Latest news with #Commotion
CBC
2 days ago
- CBC
Can AI help Indigenous communities preserve their cultures?
Social Sharing Indigenous communities are thinking about possibilities and concerns for how AI can help them preserve and pass on their languages and their cultures. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud is joined by Indigenous artists Marek Tyler and Susan Blight to discuss how AI could integrate Indigenous values and provide knowledge for future generations. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: Marek, talk to me a little about the most promising aspect of what AI could do for Indigenous communities. Marek: One of the most promising aspects, in my opinion, for AI is the potential to support Indigenous self-determination by enabling data systems that reflect our values and our languages and our governance practices. Now, OK, how? Well, when ethically developed, I think an AI can manage and protect their cultural knowledge and facilitate collective decision-making, grounded in our worldview. I think it's most important to remember that it's a tool to strengthen sovereignty, it's not just to boost efficiency. It depends entirely on who owns it, who controls the technology, who owns the infrastructure. So imagine 50 years from right now, Susan and I, our nieces' and nephews' generations coming, imagine them collaborating with their aunties and uncles who helped train that AI 50 years prior. Because their community took the responsibility to own their knowledge, to take care of the knowledge, to own the data, to care of infrastructure. My thoughts are when — not if — Indigenous communities start training AI, we're not just going to feed it data. We're teaching it the principles of iyinisiwin [wisdom and knowledge]. We are teaching it to practice respect, humility, uphold our governance systems — all of those pieces so that it learns to learn like us, to think like us, to walk in our ways. So we decide who the helper is and how they're taught and what they're taught, and how the future generations are going to be served, not the other way around. Elamin: Protecting the environment is a core belief for a lot of Indigenous communities. But one of the biggest concerns around AI technology is the environmental impact of so much energy, so much water, goes into maintaining large AI systems. Susan, what do you make of the risks and the benefits that come with bringing AI into Indigenous communities and thinking about using it in that way? Susan: Yeah, I think it represents one of the main areas, or arenas, of contention as it pertains to Indigenous AI or Indigenous people using AI. And that has to do with the fact that any technology that we employ has to align with our values. And so the environmental impacts of AI not currently having a system to run it that is sustainable is something that a lot of Indigenous people are talking about. But this also goes to what Marek is talking about as well, which is how we introduce our concepts, our place-based ways of living and being, as well as frameworks that are sustainable and reciprocal, into AI. We are not going to rely on something that is not sustainable and that actually harms the environment and our non-human relations.
CBC
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
How Alex Cooper turned the Call Her Daddy podcast into a media empire
One of the biggest podcasts right now is Call Her Daddy, a celebrity interview show hosted by Alex Cooper. But the show began as a sex podcast, best known for the raunchy details that Cooper and her co-host would share about their own sex lives. A new Disney+ docuseries, Call Her Alex, came out last week to share a behind-the-scenes look at at how Cooper used Call Her Daddy to propel her to bonafide celebrity status and lucrative business deals, as well as an inside look at her personal life. On a bonus episode of Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with culture critics Liz Duff and Rebecca Jennings about the new docuseries and Cooper's success.
CBC
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
The complex relationship between Toronto hip-hop fans and Kendrick Lamar
Social Sharing When rapper Kendrick Lamar played two shows in Toronto last week, it was more than just the latest stop on his stadium tour with SZA. After Lamar's long battle with Toronto's own rapper, Drake, the concert symbolized an affront to the city and its hip-hop culture. Last year, Lamar won the feud by releasing his final Drake diss track and hit song, Not Like Us. Though many Canadians happily attended the Lamar concert and didn't think about the feud, for others, it was a sore spot. Drake publicly called out Jagmeet Singh for going to the show, prompting the former NDP leader to release an apology for his attendance. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud sits down with culture critics Matt Amha and Rad Simonpillai about the complexity of Toronto's relationship with Lamar and with Drake. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: How does a rapper, like Drake, become the site of an identity crisis like this one, do you think, Matt? Matt: Because it takes on all of this additional cultural meaning. As someone that has been talking about this battle as a Black Canadian for the better part of the last year, it became very clear, very quickly that this was actually not about Drake and was instead about all of these larger questions around belonging, identity, nationalism, cultural exceptionalism, around people that understood Not Like Us to not just be a critique of Drake, but to be a critique of the place that he's from: Toronto, a city that we've said on the show before that American rappers don't understand. And this is something that Kendrick played into, in advertisements of his Superbowl performance, we saw Kendrick quite literally wrapping himself in the colours of the American flag. When Canada plays the United States in sport, they play Not Like Us. When Argentina beats Canada in soccer, in football, Argentina puts up an image that says, "Not like us." And then the more interesting conversation is the intra-community conversations that we are having as Black people in this country, where this became a referendum on Blackness. All of these canards about Black Canadians not experiencing racism, Canada as some kind of post-racial oasis, about us not being raced as authentically Black, you know? And actually framing Toronto as not having a real claim over the thing that we call hip-hop, which is an impossible argument to make about a city that produced Saukrates and Choclair and Kardi [Kardinal Offishall], etc., etc., etc. If Toronto, the most diasporically rich city in the world, does not have a claim to rap, no city in the world has a claim to rap. Elamin: I think the most cutting line of Not Like Us is Kendrick saying, "You're not a colleague, you're a colonizer." This notion of accusing Drake of being an interloper in hip-hop. And if you are to believe that Drake is an interloper in hip-hop, what you're really saying is Canada has no place in the hip-hop conversation, it's really an American art form. Rad, is that your interpretation of it? Rad: I mean, not to me. Because, for me, I feel like Canada is getting caught by strays as shots taken at Drake. Maybe that's just me kind of compromising or negotiating or dealing with my cognitive dissonance? Because I take Matt's point about [how] this is an attack on Canada's claim to hip-hop culture. I mean, look, I love the guys he referenced — Saukrates, Choclair — I went to the same high school as those guys. I have a lot of love for the history of hip-hop in Toronto. And in no way am I agreeing with someone that says we don't have a claim to that culture, because that is formative for me. And again, I think I'm choosing to negotiate with myself to separate out the Drake aspect of this. Maybe I'm choosing to separate Drake from that history of Toronto hip-hop that I cherish and I would fight for. I think it speaks to the multitudes of who we are as hip-hop fans, and who we are as Toronto as a culture, and who we are as people who may actually not want to use the word "crodie" and feel like he's dissing a certain generation of Toronto. It's complicated. I think the way we receive a song like Not Like Us, that also contains multitudes.
CBC
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Will this be the summer of Addison Rae?
Social Sharing Over the last five years, Addison Rae has managed to make the jump from young internet celebrity to legitimate pop star. It's a transition that can be almost impossible to manage, but with the success of her 2024 song Diet Pepsi and a brat summer tailwind from her appearance on Charli XCX's Von dutch remix, the former TikToker is ready to emerge as an artist all her own. Today on Commotion, culture writer Joan Summers, music journalist Maura Johnston, and rapper Rollie Pemberton join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to share their thoughts on Rae's self-titled debut album, Addison. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion on the new Lorde single and the latest from the band Turnstile, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: We met Addison Rae as a TikTok influencer, and she's managed to do the improbable — which is, become a legitimate, bonafide pop star…. Today the debut album, Addison, came out. Joan, we've been talking about this moment for a minute…. Why is 2025 gonna be the summer of Addison Rae? Joan: I think Addison Rae, you said just perfectly, did the impossible by fully transcending from TikTok stardom to pop stardom. It is a pipeline that has been paved by many other people before her, but none quite like her, where they started on the internet as a TikToker. She was a college student, cheerleading. She was in Louisiana, got on the Internet, and fully transitioned from that to this. And I think she's really the first one to do it in this way. What I think people are picking up on is, when she debuted, there was a lot of chatter about authenticity. Is this real? Can we trust what she's doing? Is this really coming from her heart, her soul? And I think despite all the criticisms she faced post- Diet Pepsi — which were totally unfounded and mostly teenagers on the internet, if you ask me — I think that she stuck to her guns. She did something weird. She put out something unlike any of what her peers are doing right now. She found some luminaries in New York, overseas to help produce the record. And speaking of that record and those luminaries: all women. I think it's one of the first pop albums this year that we can confidently say is produced entirely by a team of up-and-coming young women. So I'm very proud of her. And I just think that people are finally resonating with what she's rocking. WATCH | Official music video for Fame is a Gun: Elamin: Joan Summers said Addison Rae is for the girls…. When you survey the way that Addison is landing, Rollie, does it feel authentic to you? Do you hear this record and go, "This feels like you are trying to give me something that is coming genuinely from you."? Rollie: You know, typically … my soul would tell me this is contrived, but knowing what's actually going on, I feel like it really is authentic. You know? I definitely feel like there was a bit of a PR blitz to establish Addison's coolness…. The Charli XCX co-sign — which by the way, that Von dutch remix is amazing. It's such an incredible song. That was the first thing that perked me up where I was like, "Oh wait, she's really about that life. She really wants to make music." It's not just a TikTok celebrity who's like, "How can I be more famous? Let me be an artist." It felt very authentic. I think the fact that she's going with the Y2K aesthetic — you know, the headphones on, she got the iPhone earpods and everything — it feels like it's really true to her interests. And the aesthetic actually just works so much for her. I feel like seeing people like Charli XCX and Lana Del Rey really getting behind her, that's the ultimate co-sign for me. They don't just do that for anybody…. I'm like, okay, these are people who are genius pop stars, strategists, artists. They see something of that in Addison Rae, and that's why they want to get behind it, I think. Elamin: I think it's really important to absorb how unlikely all of this is, because we are, I think, in a cultural moment that is very allergic to the inauthentic. I think we can kind of smell it right away. There's a sense of, "Oh, this feels like something beyond our control came together," [or] "This was assembled in a boardroom somewhere." And whenever you get that sense, I feel like there's a sense of, I don't want to mess with this. I'm not rocking with it. But for her to transcend that mountain, it's a much higher and harder mountain to climb.
CBC
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Friendship subverts traditional depictions of male companionship on screen
Comedians Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd star in a new dark comedy, Friendship. It's a film that delves into a subject you don't see represented often: friendship between men. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud sits down with film critics Adrian Horton and Jackson Weaver to discuss their thoughts on Friendship and how the film subverts traditional depictions of male companionship on screen.
