a few noteworthy clips 🗞️

Elite Daily • March 16 2023

Ryan Destiny Isn’t Just Making Music For TikTok

I’ve always thought the word special was overused until I spoke with Ryan Destiny, the Justin Bieber-approved actor and singer-songwriter who describes her creative work as “special” so sincerely, so headstrong, that you can tell she really means it. “I love feeling respected,” Destiny tells Elite Daily. “I don’t like being in rooms or situations where someone wants to control me.” With confidence like that, who wouldn’t bow down?

Elite Daily • April 29 2022

Suki Waterhouse Is Finally In Charge

Suki Waterhouse is booked and busy. On a Friday morning in mid-March, she rushes to the phone and kindly prefaces our conversation by admitting she’s in the middle of something else: filming her upcoming Amazon Prime series, Daisy Jones & The Six, in New Orleans. Yes, it’s the series adaptation of that beloved book by Taylor Jenkins Reid. “It’s a bit mad,” Waterhouse tells Elite Daily, somewhat out of breath. “I’ve got to get in a van to work in like half an hour.”

Cosmopolitan • July 9 2021

Dear IOC, Please Fix Yourself

Just two weeks ago, Sha’Carri Richardson was on fire at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Calling special attention to the 21-year-old sprinter was her distinct style—orange hair, fake lashes, and embellished acrylic nails. But Richardson’s was only part of the reason all eyes were on her. In her post-race interview, after conquering the 100-meter dash, she revealed that a week before.

Elite Daily • June 8 2021

Saweetie's "Fast (Motion)" Combines Her Two Passions: Music & Sports

Saweetie knows what it’s like to be the new girl, but you’d never guess it after marathoning her music videos and discography. Her work is the sonic embodiment of attitude and electricity, packaged as fiercely feminine rhymes with fire beats that have garnered over 1 billion streams on Spotify. The latest addition to the rap star’s body of work? Her May 7 single, “Fast (Motion),” and its spirited music video, both released just months ahead of her debut album, Pretty B*tch Music, which drops this #hotvaxsummer.

Medium • March 29 2021

Craig David was basically the godfather of the infamous Flavas dolls

In the early 2000s, the brains behind Barbie debuted a new line of hip-hop- and Black-culture-inspired fashion dolls called Flavas. The verdict? They were problematic (and swiftly discontinued after a year of poor sales). Their legacy? Not entirely tainted, thanks to none other than U.K. R&B legend Craig David.

FLARE • September 21 2020

I Lost My Job to COVID—But Found My Personal Style Again

Scrolling through an iPhone camera roll is the 21st century version of flipping through the pages of a metal ring-bound photo album and romanticizing times that felt much simpler. In 2020, a miserable year that feels more and more like a literal epoch, waxing nostalgic about The Before—a period that I can’t help but refer to as “when things were normal”—has become an international pastime, and at this point, looking back at snapshots of life pre-pandemic can feel borderline masochistic. We had p

PEOPLE • July 18 2022

Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon's Relationship Timeline

Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon were once considered a Hollywood "it" couple. The Grammy-winning songstress and the rapper-turned-television host were first linked to each other in early 2008 when Cannon starred in Carey's "Bye Bye" music video. The couple kept their whirlwind romance very low-key, and after just a few months of dating, they secretly tied the knot during a private ceremony in the Bahamas...

Medium • August 3 2020

How Bratz became the cool-girl blueprint

Looking back, I recall the first wave of Bratz content trickling onto social media as if it were just yesterday, although it was actually mid-2018, when FILA Disruptor IIs weren’t yet stale, and every art show I stumbled into was an unspoken competition of who could show up looking most like an Ashanti/Ja Rule video extra. I noticed that “extremely online” women seemed increasingly inspired by the doll franchise with every passing day — profile icon selfies were swapped with vintage Bratz artwor

Adolescent Content • August 26 2020

On the commodification of an artist’s heartbreak

When Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour was released in 2018, the story of the country songstress’s heart—its splinters, fragments, and return to togetherness—became of the world. With clarity and sweetness, her voice shared stories powdered with pain, but rapturous contentment, too; and anyone who has loved and lost could easily find themselves heart-warmed and goose-bumped by her smart yet depressive double entendres (re: “You can have your space, cowboy” on “Space Cowboy”) and balmy, illustrative m

Popdust • August 7 2020

The Death of White Escapism in Hulu’s "Palm Springs"

"Like no place else."

That's the motto of Palm Springs, according to their Bureau of Tourism, which also pridefully advertises the Southern California desert resort city as a balmy oasis with a rich heritage, iconic modernist aesthetics, and an ever-increasing cultural appeal to both hipsters on holiday leave and influencers on business trips.

For a place like Palm Springs, these attractive qualities are not merely marketing angles, but famed truths. The city was established atop land belongin

Medium • August 15 2020

Normani, babygirl, what is you doin’?

Normani, babygirl, what is you doin’?

Signed with RCA Records, former Fifth Harmony multihyphenate Normani has enough star power to blow today’s one-dimensional pop newcomers right out of the water. The problem: she has very little music to prove it. #FreeNormani (lol)

I’m obsessed with Normani Hamilton for a simple reason: she’s a young, black female performer who sparkles with more multidisciplinary star power than any other solo pop act I’ve seen rise to celebrity over the past half-decade

Adolescent Content • July 9 2020

I dated someone with an OnlyFans

Around this time last year, I dated a guy who loved showing ass on the internet via cheeky mirror pics and the occasional film photograph. Cameron’s* mooning-centric Instagram feed was the result of his relatively newfound body-posi mentality; like many of us grappling with idealistic beauty expectations, most of his teen and early 20-something years were dampened with low self-esteem incited by images of how an attractive man’s body should look, and thus, his online nudity represented liberatio

Adolescent Content • May 22 2020

What’s in a name? A lot if you’re black.

Just a few months ago, someone from Black Twitter quipped that the reigning women of Destiny’s Child had “some really black-ass names.” The joke reintroduced an old truth: Beyoncé, Tenitra (Michelle’s first name), and Kelendria sound as black as catfish and fried okra, or a beauty supply store referred to vaguely as “the beauty supply.”

As the tweet became a thread, other folks waxed nostalgic upon a yesteryear when such Afrocentric names dominated black entertainment, and one Destiny’s Child