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Central Cee lifts the lid off Spark Arena in Auckland as rapper kicks off Down Under leg of world tour

Central Cee lifts the lid off Spark Arena in Auckland as rapper kicks off Down Under leg of world tour

Daily Mail​21-06-2025
British rap phenomenon Central Cee has officially kicked off the final leg of his mammoth three month world tour Down Under.
Kicking things off in Auckland on Friday night, the tracksuit-clad star had thousands of attendees shaking off their winter blues and belting out every word to his TikTok viral lyrics.
Fresh off the back of his highly anticipated debut album Can't Rush Greatness, the London-born hitmaker is concluding his most ambitious run of arena shows yet.
After scoring a cracking #91 spot in the Hottest 100 of 2024 with his undeniable banger 'BAND4BAND' alongside Lil Baby, there is no doubt these shows are going to be nothing short of insane.
' New Zealand what the hell,' the rapper captioned a fan-made video of the crowds at Spark Arena creating a sea of phone lights to 'Now We're Strangers.'
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Fresh off the back of his highly anticipated debut album Can't Rush Greatness , the London-born hitmaker is embarking on his most ambitious run of arena shows yet
Earlier in the day, Cee went incognito at an Auckland café, where he stepped out with a black bucket hat pulled down over his head.
He posted a short clip with a location tag to his Instagram Stories, as he leaned down to pat the dog of an unsuspecting customer who paid him no mind.
Cee took to the stage wearing a Pounamu, also known as New Zealand jade or greenstone, in a small gesture of appreciation to Māori customs (Tikanga).
The rapper, real name Oakley Neil Caesar-Su, will make his grand entrance on Australian soil on Sunday at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.
He will then travel to Sydney for another one-night-only concert at Quodos Bank Arena on Wednesday June 25, followed by Melbourne on June 28, before wrapping up in Perth on July 2.
The 25-year-old caused chaos and confusion in the Harbour City during his last visit in January, when a surprise visit to Oxford Street saw thousands of fans swarm the area.
The London-born artist visited the suburb of Paddington to promote his streetwear clothing label Syna World.
However, pandemonium filled the streets as a throng of fans lined up from 4am around the block hoping to see him in the flesh.
Kicking things off in Auckland on Friday night, the tracksuit-clad star had thousands of attendees shaking off their winter blues and belting out every word to his TikTok viral lyrics
Crowds at the Central Cee concert at Spark Arena in Auckland on Friday
He rose to fame in 2021 with his hit single Obsessed With You and in 2023 he scored his first number one in Australia with his song Sprinter
In the afternoon, they were finally rewarded when Cee arrived in his limo and was escorted into a store by his security team.
Cee looked to be in good spirits as he waved to his adoring fans, who were heard loudly chanting his name and fighting to catch sight of the adored rapper.
Fortunately, Cee was thrilled to oblige and looked every inch the rap star in stylish branded streetwear as he posed for photos and entertained the crowd.
The rapper had the roaring crowd in the palm of his hands as many forked out hundreds of dollars to purchase one of his streetwear hoodies and jackets.
His brief appearance thrilled his legion of supporters and left them screaming for more.
Cee waved to them goodbye as he was driven away by his entourage.
He rose to fame in 2021 with his hit single Obsessed With You and in 2023 he scored his first number one in Australia with his song Sprinter.
His unique hip hop style has seen him work with a host of other popular artists, including Australian rapper The Kid Laroi and South Korean star Jungkook.
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'It's the best feeling' - The Bristol rave where everyone is sober
'It's the best feeling' - The Bristol rave where everyone is sober

BBC News

time2 hours ago

  • BBC News

'It's the best feeling' - The Bristol rave where everyone is sober

Bristol's music scene is known for its thumping basslines and - for some - its booze-fuelled big nights out. But as more young people embrace sobriety, one group aims to prove you do not need drugs or alcohol to let loose on the dancefloor. DJ Milly, better known as Milly on Air, has been in recovery for nine and a half years."For me, it was a choice between life and death, and I chose life," she said."I actually started DJing whilst I was in recovery. It was something that I had always wanted to do and addiction had meant my life was incredibly chaotic and I'd never actually managed to do it," Milly was one of a host of artists who played at The Trinity Centre's first ever day-long sober rave on 3 August. The event in Old Market welcomed anyone who chooses to avoid alcohol or drugs, whether that is for health, religious, recovery or personal the early days, Milly said being a sober DJ in the world of dance music made her feel "like an alien" - but in recent years she has noticed a "huge shift".And that change is reflected in national figures. Research showed 19% of people in the UK aged 16+ did not drink alcohol in 2022, compared to 17% in adults aged 16–24 were the most likely to be non-drinkers (25%), while those aged 55–64 were the least likely (14%), according to the of the Trinity Centre event - Bristol Sober Spaces - aimed to rewrite the narrative that nightlife and substances must go seven-hour rave featured local favourites Misneach, Discombobulator, Steven Stone, and Josephine Gyasi, and was headlined by drum and bass icon Nicky Blackmarket and Bristol's own Roni Size. Reflecting on the gig, Roni Size said: "It was incredible. Performing to all those people, some of whom were going through recovery, was a totally different feeling to what I'm used to."I've [always] felt like people associate drum and bass, jungle and anything to do with DJs with drugs or alcohol."They think that you can't party without some type of influence to get you going - but that's not the case."Bristol Sober Spaces is a collaborative project between Bristol Drugs Project - a drugs and alcohol support service - and Not Saints, a record label aimed at supporting those in its formation in 2020, the group has hosted a number of sober Jade King said she avoided clubs altogether when she first became sober 11 years ago. Speaking about partying at sober events, she said: "A lot of my friends are here, I get to have a dance with them. "I don't feel embarrassed about getting up and dancing in front of other people."These events are not just for people that are sober because maybe they've had a problem in the past - but also for people that just don't want to wake up tomorrow with a hangover."Curtis Corbett-Blakemore, also a volunteer at Bristol Sober Spaces, said more people were focusing on wellness and mental health these days. "There's clearly a bit of a link between poor mental health and using substances."These events are important because, generally, people in recovery want to stay away from places where there's a lot of drug and alcohol use."It can be triggering for people that are in recovery and there are not a huge amount of options out there," he of the DJs who performed at the rave said sober crowds were often the most engaged."There's something really special about playing at sober events. People are so engaged and so present," Milly said. DJ Steven Stone agreed, saying the energy levels in the crowd were "incredible". "I've never seen anything like it. The participation's amazing and the interactions I've had since coming off the stage have been really wholesome," he the crowd was London-based music producer Mina, who does not drink and runs an alochol-free club night called Club said she was "curious" to see what happened when alcohol was removed, which she felt dominated nightlife and electronic added: "I found it's a really beautiful experience. You're surrounded by people that are really present and engaged. "It's just one of the best feelings being on the dancefloor without alcohol."If you, or someone you know, have been affected by addiction the BBC Action Line has details of organisations which may be able to help.

‘We popped the baby in a flowerpot!' Anne Geddes on the beloved photos that made her famous
‘We popped the baby in a flowerpot!' Anne Geddes on the beloved photos that made her famous

The Guardian

time3 hours ago

  • The Guardian

‘We popped the baby in a flowerpot!' Anne Geddes on the beloved photos that made her famous

When Anne Geddes began shooting her famous photographs, she soon learned she would need a backup baby – or 20. 'Connecting with a child who considers you a stranger is high stress,' she says. 'I remember trying to shoot one baby sitting in a tank of water, surrounded by waterlilies. It took five babies to make it work. One of them was even called Lily, but she was not having a bar of it. She looked at me as if to say: 'You think I'm getting in that water?'' She describes the practicalities of one of her best-known shots, 1991's Cabbage Kids. It shows twin brothers Rhys and Grant with cabbage-leaf hats on their heads, each sitting in an upturned cabbage, turning to one another with mild alarm. Geddes' assistant had tied a balloon to a piece of string, lowering it between them and whipping it up the moment they turned. Geddes got the shot. 'That whole world has changed; that income has gone,' says the 68-year-old Australian from her home in Manhattan, New York. Technology has changed everything. She calls Cabbage Kids 'authentic': 'The props were all real. It was all in my garage. It's funny; with Photoshop and AI, it makes me sad to think that if you came to my work now, you might question whether it was real. 'I think original stories will always prevail. That's why having people and humans behind the photographs is important. AI can't replicate that.' If you grew up in the 1990s, there is every chance that, like me, you tacked a Geddes poster to your wall. Babies upright in a flowerpot or a bucket, or gazing sleepily from a peony, a calla lily or a bed of roses. Some were dressed as bumblebees, others with little fairy wings, snoozing on a bed of crisp autumn leaves. The images are whimsical, otherworldly and sometimes plain weird. But they have that rare quality of appealing to children without being childish and have begun popping up again, often ironically, on social media. They were disseminated initially not just on Hallmark greetings cards, but also on the cover of Vogue Homme, in a Dior advert and even in a 2004 book with Céline Dion (the best image shows the singer holding aloft a baby asleep inside an amniotic sac). The height of that period, for Geddes, was appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show: 'She came out carrying two babies dressed as bumblebees and we shot up the New York Times bestseller list!' But for many millennials, the peak of her fame was the episode of Friends in which Elle Macpherson's character, Janine, moved in with Joey and attempted to 'girlify' his apartment using Geddes' photograph Tayla as a Waterlily. Geddes is striking, with silver hair, high cheekbones and bright skin, like Meryl Streep if Streep wore her cap backwards. She sits in front of a generic backdrop, warm, if a little reserved, speaking slowly and carefully about bumblebee suits and lily pads. It's almost 30 years since she created Down in the Garden, a series of photographs of babies in and around flora and fauna, some of which will appear in her first ever retrospective, at the New Art Museum in Tübingen, Germany, this month. Among the 150 images are identical triplets sleeping in the hands of Jack, a school groundsman, whose hands also appeared in her 1993 photograph of Maneesha, a baby born prematurely at 28 weeks. For years, people have written to tell Geddes they keep this hopeful image on their fridge. Another photograph is of Tuli and Nyla. Geddes had two days in the studio, lots of babies and a giant Polaroid camera. 'I had no props, but you need a vague plan when you work with babies, as you have to work quickly,' she says. When Nyla began fussing, Tuli rocked her and whispered into her hair. She grabbed the moment. Geddes refers to these prop-less, slightly quieter pictures as her 'classic work' and the babies in flowerbeds as 'what they know' – 'they' being people like me, who grew up with them. 'After Down in the Garden came out, it was all pots, pots, pots,' she says. 'It was like I had a flowerpot tattooed on my forehead. People always want the flowerpots! But I'm like: I do other things. And what I'm looking forward to is that people will see the other work. This exhibition is really the first time anyone has asked me to do this.' Despite selling more than 10m calendars and almost twice as many copies of her seven coffee‑table books (for context, EL James shifted fewer copies of Fifty Shades of Grey in its first decade), Geddes hasn't always been treated with reverence in an industry dominated by single-name stars such as Bailey and Rankin. Is it snobbery? 'It's just a bit of a guy industry,' she says. '[Men] would say: 'I used to shoot babies, but then I moved on to landscapes.' I was always puzzled. To me, babies are magical.' The response to the baby pictures has sometimes been frustrating, she says. 'People said I was a one-shot wonder. I'm just as interested in shooting pregnant women or new mothers. It's just people don't want to talk about that as much.' With some earnestness, she says she now prefers photographing anything pertaining to the 'promise of new life, the miracle of pregnancy and birth'; she hopes the exhibition will draw attention to that. 'I've found that once the Europeans say: 'This is amazing,' then the Americans are like: 'We want this, too.' It has to be that way round.' Geddes was born in 1956 and grew up on a 10,500-hectare (26,000-acre) ranch in Queensland alongside four sisters. They were country kids who attended a two-room primary school. Photography wasn't a big part of her life: 'I only have three images of myself under two and none of me as a newborn.' As a teenager, she subscribed to Life magazine and became fascinated by the idea of telling a story through an image. Still, she lingered on the periphery of photography, going to work in television, where she met her husband, Kel. It was in those corridors that she came across the 'magic' of the darkroom. Shortly after they met, the couple moved to Hong Kong, where Kel was running a new TV station. 'Then we got married and I thought: I've got a roof over my head, now's the time to pick up a camera.' She began putting up adverts in supermarkets, offering to photograph families and children, traipsing around their gardens and homes with a Pentax K1000 she borrowed from her husband. When she was back in Australia and pregnant with her second daughter, now 40, Geddes began taking her classic baby pictures. She realised that, in a studio, she could control everything. She started taking photos for new parents, spending months creating elaborate sets in her garage and trying out different props. A lot of the shots came about by accident. One day, a six-month-old called Chelsea was brought in for a portrait and Geddes spotted an empty flowerpot in the back of the studio: 'We just popped her in there.' To keep her comfortable, she lined the pot with fabric. After a few months, she sent a collection of these images to a small greetings card company. That was that. At the beginning, she would put a call out for babies and take 'whoever came through the door'. But she learned to be discerning. 'Under four weeks is good. If they're full of milk and warm, they'll sleep.' She also liked working with six- and seven‑month-olds, 'because they're not mobile, but suddenly they're sitting and have this whole new perspective. Also, their heads are too big for their bodies, which is funny.' 'The more you charge [for a portrait], the more they want you to make magic with a two-year-old who is having a bad day,' she says. As she became well known, 'people began sending in photos of their babies, or rang from the labour ward in tears saying: 'I've just had the most wonderful baby.' I was just like: 'OK, yup, sure, let's go.'' The images that appeared in calendars, posters, books and magazines were always used 'with the permission of the parents', she says, and the parents were always on set. 'To me, a naked newborn baby is perfect,' she says. 'They are us, essentially good people, at the start of their lives, and that's what I love about them. That's what I was trying to capture. You look at these tyrants that are running rampant [in politics] and think: they were once newborns. What happened? Why didn't your mothers just tell you to sit down and behave?' Her main inspiration is May Gibbs' 1918 book Tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, about little brothers who went on intrepid adventures in the Australian bush: 'Photographers have to have their own visual signature. This became mine.' Her success is unusual, given how kitsch her images are. 'This subject of mine is not deemed to be art and that's been evident throughout my career,' she says. But that was also the point. 'It was meant to be a children's story, not serious.' Does she think it would be harder to make her images now, in the digital era, because of privacy concerns? She says she doesn't think the web has affected her work in that way: 'I know a lot of people talk about having their babies online, or not having them online, but this sort of work is not exposing the babies personally.' Geddes still refers to her images by the name of each baby, partly because she is still in touch with some of them. She recently put out a call, hoping to reunite with the babies, now in their 30s, many of whom are parents themselves. After we speak, I go to bed and begin scrolling through pictures of my own baby, asleep in the room next door. We love looking at our own babies, but why do we like looking at other people's, too? We don't always, says Geddes. She once came close to winning a big portrait award in New Zealand. 'I remember the head of Kodak in New Zealand coming up to me and saying: 'Thank God you didn't win. How could we have a baby on the boardroom wall?'' Anne Geddes' retrospective exhibition, Until Now, runs from 16 August until 21 September at Art 28, Neues Kunstmuseum Tübingen, Germany

Antony Starr says role in The Boys has been the highlight of his career
Antony Starr says role in The Boys has been the highlight of his career

The Independent

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  • The Independent

Antony Starr says role in The Boys has been the highlight of his career

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