Daily News Feed 7.18.08

Tweet Returns with New ‘Love Tweet’
After a few failed attempts as a member of an all-girl group, Tweet received a life-altering phone call, from Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott, that forever changed her life. The, then aspiring, singer-songwriter immediately went to work as a backing vocalist, not only for Elliott, but for Timbaland & Magoo, Ja Rule, Bubba Sparxxx, and Petey Pablo, before eventually inking a solo deal with Missy’s Elektra distributed, now defunct, The Goldmind Inc. imprint. Southern Hummingbird, her gold certified debut, which spawned her signature hit, “Oops (Oh My),” finally dropped in 2002. Its’ underwhelming follow-up, It’s Me Again in 2005, was a commercial disappointment, but also still an overall good album. BallerStatus.com got a call from the Rochester, New York, native, who now resides in Atlanta, Georgia, to find out where’s she’s been? What she’s been up to? And, basically, all things Tweet… (Continue Reading…)

Disney’s ‘Subservient’ Black Princess Animates Film Critics
When Disney announced it was casting its first black princess for its latest animation film, the African-American heroine was hailed as a positive role model for little girls and an ambitious marketing ploy, not to mention an attempt to ward off the allegations of racism that have lurked since the heyday of Walt Disney Productions in the 1940s and 1950s. But now the film studio finds itself fending off a chorus of accusations of racial stereotyping in its forthcoming big-budget cartoon, The Princess and The Frog: An American Fairy Tale, which marks a return to hand-drawn animation. A musical set in 1920s New Orleans, the film was supposed to feature Maddy, a black chambermaid working for a spoilt, white Southern debutante. Maddy was to be helped by a voodoo priestess fairy godmother to win the heart of a white prince, after he rescued her from the clutches of a voodoo magician. Disney’s original storyboard is believed to have been torn up after criticism that the lead character was a clichéd subservient role with echoes of slavery, and whose name sounded too much like “Mammy” – a unwelcome reminder of America’s Deep South before the civil rights movement swept away segregation. (Continue Reading…)

New York Governor, NAACP Condemn Magazine Cover
New York Gov. David Paterson and the NAACP on Thursday condemned the New Yorker magazine’s satirical cover depicting Democrat Barack Obama and his wife as flag-burning radicals. Paterson, a Democrat who is New York’s first black governor, told delegates at the civil rights organization’s national convention that the cover that hit newsstands Monday is “one of the most malignant, vicious covers of a magazine I have ever seen,” drawing a loud applause. “It depicted them as angry, hateful, violent and unpatriotic,” Paterson added. (Continue Reading…)