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  • Willow Smith Used Meditation and Workouts to Fuel the Creativity on “Empathogen”

    Willow Smith Used Meditation and Workouts to Fuel the Creativity on “Empathogen”

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    Courtesy of LG Global Life’s Good Campaign
    Courtesy of LG Global Life’s Good Campaign

    Willow Smith‘s “b i g f e e l i n g s” is the final song on her new album, “empathogen.” And, according to Smith, it’s “the most complex piece of music I’ve created in my entire career.”

    “Hopefully not the last — definitely not the last,” she qualifies. “But this one is pretty awesome.”

    The entire record — the 24-year-old’s sixth solo studio album — represents a sonic departure. Ahead of its release on May 3, Smith was a little nervous about putting it out into the world. But mostly, she was energized.

    “I’m a risk-taker, what can I say?”

    “This whole album is different from anything I’ve done, and I’m just so excited for people to hear it,” she says. “You always take a little bit of a risk, but I’m a risk-taker, what can I say?”

    Indeed, Smith has made a name for herself throughout her career for criss-crossing genres and stretching the bounds of her art. And she’s never shied away from being open and honest about how she chooses to live her life outside of music, too. That ethos is very much reflected in this latest album, she says.

    “I think I’m in a place right now in my life where I’m realizing that there’s no destination, there’s only choices every day that we make that bring us through our lives. I want to make the decision every day to be more compassionate, to be more honest, to practice my instrument with deep presence and treat it as a spiritual experience,” Smith adds. “This album is an expression of me coming to that understanding.”

    Even the album art embodies that approach — on the cover, Smith is shown smiling emphatically, her Afro and grillz standing out against an earth-colored backdrop. In another shot, she’s literally stripped down. It all connotes that honesty, that coming into herself. Smith says it was important to be present in her own body throughout making the album. Even if it wasn’t traditional, eyes-closed meditation, she’d just “tune in every once in a while.”

    “Like, can I feel my feet, can I feel my fingers, am I tapped in how my heart is feeling right now, am I tapped into my emotional state right now, instead of just being on autopilot,” she explains.

    It’d be difficult for Smith to be on autopilot right now, given everything that’s going on in her life. Just days after her album comes out, she’s releasing her debut novel, “Black Shield Maiden,” which she co-wrote with Jess Hendel. She’s also a global ambassador for LG and their Life’s Good campaign, a partnership she says was “super on the nose” given her and the brand’s commitment to high-quality audio.

    Amid all the moving parts, physical presence and mindfulness don’t just fuel her creative process; they also help her relax.

    “Pilates also kicks my ass.”

    “Weirdly enough, if I work out, it kind of counterbalances the mental and emotional fatigue. It gives me energy. I know people say that, I know that there are studies on that. But the last thing you want to do after you’ve been working all day is work out,” she says.

    Her favorite workouts right now are hot yoga and “pilates also kicks my ass,” she laughs. She loves running, too, and often listens to podcasts while doing it. Right now, she’s into “The Ancients” (she recently listened to an episode about ancient Polynesian sailing techniques) and the science podcast “Ologies with Alie Ward.”

    It’s very clear that Smith loves to learn. She’s almost done reading “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow, a nonfiction book that looks at how society came to be. “I honestly can’t even really explain it that well because it’s deeply complex and I’m still trying to figure it out, but that’s been really cooking my noodle,” she quips.

    Getting inspired by these other forms of media brings us back to her process. It’s all about getting inspired by the possibilities within other realms. Smith says she loves walking around museums alone, for example, just taking in “all the cool shit.” And in releasing this album back out into the world, she’s keeping that inspiration loop going round and round.

    “I’m just interested to see what people get from this art I’ve been creating, and I hope that it’s a cathartic experience,” she says. That comes back to “b i g f e e l i n g s,” too: “I just want to keep helping people be inspired and feeling like they’re less alone.”

    Lena Felton is the senior director of features and special content at POPSUGAR, where she oversees feature stories, special projects, and our identity content. Previously, she was an editor at The Washington Post, where she led a team covering issues of gender and identity.

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    Lena Felton

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  • Black Women in Country Are Grateful Beyoncé Is Entering the Genre

    Black Women in Country Are Grateful Beyoncé Is Entering the Genre

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    Tanner Adell fell in love with country music young.

    She grew up splitting her time between Los Angeles and Star Valley, WY, which created a stark contrast — but it was the country lifestyle, and specifically the music, that held her heart. Adell remembers falling in love with Keith Urban when he released “Somebody Like You.” And every summer, when she and her mom would set out to drive back to LA from Star Valley, she’d sit in the back of the car and “just silently cry my eyes out as we’d start on this road trip back to California,” she remembers.

    These days, Adell is a rising country music star. And ever since Beyoncé released “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” on Super Bowl Sunday and announced her forthcoming country album, “Act II,” the spotlight has been on Black women country artists like her. A lot of that attention has been positive; Adell and others say they’re incredibly excited about what this will mean for the genre. But it’s also been a bit contentious. After an Oklahoma radio station refused to play Beyoncé because it “is a country music station,” an online uproar convinced the station to reverse its decision — and ignited a larger conversation around inclusion within the genre.

    “Country music is how you feel, it’s your story, it’s part of you.”

    For Black women artists like Adell, pursuing country music often transcends the difficulty that might come with navigating their identity in a genre dominated by white men. As she puts it, “Country music is how you feel, it’s your story, it’s part of you.”

    The same was true for Tiera Kennedy when she started writing songs in high school. She was a big fan of Taylor Swift at the time, and she just fell into expressing herself through the genre. “I always say I don’t feel like I found country music, I feel like country music found me,” she tells POPSUGAR. “When I started making music, it just came out that way. I was writing what I was going through at the time, which was boy drama. And I fell in love with all things country music and just dove into it.”

    Moving to Nashville seven years ago was “a big deal” for Kennedy in terms of building up her career: “Everyone told me that if you want to be in country music, you have to be in Nashville.” When she got there, she was surprised she was so welcomed by others in the industry, which doesn’t necessarily happen for everyone, given how tight-knit the city can be. “I was super thankful and blessed to have met so many people early on who have opened doors for me without asking for anything in return,” Kennedy says.

    For Adell, too, moving to the “capital of country music” almost three years ago was huge in pushing her career forward. And an essential part of that has been finding a community of other Black women artists. “Oh, we have a group chat,” she quips. “We’re extremely supportive, and I think sometimes people are trying to pin us against each other or even pin us against Beyoncé, but you’re not going to get that beef or that drama.”

    “Country is just as much a part of the fabric of Black culture as hip-hop is.”

    But while these artists have been able to foster a strong community within Nashville, it’s no secret that country music has been facing a reckoning when it comes to racism and sexism. Chart-topping artists like Jason Aldean and Morgan Wallen have recently weaponized racism as a marketing tool, per NPR. In September, Maren Morris said she was distancing herself from the genre for some of these reasons. “After the Trump years, people’s biases were on full display,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “It just revealed who people really were and that they were proud to be misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic.”

    But the reality is that Black artists have always been part of the foundation of country. As Prana Supreme Diggs — who performs with her mom, Tekitha, as O.N.E the Duo — says, “Black Americans, so much of our history is rooted in the South. Country is just as much a part of the fabric of Black culture as hip-hop is.”

    Diggs grew up in California watching her mother, a vocalist for Wu-Tang Clan, host jam sessions at her house. She’s been wanting to perform professionally with her mom since she was a teenager, but it wasn’t until the beginning of the pandemic that they really committed to their joint country project.

    For Diggs, there’s been nothing but excitement since Beyoncé’s commercial came on during the Super Bowl. She immediately ran to her computer to listen to the songs. “And the second the instrumental came on for ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ came on, I was like, oh my god, it’s happening,” she says. “We are finally here.”

    Tekitha felt the same way. “In the Black and country community, we’ve really been needing a champion,” she says. “We’ve been needing someone who can kind of blow the door open and to recognize our voice is important in this genre.”

    Adell says that given how iconic Beyoncé is, the criticism she’s received speaks volumes about how far country still has to go. “For her to have given so much of herself to the world and when she decides to have a little stylistic change to not just be supported — I don’t understand it,” she says. “I don’t understand why people aren’t just like, ‘This is cool, Beyoncé’s coming out with a country album!’”

    Kennedy tries to focus on the positives of the industry (if she gets shut out of an opportunity, for example, she won’t dwell, she’ll just go after the next), but being a Black woman in America will always come with systemic challenges. “No, it hasn’t always been easy,” she says. “There are so many layers tacked onto that: being a new artist, being female, being Black in country music. But I think if I focused on how hard that is, I would fall out of love with country music.”

    That positive thinking has been paying off; the past week has been really exciting for Kennedy. She released a cover of “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which has since gone viral. After she posted the video, new fans streamed into her DMs, telling her they didn’t even know her type of country, which is infused with R&B, existed. It’s something other Black women country stars are echoing: that the new focus on their contributions to the genre is a long time coming — and a huge opportunity.

    “I’m super thankful that Beyoncé is entering into this genre and bringing this whole audience with her,” Kennedy says. “And hopefully that’ll bring up some of the artists that have been in town a long time and grinding at it. I don’t think there’s anybody better than Beyoncé to do it.”

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    Lena Felton

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  • Get an Exclusive Look Inside Heidi Klum’s Halloween Party, Courtesy of the Elevator Boys

    Get an Exclusive Look Inside Heidi Klum’s Halloween Party, Courtesy of the Elevator Boys

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    Every year, Heidi Klum’s Halloween party makes headlines. Whether it’s for her over-the-top costumes or the celebrities in costume who show up, we’ve always got eyes on the annual bash, which has been running since 2000.

    This year, the party took place at the Marquee nightclub in Manhattan, and we got an inside look, courtesy of the Elevator Boys, a TikTok-famous boy band comprised of Bene, Jacob, Julien, Luis, and Tim. Sporting a “Men in Black”-inspired costume, they shared what it was like to attend Klum’s bash. Scroll to see photos from the night, alongside their diary entries explaining what it was like.

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    Lena Felton

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  • Busy Philipps on the Actors’ Strike: “These Old Billionaires” Are “Just Out of Touch”

    Busy Philipps on the Actors’ Strike: “These Old Billionaires” Are “Just Out of Touch”

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    It’s been an emotional summer for Busy Philipps. The mom of two has been gearing up to send her oldest child, Birdie, to boarding school in Sweden.

    “I’m a mess already. It started to hit me this past month,” the actor told POPSUGAR in late July. She’s been documenting the process on social media, a place where her fans have come to love how relatable, funny, and outspoken she is — from her sing-along Instagram Stories to her poetic musings about motherhood.

    “I’m really feeling the pangs right now that I think are relatable whether or not your kid is going to boarding school — your kids growing up and on their way to being young adults and their own humans,” she continued. “And I’m just hoping and praying I did the right things and instilled the right values and that they know they always have a safe place to land.”

    It’s been a big summer for the entire family; Cricket, Philipps’s younger daughter, turned 10, while Birdie turned 15. The three of them have been traveling a lot, and they attended Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in May — which was “very memorable,” Philipps said. (Philipps coparents both kids with husband Marc Silverstein, whom she separated from in 2021.)

    “What we’re fighting for is very basic.”

    But it hasn’t all been sweet. Between her podcast, “Busy Philipps Is Doing Her Best,” and her advocacy work (she’s currently partnering with Two Good on a campaign for Hunger Action Month in September; more on that below), Philipps has been supporting the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in both Los Angeles and New York City, taking to the picket lines and raising awareness of the realities of working in Hollywood.

    “What we’re fighting for is very basic,” she explained. “We’re not even fighting for more money, we’re literally fighting for residuals that we are owed under agreements that were made from formulas based on broadcast and cable and DVD sales.”

    Philipps gave a personal anecdote to illustrate the problem. When she was pregnant with Birdie 15 years ago, she said, she wasn’t working in enough TV shows or movies to qualify for health insurance. But because she’d been on so many shows that were playing reruns on cable (like “Freaks and Geeks” and “Dawson’s Creek”), she was able to qualify for health insurance. Streamers present a different reality for actors these days.

    “I have multiple friends now who’ve had babies in the last couple of years who have completely lost their health insurance — and those friends have been on huge shows on streamers,” she said. “They’re not getting paid the money that they’re rightfully owed for the work that they’ve done for these companies. And the companies are recording billions and billions and billions of dollars in subscriptions and then claiming poverty.”

    The truth is, Philipps said, it’s not just the entertainment industry that’s facing this discrepancy; while billionaires are amassing more wealth, she said, workers across industries are struggling to qualify for health insurance and put food on the table, positioning them just one financial misstep away from “derailing their entire life.”

    “They’re just out of touch, these old billionaires.”

    The reason the writers’ and actors’ strikes are getting so much attention, she added, is because many of the impacted workers are visible to the public. “If they’re doing this to the most forward-facing of us, what are they doing to everyone else, you know what I mean?” she asked, incredulously. “They’re just out of touch, these old billionaires.”

    It’s not just workers’ rights that Philipps publicly — and loudly — supports. She opened up about her own abortion story last year after Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced a bill that would federally ban abortion, and she’s long been an outspoken ally to the LGBTQ+ community.

    “I suppose that I feel that there’s not really a choice for me other than to support what’s right, and I believe deeply in everyone’s right to live their lives and have equality and autonomy and food on the table and healthcare and a living wage,” she said. “I don’t think those things should be available for just rich white people.”

    Of course, Philipps can understand that many Americans can get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of “different issues that are facing all of us constantly.” But her charge to everyone is to think small. “No one is expecting any one of us to change the world. That’s not how it works,” she explained. “As much as I would like to say that some of these billionaires could make a huge dent in helping a lot of issues, especially in terms of living wage and providing healthcare and pay equality and also support for parents — for the rest of us, our job is to do what we can when we can do it.”

    For her upcoming campaign with Two Good, for example, people can simply post the hashtag #GetHangryForGood on a public account or purchase a Two Good product throughout September, and the company will donate $1 to City Harvest and We Don’t Waste to help food insecurity.

    As she puts it: “I have seen the work that can be accomplished with just a few dollars, and it does make a difference.”

    And that sense that all of us have a role to play is ultimately what keeps her yelling from the rooftops about the injustice she’s seeing in her world.

    “It is a bummer more people aren’t vocal. But people are afraid,” Philipps said. “I just don’t ever let fear be my motivating factor. Except when it comes to spiders, creepy-crawly bugs. Then I’m out.”

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    Lena Felton

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