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https://www.essence.com/entertainment/andre-3000-performs-new-blue-sun-luna-luna/

Courtesy Ray Mora By Anthony Bryant ·Updated March 28, 2024

New Blue Sun Live. Andre 300. No Bars, No Phones reads a dandelion-yellow shirt hanging from a merch stand just outside of Luna Luna in Downtown Los Angeles, where Andre 3000 has scheduled four performances over two nights of his melodic, introspective, and spiritual album New Blue Sun as the latest tour stop for his first solo album in nearly 17 years. 

Luna Luna promises “a fantastical fairground unlike any ever witnessed,” evident once you step inside the warehouse where each of its original works has been meticulously restored to near-original state—please don’t ask to ride the attractions. Before the performance, guests are free to roam the grounds and take in the works of artists Keith Haring, Salvador Dali, David Hockney, Sonia Delaunay, Andre Heller, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose painted Ferris wheel looms just behind the stage in view throughout the show.

Andre 3000 performed two nights of his melodic, introspective, and spiritual album ‘New Blue Sun’

To fully appreciate the rarity of this experience, I should state how unlikely it is to witness the lunar-eclipse-esque crossing of the pair. Andre 3000, one of the most revered artists of the last three decades and hip-hop’s most elusive griot, returns to music nearly two decades after his last full-length solo project to deliver an entirely instrumental album. No raps, just flute. And Luna Luna, the ambitious brain-child of Andre Heller given new life after being relegated to nearly 40 years inside a Texas storage container. 

Collaboration is another commonality shared between the two Andres. One of the most incredible intrigues of Luna Luna is how some of the most notorious names within the art community banded together to create the world’s first and (still) only art amusement park. This meeting of artist minds is also the driving force of New Blue Sun. Carlos Niño (who Andre 3000 describes meeting at the infamous Erewhon), Nate Mercereau, Surya Botofasina and Deantoni Parks all share the stage for the four performances.

“This isn’t a show; it’s happening” Andre 3000 proclaims to the 400 plus in attendance. He urges the audience to chant, shout, grunt, laugh, and bring whatever emotion forward because this night is an exchange between his ensemble and the crowd. Speaking of those in attendance, the guest list was painted with LA celebrity and creative starpower rubbing shoulders over the two nights including Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, Rosalía, Alexa Demie, Usher, Gayle King, Regina King, Tobe Nwigwe and Martica “Fat” Nwigwe, Storm Reid Cedric the Entertainer, Jerry Lorenzo, Michael Ealy, Flea + Melody Ehsani, Beck, and more.

Andre 3000 performs live at Luna Luna

All these ingredients create the atmosphere for Andre and his cohort to perform his free-wheeling and imaginative album. “This will be the most honest thing you’re going to hear right now” Andre 3000 shares towards the start of his set. He’s absolutely correct. His New Blue Sun album is a revelation, not just in the career arc of Andre 3000, but to popular music today. His opening track, “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time,” broke the record for longest song to debut on the Billboard Hot 100, and the only instrumental album to land on the Billboard Top 200 chart. 

Throughout the evening’s happening, Andre 3000 and his ensemble perform songs from his album along with spontaneous in-the-moment movements. He confesses to the crowd he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. His band is performing this all on the fly and in real time. The vulnerability in this admission is at the core of this magical evening. It’s illuminating to witness Andre 3000 play his flutes as he wanders within the universe he imagines on the album.

“I wasn’t trying to be the flute n—a” he jokes midway through his set. This admission set off a wave of laughter as he shared his journey creating New Blue Sun. His retelling of this journey reveals the curiosity at the center of his creativity, his willingness to “just try,” after overhearing a woman playing the flute on a fateful day. “One flute turned into seventy-two” he says with his trademark charm. This anecdote is one of the many highlights of the night.

Another moment worth sharing is when Andre 3000 breaks from the flute into a monologue spoken in a foreign language. He speaks unbroken and for several minutes. I can hear introspection, joy, and deep contemplation in his voice, even if I can’t pinpoint the origin of his dialect. You can hear a few Sunday-church-sermon mmhhms and finger snaps during his speech. Affirming the message from Andre 3000. Once he switches back to English, he says, “From the bottom of my heart, I want you to know I completely made up everything I just said.” Everyone in attendance, along with Andre 3000, shares in the hilarity of the moment. Kukio is the language spoken—an amalgamation of every language he’s ever heard and is a window into the brilliant mind of Andre 3000.

Everything has meaning as long as there’s intention behind it, Andre 3000 reflects—a deep understanding that is at the heart of  New Blue Sun. Andre 3000 has painted with words throughout his career. His profound ability to stretch and bend the English language to mine his musings has cemented him in Hip Hop’s pantheon—your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper.

On this night, like in New Blue Sun, he paints with his flute. What is felt is what’s most important this evening. Throughout the evening, he played motifs familiar to those who have experienced his album alongside new compositions he’s manifested solely for this occasion. Elation, joy, confusion, peace, and solitude all permeated the hour-and-a-half surrealist performance. I found myself sailing across each note. 

Luna Luna is open for public view through May 12th

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https://nerdist.com/article/doctor-who-spinoff-featuring-unit-kate-stewart-jemma-redgrave-on-the-way-russell-t-davies/

Once Russell T Davies was announced as taking over Doctor Who again, wheels turned about what else might be in the pipeline. During RTD’s first regime (2005-2010), fans saw two successful Doctor Who spinoffs: the adult-oriented Torchwood and the kid-focused The Sarah Jane Adventures. And with a new Doctor, and a new distribution deal with Disney+, we wondered what other shows we’d see in the Whoniverse. Now, according to a report from Deadline, we have an idea. The latest Doctor Who spinoff will be a show focused on UNIT and star Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart.

Kate first debuted on screen in 2012’s “The Power of Three,” the daughter of fan-fave classic ally Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. She has acted as head of Doctor Who‘s UNIT, the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, in all of her appearances. Kate also appeared in “The Power of the Doctor,” Jodie Whittaker’s final story.

Most recently, Kate Stewart and UNIT were seen in “The Giggle,” the last of three 60th-anniversary specials starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna Noble, respectively. Stewart had recruited former companion Mel Bush to the UNIT team and, towards the end of the episode, offered Donna a position there, too.

A UNIT/Kate spinoff is perhaps the biggest no-brainer for a new Doctor Who show. It has the potential to do what Torchwood tried to do; that show couldn’t decide how adult it wanted to be. “The Power of the Doctor” introduced the idea that Kate had been recruiting past companions and she has two great ones under her belt. Plus, in the trailer for Doctor Who‘s upcoming season with Ncuti Gatwa, we see that Fifteen will return to UNIT. This season could be a bit of a backdoor pilot for the UNIT spinoff series.

It is highly likely that we will see Donna, Mel, Rose Noble, and others in the mix. Maybe, just maybe, Martha is done freelancing and will come to UNIT for an adventure, too. What a great way to have legacy characters pop in and out for various missions! Plus, we just love Redgrave! Yes, give her a show.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

Originally published on March 15, 2023.

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https://blacknerdproblems.com/x-men-97-review/

X-Men ’97 hit Disney+ bringing Marvel’s mistreated mutant heroes back into our living rooms, and I’m going to let you know right now there’s going to be hella spoilers in this write up. If you haven’t seen the show, then what are you even doing here? Go watch that greatness then comeback and read this sermon cause I’m bout to do some preaching from the pulpit Danger Room. Credit has to be given to the creators for taking a risk with the vision for this reboot. We could have gotten a new X-Men iteration. A lot of us were hoping for Krakoa but seeing the show is picking up right where the original 90s series ended with the “death” of Charles Xavier, makes us feel like we were just no a hiatus. It’s similar to when a manga goes on breaks for a few weeks but in this case it was just shy of 30 years.

The first two episodes of X-Men ’97 takes us straight into the thick of matters. We’re introduced to the X-Men saving Roberto Da Costa (Sunspot) from the mutant hate organization Friends of Humanity. The X-Men coming to Roberto’s aid echoes how Jubilee was saved from sentinels at the mall in the first episode of the original series. We even have Jubilee giving Roberto a talk similar to the one Storm gave her about mutant abilities. The show does an amazing job harking back to not only the original series with certain easter eggs (Storm/Rogue wearing the same civilian outfits from the original series), cameos (Morph turning into different mutants), but episodes that are nods to specific comic book stories. In just one episode we’ve seen not only a nod to “The Trial of Magneto” but a nod to “Lifedeath” which centers Storm’s most iconic and stand outs storyline. Speaking of Storm, the first episode “To me, My X-Men” solidifies that Storm and Cyclops are the Kobe and Shaq of the X-Men team and gave Cyclops an apology that’s been long overdue.

Scott Summers For X-Men ’97 MVP

In just one episode, X-Men ’97 shut down 20 years of Cyclops slander from the Fox movies. Yall don’t hear me, everybody hated on this man in the animated series. He gets seen as a boy scout, a goody two shoes, and ruining the fun. Fam, imagine being the leader of a team and getting shitted on because you making the tough calls to make sure your teammates make it out alive on a mission. Scott Summers been fighting for mutant rights since he was 15-years-old and muthafuckas wanna say he’s a cop or got cop behavior. I’m fuckin’ disgusted. Which is why I was so hype to see Cyclops appear and give them bigots all the hands from his Marvel vs Capcom 2 move set. Cyclops reminded everyone why he’s the only person Ryu shook hands with in X-Men vs. Street Fighter. The story boarders and animators truly did what they were supposed to do here because this is how we should see Cyclops utilizing his powers.

I loved seeing cyclops come out the gate strong in the spotlight from jump. The fact that he was using his beams to not only maneuver himself but to counter punches and kicks had me dying. Those aren’t laser beams he’s shooting. It’s beams of concussive force, so seeing Cyclops use that force in order to position himself in a brawl is not only insane to see but genius and exactly what Cyclops would do because he’s a strategist. I’ve never seen anyone do a forward dash ass first until Scott Summers, and I’m dying. This man is an innovator.

I thought that was all the spotlight he was going to get but he then proceeded to not only throw hands but bring back all that dry humor and sass I love. Scott roasted the team this entire episode. Rogue said, “why we in trouble we ain’t even do nothing?” Scott said, “Exactly. Yall ain’t been doing shit.” He gave an order and when Wolverine didn’t like it, Scott told that man to cry him a river, told a UN leader that they was fucking up on the job, then had his wife to mentally beat a man up for information. The most egregious thing had to be the sentinel attacking the X-Men on the Blackbird. That sentinel tore the roof off the jet, and Scott’s immediate response was to start dumping. He straight up went for emptying the limitless optic blast clip.

This. Man. Is. Unhinged. Summers really let the whole beam go, and I am beside myself. Man took down a whole sentinel by his lonesome 40 thousand feet in the air. It could have stopped right there, but once he saw all the X-Men that could fly grabbing the ones that couldn’t he said, “Cool. I’ll see yall on the ground.” And proceeded to accelerate towards the ground then shout out his beam to slow his descent. Yall don’t fucking hear me?! This man was speeding toward the ground but was checking to make sure the team was okay first before taking care of himself. That’s the opposite of what they tell you do during a plane emergency!

Scott Summers then proceeded to recreate the no parachute scene from Point Break just for fuckin funsies. Don’t talk to me about greatness. Don’t talk to me about putting the whole team on your back unless you talking about Scott “Fucking” Summers. Man. I can’t hear otherwise. No parachute? No fucking problem. I saw folks online still trying to hate on Street Jesus by saying he was doing the most or doing too much, which lemme know the haters graspin’ at straws to try and bring this man down. Folks saying him using his powers to slow his descent doesn’t make sense cause it should snap his neck as if this man doesn’t have a whole regimen for neck training.

Mother Has Spoken (Yeah, ‘Ro!)

Now for Ms. Ororo Munroe. So, Storm didn’t have the same issue as Cyclops. Everybody loves storm. She’s literally the gawd. Storm’s issue on the original show was being the biggest gun but having to pass out after using her powers (2nd only to Jean). Ya girl was quietly nerfed in the original series, but they changed that from jump. It is known, and shown, that Storm is one of, if not thee, biggest guns on the X-Men. If we talkin’ power, then 9 times outta 10 everybody goin’ be looking at Storm when it’s time to pay the electricity bill. X-Men ’97 lets us see that from jump. Sure Storm got knocked down when she arrived but when it was time to run up and done up the sentinels, and they had the X-Men outnumbered? Cyclops remembered the safe word Storm told him and let her know it was time to bring the pain.

This might be the coldest pass in Marvel history. Cyclops tapping the chest comm and telling Storm, “Give’em the forecast” is Marvel’s equivalent of Magic Johnson in the ’92 Dream Team scrimmage talking about hitting with the Hee-Heeeeeeeee no look pass. You know how cold you gotta be to drop your teammates off to a fight then fly a mile down the road to be able to give them back up because you’re so damn powerful that you woulda fried your own teammates if they were near you? Naaaaaah, yall don’t understand the respect being put on Storm’s name right here. Them sentinels getting a Google alert about an Omega level threat, and we see it’s Storm? You Bast damn right it’s storm fam! All these years of not being labeled officially as an Omega Level Mutant in X-Men lore then finally getting that respect in 2019 (Krakoa era X-Men) and it translating over to the reboot too?!

Storm is having a whole moment. We see sis having to take over as field leader and when a UN leader asks, “Who does she think she is” Storm hits mans back with the most vicious shut the fuck up I ever heard in my life. “Do not think. Be Silent. Heed my commands and maybe you will survive this.” She told that man not to think but to sit there and be a sheep so that he might survive whats to come. That’s wild, and I believe we need more Black women talking to old white men this way on national TV. Even though we see Storm go through her most rock bottom moment on screen for the first time ever, the story that’s about to unfold with her is going to be a freaking chef’s kiss and we’ll get to see the many different facets of Storm personality and drive.

To Me, My X-Men

The best thing about X-Men ’97 is that we’re seeing the X-Men truly working as a team. Everybody is strong but on any given day, anyone can also get got. When X-Cutioner went in and started beating the salmon shorts off Cyclops, I wasn’t upset because first off, who throws a bo staff at someone? Cyclops was caught off guard as anyone would be because what type of sicko does that?! Two, Morph was there to save Cyclops’ ass. Literally. These are characters with great power, but they can still get killed by a bullet or beaten at hand-to-hand combat. Your teammate might have an off day or just get caught with some wild shit. The dope thing about being on a team is someone always having your back, and maybe they’re have a day where they’re just firing on all cylinders.

We’re seeing this team as they should be. Using their powers as a circuit for tag team moves and jumping anyone that steps to them. The team is more solid than it’s ever been, but I can’t help but point out once again: the heart and soul of this team, in my eyes at least, are Storm and Cyclops. I’m very excited to see where the rest of the show goes and to see these mutant all-stars take their team to the championship (the ship is 6 seasons and a movie).

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https://blacknerdproblems.com/a-paracausal-ludonarrative-dissonance/

Ludonarrative dissonance – When the non-interactive elements and the narrative told through the game mechanics are at odds with each other.

Ludomaniacal

The Titan stops sifting through their Vault and looks over to the Hunter in their fireteam also doing the same.

“You ever wonder who names all of our guns?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about Chim.”

“Like, Submission, Deliverance. All of the gear we got from the Pyramid was clearly named by the Witness as a way to promote their ideology.”

“Uh huh.”

“And all of the foundry weapons and Black Armory were clearly named by their respective designers, and the stuff we salvaged from Clarity Control has Clovis Bray’s egotism baked in.”

“So, it sounds like you know who names all of the guns.”

“That’s the thing though. Some of the gun names are weird. Spoiler Alert, with a data tag of ‘Someone is going to die’? Pardon Our Dust? Whose dust? Why are we pardoning it?”

“Oh that reminds me, can we stop by Xur’s Treasure Hoard for a second? I need to turn in some keys…”

The Illusion of Choice

Video games are a unique medium because of their intrinsically interactive nature. Movies, television series, books, theater, all of these present character, setting, and story to the watcher/reader/consumer. Different people may have different takeaways from the experience, but their experience will be relatively consistent to one another. Or at the very least, the same set of elements are readily available to the consumer.

This does not hold true for games. Two different people can have drastically different experiences because of the choices that they make and the resultant consequences. And game developers try to account for this. We see in visual novels and point and click adventures. We see it in the expansive linear sandbox that is Baldur’s Gate III. Developers plan for a wide range of possibilities and do their best to make sure that the narrative unfolding is consistent with the gameplay that the player experiences, but it doesn’t always work out that way.

Darkest Days

“Sweet, a red box. I think I can craft a BXR now.”

“You mean you are able to see the Deepsight Resonance intrinsic to this paracausally gifted weapon at the mysterious machine that manipulates time?”

“Oh, you’re still on this.”

“Yes, I’m still on this. We’re currently in a treasure hoard connected to a pocket dimension of sentient space dust talking to their envoy who previously only shows up between Friday and Monday like clockwork. We’ve been going to this tentacle faced husk for the better part of a decade, and we’ve just never questioned it.”

“…This is about Crow isn’t it?”

The Titan sighs.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is.”

Traveler’s Chosen

The Destiny franchise in many ways is built around trying to resolve one of the most common examples of ludonarrative dissonance: infinite respawns. In many games, we take it for granted that we manage to pop back into existence. Destiny has the impetus baked into the narrative.

The Traveler gave us Ghosts, and Ghosts are able to bring back to life, again and again and again. True deaths are hard to come by, although not impossible. But the game is structured around this loop and the fact that we are constantly in a loop of activities. Sometimes, there is a narrative justification for the repetition like how the Leviathan raid had us beating up Calus’s robots on a weekly basis until we ran the stock out by the time Spire of Stars came around. Sometimes, it’s calling the activities Meditations and saying the repetition is because we are reliving our myth to hone our skills. Sometimes, it’s because we have to tithe to our friend turned into Hive god for a good three months in order to engineer a complex gambit to figure out a solution to get access to the triangle shaped portal in the Traveler.

That’s not to say the game is perfectly aligned from a narrative and mechanical process. We have been told not to kill a Techun (Tech witches, us Guardians call them), but to cleanse them… with bullets and explosives. Our powers suddenly change without a clear narrative reason due to balance passes. Weapons that are clearly meant to bespoke are available en masse (although it’s fun when the weapon is specifically said to be produced en masse).

Which brings us to the titular paracausal ludonarrative dissonance that inspired this article: the delay of The Final Shape, the conclusion to the decade sprawl of the Light and Dark Saga.

An Inscrutable Amygdaloid Eigenstate

“Every Tuesday for seven weeks or so, we got news of some Ahamkara egg in the leyline and were tasked to find it and every week we did. And made the pact with the Wish Dragon and Crow went through the portal, and I don’t know… it feels like we should have gone in by now y’know?”

Delayed and/or Deferred Gratification

Destiny as a live service game has relied on a steady cadence of content. Content is what brings the players back day to day, reset to reset, season to season. The player base feels disruptions in that cadence even though we understand it. Guardians are familiar with delays. Beyond Light was delayed because of the pandemic. Witch Queen was delayed in order to ensure a specific standard of quality, and Bungie managed to compensate with a special 30th Anniversary DLC which got wonderfully meta with Xur and the Loot Cave dungeon. Lightfall came out at the announced February date which was great because the year of the Witch Queen had ended with one of the most hype cinematics in the franchise’s history.

Whether or not Lightfall lived up to the expectations (we’d argue that from a narrative it didn’t, even if from a mechanical perspective it brought many good toys), it did set the stage for the final confrontation, and the announcement that we’d see the end of the Saga come February 2024 was exciting-ish. But then, the worst possible news came when Bungie laid off a bunch of their staff in what was apparently a prelude to the rest of the game industry participating in mass layoffs, and after an uncomfortably long silence, the news broke that the conclusion to the game was delayed until June.

Four months. Fourteen weeks. A lot of downtime for the biggest big bad in the franchise to apparently just meander in the Pale Heart of the Traveler while we twiddle our thumbs.

Shigeru Miyamoto is reported to have said “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad,” which we can argue about the origins of the quote and the various examples and counterexamples, but the point stands. If Bungie felt like they needed to delay the game, it probably was in the best interest of making the best experience possible.

However, this does put in the weird situation where all narrative momentum has been lost. We were supposed to be engaging in one final confrontation with the Witness. And now we are just meandering in the Dreaming City, doing odds and ends, collecting trinkets where it’s becoming increasingly harder to justify using new gear over old reliables. To say nothing of the content creator cycle becoming a desolate wasteland of rehashed rehashes as they desperately try to keep afloat during a non-existence news cycle.

And yes, there is new content on the horizon. Into the Light may help smooth over this disconnect of narrative and… non-ludology as it were. But until that arrives, we are left waiting and wanting. And it’s not the first time this has happened, but it’s definitely the most impactful time for the franchise.

Prophetic Visionary

A Titan sits on the derelict looking at a holographic Ahamkara skull. They go on comms, “is anyone else coming to see the rumors of the refurbished gear the Nine apparently tucked away in Unknown Space” and wait.

It’s something to do to pass the time. It’s not like they actually want to race to the end of the story. They mostly just want to have reasons to spend time with their fellow Guardian.

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The post A Para-causal Ludonarrative Dissonance appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.