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Travis Scott is probably getting “Goosebumps” right now. His Kendrick Lamar-assisted single off Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight has officially gone platinum. The Houston rapper celebrated his RIAA certification on Instagram on Tuesday (March 28). “Thank u god we beat the odds Video this week,” he wrote. “#1 at rhythmic radio!” As Scott mentioned in his caption, a video for the K. Dot-assisted banger is expected this week. It’s set to follow his Birds in the Trap short film, which dropped earlier this month. “Goosebumps” is Travis’ highest-charting single off Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, peaking at No. 50 on the Hot 100. His highest-charting banger of all time is “Antidote” off Rodeo, which soared as high as No. 16. This will be Scott’s fourth platinum plaque as a lead artist. In the past, he’s earned two for “Antidote” and one for his Young Thug-assisted single, “Pick Up the Phone.” Currently, La Flame is on the “Birds Eye View Tour,” which kicked off March 10. His next per...

She may have sold tens of millions of albums and filled arenas around the world, but Adele says she may never tour again. The British singer told fans at a concert in Auckland that she was not good at touring - and even admitted she feels "vulnerable" on stage, according to the New Zealand Herald. Her performance Down Under was the final international gig of her epic 15-month world tour. She will next be on stage in London for four sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium from 28 June to 2 July which have been described as "The Finale". The 28-year-old told her fans in New Zealand: "Touring isn't something I'm good at. Applause makes me feel a bit vulnerable. "I don't know if I will ever tour again. The only reason I've toured is you. I'm not sure if touring is my bag." Adele reportedly burst into tears as she described her latest tour as "the greatest accomplishment in her career" - and said it changed her life....

There have been many horrendous propaganda videos produced by Islamic State, but the latest I have seen is genuinely the worst. It shows young boys being trained to fight and let loose in a disused warehouse. Dressed in black combat fatigues and masked, the boys run through military drills. It is standard propaganda stuff. Every terror organisation films this type of thing. But there is a difference. On the highly produced film, you see handcuffed men running from room to room. They are being hunted. It is utterly awful when you realise it is real. This looks like a Hollywood film. But it is actually happening. As they hunt down the men, they kill them. The final moments of fear, screaming, begging and the pain are glorified. It is astoundingly barbaric. The video is important because it explains why these are not just errant youths. They have been brainwashed, and they are deadly. The question is whether or not they always will be - because in the chaos of the Mosul ...

Manchester United have sent shock waves round the Nou Camp as they are set to execute a  £173million move with £416,000-a-week contract offer for Brazil/Barcelona star Neymar Jr. According to various reports in Spanish and Brazilian media outlets, Britain's richest and most successful club is set to trigger Neymar's release clause (£173million) this summer, with club manager, Jose Mourinho in search of an elite signing that will take the club to new heights as the futures of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Wayne Rooney remain uncertain. Neymar is appreciated in Barcelona but knows he won't ever be seen in the same light as Lionel Messi, but knows at Man U he will be an automatic leader and at the age of 25 will surely be given god-like status at the club.  Neymar also knows that the £416,000-a-week salary can't be rivaled by Barcelona or even other English clubs like Man City and Chelsea, but has informed his agent he won't move to a club that won't be playing...

Of all the announcements passengers on an Alaskan commuter flight expected to hear, being told there was a snake on the plane probably wasn't one of them. But that's what seven people on a Ravn Alaska flight between the village of Aniak and the city of Anchorage heard over the intercom. The reptile was spotted by a little boy, who was climbing on his seat when he spotted the sleeping snake partially covered by a duffel bag at the back of the plane. The pale snake was about 4 to 5 feet long and, unlike the film Snakes on a Plane, luckily was not poisonous. According to passenger Anna McConnaughy passengers remained remarkably calm at the announcement. After a discussion with the pilot on how to catch the snake a flight attendant grabbed it by the belly and dropped it into a plastic rubbish bag. The snake then spent the remainder of the journey sleeping peacefully in an overhead luggage compartment and the plane landed in Anchorage on schedule. ...

An oversized gold coin worth millions of pounds has been stolen from a museum in Germany. The Big Maple Leaf weighs 100 kg (221lbs) and measures 53cm (21ins) across, and is thought to be the world's biggest coin. Berlin police said it was taken by thieves who broke into the Bode museum in the city at around 3.30am on Monday. Spokesman Stefen Petersen said they entered through a window and broke into a cabinet where the coin was kept. A ladder found alongside nearby railway tracks is believed to have been used by the thieves and then dumped. The coin has a face value of $1m (£790,000), but the gold in it makes it worth almost $4.5m (£3.9m) at today's market prices. The museum says the Big Maple Leaf is in the Guinness Book of Records for its purity of 999.99/1000 gold. It has a portrait of the Queen on one side and maple leaves on the other. The three centimetre thick coin is a commemorative piece issued by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007. The Bode Mu...

Hollywood already has a Denzel Washington. Now, it’s about to have a Renzel Bossington. Rick Ross, who has the No. 3 album in the country with Rather You Than Me, is setting his sights on the big screen with an upcoming motion picture co-starring Gucci Mane. Rozay revealed the news during an interview with Atlanta’s V-103. “Me and Guwop gonna film our first movie,” he said. “We doing that independently. We gon’ be beginning that in the next three months. That’s coming. That’s official. They gonna see us swerving.” The film follows Renzel’s Guwop-assisted “She On My Dick” and “Buy Back the Block” collaborations. The latter’s video found them showcasing their on-screen acting skills as a pair of disgruntled car wash employees. Rozay’s Rather You Than Me debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 106,000 equivalent album units in its first week. Meanwhile, Gucci is readying a new album, Drop Top Wop, and his first book, The Autobiography of Gucci Mane, due in bookstores Sept. 19...

(March 23), Kendrick Lamar unleashed a fiery new track, “The Heart Part 4,” as both a confirmation that new music is on the horizon, and as a warning shot to an unnamed foe or foes. Instantly, fans dissected the Khalid-assisted track and dropped speculations about its possible targets. Some quickly pointed to Big Sean as a potential mark for these quips. “My fans can’t wait for me to son ya punk ass and crush your whole lil’ shit / I’ll Big Pun ya punk ass, you a scared lil’ bitch.” Part of that had to do with the juxtaposition between Big Punisher and Big Sean — the former being much larger — but there’s a lot in those last two words. Earlier in his career, “lil’ bitch” was one of Sean Don’s most-used catchphrases, as heard on Meek Mill’s “Burn” and Drake’s “All Me.” What would the motive be? Well, Sean seemed to be sending thinly-veiled shots at Kendrick on his Beyoncé freestyle “Me, Myself & I” in 2015. “Ya’ll bragging about so and so, like ‘Oh, he really it’ / The new ni*...

A Fetty Wap robbery led to a shootout in Paterson, New Jersey on Sunday (March 26). According to TMZ, the “Trap Queen” rapper was robbed of a chain and cash in his hometown. Law enforcement officials say that they arrived at Montclair Ave. and Paxton St. at approximately 5 a.m. over an altercation with gunshots, presumed to be related. Two men with gunshot wounds were found nearby. One of them had been shot in the leg. The other man had been hit in the torso. A third man, believed to be involved, as well, went to Hackensack Medical Center soon after. It’s unclear if Fetty, who was not named as a victim in the shooting, was involved in the shootout at all. Authorities began investigating the shooting, but not the robbery since that hadn’t been reported. Soon after, Fetty’s “1738” chain appeared on Instagram, posted by Raheem “Fuzz” Thomas, the CEO of Muscle Team Entertainment. Fuzz reportedly bragged about taking a picture with the chain, but claimed he didn’t personally stea...

More Life comes for the Billboard 200 head top. Drake’s new playlist project debuts at No. 1 on the coveted chart, setting a new streaming record in the process. As projected, the effort earned 505,000 equivalent album units, the biggest opening for a project since his own Views dropped in May of last year. Drake set a new high in streaming equivalent units with 257,000 through 384.8 million streams of individual tracks from the 22-song playlist. Again, he bests himself as Views had 163,000 streaming equivalent units with 245.1 million song streams. More Life moved 23,000 track equivalent album units and 226,000 in traditional album sales units, the second-most this year, following Ed Sheeran’s ÷. This follows news that More Life had already bested Views in streaming, shattering Spotify records in the process. This is Drake’s seventh straight No. 1, tying him with Eminem and Kanye West for second-most No. 1s among hip-hop artists. Jay Z holds the crown in that category with 13. ...

This may look like a photograph, but the highly realistic face staring back at you belongs to a man who died over 700 years ago. The researchers who performed this unbelievable facial reconstruction say their work is providing new details about the way ordinary people lived in medieval England. This 13th-century man—dubbed “Context 958"—is one of approximately 400 complete burials found and excavated beneath the Old Divinity School of St. John’s College in Cambridge, England, between 2010 and 2012. Back during the medieval era, this spot was home to the Hospital of St. John, a charitable institution set up to care for the poor and sick in the community. For centuries, the dead were buried in a cemetery right out back. The reconstruction of Context 958 is part of a collaborative effort between Cambridge University’s Division of Archaeology and the University of Dundee’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification. The Wellcome Trust-funded project, called “After the pl...

Make the most of that beauty spot. Ultrathin temporary electronic tattoos can now turn body blemishes into touch-sensitive buttons, letting you control your smartphone with your own wrinkles, freckles and other skin features. People intuitively know the location of their own bumps and birthmarks, which makes them ideal locations for touch-sensitive buttons, says Martin Weigel at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany, who has led the research. You could squeeze a freckle to answer a phonecall, or slide a finger over your knuckles to change the volume of your music. Weigel and his colleagues at Saarland University and Google used conductive ink to print wires and electrodes on temporary tattoo paper. The tattoos, which they call SkinMarks, are thinner than the width of a human hair. They are transferred onto the skin using water and last a couple of days before rubbing off.

In a music genre associated with crime and "street cred", do Drake's soft-spoken lyrics and public love-life feel out of place? With each passing album, the Hotline Bling singer feels to me more like a pop star and less like a rapper. With the Saturday release of his album/playlist More Life, the former Degrassi teen actor seems to have got back on the critics' good side, but scrutinising his love misadventures won't help his street credibility. After years crying over a failed relationship with Rihanna, Drake is now addressing his supposed fling with Jennifer Lopez, by describing a scene where she purposely changes numbers to avoid his texts. "I drunk text JLo, old numbers so I bounce back, Boy Wonder gotta bounce back." He doesn't stop there, though, sampling the chorus of JLo's If You Had My Love in another song, including lyrics like: "You're to blame for what we could have been, 'cause look at what we are." ...

Protein in a deadly spider's venom can be used to protect the human brain from stroke damage, according to a study. Australian scientists say they found the Hi1a protein after "milking" the poisonous venom of funnel web spiders, which can kill within 15 minutes. After injecting a version of the protein in lab rats, researchers found it blocked "acid-sensing ion channels" which are said to be the "key drivers" of brain damage after stroke. The study said a dose of the compound two hours after a stroke reduced brain damage in rats by 80%. Even a dose after eight hours could cut injury by 65%, it added. Professor Glenn King, who led the research, said it showed "great promise" as a future treatment. He said: "During preclinical studies, we found that a single dose of Hi1a administered up to eight hours after stroke protected brain tissue and drastically improved neurological performance. "This world-first discovery will h...

Even before More Life dropped on Saturday (March 18), Spotify revealed that Drake had become the first act to hit 10 billion streams on the platform. Much of that success came through Views, his massively popular 2016 album that spawned a series of hits, including “One Dance,” which garnered 1.15 billion streams, according to Forbes. Other Views smashes have also helped Drizzy attain his new accolade. “Hotline Bling” was played 600 million times. “Too Good” was played 520 million times. Meanwhile, “Controlla” garnered 340 million streams. As a whole, Views tracks have earned two billion streams in less than a year with Drake’s back catalog making up the rest of his total, but none of these figures reflect Saturday’s More Life release. Those numbers are particularly impressive given Drake’s Apple Music ties. Not only has he released temporarily exclusive material through a reported $19 million Apple deal, but he’s also premiered much of his new material through his Beats 1 program...

The Queen reps Queens. After dropping her #3PackFromParis, Nicki Minaj curates an exclusive TIDAL playlist, “Queens Got Da Crown,” an ode to her home borough and its legacy. The 40-track playlist reads like a history lesson on Queens, New York hip-hop. It features appearances by the borough’s greatest MCs, including Nas, 50 Cent, Ja Rule, LL Cool J, Kool G Rap, N.O.R.E., Run-D.M.C., Salt-N-Pepa, A Tribe Called Quest, and the late Stack Bundles. Rap’s legendary battle spirit is alive on the playlist. The Queen of Barbz kicks things off with “No Frauds,” “Changed It,” and “Regret In Your Tears.” Her scathing Remy Ma disses are followed by Roxanne Shanté’s classic “Roxanne’s Revenge.” Nicki later celebrated the playlist on Twitter, calling it the greatest of all time. This isn’t her only new playlist. On Friday (March 10), Nicki also teamed up with 2 Chainz for a Spotify exclusive. It was the latest edition of Tity Boi’s Pretty Girls Like Trap Music series. But playlists aren’...

On Friday (March 10), Drake confirmed that he was extremely close to finalizing work on his forthcoming playlist during a “Boy Meets World Tour” stop in Hamburg, Germany. “I know it’s taken me a while, but I’m going to the hotel tonight to finish this More Life shit so I can give it to you as soon as possible,” he told fans. “I hope you’re ready to enjoy some new music.” Drake announced More Life in October 2016. The original release was slated for December. It was pushed back to early 2017. A month ago, Drizzy promised to complete it within two weeks. Rumors claimed it would drop March 4. Since then, however, Drake’s producer Noah “40” Shebib said it wasn’t ready to drop just yet. When it does arrive, the 6 God says the playlist will be like an episode of OVOSOUND Radio with all new music. “It’s just an evolution of the mixtape,” he said. “It was getting tough to be like, ‘I’m dropping a mixtape but it’s for sale on iTunes.’ It was like, ‘Oh, that’s your album.’ I didn’t want ...

Drake says he’s going to the hotel to finish up his “More Life” project tonight. Even though it’s seen its fair share of setbacks & delays, Drake’s highly anticipated More Life project finally looks to right around the corner. On Friday night during his latest stop of the “Boy Meets World” Tour in Germany, Drake told the crowd that he’s going to the hotel after the show to finish the project. Unfortunately, he still didn’t give us a concrete release date, but he did say he’s giving it to us ASAP. “I know it’s taking me a while, but Im going the hotel tonight to finish this “More Life” shit so I can give it to you as soon as possible” Drake told to the sold-out screaming crowd.

Flashes of energy detected in distant galaxies could be evidence of aliens powering interstellar spacecraft, according to scientists at Harvard University. Discovered in 2007, Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are intense radio pulses lasting up to a millisecond. Their origins remain unknown, and fewer than two dozen have been detected by the world's largest radio telescopes - but they appear to occur in remote galaxies billions of light years away. Now, a team from Harvard has suggested FRBs could be leaked energy from powerful transmitters built in order to send giant light sail ships on interstellar voyages. A light sail uses the tiny amount of pressure exerted by light to produce a small but constant acceleration which allows a spacecraft to reach a great speed. Professor Avi Loeb, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, said: "Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven't identified a...

Pressure upon Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has escalated in the last one week after the club's damaging 5-1 loss to Bayern Munich in the UEFA Champions League. Several fan sites and fan groups have called on Arsene Wenger to leave the club once his contract expires this season as he has been at the club for 20 years and there hasn't been any tangible success in the last decade except 2 FA cups and constant champions league (top four) qualification. But Arsenal's chairman, Sir Chips Keswick, has released a statement regarding Wenger's future, saying the club won't be making any hasty decisions regarding Wenger's job till the season's end. Keswick said:  “We are fully aware of the attention currently focused on the club and understand the debate.We respect that fans are entitled to their different individual opinions but we will always run this great football club with its best long-term interests at heart. Arsène has a contract until the end of the season....

A recent report from the  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists  details how the US massively upgraded the lethality of its submarine-based nuclear missiles - and US adversaries like Russia may be spooked to the point of considering countermeasures. Essentially, the US's latest update to its Trident missiles aboard US Navy submarines ensures that each and every single missile will explode at precisely the right moment to devastate any target. Because of this new "super fuze," or timing element, the US's submarine-launched ballistic missile fleet has tripled in destructive potential, according to the report. This is important because US military planners previously only relied on submarine-launched missiles to strike soft targets like military bases. Now these missiles could be used to wipe out Russia's nukes buried deep underground. "Because of improvements in the killing power of US submarine-launched ballistic missiles, those submarines now patrol with mo...

Ciara was involved in a car collision in Los Angeles on Friday (March 10). The R&B superstar, who is in the third trimester of her pregnancy, was reportedly making a left turn when a grey Volvo SUV hit the front passenger side of her Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen. The Los Angeles Police and Fire departments both showed up to the scene, where Ciara was seen walking around and talking on the phone, as per TMZ. Glowing about her pregnancy in the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar, CiCi opened up about what a joyous time this has been for her. “I’m just super excited about this time in my life,” she said. “Like, oh my gosh, I can see my son running around, and soon it’s going to be two of these creatures running around! Our hands will be full of non-stop action.” UPDATE: Ciara’s husband, NFL quarterback Russell Wilson, has assured fans that his wife and baby are safe following the accident. “Momma Wilson & Baby Wilson are feeling great,” he tweeted. “God is good!”

The most revealing thing to come from the WikiLeaks CIA files was the news that a Samsung TV can be used as a listening device by the CIA. It is jaw dropping, not because it is so close to home, but because it is actually in the home. If the CIA can do it - who else can? The CIA leaks would seem to be evidence that the internet of things is in fact the internet of vulnerabilities. We are more compromised than perhaps we ever dared acknowledge. "Why would anyone care about how many times I heat up my cup of coffee?" says Jennifer Acuri, an ethical hacker. "And you're right: no one does. But if I can compromise your inbox to your email through your microwave, well that gives me a whole lot of information about you - possibly your banking details, where you work, your schedule. "As more and more devices become smart we will start to see attacks through CCTV cameras, your microwaves, your washing machines, your kettles. All of these things are connected...

Twenty years ago, The Notorious B.I.G. died in what has become one of the most tragic moments in hip-hop history. The still-unsolved shooting in Los Angeles cut Biggie’s career short, but it didn’t erase the New York wordsmith’s legacy or impact. Since that fateful night, Christopher Wallace has become an iconic face for hip-hop and music worldwide. In the years that followed, Big’s memory has been carried on by fellow musicians who’ve been inspired by his work, including Nicki Minaj, J. Cole, Childish Gambino, Logic, Nas, and, of course, Jay Z. Yesterday,on the 20th anniversary of the late legend’s passing, Rap-Up looks back on his influence with tracks he’s inspired. Ariana Grande feat. Childish Gambino – ‘Break Your Heart Right Back’, When Childish Gambino appeared on Ariana Grande’s “Break Your Heart Right Back” off 2014’s My Everything, he took a page out of Biggie’s “Mo Money Mo Problems” verse. Spelling out his name, he mimicked Biggie’s style and melody. In fact, the “M...