Surely being the son of one of the greatest actors of all time isn’t the easiest thing to be, especially if your dad is Denzel Washington.
In a recent interview with Mr. Porter, John David Washington shared some insight into what it was like growing up with a celebrity father and also spoke about his father’s influence on his own acting career.
Washington says he wanted to go into acting before he was 10, watching his father on the silver screen. However, by the time he was a teenager, things shifted and he feared being judged by the industry.
“I saw how people changed when they found out who my father was. I used to lie, saying he was a construction worker or in jail, just to have some sense of normalcy” Washington said. “I felt like there was no way people would take me seriously, even if I was good. They would always judge me. So I hid who my father was. I guess I was protecting myself.”
The U.S. release date for Washington’s upcoming movie, Tenet, has been indefinitely pushed back by Warner Bros due to COVID-19. However, it might be releasing in Europe this August.
“You think it’s going to happen and they keep pushing it back. That can be disheartening,” he said. “But it’s like your child. You want to send it to the best school, even if you have to wait a semester.”
The younger Washington is most known for his role as Ron Stallworth on the Oscar award winning Spike Lee film Blackkklansman. Washington said in a CBS News interview last year that he got the role after Spike saw his work in the HBO series Ballers as well as the film Monsters and Men.
Grammy-winning rapper Eminem is definitely not a Selfie God – at all. Marshall Mathers hit up social media to show fans he’s still in the learning stages of perfecting his skills.
We have our opinions on the best releases of 2018, but rather than simply tell you our pick for #1, we thought it would be more interesting to hear what you, the readers, believe is the Best Rap Album of 2018. With that in mind, we decided to make our Best Rap Albums Of 2018 list a living breathing conversation, that would ultimately lead to you, the readers, choosing which album is the best of the year. Throughout December, we will pit albums against one another, battle style, and your votes will determine the winners.
The bracket-style competition among the final 16 albums has begun. Each weekday, albums will face off against one another. In each case, voting will close after 24 hours. We will go from the Sweet 16 to the Elite 8 to the Final 4 to the Championship Finals, with one album emerging as the victor. The second Round 2 match-up from the Elite 8 is between Royce 5’9’s Book OfRyan and Saba’s CARE FOR ME. Only one can reach the Final 4. Make sure your opinion is heard and gets counted (click on your album’s artwork in the box below, then click “vote”).
In a career filled with a variety of impactful releases, Royce 5’9’s most personal and complex offering arrived this year. Book Of Ryan has Royce reflecting on chapters of his childhood as he takes audit on his life as a proudly sober family-man. It’s easily his most intimate, introspective album to date, as he goes page by page through his past, exploring his father’s struggles with addiction on “Cocaine,” the physical abuse his family endured on “Power,” and even life’s loss of innocence on “Boblo Boat.” One of 2018’s longer albums at the top, it maintains a cohesive narrative that’s tied together with perfectly executed skits. Nickel Nine can paint vivid pictures with his words to put the listeners directly in the shoes of both his younger and present-day self. For Heads who are more used to Royce demolishing a beat first and asking questions later, he has a few competitive joints sprinkled between his story, reuniting Bad Meets Evil on the Eminem-assisted “Caterpillar” and recruiting Pusha-T, Jadakiss, and Fabolous for the hyped “Summer On Lock.”Book Of Ryan proves to be Royce’s best look into the mirror, and has him evolving beyond the killer MC he’s known as, and into a true artist that can resonate with his story. – Sypher
Released: May 4, 2018 Label: Heaven Studios/eOne Music Guests:Eminem, J. Cole, Pusha-T, Jadakiss, Fabolous, Logic, Boogie, Marsha Ambrosius, Robert Glasper, T-Pain, King Green, Ashley Sorrell, Agent Sasco, Melanie Rutherford, Chavis Chandler Producers:Mr. Porter, S1, AntMan Wonder, Boi-1da, Cool & Dre, DJ Khalil, 808-Ray, Epikh Pro, Frank Dukes, Fuse, !llmind, Key Wane, The Maven Boys, StreetRunner, Tarik Azzouz
Saba – CARE FOR ME
Grief, fear, loneliness, and depression can all separately stand as incapacitating barriers for an individual. When present in unison, it would be easy to just not be. For much of the last two years since releasing the eager and hopeful Bucket List Project, Saba was suffocated by a combination of the above obstructions. With music and the studio acting as the Westside of Chicago rapper’s lifelines though, CARE FOR ME ultimately formed as the light that cut swiftly through the darkness. That’s not to say that Saba’s third full-length album isn’t bleak, because it’s certainly veiled in agony. However, if there were ever a modern day LP that deserved the oxymoronic label of being beautifully tragic, CARE FOR ME is the one. Heartache stemming from the fatal stabbing of his older cousin John Walt is found throughout the entirety of the album, but Saba also visits anxiety and racial profiling (“BUSY/SIRENS”), tainted love (“BROKEN GIRLS”), his family’s life-long anguish (“LIFE”), gang violence in Chicago (“CALLIGRAPHY”), the unhealthy dependence on social media (“LOGOUT”), and the cruel nature of the music business (“GREY”). In an industry where the line between show and reality is increasingly blurred, Saba’s ability to paint a real-life picture with his words throughout CARE FOR ME has firmly situated him as one of the most promising storytellers in all of Hip-Hop. – Michael Blair
Released: April 5, 2018 Label: Saba Pivot, LLC Guests:Chance The Rapper, TheMIND, Kaina Producers: self, daedaePIVOT, Daoud
Black Milk – Fever Black Thought – Streams Of Thought, Vol. 2
Buddy – Harlan & Alondra Evidence – Weather Or Not J. Cole – K.O.D Jay Rock – Redemption Mac Miller – Swimming Masta Ace & Marco Polo – A Breukelen Story Nipsey Hussle – Victory Lap
Phonte – No News Is Good News
Pusha-T – DAYTONA
Royce 5’9 – Book Of Ryan
Saba – CARE FOR ME Travis Scott – ASTROWORLD Westside Gunn – Supreme Blientele
We have our opinions on the best releases of 2018, but rather than simply tell you our pick for #1, we thought it would be more interesting to hear what you, the readers, believe is the Best Rap Album of 2018. With that in mind, we decided to make our Best Rap Albums Of 2018 list a living breathing conversation, that would ultimately lead to you, the readers, choosing which album is the best of the year. Throughout December, we will pit albums against one another, battle style, and your votes will determine the winners.
The bracket-style competition among the final 16 albums has begun. Each weekday, albums will face off against one another. In each case, voting will close after 24 hours. We will go from the Sweet 16 to the Elite 8 to the Final 4 to the Championship Finals, with one album emerging as the victor. The second Round 2 match-up from the Elite 8 is between Royce 5’9’s Book OfRyan and Saba’s CARE FOR ME. Only one can reach the Final 4. Make sure your opinion is heard and gets counted (click on your album’s artwork in the box below, then click “vote”).
In a career filled with a variety of impactful releases, Royce 5’9’s most personal and complex offering arrived this year. Book Of Ryan has Royce reflecting on chapters of his childhood as he takes audit on his life as a proudly sober family-man. It’s easily his most intimate, introspective album to date, as he goes page by page through his past, exploring his father’s struggles with addiction on “Cocaine,” the physical abuse his family endured on “Power,” and even life’s loss of innocence on “Boblo Boat.” One of 2018’s longer albums at the top, it maintains a cohesive narrative that’s tied together with perfectly executed skits. Nickel Nine can paint vivid pictures with his words to put the listeners directly in the shoes of both his younger and present-day self. For Heads who are more used to Royce demolishing a beat first and asking questions later, he has a few competitive joints sprinkled between his story, reuniting Bad Meets Evil on the Eminem-assisted “Caterpillar” and recruiting Pusha-T, Jadakiss, and Fabolous for the hyped “Summer On Lock.”Book Of Ryan proves to be Royce’s best look into the mirror, and has him evolving beyond the killer MC he’s known as, and into a true artist that can resonate with his story. – Sypher
Released: May 4, 2018 Label: Heaven Studios/eOne Music Guests:Eminem, J. Cole, Pusha-T, Jadakiss, Fabolous, Logic, Boogie, Marsha Ambrosius, Robert Glasper, T-Pain, King Green, Ashley Sorrell, Agent Sasco, Melanie Rutherford, Chavis Chandler Producers:Mr. Porter, S1, AntMan Wonder, Boi-1da, Cool & Dre, DJ Khalil, 808-Ray, Epikh Pro, Frank Dukes, Fuse, !llmind, Key Wane, The Maven Boys, StreetRunner, Tarik Azzouz
Saba – CARE FOR ME
Grief, fear, loneliness, and depression can all separately stand as incapacitating barriers for an individual. When present in unison, it would be easy to just not be. For much of the last two years since releasing the eager and hopeful Bucket List Project, Saba was suffocated by a combination of the above obstructions. With music and the studio acting as the Westside of Chicago rapper’s lifelines though, CARE FOR ME ultimately formed as the light that cut swiftly through the darkness. That’s not to say that Saba’s third full-length album isn’t bleak, because it’s certainly veiled in agony. However, if there were ever a modern day LP that deserved the oxymoronic label of being beautifully tragic, CARE FOR ME is the one. Heartache stemming from the fatal stabbing of his older cousin John Walt is found throughout the entirety of the album, but Saba also visits anxiety and racial profiling (“BUSY/SIRENS”), tainted love (“BROKEN GIRLS”), his family’s life-long anguish (“LIFE”), gang violence in Chicago (“CALLIGRAPHY”), the unhealthy dependence on social media (“LOGOUT”), and the cruel nature of the music business (“GREY”). In an industry where the line between show and reality is increasingly blurred, Saba’s ability to paint a real-life picture with his words throughout CARE FOR ME has firmly situated him as one of the most promising storytellers in all of Hip-Hop. – Michael Blair
Released: April 5, 2018 Label: Saba Pivot, LLC Guests:Chance The Rapper, TheMIND, Kaina Producers: self, daedaePIVOT, Daoud
Black Milk – Fever Black Thought – Streams Of Thought, Vol. 2
Buddy – Harlan & Alondra Evidence – Weather Or Not J. Cole – K.O.D Jay Rock – Redemption Mac Miller – Swimming Masta Ace & Marco Polo – A Breukelen Story Nipsey Hussle – Victory Lap
Phonte – No News Is Good News
Pusha-T – DAYTONA
Royce 5’9 – Book Of Ryan
Saba – CARE FOR ME Travis Scott – ASTROWORLD Westside Gunn – Supreme Blientele
