Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 262

Kanye West’s 2016 Rap Resurrection

It’s 2016, so what’s Kanye West going to do now? Kanye asked himself the same sort of question on 2011’s “Monster,” and helpfully provided a reply:

Whatever I wanna do! Gosh, it’s cool now!
Know I’m gonna do: Ah, it’s the new now!

Which is a nice distillation of Kanye West’s musical attitude. He sets trends by following his whims, often while referencing bro comedies of the mid-aughts.

A year ago, he began a campaign to show the world just how little he cares about its expectations. The New Year in 2015 brought a tender ode to fatherhood recorded with Paul McCartney, later followed by a country song, an ambient mood piece, a remix from an experimental classical arranger, a lot of weird clothes, and just one true rap song. But he’s rung in 2016 with “Facts,” a tossed-off-seeming brag track whose big twist is just how conventional it is. For the first time in a while, West doesn’t sound like he’s in his own universe; he’s wading straight into the middle of current hip-hop culture to remind people of why he matters in the first place.

The song is a sendup of Drake and Future’s recent hit “Jumpman”: West steals that song’s vocal cadence, and its obsession with Michael Jordan, basically to say that he’s better than Michael Jordan, Drake, and Future. The first assertion is explicit, with West repeatedly shouting “Yeezy just jumped over Jumpman!” He’s talking about shoes, about how his sneakers line for Adidas has the hype and sales to compete with the iconic Air Jordans. He also spends a lot of time dissing Air Jordans’ maker, Nike, West’s ex-partner-in-fashion-design. His lyrics claim that Nike would have nothing without help from Drake and West’s friend Don C, a “fact” that isn’t strictly true when it comes to commercial figures and is also plenty arguable when it comes to cultural cred.

Got it: Kanye still has less chill than anyone else.

Mostly, though, West seems interested in reminding listeners of his cultural cred. He’s not only using Drake and Future’s flow. He’s also for the first time working with the producer Metro Boomin, who’s behind a slew of recent hip-hop smashes including, yes, “Jumpman.” (The producer Southside, also associated with Future and Drake, contributes too.) “I been trending years, y’all a couple days,” West says, a reminder that even though Drake, Future, and many of the guys in Metro Boomin’s contacts list are his friends, they’re also his younger rivals. In interviews, he’s already acknowledged that Drake has him beat in musical popularity—temporarily.

As a rapper, does West re-prove himself on “Facts”? Well, most of the song is not very clever, though I do like the ruthlessness of him bragging about outfitting his toddler in $10,000 furs while “your baby daddy won’t even take your daughter shoppin’.” But pure lyrical prowess has never been West’s appeal. Sound has been. Attitude has been. So here, the production feels bigger, more grandiose, than anything Drake or Future put out in 2015. Even better, West’s delivery is absolutely maniacal. He screams, he gasps, and he terrifyingly makes like Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest for this line: “Every time I talk they say I’m too aggressive / I was out here spazzin’, all y’all get the message?” We do, Kanye, we do—you still have less chill than everyone else. Your next challenge: Getting back to music everyone else will imitate.

Trump's First TV Ad Recaps His Greatest Hits

The new Donald Trump ad has dropped, and it looks a lot like the old Donald Trump campaign. In fact, the TV spot is basically a greatest-hits package of the Trump campaign:

Radical Islamic terrorism! Ban Muslim immigrants! Cut the head of ISIS! Take their oil! Stop illegal immigration! Make Mexico pay!

This is Trump’s long-awaited entry into the big-time advertising game. He says he’s spending $2 million per week in Iowa and New Hampshire—although his campaign has promised to spend heavily before, and failed to deliver. Trump says he hasn’t bought any ads until now because he hasn’t needed them: He likes to brag that his campaign is $35 million under budget, and that his poll numbers show he doesn’t need the ads. But there’s been a nagging undercurrent of naysayers who point out that Trump has fallen behind Ted Cruz in Iowa and that there’s still no evidence that he has built a ground game capable of turning good polling into actual voters. (Maggie Haberman notes that she’s been hearing about his alleged organization for some time, but that no one has actually seen much evidence of it.)

According to Howard Kurtz, a slight majority of the ad spending is in Iowa, where polls in December showed him trailing Cruz by a few points. (There has been little or no polling since before Christmas.) The balance will go to New Hampshire, where polls show Trump with a double-digit lead.

Standard practice for presidential candidates is to use each major ad buy to push a new message: Maybe a set of ads designed to convey the candidate’s biography; maybe ads that focus on foreign policy, or on economic policy, or on social issues. Trump, as he has done throughout his campaign, eschews the usual playbook and simply resurfaces his biggest lines. Who knows what the Trump campaign is thinking, but this ad seems a somewhat grudging exercise: We’ll make an ad, but don’t expect us to do anything flashy. Since Trump’s message has resonated with many people so far, there’s some logic to it. Yet if the point of these ads is to win over new voters, is a recap of months-old messages the most effective way to do it?

The Diplomatic Fallout of Saudi Arabia’s Execution of a Shiite Cleric

Bahrain and Sudan, both close allies of Saudi Arabia, have joined the kingdom and cut diplomatic relations with Iran, while the United Arab Emirates, another Saudi ally, has downgraded them.

The steps come just days after Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in an apparent response to the kingdom’s execution over the weekend of a prominent Shiite cleric. Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran after the embassy protest, recalling its diplomats from the Islamic republic and giving Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country.

In a statement, Bahrain said it was cutting relations with Iran “after the criminal cowardly attacks on the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Tehran and its consulate in the city of Mashhad.”

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said Khartoum was cutting relations with Tehran in “response to the barbaric attacks on the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad.” A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Emirates were downgrading ties with Tehran “in the light of Iran’s continuous interference in the internal affairs of Gulf and Arab states, which has reached unprecedented levels.”

Hossein Jaber Ansari, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the steps continued the Saudi “policy of increasing tension and clashes in the region.”

At issue is Saudi Arabia’s announcement on Saturday that it had executed 47 people on terrorism charges. Among them was Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who, as my colleague Marina Koren reported, was sentenced to death in October 2014 after being convicted of sedition and other charges. The Shiite cleric was a critic of the Saudi monarchy and had led protests in the eastern part of the country, where many Saudi Shiites live. The execution sparked protests by Shiites across the world, including in Iraq, Bahrain, Pakistan, and Iran, where protesters stormed the Saudi Embassy in Riyadh, as well as the consulate in Mashhad.

Although relations between Saudi Arabia, which is mostly Sunni, and Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, have never been warm, the tensions mark the worst deterioration in ties in recent years. It’s been some time coming: The two countries are on opposite sides of the civil war in Yemen, where the Saudis support the government and the Iranians the Houthi rebels; and in Syria, where Riyadh supports some rebel groups and Iran the government of President Bashar al-Assad. They have also parried in Bahrain, where a Sunni ruler governs a mostly Shiite population, and in Iraq, where Iran holds considerable influence over the predominantly Shiite government; and traded barbs over the death toll of the stampede at the Hajj last September.

The latest tensions have prompted fears of a region-wide sectarian conflict (indeed, on Monday, two Sunni mosques in Iraq were bombed and a cleric killed), but they also complicate U.S. efforts to forge a global coalition against the Islamic State group in the region. ISIS, as the Islamic State is also known, controls territory across Iraq and Syria, and Western nations see the group’s defeat as a pivotal step toward bringing about a semblance of stability to the Middle East. Worsening relations between the region’s two most powerful Muslim nations are likely to make that more difficult, though both countries ostensibly oppose ISIS.

Western nations, including the U.S., condemned Nimr’s execution, while Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, has urged both countries to resolve their differences. John Kirby, the U.S. State Department spokesman, said the U.S. believes “diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences.”

Why Armed Protesters Took Over a U.S. Wildlife Refuge Building

A few days ago, Ammon Bundy wrote a Facebook post urging people to pray for the Hammonds, two Oregon ranchers facing prison time for arson.

On Saturday, Bundy went further. He and an unknown number of other individuals, armed with guns, stormed an empty building in a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon in support of the ranchers. The federal government, Bundy said, was unfairly punishing Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son and Steven Hammonds, 43, who were convicted in 2012 of committing arson on public lands in 2001.

“We will be here as long as it takes,” Bundy said in an interview posted on the Bundy Ranch’s Facebook page late Saturday night.

Bundy and the armed protesters took over the headquarters of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, which was closed for the holiday weekend, after participating in a peaceful rally in Burns, Oregon, in support of the Hammonds. Bundy said that the property, which is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is “owned by the people, and it has been provided to us to be able to come together and unite to make a hard stand against [government] overreach.”

When the Hammonds were originally sentenced, they argued that the ​minimum mandatory sentence for arson on federal land—five years—was unconstitutional, according to the U.S. district attorney’s office in Oregon. The trial court agreed and reduced the sentence. But an appeals court eventually upheld the federal law, and a judge imposed the mandatory sentence last October, with credit for time the Hammonds already served. The father served three months, while the son, who was also found guilty of committing arson on public lands in 2006, served one year, according to the Associated Press.

The Hammonds claimed they set fire to the lands, which they leased from the government for grazing cattle, to fight off invasive species. They are expected to report to prison on Monday.

The Hammonds’ lawyer wrote to the sheriff of Harney County, Oregon, Dave Ward, on Friday that “neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family,” according to the AP.

Bundy has insisted that the armed protesters at the refuge were being peaceful and urged “all freedom-loving people” to join their cause. The protesters demand that the Hammonds be released. But Bundy told CNN Sunday that “if force is used against us, we would defend ourselves.”

Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who is known for staging his own standoff against the federal government. In April 2014, Cliven, along with dozens of armed supporters, chased away Bureau of Land Management rangers who attempted to confiscate Bundy’s cattle herd, which had illegally grazed on federal land since 1993.

The elder Bundy appeared to distance himself from his son’s standoff, telling Oregon Public Broadcasting’s John Sepulvado on Saturday that the standoff was “not exactly what I thought should happen.”

The county sheriff’s office has advised people to stay away from the refuge as the standoff continues, according to The Oregonian.

The Aftermath of a Muslim Cleric’s Execution in Saudi Arabia

Updated on January 3 at 4:12 p.m. EST

Saudi Arabia has severed diplomatic ties with Iran following Iran’s condemnation of Saudi Arabia’s execution of a respected Shiite Muslim cleric.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Sunday his country is cutting ties with Iran, and has ordered Iranian diplomatic personnel to leave the country within 48 hours and told Saudi officials in Iran to return home.

Saudi Arabia announced Saturday that it had executed 47 men on what the government called terrorism charges. Among them was Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was sentenced to death in October 2014 after he was convicted of sedition and other charges. Al-Nimr regularly criticized the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, whose population is predominantly Sunni Muslim, and had led protests in the eastern part of the country.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other government officials on Sunday condemned Saudi Arabia’s mass execution. Demonstrators in Iran, Pakistan, Bahrain, and elsewhere took to the streets to protest the killings, chanting and carrying signs and photos of the cleric.

In Iran, protesters swarmed and set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran late Saturday night and early Sunday morning. In Pakistan, Shiite Muslims participated in rallies Sunday in the city of Karachi. In Bahrain, dozens of people, some holding photos of al-Nimr, marched in the capital city of Manama. The cleric had been a critic of Sunni-led monarchy in Bahrain.

In London, protesters gathered outside the Saudi embassy. One woman held a sign that read “Justice for Sheikh Nimr,” wire-service photos showed.

A prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, called for Iraq to shut down the Saudi embassy, and urged people in Gulf countries to protest al-Nimr’s execution.

Al-Nimr’s death, which al-Nimr’s brother told the Associated Press came as a surprise to even their own family, was seen by some as a warning to individuals, particularly Shiites, against seeking political reforms. Religious leaders and political figures in Iran, Yemen, and Lebanon warned that al-Nimr’s killing would prompt widespread anger and worsen sectarian tensions in the Middle East, according to The Guardian.

The Aftermath of a Muslim Cleric's Execution in Saudi Arabia

Updated on January 3 at 4:12 p.m. EST

Saudi Arabia has severed diplomatic ties with Iran following Iran’s condemnation of Saudi Arabia’s execution of a respected Shiite Muslim cleric.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Sunday his country is cutting ties with Iran, and has ordered Iranian diplomatic personnel to leave the country within 48 hours and told Saudi officials in Iran to return home.

Saudi Arabia announced Saturday that it had executed 47 men on what the government called terrorism charges. Among them was Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was sentenced to death in October 2014 after he was convicted of sedition and other charges. Al-Nimr regularly criticized the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, whose population is predominantly Sunni Muslim, and had led protests in the eastern part of the country.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other government officials on Sunday condemned Saudi Arabia’s mass execution. Demonstrators in Iran, Pakistan, Bahrain, and elsewhere took to the streets to protest the killings, chanting and carrying signs and photos of the cleric.

In Iran, protesters swarmed and set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran late Saturday night and early Sunday morning. In Pakistan, Shiite Muslims participated in rallies Sunday in the city of Karachi. In Bahrain, dozens of people, some holding photos of al-Nimr, marched in the capital city of Manama. The cleric had been a critic of Sunni-led monarchy in Bahrain.

In London, protesters gathered outside the Saudi embassy. One woman held a sign that read “Justice for Sheikh Nimr,” wire service photos showed.

A prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, called for Iraq to shut down the Saudi embassy, and urged people in Gulf countries to protest al-Nimr’s execution.

Al-Nimr’s death, which al-Nimr’s brother told the Associated Press came as a surprise to even their own family, was seen by some as a warning to individuals, particularly Shiites, against seeking political reforms. Religious leaders and political figures in Iran, Yemen, and Lebanon warned that al-Nimr’s killing would prompt widespread anger and worsen sectarian tensions in the Middle East, according to The Guardian.

Downton Abbey Returns for a Feel-Good Final Season

When you’re alone, and life is making you lonely, you can always go … to Downton. Not that it’s an easy ride: The past five seasons of Julian Fellowes’s early 20th-century aristocratic soap opera have been fraught with drama, heartbreak, aristocratic disgrace, and the specter of socialism, which looms over the ridiculously privileged Crawley family even more insistently than rain clouds hover over Yorkshire. Still, there’s something about the combination of upstairs/downstairs antics, manor-house glamour, and the Dowager Countess’s bon mots that makes even the silliest storylines bearable.

The sixth and final season of Downton Abbey returns to PBS Sunday night, and for once, things might be looking up. Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan) and Mr. Carson (JimCarter), who got engaged at the end of season five, are preparing for their marriage, the potential intimate details of which prompt a heart-to-heart between Carson and Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) that reminds viewers how Downton really peaks when it’s a genteel sex comedy. Anna (Joanne Froggatt), out on bail after being accused of the murder of her rapist, might finally be off the hook after another of his victims comes forward to confess (the show hints at self-awareness by having both Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle) and Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) continually refer to Anna as the most long-suffering woman in England). Little Marigold is finally ensconced at the Abbey with everyone apart from Mary having cottoned on to the fact that Edith (Laura Carmichael) is her mother. And Violet (Maggie Smith) is still gloriously, acerbically Violet, storing up one-liner after one-liner for The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and her countless parody Twitter accounts.

Downton, for all its charms, has never quite managed to find a balance when it comes to plot, which is why the darker threads of season four were so jarring—it’s hard to see one beloved character die and another be brutally attacked while the rest of the ensemble cast is cheerfully fretting about the newfangled refrigerator possibly emitting toxic electricity rays, or whether the pigs are dehydrated. The final season, at least in its early episodes, seems to have wisely decided to ease toward a happy ending, without much in the way of Greek drama. This does, of course, mean more time spent on the less-pressing issues afflicting the Crawley family and their good-natured servants. Remember the fuss last season over the proposed war memorial in the village? And the drama over whether the family could get a wireless? If season six has more in the way of these small-stakes storylines, it’s compensated by the comic exuberance of the show at its best.

In 1925, the most serious problems the Crawley family face continue to revolve around the future of Downton. With Tom now in Boston, the estate needs a new manager, and Robert (Hugh Bonneville) doesn’t seem all that amenable to letting Mary have a go, especially since the first conversation they have in the new season involves him reprimanding her for not riding her horse side-saddle (“so much more graceful”). The wage bill for the servants has tripled since the war ended, leaving Mr. Carson faced with the prospect of laying off a servant or two, even while stuck between Mrs. Hughes and Lady Mary in his own uncomfortable version of Bride Wars. More to the point, great houses all over the country are going bankrupt, reminding Robert and Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) that the sanctity of their status as lord and lady of the manor is anything but certain.

A heart-to-heart between Carson and Mrs. Patmore reminds viewers how Downton really peaks when it’s a genteel sex comedy.

Still, not everyone is threatened by the rising tide of progress: Edith is leaning in as the publisher of the magazine she inherited from her late boyfriend, Daisy (Sophie McShera) continues her studies, Mrs. Patmore hopes to turn her inheritance into a small business of her own, and even Mr. Molesley (Kevin Doyle) has a dream. If the show has had a recurring theme over six seasons, it’s that you can’t stop progress by leaping aboard the steam train of history and yelling stop (with Mrs. Patmore’s skepticism regarding all new kitchen inventions serving as a metaphor for a larger fear of modernity). Set 13 years after its pilot episode—which dealt with the sinking of the Titanic—in 1925, Downton has seen the first Great War of the 20th century, a wealth of technological innovation, the election of a Labour government, and the birth of the movement for women’s rights. If the way in which it points to real history is sometimes a little heavy-handed (ahem, Cora reading the paper), it’s at least refreshing that it doesn’t simply romanticize a time when so much was shared by so few.

Devoted and casual fans of the series alike will doubtless enjoy the gentle winding up of stories that have progressed over so many years, with new beaus for Mary and Edith introduced at the end of last season, an increasing degree of liberation for the servants, and even a glimpse of happiness for the tragedy-ridden Bateses. Meanwhile Downton’s villains, always cartoonish, remain so: Decker the lady’s maid (Sue Johnston) is Cruella de Vil with a northern accent, and there’s a sassy new visitor for Lady Mary who seems hellbent on destroying the aristocracy one teacup at a time. But with the stakes kept pleasantly low, all Downton has to do is gently point out how much we’re going to miss it when it’s gone.

The Best of 2015's Best of Lists

2015 Pop Culture Time Capsule | Vox
“Either you saw a black-and-blue dress, a gold-and-white dress, or a useless exercise that represented all the worst the Internet has to offer. Scientific explanations came forward, conspiracy theories loomed large, and Twitter became a hivemind devoted to the sole task of figuring this puzzle out. It was a wacky time, but it will be difficult to explain to future generations why, exactly, anyone ever cared at all.”

16 Best Pop Culture Characters of 2015 | Slate
“This was the year when the princess of contemporary hitmaking completed her transformation from Taylor Swift to ‘Taylor Swift’ … Each time the jumbotron zoomed in on her face, she delivered a wink so crisp and crowd-pleasing that it could have been CGI’d. Even her hair seemed to have learned the choreography.”

Book Concierge | NPR
“Tom McCarthy himself writes in the novel (parenthetically, how else?): ‘(events! If you want those, you'd best stop reading now).’ So it’s not a page-turner, but it is a mind-turner, and sometimes that kind of book hits the spot.”

Best Book Covers of 2015 | The New York Times
“When considering the book as a whole, I prefer that the interiors contain answers and the covers ask questions. To the extent that my favorite reading experiences empower me to confront uncomfortable truths and honest answers about people, societies and the greater universe, the covers that lure me into the pages often do so by posing questions that I don’t want to ignore.”

10 Best Memes of 2015 | Vulture
“There have been countless Drake memes throughout 2015, but none was bigger than those birthed from the ‘Hotline Bling’ music video. Drake knows the internet, and he made that music video specifically for the it—because he knows that being in on the joke pays dividends.”

76 Viral Images From 2015 That Were Totally Fake | Gizmodo
“This photo may seem like one of those that’s so absurd, no one could ever believe it deals. But people do. And they keep sharing it far and wide across social media. Like a cockroach scurrying around during Nuclear Winter, the image just won’t die. But yes, it’s a fake.”

100 Most Bullseye Things That Happened This Year | EW
“In a year punctuated by strange quarterly decisions from Shia LaBeouf (including #AllMyMovies in November and that time he yelled a motivational speech at you in August), his simple, disgusting, Elsa-from-Frozen haircut was his most offensive choice of 2015.”

The 15 Weirdest and Wildest Art Stories of 2015 | Artnet
“An art and design collective made a black-and-white striped bouncy castle with Nicolas Cage’s face on it (Cage in a cage, get it?), and it’s kind of terrifying.”

20 Biggest Breakouts of 2015 | Rolling Stone
“This year, Fetty Wap put Paterson on the map with ‘Trap Queen,’ his surprisingly sweet tale of pie-slinging romance—then scored two more ultra-catchy Top 10 hits, ‘679’ and ‘My Way.’ And that was all before Fetty dropped his self-titled album in September.”

16 of the Best Jeopardy, Family Feud, and Wheel of Fortune Moments of 2015 | Buzzfeed
“When a Jeopardy contestant got Alex Trebek to say ‘Turd Ferguson’: Sure, Talia Lavin might have lost the game, but she won at the game of trolling Alex Trebek.”

Top 11 Moments for Women in Pop Culture in 2015 | Time
“It’s rare for a children’s movie to star a girl, rarer still for that girl not to be a princess … And yet Pixar broke the record for best opening of an original film (not based on a book, TV show, etc.) with a movie about a girl’s emotions and thoughts in an industry that has repeatedly demonstrated to young girls that it doesn’t care what’s inside their heads.”

The Top 100 New York Times Stories of 2015, by Total Time Spent | The New York Times
“We ranked the top 100 favorite Times articles of 2015 in a new way — by the total combined time readers have spent looking at them. The result is a mix of ambitious investigative projects, big breaking news, features and service journalism. You can see the big themes of the year, like race, terrorism and technology—but also the things we all found captivating.”

The Best Television of 2015 | NPR
“Aziz Ansari nails modern love, modern families and cultural assimilation in a potent comedy that often camouflages its depth with Ansari’s quick wit and snappy patter. At a time when America is tempted to turn its back on immigrants, he uncorks an episode on the struggle pampered first generation kids can face connecting with their immigrant parents’ hardscrabble origins.”

Best of 2015: Essays and Criticism | Longreads
“ ‘There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question,’ writes Rebecca Solnit, neatly packaging a manifesto’s worth of logic into 20 words. She’s talking about the persistent idea that a woman’s life can be morally dictated, and I’ve never been one for slogans, but I would readily get that sentence tattooed.”

Top 10 Architecture and Design Trends of 2015 | Dezeen
“Ocean plastic, created by harvesting and melting down waste from the world's seas, was the breakthrough material of 2015. Sports brand Adidas created trainers from the recycled material, while Pharrell Williams’s third collection with fashion brand G-Star RAW included ocean plastic clothes.”

Remembering Natalie Cole

Natalie Cole, the Grammy award-winning American singer known for R&B hits like “This Will Be” and “Our Love,” has died. She was 65.

Cole died Thursday night at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles of “complications from ongoing health issues,” according to a statement from her family.

“Natalie fought a fierce, courageous battle, dying how she lived ... with dignity, strength and honor," her sisters, Timolin Cole and Casey Cole, and son, Robert Yancy, said in a statement Friday. “Our beloved Mother and sister will be greatly missed and remain UNFORGETTABLE in our hearts forever.”

In her decades-long career, Cole followed in the footsteps of her famous father, Nat King Cole, who died of cancer in 1965 when his daughter was 15 years old. When Cole was young, her father, already a star when Cole was born in 1950, would bring home a variety of records for her and her siblings. “There was always music playing at our house in one room or another,” Cole wrote in her 2000 memoir, Angel on My Shoulder.

Cole started singing at music clubs while in college at the University of Massachusetts. Her debut album, “Inseparable,” released in 1975, earned Cole her first two of nine Grammy awards. It was an instant success, and Cole went on to release more than 20 albums, including her best-selling “Unforgettable … With Love,” a 1991 collection of Cole singing her father’s classic songs.  

Off the stage, Cole struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for many years. She spent six months in rehab in the 1980s. “Just like a baby who wants to put everything in its mouth or stick its finger in every hole—I wanted to try everything—good, bad, and indifferent,” Cole wrote in the same memoir. “Looking back, it seems that I dove head first into every black hole I encountered, and before I knew it I was stuck and having to claw my way out.”

Cole was married three times, and divorced from her husband in 2004. In 2007, Cole was diagnosed with hepatitis C, which doctors said she likely contracted years earlier when she injected heroin. Cole successfully underwent chemotherapy for the disease, but the treatment led to kidney failure. Cole received dialysis three times a week, but continued to perform. Cole told Larry King during an appearance on his show in April 2009 that doctors said she needed a kidney transplant. A month later, she had a donor—a fan. Cole described how it happened to the Daily Mail in 2013:

Natalie’s donor was a young woman called Jessica from El Salvador who died while heavily pregnant with her baby boy Lucas. Jessica was the niece of a nurse called Esther, who had once tended to Natalie. It’s a miracle Jessica’s kidney was a match. ‘I’d had surgery in LA for an infection and Esther looked after me,’ says Natalie. ‘A couple of weeks later she was watching Larry King with Jessica.

'She said to her, “I took care of that lady for a day and she was so nice. I wish we could find her a kidney.” A few weeks later Jessica passed away. She was eight months pregnant and had a stroke. They saved the baby and the family gave all her organs away. Esther said, “I know a lady who needs the kidney.” It was a perfect match. It was meant to be.’

On the morning of the operation, Cole’s sister Cookie, the orphaned child of her mother’s aunt whom the Coles adopted, died of cancer. Cole’s mother, Maria, a singer herself, died in 2012 of stomach cancer.

Cole documented her health troubles and kidney transplant in a second memoir, Love Brought Me Back, published in 2010.

Cole performed sold-out shows in the United States this summer, but canceled appearances in November and December to recover from a medical procedure. At a concert in Atlanta in June, Cole sang a “duet” with her father, crooning “Unforgettable” along with the original vocals. “Her sumptuous, buttery, vocals are the kind of rare treasure that needs only the twinkling of a piano, the snapping of fingers, and the thump-thump-thump of a stand-up bass,” wrote Jamila Robinson for the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Obama's New Year's Resolution on Gun Violence

President Obama said Friday that he would meet with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Monday “to discuss our options” on executive action for stricter gun regulation.

The president said in his weekly radio address that his New Year’s resolution is “to move forward on our unfinished business as much as I can.” He asked citizens to help him fight an “epidemic of gun violence” and a “gun lobby [that] is loud and well organized.”

“I get too many letters from parents and teachers and kids to sit around and do nothing,” Obama said. “I get letters from responsible gun owners who grieve with us every time these tragedies happen.”

Obama said he asked his staff several months ago to look into executive action on guns. CNN reported Thursday that the president was expected to announce “in the coming days” action that would expand background checks on gun purchases, just before his final State of the Union address on January 12.

Reports of looming executive action began circulating last month after a husband and wife shot and killed 14 people at a holiday office party in San Bernardino, California. Current legislation, Obama said then, makes it “just too easy” for individuals to acquire firearms.

“It’s going to be important for all of us, including our legislatures, to see what we can do to make sure that when individuals decide that they want to do somebody harm, we’re making it a little harder for them to do it,” he said at the time.

Here’s what the president could do, as my colleague Adrienne LaFrance reported in December:

Federal regulations already require professional gun dealers to be licensed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. But the law doesn’t clearly define what it means to be in the business of selling guns. Some sellers use the ambiguity of the current law to advertise the fact that they don’t require background checks, which makes it easy for people to purchase weapons without any scrutiny. Officials have identified, and in some cases convicted, individuals selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of guns per year without a license because they don’t consider themselves to be in the gun-selling business. …

Obama could use executive power to clarify the existing law—perhaps by adding a set number of guns sold, or the amount of money that a person can pull in from gun sales—and determine what constitutes being in the firearms business. Doing so would require more sellers to be licensed.

Requiring more sellers to be licensed would mean more oversight for gun dealers, which could mean more buyers would be subject to background checks.

About this time three years ago—in the wake of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six women in Newtown, Connecticut—Obama announced 23 executive initiatives related to gun violence. In the months after the massacre, lawmakers in Congress introduced proposals that would expand background checks for gun purchases and regulate assault weapons. Both were defeated in spring 2013.

According to an October Gallup poll, 86 percent of Americans support the idea of laws that would require universal background checks for gun buyers. But Americans are split on whether such regulation would reduce the number of mass shootings in the country.