Iggy Pop and Nick Cave advocate for animals, Michelle Rodriguez threatens to leave ‘Fast and Furious’ and more celebrity news.
Chance the Rapper, 24, says he’s donating his Grammy Award for best rap album to Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History. The Chicago Sun-Times reports the rapper’s announcement at the museum’s gala Saturday surprised officials. During his speech, he said he wants to make the museum “a staple of African American history.” The three-time Grammy winner, a native of Chicago whose full name is Chancelor Johnathan Bennett, was named to the more than half-century old museum’s board of trustees in January, along with his father Ken Bennett, the former regional representative for the Secretary of Labor during the Obama Administration, who is now a Chicago tourism executive.
Actor Rob Lowe, 53, told Entertainment Weekly that he thought he was going to be killed during an encounter with a bigfoot creature while filming his new A&E docuseries, “The Lowe Files, ” according to Page Six. The encounter took place in the Ozark Mountains — which stretch between Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Lowe said he and his sons were camping there to investigate a bigfoot-like creature known to locals as a “wood ape” during a shoot for “The Lowe Files” when something began to approach their camp. Lowe said he was lying on the ground thinking he was going to be killed. He added that he’s “fully aware” that the story makes him sound like “a crazy, Hollywood kook.” “The Lowe Files” follows the actor and his sons, Matthew and John Owen, as they explore mysterious phenomena across the country.
Rock legends Nick Cave (of the Bad Seeds fame) and Iggy Pop teamed up to advocate for animals in a new PETA video. Pop, a Detroit native, stars in the video live and in animation, showing his muscles as he dances to one of Cave’s most adored love songs, “Breathless.” In the video, the “godfather of punk” appears in his dog’s daydream as a superhero, helping a turtle safely cross the road and coming to the defense of a rabbit in a hair-raising attack, as Cave sings, “The rabbit hides beneath the ground/For he is defenseless without you/The sky of daytime dies away/And all the earthly things they stop to play/For we are all breathless without you.” The uplifting new video spot carries an important message. “Nick Cave and Iggy Pop have left PETA breathless with this sweet video, ” said PETA President Ingrid Newkirk . “If everyone acted like the people our dogs think we are and depend on us to be, the world would be a far kinder place.” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are part of a long list of musicians — including Paul McCartney, The Black Keys, Sia, Morrissey, and Chrissie Hynde — who have donated their songs to PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way.” You can visit peta.org for more information.
Michelle Rodriguez, 38, is threatening to leave “The Fast and the Furious” franchise unless its female characters are treated differently. Rodriguez wrote on Instagram on Tuesday that she hopes filmmakers decide “to show some love to the women of the franchise” in its next installment. If not, she says, she “just might have to say goodbye.” F. Gary Gray, 47, directed the eighth film in the series, “The Fate of the Furious, ” and is defending the treatment of women in that movie. He tells Business Insider he “thought the combination of female characters was pretty strong.” Gray notes that Charlize Theron, 41, played the antagonist in the film and Helen Mirren, 71, made a cameo. The ninth film in the franchise is due out in 2019.
■ Asahd Khaled, son of DJ Khaled, 41, met Justin Bieber, 23, and subsequently exploded in a fit of tears, according to TMZ. Bieber got an audience with Khaled’s baby boy for the shooting of their “I’ m the One” music video, and Asahd — who famously never cries or fusses in public — gave Justin a quick glance and then started bawling his eyes out. The Biebs tried to calm him down but was unsuccessful. Asahd, at only 8 months old, is, impressively, the executive producer of DJ Khaled’s 10th album, “Grateful.” You can show some #fanluv by following him on Twitter @asahdkhaled.
■ Danzig and Corrosion of Conformity will perform at The Fillmore Detroit on Sept.15. All ages are welcome. Doors open at 6: 30 p.m. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday and range from $25 to just under $50. You can buy them livenation.com .
