He started from the bottom in Fayetteville, North Carolina and now J. Cole is addressing students at Harvard University about his journey in hip-hop music.
Roc Nation’s flagship artist spoke to a room full of Harvard students on Tuesday as part of a dissertation on hip-hop called “The Next Move: A Conversation With J. Cole.” Cole talked about being influenced by artists such as Michael Jackson, Kool Moe Dee, and original R&B bad boy Bobby Brown. J. Cole admitted he didn’t know much about Tupac‘s music until his stepfather him to it. Through his introduction to Pac, J. Cole got into other West Coast rappers.
As he’s shared in many of his interviews, J. Cole told the Harvard students that he wanted to be a basketball player in the NBA before deciding to dedicate his time to writing rhymes and making beats. he also gave major props to his mother for her support early in his career.
After J. Cole wrapped up his speaking engagement, he tweeted, “Harvard, that was ill.” He couldn’t contain his excitement about the event and later tweeted, “Lemme stop being cool, THAT SHIT WAS AMAZING. Thanks.”
Will Smith loves the kids! The actor/rapper stopped by a South London all girls school, St. Martin-in-The-Field, as a surprise visitor. Smith was invited by Parliament member Chuka Ummuna, who is a vocal fan of the 90′s sitcom “Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”
Smith was in the U.K. accompanying his son Jaden’s concert tour with pop phenomenon Justin Bieber.
Not just a celebrity appearance, Smith dropped some jewels of knowledge for his star struck audience:
“You have got to be very, very aggressive about associating with people who are good for your life. One person that you’re out with, one night, could do one dumb thing that can ruin the next 15 years of your life.”
Smith then had the ladies join him as he rapped his iconic hit “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”
Will and Jaden will reunite on screen in the upcoming sci-fi thriller “After Earth” slated to open June 7th.
Wu-Tang Clan is back! In an interview, Cappadonna confirmed that the NY based hip-hop group will be reuniting to record a 20th anniversary album:
“We’ve been texting each other. We’re definitely concentrating on more positivity and teachings and trying to put that back into the original recipe for this next Wu-Tang album.”
Method Man confirmed the reunion earlier this month at the Key Club in Hollywood:
“How many brothas kept a job for twenty years? The same job. That’s the shit. We owe that sh*t to each and every fan that ever supported our music, and that’s real talk.”
Wu-Tang’s debut album “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” dropped in 1993.
A 2-year old baby was born with HIV and was cured. Peep the report from ABC News.
A Mississippi baby born with HIV more than two years ago appears to be the first documented case of a child’s being cured of the virus, according to doctors and scientists.
The unidentified child has now been “functionally cured” and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of the HIV infection. If the child remains healthy, it would mark only the second time in the world’s history that a person has been cured of HIV, which is the virus that causes AIDS.
The landmark case was announced Sunday at the 2013 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.
Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was one of the lead researchers and author of the report, which was released by The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).
The infant was diagnosed with HIV at birth to a mother who did not receive prenatal care or HIV treatment, Dr. Rowena Johnston, director of amfAR, told ABC News.
The infant was transferred to the University of Mississippi Medical Center and started on antiretroviral treatment about 30 hours after birth. Doctors took the apparently unusual step of prescribing three aggressive drugs (AZT, 3TC, nevirapine) at once after birth.
Johnston points to the early intervention of the three medications as the difference-maker.
“If one had to make an educational guess, the difference was receiving the treatment dose very soon after birth, earlier than standard of care in the U.S.,” Johnston said.
Initial HIV viral load tests were high and then expectedly decreased in the first month. Viral loads were detectable three times and became undetectable by one month of age.
The baby was on treatment and in care until 12 to 15 months of age, at which point the baby was lost to follow-up after doctors lost contact with the mother and the baby stopped receiving any medication. The baby returned for care at 23 months of age.
Surprisingly, viral loads were still undetectable, despite being off treatment for almost a year.
Johnston said the results were all the more shocking because doctors do not usually recommend stopping treatment at any time in children with HIV from birth.
The results surprised Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi, who was treating the child.
“My first thought was to panic. I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, I have been treating a child who is not actually infected,’” she said.
A battery of “highly sensitive” tests confirmed the absence of HIV, according to a news release.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, with the National Institutes of Health, cautions that more studies are needed before calling the results a breakthrough.
“You have to be careful because this is just a single case and although the data looked pretty convincing that you got to be careful that this may not be broadly applicable to other situations,” Fauci told ABC News Radio.
In Mississippi, Gay gives the child a check-up every few months. “I just check for the virus and keep praying that it stays gone,” she told The Associated Press.
The mother’s HIV is being controlled with medication and she is “quite excited for her child,” Gay added.
The only other documented case of an HIV cure to date remains that of Timothy Brown, the so-called “Berlin patient.”
We were waiting to see if Lil Wayne would respond to the diss track Pitbulldropped yesterday, “Welcome to Dade County.” Weezy responded today with one sentence via Twitter:
“DAMN PITBULL BRO I THOUGHT YOU WERE COOL!”
Lil Wayne apologized to the city of Miami and LeBron James after he went on an expletive-filled rant against the NBA and the Miami Heat after All-Star Weekend, even saying he had sex with Chris Bosh’ wife, Adrienne Bosh. Weezy did not apologize to Bosh or Dwyane Wade.
Pitbull responded to Weezy with:
Pit followed that up with:
“@LilTunechi the world shows me love and vice versa but miami is all I got no disrespect just the truth.”
It looks like Pitbull removed both tweets so maybe he’s trying to squash the feud with Weezy in private.
Lil Wayne and Pitbull became friends when they first worked together on Pitbull’s 2005 remix to his single “Dammit Man.” Since then, they both appeared on one of DJ Khaled’s first singles“Holla At Me Baby.”
Funny thing about that Bugatti you woke up in, #ItsMine #OhTheIrony hahahaaaa funny how “the new T-Pain” has to use “The old T-Pain’s Bugatti for his Bugatti hook hahaaaaa yea. So. There’s That. Not at all throwing shots at @Acehood that’s my man 100 grand.
- T-Pain
T-Pain is clearly referring to Future who sings, “I woke up in a new Bugatti,” on Ace Hood’s, “Bugatti,” track. Do you look at Future as the new T-Pain?
Uncle Luke wrote a blog post recently where he criticized Miami-transplant Lil Wayne, calling on him to stop disrespecting Miami. The 2 Live Crew founder also wrote that Rick Rossshould straighten Weezy out.
While Rick Ross has yet to respond, Miami native Pitbullhas. The Cuban-American rapper just released the Lil Wayne-diss track, “Welcome to Dade County,” where he raps overBaauer’s viral hit “Harlem Shake.”
Pitbull name drops Baby and Slim but never mentions Lil Wayne, but its obvious he’s referring to the YMCMB boss:
“I had to do this for my city, dog,” Pitbull says at the end of the track. “It’s something that I love so deeply. I don’t want to be 305 Miami-Dade County, I am 305 Miami-Dade County. When we show love to those that get their city destroyed by a hurricane and then they come down here and…” Pitbull declares before finishing the song in Spanish.
Lil Wayne and Birdman moved to Miami after Hurricane Katrina devastated their native New Orleans.
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