‘Summertide' Is a Human-Scale Beachy Drama
Martin struggles with guilt over his wife's death (the specifics of which are doled out slowly), and he is determined not to replicate with Tristan the relationship he has with his father (Andre Jacobs). Good luck to him! Tristan gets into some scrapes right away but also strikes up a romance. Lucy becomes obsessed with two local penguins. Gavin resents being perceived as a flaky man child, though he concedes he has earned it.
The miracle here is that 'Summertide' is not a murder show or a cop show, at least not in the six episodes made available for review. It is sketched to a human scale, and you can feel the relationships stretch and repair in concert with one another; we see the characters experience different moods, not just different plot points. Everyone here is in a huge moment of transition, either moving or retiring or reassessing or maturing. And each wonders, Why can't you see me as I am, and especially as I am right now? How dare you think you understand me?
'Summertide' has its soapy elements. Longer arcs about the ecological health of the bay, especially as it relates to shady goings-on among local fishermen, unfurl as the season goes on. The show can afford to be relaxed in its pacing because there are 52 episodes in the first season, two of which are already streaming. That is a lot of episodes, and it engenders in the viewer the same feeling the characters share: We're in this together for the long haul.
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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
The Afropop Girls Making This Summer Sexy
On Friday, July 26, the day of the week new music drops regularly, three of the hottest pop stars out of Africa doled out the steamiest trifecta of releases this year. Nigerian singer Ayra Starr's latest song is literally about being hot. South African star Tyla came with a four-pack EP called WWP, short for We Wanna Party. And Ghanaian-American shapeshifter Amaarae broke barriers with her new single 'Girlie-Pop!' and its steamy, queer-coded music video. It was a day that crystallized a pattern that had been forming all year: the women of Afropop are bringing sexy back. Much of their movement, like others across media right now, is Y2K-indebted. Skirts and tops have gotten microscopic, bottoms are being slung below the waist again, and lots of producers seem to be doing their best impressions of early Pharrell. But that time also came with some trends in how women's sexuality was marketed and received that we now find disturbing, to say the least. We can see that Britney Spears, the queen of Y2K, was someone whose personhood and sexuality was often devoured and exploited as she explored both as a young girl (her iconic and controversial 1999 Rolling Stone cover is an emblem of how complicated it is to make a teenager a sex symbol). We now know Janet Jackson was unfairly shamed and punished after Justin Timberlake exposed her pasty-covered breast during their 2004 Super Bowl performance. Today, while some of the cultural relics of that time have rolled back around, many young women may have more agency about why, when, and how they want to participate. More from Rolling Stone Tyla Summer Kicks Off With 'WWP' Mixtape Justin Bieber, Blackpink, Tyla, and All the Songs You Need to Know This Week Tyla Asks 'Is It' Wrong for a New Romance to Feel So Right on Latest Single It feels like that agency is what we're witnessing in Afropop. Ayra Starr — who emerged in 2021 as a cunning 19-year-old surrounded by cartoon butterflies and broken hearts — has grown more edgy in her dress and performance as she's gotten older. In May, she inched towards summer with the fiery 'Gimme Dat,' video featuring Wizkid, and last week, she finally released her much-anticipated new single 'Hot Body.' 'Body be dancing/Slow wine/Summer body/So fine,' she sings on the strip tease of a song. As she breadcrumbed the track on social media over the past few weeks, she could be seen hitting a seductive, TikTok ready dance to it with her girlfriends, and it truly looks like she's having a blast. Just a few days ago, on July 27, she giddily celebrated performing the song with Coldplay, who she's touring with as an opening act this summer. Before she took the stage, Chris Martin, who eagerly accompanied her on acoustic guitar, told the crowd, 'Ok, everybody, listen. We will do something special because this is Ayra Starr from Nigeria. She is going to be the world's biggest pop star soon and she has a new song called 'Hot Body' which I think is amazing. So please indulge us and join us for a big dance party.' Dancing, of course, has been Tyla's thing since she captivated the mainstream with 'Water' in 2023. (Cute Y2K fashion has become a bit of a calling card for her, as it has for Starr. They've been friendly collaborators, both 23 years old.) The rollout and name of Tyla's new EP, WWP, takes cues from the popular nightlife chant '[Insert name of DJ or performer leading the crowd here], we wanna party!' That makes perfect sense for a girl who's always been about partying so hard you're soaked, whether with sweat or the contents of your plastic bottle. Tyla's WWP features 'Bliss,' a track whose music video spawned an excellent meme about being sexy and sad at once. It takes the quick cut between a scene of the singer fighting tears and another of her grinding against a silver sculpture in desert sand. 'Idk if we're supposed to shake ass or cry' one YouTube commenter wrote to the tune of 15,000 likes. The full WWP EP includes two songs that debuted this month, one being 'Dynamite,' an energizing collaboration with Wizkid (it's the pair's first and feels reminiscent of Ayra Starr hopping on Star Boy's '2 Sugar' earlier in her rise). The song that really cements the sexy, though, is 'Mr. Media.' While the track lambasts the voyeuristic sensationalism she's faced in the public eye, she uses the second verse to remind herself why she shouldn't care: 'Bad bitch, I ain't always got time to talk/Too bad, yeah, I know I'm difficult/You'd be too if you had my visuals/You'd be too if you had material.' Amaarae seems to be channeling a similar devil-may-care confidence as she gears up to release Black Star, her third studio album set to drop August 8. On Friday, she shared the second single, 'Girlie-Pop!' following the erotic 'S.M.O.' (for 'Slut Me Out'). 'Girlie-Pop!' ushers in this new era of Amaarae's powerfully, honing a familiar balance of softness, urgency, and cleverly sensual songwriting with a righteously queer arc. Using music as an extended allegory, she coos, 'I want you to take me from the top/Kiss me 'til I tell you, 'Make it soft'/One of us gotta bring this to a stop/Flip positions, switching genres 'til you make it pop.' In the moody video, Amaarae nearly sings into the mouth of another woman, the camera lingering on their lips. In other moments, their heads swirl around each other's face and neck. When that's not happening, the woman is DJing, potentially another bit of innuendo. Amaarae's imagery and music has sometimes teetered towards homoerotic (in the 'S.M.O.' video, for example, one might say she's literally waxing a beautiful woman's ass) but 'Girlie-Pop!' marks a bold embrace of queerness for a Ghanaian artist of her magnitude. For years, Ghanaian lawmakers have notoriously been pushing virulent anti-LGBTQ legislation and now they have a president reportedly committed to passing them. Amaarae declaring that the video was shot in Ghana 'with loveeeeee' is a radical act. 'My real mission is for us to not think about sexuality, or to subvert it so much to the point where it subconsciously takes people away from that,' she told Galore about her last album, Fountain Baby, in 2023. 'I wanted to make the music so sexy and captivating that you kind of wouldn't think about what pronouns I was using, no matter if you are straight, gay, pansexual, whatever. That was my way of trying to slowly break that boundary that things have to be in boxes and confined and defined.' So much of this Summer of Sexy has actually been brewing since 2024. Moliy's 'Shake It to the Max (Fly)' is currently one of the biggest songs in the world, and the Ghanaian singer first teased it back in October with a short snippet on TikTok. Today there have been 4.5 million videos made with a remix featuring dancehall stars Skillibeng and Shenseea on the app. In fact, there's been five remixes total, including versions with Sean Paul and Major Lazer. Though Moliy is African, 'Shake It to the Max' has always been a dancehall song, produced by Silent Addy and Disco Neal of the DJ duo Bashment Sound. On July 29, Billboard announced that the song had hit Number One on their Rhythmic Airplay chart, meaning it's a certified smash on American radio. It's also been sitting at Number One on the U.S. Afrobeats Song chart for 12 consecutive weeks, too. 'Shake It to the Max' has reached these heights as a viral anthem for baddies to let loose and whine their waists. Make sure you get out there and heed Moliy's call over the next month. Loosies: More music to move to summer Rema's 'Kelebu' and Theodora's 'Kongolese Sous BBL': So, in honor of the Summer of Sexy, I'm writing about these two at once, as Francophone singer Theodora's burgeoning hit is, in a way, an energetic ancestor to 'Kelebu,' Rema's excellent new party-starter. 'Kelebu' seems inspired by Bouyon, a high-octane dance music from Dominica, as well as Makossa from Cameroon and Coupé-décalé from Côte d'Ivoire (Theodora was born in Switzerland to Congolese parents and has lived all over the world). These are all threads Theodora has been pulling from the past few years, with the excellent 'Kongolese Sous BBL' becoming her biggest hit with well over 47 million streams on Spotify. Rema's closest collaborator, the producer London, also worked with Theodora on her song 'Massoko Na Mabele' from this past May. Darkoo, 'Right Now' featuring Rvssian and Davido: Intuitively, Nigerian hitmaker Darkoo titled her June EP $exy Girl $ummer. 'A lot of the top people in the game who are making music aren't making music for girls,' she told Apple Music. 'They are making music that women like, but it's not about them, and that's what I'm doing. I want them to feel like the sexiest women in the world.' This song definitely does it as the openly queer Darkoo and enthusiastic Davido promise to give some fortunate ladies the world. The song samples Gyptian's Jamaican hit 'Whine Slow,' which Rvssian himself produced. Daddy Lumba, 'Se Sumye Kasa A': This last Loosie is a tribute to Ghanaian legend Daddy Lumba, who died at age 60 on July 26. While he's known as a highlife maven, his music had diverse influences, from gospel to hip-hop, like you can hear on 2002's 'Se Sumye Kasa A.' 'Daddy Lumba really is a risk taker of his time,' Amaarae said in 2023, part of an interview she re-shared in memoriam of Lumba. She had praised his affinity for 'Bad bitches,' adding, 'At a time where male highlife artists were taking very romantic approaches to the way they were writing their music, Daddy Lumba said 'Look, I love the hoes and the hoes love me'.' Made in Africa is a monthly column by Rolling Stone staff writer Mankaprr Conteh that celebrates and interrogates the lives, concerns, and innovations of African musicians from their vantage point. Don't forget to check out the songs we covered this month and more in the Made In Africa playlist. Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked Solve the daily Crossword
News24
13 hours ago
- News24
Moja Love's Inno Matijane on leaving reality TV, his sexuality and being born again
After five seasons filled with drama, memories and heartfelt moments, reality TV star and musician Inno Matijane (27) announced his departure from the Moja LOVE show, The Way Ngingakhona. He confirmed he will not return for another season and wants to embrace a fresh start and new beginnings. 'I think it's time for a change,' he says. Another chapter he has put the lid on is his 'phase' as a 'cross-dressing' gay man. After devoting himself to the church and being born-again, Inno says he believes he was once living in sin as a previously gay man, and it took accepting Jesus as his saviour to change. 'I thank God for what he did with my life,' he says. 'I've been living as a queer person for so long but still praying to God has changed me.' Read more | US Singer Tank withdraws from Ndala Mall opening as event gets postponed Inno has been highly criticised for the switch in sexuality from being gay to being a devoted Christian, despite explaining himself several times. 'When a woman says she is choosing God over a marriage that no longer brings her peace, people call her strong. When someone walks away from a glamorous life to protect their mental health, the world calls it healing. When people change their entire appearance, their identity, their name, and their truth to feel more aligned with who they are becoming, we say they are brave. We support them. We defend their transformation. But when I say I am choosing God, not with all the answers, not with a label, not with a perfect backstory, just a sincere heart that wants to walk in truth and peace - suddenly I become a joke,' he says. 'Suddenly, I am labelled confused, the same world that applauds everyone else's journey finds mine unacceptable.' He might be labelled as confused about his reality, but he is willing to go on that journey of self-discovery. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Engineer Your Life (@engineeryourlife_) Read more | Sonia Mbele rises like a phoenix with new Crowns on Fleek movement 'Yes, I am confused. But who isn't? Confusion is not failure. Confusion is not weakness. Confusion is part of becoming. It is part of the breaking. It is part of the surrender. It is the wilderness before the promise,' he adds. 'And still I choose God. In the middle of the noise. In the middle of the uncertainty. In the middle of people shouting what they think I should be.' He says any people are confused at work - changing cities, relationships, and jobs, but do not get judged. The Lesotho entertainer also shared how he experienced sexual assault, but wishes not to delve deep into that chapter. He said he even deleted the posts detailing proving he is ready to sweep the matter under the carpet. 'I want to move on and start afresh,' he concludes.
News24
a day ago
- News24
‘A cultural mainstay': Takalani Sesame celebrates its 25-year anniversary
Takalani Sesame is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. The nonprofit organisation Sesame Workshop South Africa, which is behind the show, celebrated its anniversary this week with outreach programmes. Sesame Workshop has partnered with the Department of Basic Education to drive early childhood development registration across the country. On 31 July 2000 - 25 years ago - children's broadcast programme Takalani Sesame aired its first episode. Through its cast of characters and stories, the show has helped promote early education, health, and well-being. It has received several award recognitions, including International Emmy nominations, SAFTA awards and a Peabody Award for their 2004 Talk to Me… campaign. The nonprofit organisation Sesame Workshop South Africa, which is behind the show, celebrated its anniversary this week by visiting founding partners, the Department of Basic Education and the SABC. They also made a stop at the I Can Day Care Centre in Pimville, Soweto. 'Takalani Sesame began as a pioneering television show, and has now become a cultural mainstay, reaching over 7 million viewers and being embraced by 95% of households with young children,' said Dr Onyinye Nwaneri, managing director of Sesame Workshop South Africa, in a statement. The Sesame Workshop also partners with the Department of Basic Education (DBE) to drive Early childhood development (ECD) registration across the country. This forms part of the Bana Pele (Putting Children First) campaign, 'which is a drive to position children as national assets and ensure that all young learners benefit from safe, high-quality, and registered ECD services,' reads a press release. Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube, joined the Bana Pele campaign and visited ECD centres in Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape, with the next stop being the Eastern Cape. Children and families got the opportunity to meet Takalani Sesame characters and engage in interactive storytelling. 'Takalani Sesame is a much-loved educational brand that has supported generations of young South African children with fun and engaging learning,' said Gwarube in a statement. 'Sesame Workshop aligns with our vision to put our youngest citizens first and prioritise early learning as a national imperative. We are delighted to celebrate Sesame Workshop's 25th anniversary because it is also a celebration of children as South Africa's greatest assets,' Gwarube continued. 'The Department of Basic Education has been in our corner since day one. It fills me with much joy and gratitude to be celebrating our birthday with the DBE,' Nwaneri said. On Thursday, celebrations also took place at the SABC offices, marking the day the first episode aired. 'The SABC has truly been a wonderful partner to Takalani Sesame, providing us with a platform for the show to reach millions of South African children over the last 25 years,' Nwaneri said. 'It's been a beautiful journey, one in which we have seen many famous and familiar faces on our SABC TV screens, including our late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and childhood heroes Banyana Banyana, to musicians like Sho Madjozi, and comedians such as David Kau and The Goliaths.' Jacqui Hlongwane, genre manager for SABC Education and Children, said in a statement: 'For 25 years, Takalani Sesame has supported early childhood education, health and social inclusion, helping the SABC deliver on its children's education and language mandates through accessible, engaging and culturally relevant content.' 'Importantly, the show, which is currently on air, is broadcast in most of South Africa's official languages, further ensuring its accessibility and resonance with children across the country,' Hlongwane added. 'We extend our warmest congratulations and wish Takalani Sesame a very happy birthday.'
