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Entertainment

50 Cent Brings out DaBaby for Rolling Loud Performance Following Controversy, Fans Show Support

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DaBaby made his return to Rolling Loud three months following his controversial rant in Miami, thanks to his presumed mentor 50 Cent.

Fans of the North Carolina rapper were in for a special treat on Thursday, Oct. 28, when Fif brought the “Suge” rapper out to perform on Day 1 of the festival’s New York installment at Citi Field in Queens — although he wasn’t a part of the official lineup.

DaBaby (L) make this return to Rolling Loud stages thanks to 50 Cent (R). Photo: @dababy/ Instagram

TMZ reported that unidentified source say Rolling Loud organizers approved DaBaby’s involvement despite his prior flap, although his portion of the performance was allegedly cut from the livestream of the event.

Fif has shown DaBaby tons support in the weeks following the scandal. During an interview with E! News, the “Power” creator seemed confident that the “BOP” emcee would eventually land back in the media’s good graces.

“Like, they didn’t notify him that he’s turning into a superstar,” Fif said at the time. “There’s no artist development. There’s no strong A&R in this, definitely no media training. Remember they canceled Chris Brown like five or six times.”

Social media comments about the guest appearance also seemed to be mostly positive, although at least one was subtly barbed. “Dababy performed at rolling loud without saying homophobic statements for no reason, clearly he’s improving,” wrote one Twitter user.

Another person commented, “Even tho said some ignant ass sh-t at Rolling Loud, DaBaby make sum quality gym music.”

Still, DaBaby doesn’t appear to be out of the woods with everyone just yet. “The tweet that Boosie just posted about Lil Nas is 1000x more harmful and disrespectful than anything DaBaby said at Rolling Loud.” They added, “I want him to truly prove he cares about the LGBTQ+ community and stand up for Nas and denounce Boosie’s BS.”

As previously reported, the 29-year-old, whose real name is Jonathan Lyndale Kirk, went on a bizarre and misinformed rant about HIV/AIDS during his July set. “If you didn’t show up today with HIV, AIDS, or any of them deadly sexually transmitted diseases, that’ll make you die in two to three weeks, then put your cellphone lighter up,” he said during his performance.

That backlash included mounting criticisms on social media, loss of several future performance bookings and brand partnerships. The “ROCKSTAR” rapper ultimately offered up multiple apologies and met with various members of the LGBTQ community for a discussion around his comments.

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Entertainment

DaBaby Performs with 50 Cent at Rolling Loud New York

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DaBaby just made his return to the Rolling Loud stage for the first time since he made homophobic remarks during the festival’s Miami stop … and it’s all thanks to his buddy 50 Cent.

50 was on stage at Rolling Loud New York, and brought out DaBaby as a special guest … we’re told Rolling Loud organizers approved DaBaby’s appearance.



7/25/21

Rolling Loud

Rolling Loud is a significant location for DaBaby’s return considering it was during his festival set in Miami back in July when he told audience members to only put their hands up to party, “If you didn’t show up today with HIV/AIDS or other STDs that’ll make you die in 2-3 weeks” and “Fellas, if you didn’t suck a n**** d*** in the parking lot.”

He later attempted to apologize, but only made things worse when he said the comments weren’t aimed at his actual fans because his fans aren’t, “nasty gay n****s” or “junkies.” He later deleted the apology.


The fallout for the rapper was massive … he was dropped from multiple festivals and slammed by Dua Lipa, who he had a huge single with called “Levitating.”

The rapper’s comments were also the focus during a segment of Dave Chappelle‘s “The Closer” special on Netflix, where the comedian compared the outrage of DaBaby shooting and killing a man in a parking lot to the outrage from the LGBTQ+ community stemming from the RL comments.

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Science

NASA cut a 10 cent check for moon mining

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NASA Administrator BIll Nelson presents Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus with a check for 10 cents.  (Image credit: Space Foundation)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — NASA has cut a 10 cent check to space startup Lunar Outpost in the first-ever payment to a company to mine the moon. 

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson presented Justin Cyrus, CEO of Colorado-based space startup Lunar Outpost, with the first payment ever issued to a company as part of a space resource contract announced Aug. 23 here at the 36th annual Space Symposium. The check, which was just 10 cents, or 10 percent of Lunar Outpost’s $1 bid, and will go towards the company’s efforts to collect lunar dust, or regolith, for the agency. 

“We had contractual terms with them when they produce their first element. We would give them 10% of their contract award. I am happy to present a check for 10% of their bid. Justin, here’s a check for 10 cents,” Nelson said. 

Related: Home on the moon: How to build a lunar settlement (infographic)

“This sets a legal and procedural framework that will be utilized for generations and decades to come for companies like ours and many others to go out and collect resources from the lunar surface from other planetary bodies and make them basically useful for humanity,” Cyrus said. 

Lunar Outpost has previously “developed an air quality sensor to meet NASA’s need to contain hazardous moon dust,” Nelson explained Monday during a press briefing at Space Symposium. This work has “led to a technology that senses pollutants on earth to protect firefighters.” 

Now, as part of this contract, the company will “collect a small amount of moon dust, verify the collection and transfer the ownership of that lunar regolith,” Nelson said. “Space resources will play a key role in NASA’s Artemis program and the future of space exploration. The ability to extract and use extra terrestrial resources will ensure Artemis operations can be conducted safely and sustainably in support of human exploration.”

Nelson pointed to the future of lunar resource utilization, with the expected possibility that future missions to the moon could use lunar regolith to create a type of “cement” to build facilities and water ice to create rocket fuel or use for other purposes. 

The startup plans to demonstrate that they are able to land on the surface of the moon’s south pole, where resources and water ice are expected to be plentiful, and collect those resources. 

“We will be collecting 100 grams of just lunar regolith,” Cyrus estimated to Space.com at the briefing, adding that they will not separate the material during the collection. 

However, he added “we are also looking for volatiles and water ice.” The company is still looking for the right technology to bring on board to make this happen and for “exciting payloads,” as Cyrus described them, that they could add to the emission to use to study the environment on the moon’s surface. 

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Business

Parler ‘offered Donald Trump a 40 per cent stake in the company while he was president’

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Donald Trump was reportedly in talks to acquire a 40 per cent stake in Parler in exchange for the then-president agreeing to post first on the social media app that has become the platform of choice for many of his supporters.

The negotiations, which reportedly took place while Trump was still president, were ended after White House lawyers objected, saying such an arrangement would violate ethics rules and potentially expose him to bribery charges.

News of the talks was first reported by BuzzFeed News, which obtained documents outlining the proposed deal.

According to BuzzFeed News, Trump’s company would have immediately received a 20 per cent stake while the remaining 20 per cent would have handed over in tranches over a two-year period.

Donald Trump (seen above in West Palm Beach, Florida, on January 20) was offered a 40 per cent stake in social media app Parler, according to BuzzFeed News

Parler bills itself as a social media platform that allows for ‘free expression.’

The then-president would have had to agree to make Parler his primary mode of communication with his supporters.

That meant Trump would have had to post all of his social media content – including posts, videos, and livestreaming – on Parler for at least four hours before posting on any other platform, according to the proposal.

Parler also asked Trump to link back to the site when posting to the other social media platforms or whenever he emailed his supporters.

Trump would also have been required to give Parler access to his email lists so that the site could promote its platform to his many supporters.

Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, broached the idea of Trump partnering with Parler in 2019

According to BuzzFeed News, Trump’s representatives were in discussions with two  Parler stakeholders – Fox News commentator Dan Bongino (left) and investor Jeffrey Wernick (right)

Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, was negotiating with Parler executives on behalf of the then-president when the idea was first raised last summer, according to the report.

Parler was represented in the talks by two of its prominent shareholders – Fox News commentator and Trump-backer Dan Bongino and Jeffrey Wernick, one of Parler’s earliest investors.

DailyMail.com has sought comment from Parler and Bongino.

‘The president was never part of the discussions,’ Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, told BuzzFeed News.

‘The discussions were never that substantive.

‘And this was just one of many things the campaign was looking into to deal with the cancel culture of Silicon Valley.’

Wernick told BuzzFeed that Trump was never involved in any discussions about bringing him to Parler.

‘We have spoken to several people about potential stakes in the company for producing certain things,’ Wernick said. 

He said nondisclosure agreements that were made between Parler and the Trump Organization precluded him from detailing specifics of what was discussed. 

Legal experts quoted by BuzzFeed News said that the reported arrangement could have been illegal since Trump would essentially be getting a financial reward from a company that received exclusive content while he was a sitting president. 

After Trump lost his re-election bid in November, the two sides revisited the idea but the talks broke down after Parler was deplatformed by large tech giants like Apple, Google, and Amazon who accused it of failing to moderate extremist content. 

Parler hoped that Trump would help boost its traffic by getting him to post content on its platform before he did so on other social media apps.

Trump advisers thought that Parler offered an alternative to the mainstream apps like Facebook and Twitter, which has long been accused of anti-conservative bias.

While the outgoing president was negotiating with Parler, he was using the other platforms to mount a public relations campaign aimed at discrediting President Joe Biden’s election victory.

Earlier this week, Parler CEO John Matze said he was fired after a disagreement with one of the company’s chief financial backers over its content moderation policies

In the weeks that followed the November 3 election, Trump posted hundreds of messages alleging that he was victimized by widespread voter fraud that robbed him of victory.

Twitter and Facebook both placed disclaimers on his posts, stoking suspicions that the companies were seeking to censor the outgoing president.

On January 6, Trump held a rally near the White House on the same day that the Congress was meeting to ratify Biden’s election victory.

After Trump spoke, hundreds of the rallygoers stormed the Capitol, overrunning police and sending lawmakers frantically hiding in fear for their lives.

Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in the riots.

Amid the chaos and ensuing tension after the riots, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms banned Trump, saying that there was a risk he would use his accounts to foment more violence.

In an instant, Trump was deprived of his key mode of communication with his 88 million Twitter followers as well as the more than 35 million people who followed him on Facebook.

After Trump was banished from the mainstream apps, millions of users flocked to Parler, though it, too, faced trouble.

Parler, which is home to mostly far-right users who support Trump and in many cases cheered on the riots, was removed from Apple and Google app stores.

It was also taken off a web-hosting platform by Amazon, making it inaccessible to users.

The large tech companies accused Parler of failing to crack down on extremist content and calls for violence.

Talks between the Trump Organization reportedly broke down after Parler was removed from its cloud-based servers by Amazon Web Services 

Parler disappeared from the web last month with an error message saying ‘we can’t connect to the server’ after Amazon pulled the plug 

Parler’s then-CEO, John Matze, 27, accused the large tech giants of censoring his platform.

Parler last month sued Amazon for antitrust violations. It has also tried to come back online with the help of a Russian internet security company, DDos-Guard, but users have still been unable to post.

Earlier this week, Matze said he was fired from his post by the company’s board after a disagreement with Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, one of the app’s key financial backers who owns a majority stake.

Mercer has reportedly put in place a team to run the site in Matze’s absence – including British lawyer Matthew Richardson and former tea party activist Mark Meckler.

Matze said on Wednesday that he and Mercer disagreed over whether Parler should do more to moderate extremist content on its platform. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, Matze wanted to bolster the site’s content moderation mechanism so that it could be allowed to return to the app stores managed by Google and Apple.

Matze said that the company board did not agree with his suggestion to ban certain groups that were affiliated with domestic terrorists.

Matze’s claim was disputed by Amy Peikoff, Parler’s chief policy officer, who called his statements ‘misleading.’

‘The owners and managers of the company worked tirelessly to build a resilient, non-partisan platform dedicated to freedom of expression, civil discourse, and user privacy,’ she said in the statement.

The idea of Trump becoming a part owner of Parler was first raised by former Parscale. 

Trump was removed from social media apps Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and others in the wake of the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol in which five people died 

Trump’s banishment from Twitter meant that he no longer could communicate with his 88 million followers on the platform

Trump was also banned by Facebook, where the former president had more than 35 million followers 

Parscale broached the idea with Trump during a meeting last year at the White House, according to BuzzFeed News.

A Trump-Parler partnership intrigued Parscale, who first raised the idea of the then-president creating an account on the controversial platform.

In the days after Trump was being encouraged by some of his aides to set up accounts on Parler and another social media platform with fewer restrictions on hate content, Gab.

But he ultimately decided against it after his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and another adviser, Dan Scavino, discouraged it, Bloomberg News reported.

Matze said that at last count Parler has some 15 million users on its site, including the former president’s two eldest sons, Eric and Don Jr, as well as many former White House staffers who served in the Trump administration. 

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