When he’s not busy allegedly pistol-whipping and holding construction workers hostage, or beefing with 50 Cent, Rick Ross (“DA BOSS”) is a rapper… and apparently a night owl; Ross released a remix — uploaded at 4:39 a.m. —of Adele’s new single “Hello,” seemingly just because. Besides a few scratches and random “Maybach music”-plugs echoing in the background, the integrity of the original remains intact—perhaps his gesture of preserving the British vocalist’s “vibe” that inspired Ross’ introspective verse halfway through the remix. Elsewhere, Billboard reports that Adele’s imminent 25, her first full-length album in four years, after the immensely successful 21, is slated to break records for first-week sales by a female artist, potentially breaking Britney Spears’ 2000 record of 1.32 million records for Oops!… I Did It Again.
Spoiler alert (but by now, not really ): finding out whether Jon Snow is officially dead or alive (or even “undead”) on Game of Thrones might be answered later than initially expected. To whom should we direct our outrage? Martin Scorsese. Earlier today, HBO announced their late-winter lineup with Scorsese’s hour-long record label period drama, Vinyl front and center. The Sunday following its two-hour premiere on Valentine’s Day will see the return of HBO comedies, Girls and Togetherness. But as HuffPo (and many others) deduced, HBO doesn’t normally go beyond two hours of new programming per week, and since Vinyl, Girls, and Togetherness will all premiere mid-/late-February, Game of Thrones’s normal mid-March/early-April premiere could be in jeopardy.
Also at Entertainment Weekly is an interview with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on the pros and cons of their working together, specifically on their upcoming film, Sisters—their first since 2008’s (highly underrated, if you ask me) Baby Mama. In Sisters, they play siblings who discover their parents are selling their childhood home. Fey and Poehler seemingly play against their perceived type; Fey plays “former wild child” Kate, and Poeher plays the responsible, and recently-divorced Maura (as it so happens, the exact opposite of their characters’ dynamic in Baby Mama). The supporting cast also includes Ike Barinhotz, Rachel Dratch, Jon Leguizamo, Kate McKinnon, and Maya Rudolph, with the screenplay written by the hilarious Paula Pell, longtime staff writer on Saturday Night Live and on 30 Rock (you might recognize her as Pete Hornberger’s wife).
Speaking of siblings, you can now officially have one (but only one) if you’re living in China! New York Times’ Chris Buckley reports that the country’s Communist Party has decided to end its twenty-five year policy of “one child per household” for fear that the nation’s aging population would jeopardize China’s economic ascent. With that said, the reaction to the policy, which has skewed the population ratio between males and females due to the cultural preference of the former, was restrained; Buckley writes, “Many citizens in Beijing who were asked whether they would grasp the chance to have two children expressed reluctance or outright indifference.”