African Descent Festival cancelled after Vancouver Park Board refuses permit
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CNN
27 minutes ago
- CNN
Rick Ross has one of the largest pools in the country. Life is going swimmingly for the hip-hop legend
People in entertainment Music FacebookTweetLink Rick Ross often divides his time between his mansions in Atlanta and Miami. So, where does the rapper and entrepreneur prefer relaxing most? 'Swimming pools in Atlanta,' Ross told CNN during a recent interview, smiling. 'The ocean, the beach in Miami.' He knows a thing or two about pools, it turns out. Ross' expansive estate of more than 300 acres outside of Atlanta – which he named The Promise Land – features one of the largest residential pools in the country. It holds 350,000 gallons of water and requires a crew of four from Georgia Plaster and Tile to maintain it. And it's not just for show. 'I use it. I swim every summer,' said Ross, who also sometimes uses the pool as part of his morning meditations. 'I love being in the water, you know. I'm (an) Aquarius. Shout out all the Aquariuses.' The luxe pool is also a source of revenue. Ross has rented out his estate and pool for films such as 2018's 'Superfly' and the sequel to 'Coming to America,' which was released in 2021. He also opens his home up annually for a car show as well as a pool party because he believes that showing off his success is a way to let younger generations know that with hard work and determination, the sky is the limit. Ross, who acts as the chief executive officer of Maybach Music Group (MMG), has extended his portfolio well beyond music as a franchise owner of multiple Wingstop restaurant locations, a partnership with Luc Belaire sparkling wine as well as an interest in Rap Snacks, to name just a few side hustles. 'To me what's most beautiful about it is I believe I could help translate that story to the younger ones,' he said. 'Because when I was growing up in school and I was mischievous a lot of times I remember teachers telling me it's either death or jail. And that wasn't really the way to translate it to me.' One recent windy and overcast Saturday, Ross hosted his pool party, which some fans purchased tickets to attend. The pool is truly a sight to behold, practically spanning the entire width of his sprawling main mansion on the property. Ever the gregarious host, Ross popped bottles of Belaire, posed for photos and generally made people feel welcomed in The Promise Land. Brad Baker drove three hours from Greenville, South Carolina, for the pool party. Baker has attended for the past few years, and said it's a vibe being able to party with Ross. 'He's just positive, you know? It's just positive energy,' Baker said. 'It's just nothing that he could say that would make you feel like, 'Oh man, I don't like that cat.' He's all about making your money and he shows you how to get money.' The pool, which Ross jokingly christened 'Wet Wet' when prompted, also helps make that money in the form of inspiration for some of his music. 'That's the ghost writer. That's Wet Wet aka the ghost writer,' the Grammy-nominated rapper said, laughing. 'There's no way you gonna come out here and not be inspired.' Dripping wet with inspiration, in fact.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Gone too soon, an unsettled life finds focus in 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley'
Short, pained lives marked by achievement and promise and then abruptly gone leave a restless afterglow. Youth is supposed to fade away, not become one's permanent state. And regarding the late musician Jeff Buckley — a roiling romantic with piercing good looks whose singing could rattle bones and raise hairs — that loss in 1997, at the age of 30 from drowning, burns anew with every revisiting of his sparse legacy of recorded material. Lives are more complicated than what your busted heart may want to read from a voice that conjured heaven and the abyss. So one of the appealing takeaways from the biodoc 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' is a repudiating of the typical narrative of inescapable fate, instead pursuing the richness of a gifted artist's ups and downs. Director Amy Berg would rather us see Buckley as he was in the world instead of some conveniently doom-laden figure. The result is loving, spirited and honest: an opportunity for us to get to know the talented, turbulent Buckley through the people who genuinely knew him and cared about him. But also, in clips, copious writings and snatches of voice recordings, we meet someone empathetic yet evasive, ambitious yet self-critical, a son and his own man, especially when sudden stardom proved to be the wrong prism through which to find answers. Read more: The 27 best movie theaters in Los Angeles With archival material often superimposed over a faint, scratchy-film background, we feel the sensitivity and chaos of Buckley's single-mom upbringing in Anaheim, the devastating distance of his absentee dad, folk-poet icon Tim Buckley (you'll never forget the matchbook Jeff saved), and the creative blossoming that happened in New York's East Village. There, his long-standing influences, from Nina Simone and Edith Piaf to Led Zeppelin and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, coalesced into a post-grunge emotionalism anchored by those unbelievable pipes. Even after Buckley's record-label discovery leads to the usual music-doc trappings — tour montages, media coverage, performance morsels — Berg wisely keeps the contours of his interior life in the foreground, intimately related by key figures, most prominently Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, romantic confidantes such as artist Rebecca Moore and musician Joan Wasser, and bandmates like Michael Tighe. Berg keeps these interviewees close to her camera, too, so we can appreciate their memories as personal gifts, still raw after so many years. Fans might yearn for more granular unpacking of the music, but it somehow doesn't feel like an oversight when so much ink on it already exists and so little else has been colored in. The same goes for the blessed absence of boilerplate A-list praise. The global acclaim for his sole album, 1994's "Grace," which includes his all-timer rendition of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah,' certainly put admiring superstars (Dylan, Bowie, McCartney) in Buckley's path, including one of his idols, Robert Plant. But Berg stays true to a viewpoint rooted in Buckley's conflicting feelings about the pressures and absurdities of fame, and why it ultimately drove him to Memphis to seek the solace to start a second album that was never completed. The last chapter is thoughtfully handled. Berg makes sure that we understand that his loved ones view his death as an accident, not a suicide, and the movie's details are convincing. That doesn't make the circumstances any less heartbreaking, of course. As warmer spotlights go, 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' may never fully expunge what maddens and mystifies about the untimely end of troubled souls. But it candidly dimensionalizes a one-album wonder, virtually ensuring the kind of relistening likely to deepen those echoes. Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
African Descent Festival cancelled after Vancouver Park Board refuses permit
It was supposed to be a weekend of music, dance, and food celebrating African culture at English the African Descent Festival was called off at the last minute after the Vancouver Park Board refused to issue a permit. As Shaurya Kshatri reports, organizers say the decision has cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
