Blxst has new music on the way, and this time, it’s not an EP. He announced Thursday that he’s readying for the release of his debut album, which will be titled I’ll Always Come Find You.
The announcement came via an Instagram post featuring a teaser that sees him in a Buick Grand National with a “Birdie” license plate, taking a late-night drive through the city and eventually stopping at a chauffeur car service garage called Evgle & Son. He ends the video saying, “If you’re ever lost, I’ll always come find you,” and revealing the release date: July 19.
“This is the most confident I’ve ever felt in my music. What I had to overcome while making this album changed my entire creative process, and the fans deserve to see the growth from that,” Blxst said in a press release. “I would be doing a disservice to not reach the heights I dreamed of reaching when I first started as an artist. No better time than now.”
To kick off the album, Blxst has released the Anderson .Paak-featuring single, “Dance with the Devil,” and its video.
“I’ve been a fan of Anderson .Paak since his Malibu album. His approach as an artist and tone of voice inspired me while coming into my own artistry,” Blxst said. “Full circle moment, he organically reached out to me summer 2023 to collaborate with him and the group Free Nationals. I took it as an opportunity to shoot for the stars and asked for him to be a part of my debut album as well.”
“This song is a perfect blend of two artists from California and is sonically undeniable from first listen,” he added. He said the song’s about “the tug-of-war with temptation in love and relationships.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday addressed his poor performance in Thursday’s presidential debate, just hours after he faltered on stage in his matchup against former President Donald Trump.
A senior campaign aide told ABC News that the president is “absolutely” not considering dropping out of the race after stumbling with answers and is committed to a second debate. During the rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, a more energetic-appearing Biden acknowledged that he’s not a young man, but contended that his morals and history prove that he’s still fit for the job.
“Folks, I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but … I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong, and I know how to do this job,” he told the roaring crowd. “I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
The crowd constantly shouted “Four more years,” during the event which also included remarks from first lady Jill Biden
Biden spent much of the rally pointing out what he called Trump’s false claims during the debate about the economy, immigration and crime.
“I spent 90 minutes on stage debating a guy with the morals of an alley cat,” Biden said repeating a zinger from the debate. “I think he set a new record for the number of lies told at a debate.”
Biden dug in further bringing up Trump’s conviction in a New York criminal court and pending criminal and civil trials.
“Donald Trump isn’t just a convicted felon. Donald Trump is a one-man crime wave,” the president said.
Biden also reiterated that Trump helped to end abortion rights for women across the country and contended that the former president and “MAGA Republicans” would push forward a national abortion ban.
“I made it clear last night you reelect me and Kamala [Harris] we will make Roe v. Wade the law of the land,” he said.
Jill Biden, who wore a dress with the word “vote” written all over it, also defended his performance.
“What you saw last night on the debate stage was Joe Biden, a president with integrity and character who told the truth,” she said. “And Donald Trump told lie after lie after lie.”
Biden told reporters immediately after the debate that he had a sore throat and didn’t have concerns about his performance.
“It’s hard to debate a liar,” he said.
When the president and first lady landed in Raleigh early Friday morning they were greeted at the tarmac by prominent North Carolina Democrats, including State Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue, and about 250 supporters.
Biden spent time speaking with the supporters and took photos with them before he left the airport.
Following the Raleigh rally, the president was headed to New York City to deliver remarks at the grand opening ceremony of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, the first LGBTQIA+ visitor center within the National Park system.
Biden will end his day with a closed-door campaign reception in New York.
ABC News’ MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
Dopamine was released two weeks ago, and coincidentally, Normani is experiencing a sense of joy as a result.
“I have gratitude. Like I said, I’m still processing my feelings but more than anything, I’m so glad the weight is lifted,” she said during an appearance on the Zach Sang Show, when explaining how she feels post her album’s release. “I feel like I can be present. I feel like I can live as opposed to feeling like I’m surviving and trying to fight to keep my head above water. That gets exhausting, so I’m in a much better place.”
After experiencing delays due to various reasons, including her parents’ cancer diagnoses, Normani already has a goal to ensure that recording her sophomore effort is “much more enjoyable.”
“I can’t wait, especially knowing what I know now,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — Homelessness advocates are condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling that an Oregon city’s ordinance to bar anyone without a permanent residency from sleeping outside does not amount to “cruel and unusual” punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
In 2013, the Grants Pass city council attempted to ban anyone “from using a blanket, pillow or cardboard box for protection from the elements” while sleeping outside, threatening violators with citations and tickets. Lower courts initially found that this was “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment.
The case, City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, has major implications for the rising population of unhoused Americans and the disciplinary actions they face in public spaces, advocates say.
Across the country, homelessness has been on the rise since 2016.
The most recent report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in December found that more than 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023 across the country, a 12% increase from 2022. As this number rises, local legislators continue to implement bans on homeless encampments or sleeping outside.
Advocates say these policies don’t address the lack of affordable housing for the homeless and instead they criminalize people “for trying to survive” with nowhere to go, said Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center in a statement to ABC News.
He called the ruling “inhumane.”
Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, told ABC News that unhoused people are often forced to face the elements in winter and summer, which may cause further physical and emotional trauma. Oliva argues that taking away their possessions or adding further financial burden to the homeless only worsens the harm.
“It makes it harder for them to get jobs. It makes it harder for them to get it into apartment, because fines rack up, sometimes they turn into criminal charges and bench warrants,” said Oliva. “So it not only doesn’t end homelessness for anybody, it actually makes it worse for the people who are subject to these kinds of ordinances.”
The decision is a win for lawmakers across the country who have recently implemented similar bans on the homeless and restrictions on encampments or possessions in public spaces, but who have been faced with legal challenges.
When SCOTUS first agreed to hear the case in January, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on the Supreme Court to “correct course and end the costly delays from lawsuits that have plagued our efforts to clear encampments and deliver services to those in need.”
The 6-3 SCOTUS opinion was authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” Gorsuch wrote. “At bottom, the question this case presents is whether the Eighth Amendment grants federal judges primary responsibility for assessing those causes and devising those responses. It does not.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, argued the ordinance punishes homeless people with nowhere else to go based on status.
“It is possible to acknowledge and balance the issues facing local governments, the humanity and dignity of homeless people, and our constitutional principles,” Sotomayor wrote. “Instead, the majority focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local governments and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”
Lil Nas X‘s latest song “HERE WE GO!” is the theme song for Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, so feel free to call him Detective Montero.
The rapper dropped the energetic and catchy tune — which notably features a sample of Harold Faltermeyer‘s iconic original “Axel F” theme song from 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop — on Friday.
In a recent interview, Lil Nas X said the first time he heard the original theme song was on Family Guy, and he thought, “Wait, that’s actually a nice little melody,” before he saw the film years later.
“It was actually kind of insane,” the “Old Town Road” singer said about getting to leave his mark on the beloved film franchise starring Eddie Murphy. “I was a bit, like, emotional.”
“And I know, like, my dad and family, this probably would be the thing they’d go the most, like, insane about me doing, because it’s so close to them,” he added.
According to a press release, Lil Nas X’s song is featured multiple times throughout Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F and plays over the end credits as the movie’s theme song.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F streams July 3 on Netflix.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Friday limited the scope of a federal obstruction statute used by prosecutors to charge more than 300 defendants involved with the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, including former President Donald Trump.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the 6-3 majority, said the government must show in those cases that the alleged obstruction related to “impairing the availability or integrity” of “records, documents, or objects” used in the disrupted proceeding.
The Justice Department had applied the charge more broadly in many cases, alleging that the physical presence of some of the rioters inside Capitol was alone “obstruction of an official proceeding” under the law.
Roberts said the statute in question — the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 which was enacted after the Enron scandal to prevent destruction of evidence in financial crimes — must be read in context.
“It would be peculiar to conclude that in closing the Enron gap, Congress actually hid away … a catchall provision that reaches far beyond the document shredding and similar scenarios that prompted the legislation in the first place,” Roberts wrote.
The decision was at least a partial victory for former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer who was among the rioters on Jan. 6 and challenged the obstruction charge, which can carry up to 20 years in prison.
The Supreme Court made clear, however, that prosecutors could retain the obstruction charges if more properly framed and supported by evidence that the defendants’ actions involved documents of some kind.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said “Congress meant what it said.”
The law “is a very broad provision,” she wrote, “and admittedly, events like January 6th were not its target. (Who could blame Congress for that failure of imagination?) But statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the test anyway.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland expressed disappointment with the ruling but said it would not impact the vast majority of the Justice Department’s 1,400 criminal cases related to Jan. 6.
“There are no cases in which the Department charged a January 6 defendant only with the offense at issue in Fischer,” Garland said in a statement. “For the cases affected by today’s decision, the Department will take appropriate steps to comply with the Court’s ruling.”
It was also not clear how much of an impact the court’s decision would have on special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case against Trump. Two of the four charges involve the same obstruction statute used against Fischer.
“It will be a much tougher case to argue that he impaired an official proceeding if the prosecution must also show that it related to the destruction or alteration, or related activities, of documents,” said Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller, an election law scholar.
“For rioters physically present at the Capitol that day, it will be a tougher but possible showing. For Trump, however, it may be more about whether paperwork submitted to Pence relating to other electoral votes or what to do with those votes rises to the level of criminal activity in the statute,” Muller said. “We’ll see whether the Department of Justice keeps this charge against Trump, but it may fall back to some of the other charges and rely more heavily on them instead.”
Also hanging over the Trump case is whether the high court will allow it to proceed at all. On Monday, the justices are expected to hand down a decision in Trump v. U.S. that could determine how much, if any, immunity from prosecution the former president enjoys.
