacing Justice Breyer, who sat on the bench for 27 years, joins one of the most diverse courts in the body's history.

Its membership includes representation from two of the country's largest minority groups and three major religions (Catholic, Protestant and Judaism). With the addition of Brown alongside Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett, it will be the first time four women have served together on the nine-member court.

Biden nominated Jackson in February, a month after Breyer, 83, announced he would retire at the end of the court’s term.

The administration said in a statement that Biden "sought a candidate with exceptional credentials, unimpeachable character, and unwavering dedication to the rule of law" to replace Justice Breyer at the time of the selection.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

That’s a Biden Win! pic.twitter.com/ayHCZvNhdr

— Biden Wins (@BidensWins) June 30, 2022

"He also sought a nominee—much like Justice Breyer—who is wise, pragmatic, and has a deep understanding of the Constitution as an enduring charter of liberty," it added. "And the President sought an individual who is committed to equal justice under the law and who understands the profound impact that the Supreme Court’s decisions have on the lives of the American people."

The Senate confirmed Jackson’s nomination in April. The vote was 53-47 in her favor. Every member of the Democrat caucus, along with three Republicans — Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah — voted yes to approve the historic pick.

Official Biography

Ketanji Brown Jackson, Associate Justice,

was born in Washington, D.C., on September 14, 1970. She married Patrick Jackson in 1996, and they have two daughters. She received an A.B., magna cum laude, from Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1992, and a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1996. She served as a law clerk for Judge Patti B. Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts from 1996 to 1997, Judge Bruce M. Selya of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 1997 to 1998, and Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1999 Term. After three years in private practice, she worked as an attorney at the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 2003 to 2005. From 2005 to 2007, she served as an assistant federal public defender in Washington, D.C., and from 2007 to 2010, she was in private practice. She served as a Vice Chair and Commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014. In 2012, President Barack Obama nominated her to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where she served from 2013 to 2021. She was appointed to the Defender Services Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States in 2017, and the Supreme Court Fellows Commission in 2019. President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., appointed her to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2021 and then nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 2022. She took her seat on June 30, 2022.

TMNT Game Features New Track by Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef

Courtesy Art: Dotemu 

Fans of the Foot and Wu-Tang Clans rejoice.

Tribute Games is releasing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge this month, and it appears to be the best kind of throwback.

Publisher Dotemu says the latest release in the long-running turtle's franchise "gnarly game design takes you back to the ’80s," and with most of the original voice cast on board the nostalgia is thick. But for music fans its the inevitable joining of forces with New York's other greatest martial arts family that delivers the hype.

Wu-Tang's Ghostface Killah and Raekwon the Chef's contribution of “We Ain’t Came to Lose" to the soundtrack cements the ties between dysfunctional warrior brotherhoods while at the same time offering franchise fans something Vanilla Ice's "Ninja Rap" could never do — a certifiable TMNT banger.

Peppered with bars harder than a roundhouse kick to the head the track elevates ninja-rap to an art form:

With heroes in the half shell going to war, got the city on the siege and they holdin’ the fort, got extra-large pizza boxes all on the floor, get sized up by negative thoughts, your time’s up on whatever you thought, individual starvin’ the floor, so the samurai’s sword on point for the course, dangerous metals, high like the rain and Terra, the twilight meets the brain of Shredder, all for one and trained together…

The move comes seven years after the Pharma Bro, Martin Shkreli, caused a great imbalance in the music world's Chi by snapping up the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan's last album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" — which at the time meant most of us would be dead by the time the group's seventh studio effort would be commercially available (2103) thanks to an ironclad purchaser's agreement.

Following Shkreli's incarceration for securities fraud "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" was seized by federal agents to help pay his debts and eventually sold in 2021 to crypto collective PleasrDAO for $4 million. PleasrDAO said they hoped to make it more widely accessible, but until then this effort from two of the group's finest should help satiate Wu-Tang fans' thirst for new music from the Slums of Shaolin. 

Preview the entire track below.

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A post shared by Raekwon The Chef (@raekwon)

Cam'ron Trades the Mic for Hip-Hop Home Makeover Show

Photo Credit: Paramount+ via YouTube screen capture

War, mass shootings, food shortages — 2022 has been sort of a bummer, and that's without even mentioning the "C" word.

We could all use a break right now or at the very least a distraction from the hard cold (or very hot depending on where you're at during this climate crisis) realities of the upcoming summer.

Cue Paramount+'s attempt to save the day with a home makeover show with a hip-hop twist.

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A post shared by Zoe-Zoe | 柔柔 (@zeez.louize)

Premiering on the first day of summer (June 21), the streaming network's "Hip Hop My House" pairs Harlem rap icon Cam’ron, with interior designer Zeez Louize a production designer who has worked on campaigns for Disney Nature, Star Wars Episode VII, and Google Pixel.

Together, the dynamic duo will attempt to make one lucky superfan’s crib into a larger-than-life tribute to rap icons, past and present during a nine-episode run, and they won't be alone. Featured guests include Nelly, Tyga, Erica Banks, Migos and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie among others.

It remains to be seen if the series, produced by MTV Entertainment Studios and Anaïd Productions, will ever see the heights of fellow rapper Xzibit's iconic 2000s car makeover show "Pimp My Ride," but the premise is promising.

Watch the full trailer for the new show below.

Grammy Award-Winning Rapper, Lupe Fiasco, to Teach at MIT

Photo Credit: Instagram @lupefiasco

Call him Professor Fiasco.

Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, the Grammy Award-winning rapper better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco, will be teaching at one of higher education's most famed institutions next year.

The backpack rapper's backpack rapper, who rose to hip-hop prominence in 2006 behind the breakout success of his debut album "Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor," will be part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's MLK Visiting Professor Program for the 2022-2023 academic year.

Fiasco broke the news himself Friday on social media.

“I been holding this for a while,” he tweeted. “I’ll put together something more sophisticated later that really captures the nuance and gravity but for now I’ll just say it straight and raw: I’m going to teach Rap at @MIT.”

I been holding this for a while. I’ll put together something more sophisticated later that really captures the nuance and gravity but for now I’ll just say it straight and raw:

I’m going to teach Rap at @MIT

🥲

— “DRILL MUSIC IN ZION” JUNE 24th (@LupeFiasco) May 20, 2022=

MIT confirmed the news that the Chicago rapper, who was previously a visiting artist from 2020-2021 and who also ran the “Code Cypher” programming competition — teaching rapping cyphers in a “computational way” alongside Professor of Digital Media Nick Montfort —at the school would be one of three new teachers provided by the program this year along with theater teacher Eunice Ferreira and documentary maker Louis Massiah.

Grammy-award winning rapper Lupe Fiasco and @mit_cmsw Prof. Nick Montfort join to engage the MIT community at the intersection of rap, computing, and activism. The MIT community is invited to register for CAST Visiting Artist Lupe Fiasco: SOSA: https://t.co/m4bUSFH0H3@LupeFiasco pic.twitter.com/hN3qtDH4Pq

— Arts at MIT (@ArtsatMIT) February 11, 2021

As for what he will be teaching at the school, Fiasco said his syllabus was not yet complete but offered a possible synopsis in a since-deleted tweet.

“Syllabus isn’t built yet but I’m thinking its fruit to be had in looking at neuromorphic computation through the lens of Rap as a lossless data compression model with a dash of energy efficiency via refining Landauer’s principle applied to cytoarchitectonics,” Fiasco wrote. “And some rapping…”

The announcement is the second time Fiasco has made headlines this month. The artist announced that his next album "Drill Music in Zion" will drop on June 24 just days before signaling his move to MIT. It is his first LP release since 2018's "Drogas Wave."

Anonymous Donor Picks up Tab for Graduates of Texas HBCU

Photo courtesy of Wiley College

While current and former college students across the nation await word from President Biden's administration on what, if any, student loan relief will be provided by the government under the man who at the very least promised to forgive $10,000 per borrower while on the campaign trail — an anonymous donor eliminated the concern for a group of recent Texas graduates over the weekend.

During Wiley College's commencement ceremony Saturday, the school's president and CEO, Dr. Herman J. Felton Jr., announced that the graduates remaining balances owed to the historically Black school in East Texas had been cleared.

Congratulations 2022 Graduates, YOU ARE DEBT FREE!
Go Forth Inspired, glorious deeds to do. 🥹🙌🏾#wileygrad22 #wileycollege #hbcu #hbcugrad #hbcupride #goforthinspired pic.twitter.com/a0zHUDTFc4

— Wiley College (@WileyCollege) May 7, 2022

"You are debt-free. You do not owe the college a penny." Felton Jr. said as the crowd of over 100 students and their families cheered his proclamation.

He continued, "If you have a balance, you had a balance," Felton Jr. said. "You no longer have a balance."

According to a press release from the HBCU, the financial head-start for its grads was made possible by an anonymous donor. It cleared an estimated $300,000 worth of debt owed to the school, whose costs to attend are around $17,500 (tuition, fees, and room and board), by the class of 2022.

"The anonymous gift sets graduates on a continued path to success and allows Wiley College to strengthen its commitment to providing an affordable exceptional education," Felton Jr. said in the release.

He added, "Our commitment to our students goes beyond their time while they are enrolled. We are constantly communicating with donors to assist students in these ways so that they can begin their after-college experience with less debt. We are grateful for this anonymous donor who will assist the students in paying off their balances to Wiley College and help us achieve institutional goals of graduating our students with little to no debt."

Will Smith Gets 10-Year Oscars' Ban for Slapping Chris Rock

The slap heard, and seen, around much of the world, continues to have new ramifications for embattled Oscar winner Will Smith. 

Friday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' board of governors handed the actor a 10-year ban from attending the ceremony. It was the first punitive action taken by anybody, including the Los Angeles Police Department, against the star.

Smith, 53, walked onstage and struck Rock during the March 27 ceremony for telling a bald joke about the rapper-turned-actor's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers from alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss on the scalp and elsewhere.

'I accept and respect the Academy’s decision,' Will Smith said in response to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences banning him from attending Oscars and other Academy events for 10 years https://t.co/H8Oq2EECSA pic.twitter.com/O0scK2tcq0

— Reuters Showbiz (@ReutersShowbiz) April 8, 2022

Rock, 57, was approached by officers from the LAPD after the slap. He declined to press charges, and moments later Smith returned to the stage to accept his first Oscar, on his third nomination, for his performance as the father of tennis icons Serena and Venus William in the biopic about his life, "King Richard."

By the following day, Smith had left a long and seemingly heartfelt apology on Instagram.

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A post shared by Will Smith (@willsmith)

"Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive. My behavior at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable. Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally," the post read.

Chris Rock made fun of Jada and Will Smith got on stage to slap him and cursed him from his seat after. Live feed stopped on Astro because. Not scripted. Audience stunned. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/F5dN4prPfY

— 𝗔𝘆𝘀𝗵𝗮 𝗥𝗶𝗱𝘇𝘂𝗮𝗻 (@ayshardzn) March 28, 2022

"I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness."

 

It continued, "I would also like to apologize to the Academy, the producers of the show, all the attendees and everyone watching around the world. I would like to apologize to the Williams Family and my King Richard Family. I deeply regret that my behavior has stained what has been an otherwise gorgeous journey for all of us. I am a work in progress."

While Rock has remained mum on the subject, refusing to talk about the incident, the apology proved lacking to the Academy which said in a letter sent by President David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson, the organization decided "for a period of 10 years from April 8, 2022, Mr. Smith shall not be permitted to attend any Academy events or programs, in person or virtually, including but not limited to the Academy Awards."

"This action we are taking today in response to Will Smith's behavior is a step toward a larger goal of protecting the safety of our performers and guests and restoring trust in the Academy. We also hope this can begin a time of healing and restoration for all involved and impacted," the statement continued. 

Smith's response to the judgment was swift and simple. 

"I accept and respect the Academy's decision," he told Page Six Friday.

Accepting his punishment without a fight was not enough to end the drama for Smith, who can still be nominated for his work. Over the weekend, several prominent entertainment voices were speaking out in favor of more severe punishment. 

Harry Lennix, an actor known for his bit roles in movies like "Ray" and "Justice League," as well as a plethora of roles across his career on the stage and television screen, went so far as to write a guest column for Variety urging Smith to voluntarily return his Oscar statuette for best actor.

"At this point, the only person who can redeem the integrity of the Oscars is Smith himself," Lennix, 53, wrote, adding, "Smith's brutality stripped the entire evening of its prestige."

"The stain on the Motion Picture Academy cannot be easily remediated. The only hope for a justifiable grace must involve Smith voluntarily returning his award for best actor," he added.