US rapper, Big Pokey has tragically passed away after collapsing during a performance in Texas.
The artist, whose real name wasMilton Powell, was performing at a Juneteenth-themed event at a bar on Saturday when he fell backwards on stage.
Witnesses rushed to help the 45-year-old before he was taken to a nearby hospital. He died on Sunday.
“He was well loved by his family, his friends, and his loyal fans,” his publicist said in a statement.
“Big Pokey will forever be ‘The Hardest Pit In The Litter!’”, the statement added, a reference to the rapper’s debut album.
Video circulating on social media showed Powell suddenly fall backwards with his microphone in hand while performing at the Pour09 Bar in Beaumont.
Paramedics were called shortly before midnight local time, a Beaumont Police spokeswoman told the Houston Chronicle. A cause of death has not been released.
Powell was best known as a founding member of the Screwed Up Click, an influential hip-hop collective of Houston-based artists.
It helped pioneer the city’s “chopped-and-screwed” sound, a laid-back, low-slung, style produced by slowing the pitch and tempo of the underlying track.
Powell charted in the Billboard Hot 100 when he appeared on the Paul Wall single Sittin Sidewayz in 2005. And last year, he featured on Megan Thee Stallion’s Southside Royalty Freestyle.
Various artists, including Juice J, Slim Thug and Lil Flip, have paid tribute to Powell.
“Low key, humble mountain of a man who moved with honour and respect. He was easy to love and hard to hate,” the rapper Bun B wrote on Instagram.
Journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor helped expose Harvey Weinstein as asexualpredator,propelling the #MeToo movement into the global consciousness, and emboldening women around the world to speak out about sexual abuse.
Carey Mulligan says meeting one of the New York Times’ reporters whose article brought down Harvey Weinstein “was rockstar crush stuff”.
The film She Said shows the efforts that went into Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s Pulitzer-prize winning journalism in 2017 which exposed Harvey Weinstein, then one of Hollywood’s most influential producers, as a sexual predator.
Their work brought about a global reckoning on the sexual abuse of women with the #MeToo movement.
Image: Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey won a Pulitzer prize for their work helping to expose Weinstein
Mulligan – who plays Twohey to Zoe Kazan’s Kantor – told Sky News she was “hugely intimidated” meeting the writers.
“It was rockstar crush stuff…Zoe was in New York and met [them] in person originally, I was still in the UK and so my first meeting was on Zoom, but I was hugely intimidated.
“Not that they’re intimidating people,” Mulligan laughs, “they couldn’t be more lovely, but they are just so impressive, I think we just both wanted them to be happy!”
Shot in the actual New York Times newsroomand with the pace unfolding like a thriller, the film follows the efforts of the journalists to persuade scared sources to go on the record.
Kantor says she and Twohey were “just flabbergasted” to see their investigation turned into a film.
“We started out by investigating a Hollywood producer, so we’re still a little confused about how likenesses of ourselves ended up on the big screen but listen, we’re really moved by it.
“One of the messages of this story, especially as time recedes, is that the number of people who really gave us publishable information about Harvey Weinstein was so small. In the end, we’re talking about like a conference room worth of people and yet look at the impact they had worldwide.”
Mulligan – who’s widely tipped to be Oscar-nominated for the role – says few “could have anticipated what the impact would be” but, in terms of the film industry she says she’s seen “lots of concrete changes” as a result.
Image: Harvey Weinstein is currently serving 23 years in jail
“Codes of conduct, workshops that are for the whole cast and crew that talk about what is expected on set in terms of behaviour – that never existed before,” she explains.
Speaking of how intimacy coordinators are now considered “crucial”, the actress says “we did this for a long time before that was a thing and it’s still sort of shocking to look back and think that was never in place before, it just seems like such an obvious need on a film set.”
Mulligan says the movement the article triggered has even influenced how scripts are written nowadays.
“The way the female characters are described in screenplays now, it’s not perfect but there’s definitely there’s a big shift from, you know, ‘Gorgeous girl in a bikini, beautiful but she doesn’t know it…’ you’re seeing markedly less of that, which I think is very welcome.”
