Latest news with #FutureofMusicShowcase
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Koffee Declares Herself Jamaica's ‘Baddest' On Self-Titled Single
Reggae and dancehall maven Koffee has returned with a bold new song she named after herself. 'Somebody please remind these niggas, this is my industry,' she spits on 'Koffee,' her first solo single since 2022 and release since appearing on Sam Smith's 'Gimme' with Jessie Reyez. 'Koffee with a K, some call me Mikayla,' she notes on this redeclaration of who she is, pointing to her birth name, Mikayla Victoria Simpson. The single comes with music video directed by Joshua Valle (Asake's 'Active,' Lil Baby's 'Heyy'). 'Koffee' was produced by GuiltyBeatz, ('Move' by Beyoncè, 'Love Me Jeje' by Tems), who gave Koffee a canvas of simple percussion, groovy bass, and rich horns to float on. Koffee's always been a skilled sing-jay, evoking the flows of some of dancehall's best deejays and hip-hop's best rappers, but she's back with more bite here, owning the scale of her impact and accomplishments. She proclaims herself, 'the baddest thing out of Jamaica' and hints at no longer playing humble, saying, 'Weh a mash up dem head, I'm tryna be a better me/Not the way you remember me/I left that in the cemetery/That side of me is dead/ I said what I said.' More from Rolling Stone Koffee, Chloë Bailey Close Out the Future of Music Showcase With One Hell of a Party J.I.D., Jay Wheeler, Remi Wolf, Koffee, and More to Play Rolling Stone's Future of Music Showcase at SXSW Sam Smith's 'Gloria' Is Their Deepest Album Yet In 2020, Koffee became the youngest person and first woman to win the Grammy for Best Reggae Album for her debut EP, Rapture, featuring the celebratory smash 'Toast.' She dropped her first full-length album, Gifted, in 2022. In a four-star review, Rolling Stone called the album 'a portrait of a brilliant young artist keenly aware of the miracles that lift her up,' and later named it one of the best albums of the year. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Inside the ‘Garden State' 20th Anniversary Concert: See the Shins and Iron & Wine Perform
It sounded like 2004, back on the plane with Andrew Largeman. The sun had already gone down over Los Angeles' Greek Theatre on Saturday night for the sold-out Garden State 20th Anniversary Concert, when the curtains opened and Zach Braff stood on stage underneath a spotlight as the Prayer to Ganesh played over the speaker. More from Rolling Stone How to Watch the 'Garden State' 20th Anniversary Concert Online Watch Mumford & Sons Perform With Ed Helms at Sold-Out Los Angeles Concert Rolling Stone's Future of Music Showcase Was the Hottest Night in Town, All Week Long The crowd applauded and Braff made his way over to a covered prop nearby and tore the sheet off to reveal the iconic green motorcycle his character rode in the early-Aughts cult classic – sidecar included. 'I cannot believe we managed to pull this off,' Braff told the Greek, 'and you guys are in for a really, really, really special night.' The Garden State star, writer, and director said it was his 'dream' to have his co-star, Natalie Portman, who plays his love interest Sam, at the show, making it sound like she couldn't make it because she lives in Paris. 'Well, dreams come true,' Portman said, walking out onto the stage, '… and sidecars are for bitches' — a nod to one of her character's most quotable lines about the bike behind them. The two hugged and Braff thanked Portman for playing Sam nearly two decades ago in the film. 'You'd think I was going to miss this special night? No way,' Portman replied. 'These incredible artists have never played together on the same stage – and who knows if it'll happen again.' For nearly two-and-a-half hours on Saturday night, fans of Braff's 2004 indie hit celebrated its Grammy-winning, platinum-selling soundtrack with behind-the-scenes interviews from the movie, clips from some of the most quotable scenes, and, of course, live performances from artists featured on the soundtrack. The one-night-only benefit concert, which will also stream April 6 on Veeps, helped raise money for the Los Angeles-based Midnight Mission, a homeless services and shelter nonprofit Braff started to work with during the pandemic. (The concert even ended with confetti raining from the sky and a group performance of Tom Petty's 'Free Fallin'' because Midnight Missions was, as Braff put it, the rock legend's 'favorite charity.') 'We got really good at this assembly line, and we made between 100 and 200 lunches every Saturday,' Braff recently told Rolling Stone in an interview. 'It made us feel like we were doing something at a time when we all felt like there was nothing we could do.' After a screen intro from Garden State co-star Jean Smart, who played Peter Sarsgaard's mom Carol in the movie, singer-songwriter Bonnie Somerville kicked off the first performance of the show with 'Winding Road,' the final track that appears on the soundtrack. Danny DeVito, whose company Jersey Films produced the movie, hopped on the stage to welcome the next act, Sophie Barker from Zero 7, who performed 'In the Waiting Line,' with a still from the slow-motion party scene projected behind them, where Braff's Largeman gets high with his old friends and plays Spin the Bottle. 'I float on this wonderful song,' DeVito said during his introduction. 'Sidecars are for bitches.' Natalie Portman Although the show featured mostly members from the cast up to this point, the night also saw special guests and presenters from Braff's other projects, including Scrubs, the TV comedy series Braff starred in while he was writing the screenplay for Garden State. His co-stars, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke, joined him on stage to welcome Braff's 'old friend,' songwriter Cary Brothers, who sang 'Blue Eyes.' The night of indie nostalgia continued with a set from what Braff called 'one of my favorite bands,' Remy Zero. The band reunited for the first time in 15 years to play their Garden State cut 'Fair,' as a fireplace appeared on the screen behind the group, a visual nod to a pivotal scene in which Portman tap-dances in front of Braff. Later in the night, Braff took it back to one of Garden State's most iconic shots, standing in front of a wall wearing the same pattern on his shirt as the wallpaper behind him. The wall – and Braff – moved to the side to reveal one of the actor-director's 'true favorites,' Colin Hay. Backed by an image of Sam and Andrew after they just buried Sam's pet hamster Jelly, Hay launched into the gorgeous acoustic number 'I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You,' with rows of lightbulbs moving in unison above, followed by his own crowd-pleaser 'Down Under.' While Paul Simon didn't appear at the anniversary concert, Braff and company enlisted the help of the Milk Carton Kids for one of the soundtrack's most memorable moments with a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's 'The Only Living Boy in New York.' The song comes at a special time in the film where Largeman, Sam, and Sarsgaard's character Mark scream into the 'infinite abyss,' a quarry in Newark, as the rain pours down. Sam Beam, best known as Iron & Wine, later treated the crowd to one of the most intimate, stunning highlights of the night. With a guitar in his hand and sitting on a stool, he started to play the first few notes of his Postal Service cover, 'Such Great Heights,' the moving acoustic cut that plays in an emotional scene near the end of the film. Beam followed it up with his track 'Naked As We Came,' before Madison Cunningham traded verses with him for a rendition of Nick Drake's 'One of These Things First.' Cunningham wasn't the only surprise guest of the night. Only a few tracks were left from the LP, as Laufey surprised the crowd with the soundtrack's opener, Coldplay's Parachutes classic 'Don't Panic.' 'I'm so thankful to get to be a part of this concert and embody Coldplay tonight,' Laufey said, sitting behind a grand piano. 'I love this song, I love this movie, so I hope you enjoy.' Next the set list turned to the final song of the movie as Sarah Paulson introduced Frou Frou to the stage. When Imogen Heap looped her vocals and launched into a hypnotic rendition of 'Let Go,' the iconic last shot from the movie appeared on the screen of Braff and Portman's characters embracing in an airport terminal in the background. The duo followed it up by improvising a track that solicited melodies from the crowd merged with Heap's own vocals – a 'completely original moment in human history,' as Sam might say. Around 10:30, Portman reappeared to present one of the final sets of the night. Of course, there was still one band and their life-changing songs on the bill. 'Now, perhaps no other band gained more momentum and notoriety from the success of the Garden State soundtrack than a little group from Albuquerque, New Mexico, called the Shins.' Portman told the crowd how Braff felt it was 'a very tricky spot to place a song because when Sam puts her headphones on Andrew, it had to be one that everyone would love. It couldn't just be good, it had to be life-changing. So 20 years later, I say to you once again, you gotta hear this song, it'll change your life.' 'So 20 years later, I say to you once again, you gotta hear this song, it'll change your life.' Natalie Portman James Mercer and the band started in with the 'New Slang,' with the crowd singing until the end. The band got the audience up on their feet and moving with their second song, 'Caring Is Creepy.' 'Thank you, Zach, thank you very, very much,' Mercer said, as fans at the Greek cheered on. 'Changed my life, I'll tell you that. Thank you, all, have a good night.' 'Winding Road' – Bonnie Somerville'In the Waiting Line' – Sophie Barker from Zero 7'Blue Eyes – Cary Brothers'Fair' – Remy Zero'Save Me' – Remy Zero'Lebanese Blonde' – Thievery Corporation'I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You' – Colin Hay'Down Under' – Colin Hay'The Only Living Boy in New York' – The Milk Carton Kids'Such Great Heights' – Iron & Wine'Naked As We Came' – Iron & Wine'One of These Things First' – Madison Cunningham and Iron & Wine'Don't Panic' – Laufey'Let Go' – Imogen Heap and Frou From'New Song Creation' – Imogen Heap and Frou Frou'New Slang' – The Shins'Caring Is Creepy' – The Shins'Free Fallin'' – Ensemble Launch Gallery: The Shins, Laufey, and More Rock Out at 'Garden State' Anniversary Concert Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
New Doc Explores Medically Unnecessary Surgeries Given to Intersex Kids — And the Trauma They Cause
Jim Ambrose was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1976 with what he describes as 'a body that was really upsetting to my parents and my doctors.' Though medical tests determined that he was perfectly healthy, his doctors seemed more concerned about what was between his legs: either 'a really, really small penis, or a really large clitoris,' Ambrose explains. Genetic testing came next. The results showed that he had XY chromosomes — indicating he was male. That's when a local urologist advised his parents to put him through the first of two surgeries in order to make him look more like a girl. More from Rolling Stone Bono's 'Stories of Surrender' Documentary Heading to Apple TV+ 'Leaving Neverland' Director Has More to Reveal in 'Surviving Michael Jackson' Documentary Benson Boone, Megan Moroney, Ivan Cornejo, and Rema to Play Rolling Stone's Future of Music Showcase at SXSW '[The doctors] were like, 'Look, we can't raise this baby as a boy,'' Ambrose tells Rolling Stone. ''Would it be able to stand to pee? We're gonna clear out the male reproductive organs and clear out the phallus and we're going to raise it as a girl.' This was considered the standard treatment for babies born with differences of sex development (DSD), previously described as being 'intersex.' In some hospitals in the U.S. and around the world, it still is. Doctors presented these surgeries to parents as their child's best hope for a normal life, without discussing the long-term implications of permanently altering their body — and, in many cases, their gender — at a time before they're able to provide consent or assent. After the surgery, Ambrose's parents named him Kristi, and their doctor told them to keep the truth to themselves. 'They were prescribed the awful trinity of shame, secrecy, and isolation,' Ambrose says. 'My mom made sure not to have anybody change my diaper. There was a lot of anxiety around my body and who might see it.' Ambrose grew up wearing dresses and feeling loved. 'My parents raised me as best they could,' he says. 'They sent me to school, they clothed me, they gave me shelter, and they loved the little girl that they saw me as and wanted to raise me to be.' While there's no scientific evidence that reinforcing a surgically achieved gender actually works, the prevailing idea at the time was that it was possible. This is the focus of a new documentary, The Secret of Me, which premieres March 9 at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas. The film explores the history of these medically unnecessary genital mutilation surgeries and their lasting psychological impact through the lens of Ambrose's experience. It marks the directorial debut of British filmmaker Grace Hughes-Hallett, the producer of the 2018 documentary Three Identical Strangers. The award-winning film tells the story of three identical triplets who were intentionally separated at birth and adopted into different families as part of an undisclosed experiment, and reunited later in life with heartbreaking repercussions. Production on The Secret of Me began in 2021, after Hughes-Hallett first learned of the surgeries done on infants with DSD from her brother, an adult urologist ('He doesn't do these surgeries, I might add,' she clarifies) who heard about them at a conference. 'He told me that there's now a lot of adults who are very unhappy with these surgeries,' Hughes-Hallett tells Rolling Stone. 'That sounded very interesting to me, so I Googled it, and started sort of going into a wormhole on this subject, and quite quickly came across John Money.' Money, a medical psychologist at Johns Hopkins University who believed that nurture was more important than nature when it came to gender identity, was the chief proponent of these surgeries. He spent the 1950s and 1960s researching human sexual behavior, but was handed the case study of a lifetime in 1967, when he convinced the parents of David Reimer, a baby boy who lost his penis to a botched circumcision, to allow their child to undergo what he called 'sex reassignment.' This involved surgery constructing female-passing genitalia, then raising him as a girl. Money also put the child, named Brenda, and their identical twin brother, Brian, through years of psychological and sexual abuse, masquerading as research. His experiment was an indisputable failure: in spite of his upbringing as a girl, Brenda always felt like a boy and endured a childhood of torment. Yet Money published his findings, fraudulently claiming that his work was a resounding success. This cemented his position as a leader in his field, and his 'sex reassignment' protocol as the standard treatment for babies born with DSD. The Secret of Me delves deeper into Money's experiments and the impact they had on the Reimer twins. 'I knew [Money] was of the past, but there's a present to this story,' Hughes-Hallett says. 'So I spoke to quite a few intersex people. I also spoke to doctors who have done and are doing the surgeries. But it was speaking to Jim — I immediately connected with his story, and thought that the way to tell the wider story is through Jim.' At first, Hughes-Hallett planned to include the stories of multiple intersex people, but then 'came to realize that a single narrative would be a stronger film' and decided to focus on Jim. As it turned out, Ambrose was a fan of her work. 'In 2018 I saw Three Identical Strangers, and thought, 'Wow, these people really get the themes of secrecy, isolation, manipulation of children and families,'' he says. 'And about midway through, I remember thinking, 'If these people called, I would take that call.' So when [Grace] called [in 2021], I was like, 'Yeah, I'll definitely talk to you.'' BACK IN BATON ROUGE IN the 1980s, Ambrose was being raised as a girl, according to the standard 'treatment' plan for children born with DSD, as devised by Money. 'There was some fantastical idea of being able to imprint the gender at an early age, and that it will stick,' Ambrose says. 'She will be the little girl. She won't be able to give you babies right out of her vagina, but she'll marry a man, and she'll have a vagina constructed, and the man will be able to have sex with this vagina, and then everything will be OK.' Around age 12 or 13, Ambrose's mother pulled him aside and told him that he'd have to start taking pills that would make him look more like other girls, and informed him of the surgery she'd have in a few years to create a vagina. '[She said] 'You're gonna grow breasts, and hopefully you'll grow taller' — it was really about the phenotypical female characteristics,' he says. 'It was all about carrying off the illusion.' The pills worked. Then, during winter break of his freshman year of college, he was admitted to Children's Hospital New Orleans for a vaginoplasty. 'At this time, I'd never had a boyfriend,' Ambrose says. 'I had never had a sexual interaction with a boy. In fact, by that point, I was already on to my second girlfriend, and she wasn't, like, 'When are you going to get a vagina so we can have proper sex?' She didn't give a shit.' Around a year later, Ambrose was in a feminist studies class, catching up on the assigned reading, when he came across an essay on the medical construction of gender on intersex infants. 'Reading through the essay, it hit me,' Ambrose says. 'I think, 'This is me. This is what happened to me.'' His medical records confirmed his suspicions. Soon after that, Ambrose connected with intersex activists, including one who contacted him in December 1997 with some news. 'She called me and said, 'Go to the nearest magazine shop and buy Rolling Stone — you have to read this,'' Ambrose says. It was an article by John Colapinto titled 'The True Story of John/Joan.' The feature told the true story of the Reimer twins and the years of medical, physical, psychological, and sexual abuse they experienced at the hands of Money. Five years after the article was published, Brian died from a drug overdose at the age of 36. Two years later, David died by suicide. While academics and intersex activists had been familiar with David's story, it had now reached a mainstream audience. 'It blew up with Colapinto's Rolling Stone article,' Ambrose says. 'Basically, everything that I learned [about David Reimer] was from that article.' It also provided activists with a new entry point to the discussion on intersex issues. 'It gave tremendous context to people,' Ambrose says of the article. 'You could start using it as shorthand: the John/Joan case. You could start using that in presentations and conversations. You could actually start out by saying, 'Are you familiar with the John/Joan case?'' It was also right around that time when Ambrose first started telling his story in public. He moved to San Francisco and worked in a bookstore and as a bike messenger, while volunteering with the Intersex Society of North America. Ambrose began working with a team of doctors in Oakland who actually listened to him and took his medical needs seriously. 'At one point, I just said, 'I want this vaginoplasty out,'' he says. 'So I got that removed in an attempt to decolonize my own body.' Ambrose stopped taking estrogen around age 20. '[It was] an act of defiance, an act of rebellion, an act of 'fuck you,' he says. 'But the fallout is that when you castrate — or you rip out ovaries, or testes, or ovotestis, or reproductive organs — you medicalize a child for the rest of their life.' After three or four years without estrogen, a bone scan revealed that Ambrose had developed osteopenia — a precursor to osteoporosis. For the sake of his bones, his doctor told him he'd either have to start taking estrogen or testosterone. He chose testosterone. 'It was much less about 'I am a man now, and I am going to take testosterone, and my pronouns will be honored, and I will wear these clothes, and I'm going to tell everybody at work,'' he explains. 'It was much more about not going back on estrogen.' After several years on the frontlines fighting for the rights of intersex people, Ambrose started to burn out. 'I kept doing the public speaking and activism and writing and traveling and speaking and things like that,' he says. 'Then I kind of just hit a wall of inexplicable depression, and I really had to step away around 2015 and 2016, which really broke my heart.' Now, Ambrose is sharing his story again in The Secret of Me. When Hughes-Hallett learned of Ambrose's experience with the John/Joan Rolling Stone article, it solidified her plans to center the documentary on his story. 'The fact that Jim actually picked up a copy of Rolling Stone and learned about the John Money Story himself, as a storyteller, I was like, 'Oh, that's perfect, because then I don't need to crowbar that story in — it exists organically in Jim's journey,'' she says. In addition to hearing from Ambrose directly, the film features interviews with Colapinto, the urologist who performed Ambrose's surgery, intersex activists, and archival footage of Money, who died in 2006. When work on The Secret of Me began, Ambrose had been retired from activism for several years. 'When I was first approached by Grace, it was my understanding that there would be more people — that I'd be on the screen for five minutes as part of an ensemble,' he says. 'I still remember the phone call where Grace was like, 'We want the story to be you.' I remember thinking, 'Gosh, I would have said no if she had come to me right away.'' But then he started thinking. 'I work at a university with some pretty progressive people; I'm not going to lose my job,' Ambrose says. 'I have an incredibly supportive partner who I've been with for a long time, who knows me and loves me fiercely. I have a family that loves me and supports me. So I thought with all of this privilege, I'm obliged. If I have the opportunity to tell people my story, so they feel less alone in this world, then that's worth everything.' Hughes-Hallett believes that telling this story is especially important in the current political climate. 'I'm glad that this is coming out now and not last year, actually, for that reason, because it's even more important to get the message out there and to make sure people see this and understand what it's actually about,' she says. She hopes the film raises awareness of the surgeries performed on infants with DSD and their far-reaching implications. 'My ambition was to get create a narrative that was interesting and edge-of-your-seat and fast-paced enough to keep today's very distracted, impatient audience engaged for 90 minutes, and hide that education within that strong narrative, so that people leave thinking, 'Wow, I just watched a story that blew me away. And also, oh, wow, shit. Didn't know that. OK, I know that now,'' Hughes-Hallett says. Ultimately, Ambrose wants viewers to come away from the film with a better understanding of kids with DSD, knowing that there's nothing disordered or wrong about them. 'There's nothing about their bodies that threatens the world,' he says. 'There's nothing about their bodies that threatens themselves or their families. They are not problems or mistakes to be fixed. The intended erasure is damaging to the child, and to the families and the people that love them. Bodily autonomy and self-determination are subjects that are important to everyone, and when they're not honored — and when they're not addressed and respected — it destroys lives.' For more information on intersex issues, get in touch with interACT, an organization that works to empower intersex youth and advance the rights of all people with innate variations in their physical sex characteristics. Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up
