The WTF? Moments of 2017 – Part 1

What’s poppin’, y’all?  As you all know, I was pretty much MIA from Southern Girl Entertainment for the vast majority of 2017, so I decided to make up for the time that we lost.  For the most part, 2017 was a really cool year (personal tragedy aside; I lost someone very close to me this year), and it was an extremely exciting year for entertainment.  Real talk, there’s been a lot of WTF moments this year; some good, some bad.  I’ve decided to list them all for you, to basically touch on all the fun we missed out on this year.  This isn’t a top 10 list, mind you.  As a matter of fact, there were more than 10 WTF moments of 2017; so much so, that this post will be split into sections.  So, without further ado, here we go (sit tight; it’s long)!

The Bow Wow Challenge

Like my girl Lovelyti always says, “If you live in your truth, no one can ever take that away from you.”  That’s a lesson that Bow Wow desperately needs to learn.  Long story short, earlier this year, Bow Wow flew out to NYC to promote his reality series “Growing Up Hip Hop,” and he posted a pic of his supposed private plane on Instagram to show that he was flying there in style.  Unfortunately for him, he got busted by a passenger on a commercial flight that caught him on the way to NYC on the same airline, not the private jet he claimed to be chartering.  To add insult to injury, it was revealed that the picture of the private plane was actually an advertisement for a transportation service in Fort Lauderdale.  SMH.

What makes this situation even crazier, is that Bow Wow doubled down and did his damndest to convince the public that the initial photo was genuine, even though he was caught lying.  As a result, the #BowWowChallenge was created, where folks flocked to Twitter to clown Bow Wow by posting hilarious pics of themselves frontin’ and fakin’ for social media.  Here’s two of the many gems they posted for nearly 36 hrs:

Steve Harvey’s Bad Year

Poor Steve Harvey.  If you’re a fan of Steve’s like I am, you know that he usually has blessings coming at him frontward, backward and sideways.  However, 2017 hasn’t been his finest year.  First, he met with now President Trump at Trump Towers to speak about urban development.  Big mistake.  Then, he made an extremely tasteless joke about Asian men.  Bigger mistake.  Next, an e-mail that he sent to his staff leaked, which basically revealed that Steve will no longer tolerate folks bombarding him in the hallways and in his dressing room.  More bad publicity for Steve.  If all that wasn’t bad enough, after the NBA Finals, Steve got in more trouble for making yet again another tasteless joke.  This time, he caught up in trash talking about the Golden State Warriors with an audience member/Warriors fan from Flint, MI during an episode of The Steve Harvey Morning Show.  Steve, a die hard Cavaliers fan, decided to have the last word of the argument when he jokingly told the man to enjoy “a nice brown glass of water.”  *Sigh*  The backlash from that last incident was so bad he took a break from his radio show for an entire month.  Since then, Steve’s been a lot more careful with the words coming out of his mouth and the company he keeps, but he has yet to issue the public apology Flint’s mayor demanded.

R. Kelly’s “Sex Cult”

2017 was definitely the year of ratchetness.  Sometime around spring of this year, it was reported that R. Kelly, aka The Pied Piper of R&B, actually had a sex cult.  The news story broke thanks to the family of a young woman named Joycelyn Savage, who openly stated that R. Kelly has her “brainwashed” and living in one of his houses, along with a slew of other women.  A former assistant of Kelly’s backed up the family’s claims and also added that Kelly dictates how the women should dress, when they should have sex with him, and when they should bathe.  Joycelyn herself released her own statement, claiming that she’s not being held against her will, and that she’s perfectly fine.

Despite the fact that R. Kelly’s isn’t a stranger when it comes to sexual scandal, and another former “lover” of Kelly’s came forward, the Savage family pretty much discredited themselves when it was revealed that that Joycelyn’s father allowed her to live with R. Kelly to further her career in the first place.  Later, when Mr. Savage couldn’t get back in touch with Joycelyn, he called himself releasing a series of videos calling Kelly out and threatening him.  Even his youngest daughter made a diss track about R. Kelly.  Okaaayyyy…  However, other women have come forward since the Savage’s story was released, also claiming that Kelly’s been running a sex cult for ages, providing more validity to the tale.  As of yet, no legal action has been taken against R. Kelly.

IMDB Shuts Down Their Message Boards

Ever since I was 18 yrs. old, there was a place specifically made for nerds/cinephiles where I would feel welcome (well, most of the time…more on that later) and talk about whatever movie or TV show I wanted, whenever I wanted.  That place was the IMDB message boards.  Whether it was the most obscure B-movie out there, or the most popular flick ever made, there was a message board for it, and I frequented them all.  The boards weren’t just restricted to the movies and TV series, either.  There were also individual boards for actors/actresses, directors, etc.  No topic or person was taboo.  However, that may have been the problem.  In mid-February of 2017, IMDB announced that they were shutting down the message boards permanently, and they only gave folks two weeks notice.  Apparently, the reason for dismantling the boards was because they were “no longer providing a positive, useful experience.”  In other words, there were too many trolls actin’ a damn fool on the boards.  Hence, the reason I mentioned that I usually felt welcome on the boards, but not 100% of the time.

Some of the boards were so full of trolling topics that I just stayed clear from them all together.  I even came across a troll that used to harass me back in my college days (on another website, sadly enough).  Yes, the trolls were a problem, but I always thought the purpose of moderators was to make sure that they wouldn’t ruin conversations for everyone else.  From what I gathered over the last few years, they either couldn’t handle things, or just flat out weren’t doing their jobs.  Either way, the powers that be at IMDB.com threw up their hands, and now I don’t have a place to discuss movies or TV series anymore.  There’s a few imitators out there, but it’s nowhere near the same.  *Sob*

And the Winner Is…La La Land!  No, Wait!  It’s Moonlight!  My Bad!

This year’s Oscars had an extremely interesting ending.  Former Bonnie and Clyde co-stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were tasked with announcing Best Picture, and after opening the envelope, it was proudly declared that La La Land won the coveted award.  Five minutes later, after the cast and crew of La La Land gave thanks, they later had to give congrats to the cast and crew of Moonlight…because they were the ones that actually won Best Picture.  So how did a musical with a predominately Caucasian cast get confused with a coming-of-age LGBT drama with a predominately African-American cast?  Easy.  They mixed the damn envelopes up, and poor Warren Beatty was clowned for the next month (although I must admit, he didn’t get half as much flack as Steve Harvey did for his Miss Universe gaffe.  Poor Steve can’t catch a break).  I still don’t get why Warren caught so much hell, considering that Ms. Dunaway was the one that announced the wrong winner.  Here’s the proof.

All the Rappers Wantin’ To Fight…Sheesh!

2017 started off on a crazy note thanks to Chris Brown and Soulja Boy.  During the first of the year , Soulja Boy was caught liking a pic of Chris’s ex, Karrueche Tran, on Instagram.  Chris was none too happy about Soulja Boy’s appreciation for Karrueche’s bikini-clad pic (although he and Karrueche broke up ages ago).  Long story short, Chris and Soulja Boy started going back and forth on Instagram and Twitter, and their trash talk soon started to turn towards an actual physical fight.  Shortly afterward, 50 Cent and Floyd Mayweather got involved, and the beef between Chris and Soulja Boy became a PPV event.  Floyd even offered to train Soulja Boy for the fight, whereas Mike Tyson backed Chris.  If that wasn’t crazy enough, other internet fights between celebrity rappers started escalating:  21 Savage vs. 22 Savage, Kodak Black vs. Lil’ Wayne (that one-sided squabble was particularly hilarious), etc.  Thankfully, Chris came to his senses sometime around March and called the fight off, and the other rappers followed suit in their own respective beefs.  Some folks are mad because the PPV never happened, but I can’t say that I am.  I’m glad to see that Chris is finally starting to grow up.

Bruno Mars Gets Accused of “Cultural Appropriation”

I’ve completely fallen in love with Bruno Mars this year, so on the morning of the 2017 BET Awards, I was psyched to see that he was trending on Twitter.  Then I found out exactly why he was trending.  Some fake woke chick on Twitter (and believe me, Twitter is chock full of them) posted a million tweets about how Bruno was guilty of appropriating black culture by singing R&B music.  I’m a black woman, and I have to say, some folks are little too fast and loose with that “cultural appropriation” accusation.  Don’t get me wrong, some people are guilty of committing that crime (I’ll be nice and not name names).  Bruno, however, is not one of those people, considering how he’s always given props and respect to black artists, and cited the R&B groups of the past as his inspiration.  Black Twitter saw the chick’s tweets for what they were:  a bunch of bullshit.  As a result, they appropriately drug the woman and read her to filth.  Bruno, true to form, paid the girl dust, went to the BET Awards later that night and killed.  I’m sure the girl really got pissed when she realized that Bruno’s song choice for the night was “Perm,” in which he pretty much reveals that he knows how a black woman’s relaxer works (that’s not what the song is really about, but I’m just sayin’…he knows how a doggone perm works!  I’m impressed!).  Then he sat in the audience and promptly went to sleep.

He woke up just in time to win best R&B Artist, though.

I’m sure that chick is still salty as hell.  Probably got even saltier when Bruno performed at the Apollo a few months later.  LOL.

The Lies!  The Lies!  The Lies!

Season 9 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta was their absolute worst.  It was boring, clearly scripted—I realize all reality TV is scripted, but the last season didn’t even try to really hide it—and the usual ratchetness wasn’t even amusing or entertaining.  It was stomach churning.  By the fourth or fifth episode of the season, I tuned out and relied on You Tube recappers to find out what was going on, seeing as their breakdown of the show was more entertaining than the show itself.  I can’t even bring myself to watch season 10, and even the folks that did the You Tube recaps for the past season seem to have tuned out.  When I found out midway through season 9 that Kandi and Todd were accused of trying to drug and basically rape Porsha in their “sex dungeon,” I still didn’t have too much interest in watching the show, but I heard that topic would be of considerable interest during the reunion and decided to watch it.  That was the only thing about the last season that didn’t disappoint me.

Long story short, it was revealed during the reunion that Phaedra told Porsha that bold faced lie about Kandi and Todd wanting to sexually violate her for God-knows-what purpose, and the blowout was intense, to say the least.  Kandi was distraught, as was Porsha (although she should’ve used better judgement), and the other ladies were rendered speechless from shock, except for Kenya, who gloated the rest of the reunion.  Phaedra, on the other hand, remained stone faced for the rest of the night, not showing too much geniune remorse for betraying two of her friends.  Black Twitter turned on Phaedra quicker than a gallon of milk left in 100ºF heat, and I witnessed the self-proclaimed southern belle instantly go from being a fan favorite to an absolute pariah.  After the dust had settled, it was reported that the ladies no longer had any desire to work with Phaedra, and the lawyer/mortician/activist officially lost her peach.  She recently told TMZ that she was happy to no longer be a part of the show, although previous news reports stated otherwise.  On the bright side though, I never saw Phaedra look prettier (seriously, no shade.  Phaedra’s always been pretty to me, but that night she was gorgeous.  Too bad it was revealed that she has a seriously evil streak), and Kandi gave us all GIF gold that fateful night.

—Written by Nadiya

Part 2 coming soon!