How much did Azealia Banks sell her NFT for?

This week Hannah talks about those photos from the Gucci movie and how it relates to Nicholas Braun, while Daysia dives into Azealia Banks’ NFT. We also round up an abundance of great celebrity profiles and other interesting reads.

<3

Daysia and Hannah

This Week’s Fixations

What’s taking up our brain space this week?

Hannah: Like many other people I’m sure, some of the first set photos from the upcoming Gucci movie starring Adam Driver and Lady Gaga were dropped in my group chat and I had to take several moments. One moment was getting excited about eventually seeing Lady Gaga on screen again. The second was laughing at the absurd height difference between the two. And the third was not really processing that the man I was looking at was Adam Driver. For several seconds I thought it was Nicholas Braun (of Sky High and Succession fame). Apparently, even Braun thought the same thing based on this post on his IG story (or more likely it was sent to him by several people saying “is this you?!”). I really didn’t know anything about this movie but I am intrigued by these photos so I guess I will start paying attention.

In tangential news, Daysia shared with me this incredible fanmade trailer of Tom and Greg’s relationship (from Succession) if it were a romcom and it’s absolutely genius. (I may have also chaotically DMed it to Nicholas Braun on Instagram but that’s not really anyone’s business…)

Daysia: Who would have thought that Azealia Banks would be the woman to make me finally look up what an NFT is? Banks’ audio sex tape (obsessed with this concept!) sold on the blockchain for $17,000 dollars! It is possibly the first audio sex tape (???) to ever sell as a non-fungible token (NFT). I didn’t know what that meant so I looked it up. Here is how I understood it, but I recommend reading this NFT explainer from The Verge because I will inevitably fuck this up:

1. Azealia Banks and her (ex?) fiancé Ryder Ripps put a 24-minute audio file of them having sex up for auction on Foundation.app, a crypto art discovery and investment platform.

2. It sold for 10 ether, a cryptocurrency native to the blockchain Ethereum, which converts to around $18,000 USD. For the record, a bunch of outlets reported that number to be $17,000 but I am going off of what is listed on the Foundation website.

1. NFTs are different from cryptocurrency in that they are non-fungible, meaning they are unique or rare. Contrastly, cryptocurrency like ether or bitcoin is fungible, meaning if you gave me one bitcoin and I gave you one bitcoin we would still have the same amount of money/the same product because they are interchangeable. An NFT has the potential to increase in value because it is, in theory, one-of-a-kind. At least, that is how I am understanding it????

Anyways I don’t really know what’s going on, but this sex tape was allegedly resold for the equivalent of $275 million on a different site called Rarible.

Has Lorde dropped a new album?

No… but we are thinking about immortalizing Melodrama on our bodies forever (yes, Lorde tats!). Thoughts?

Anyways:

In the meantime, listen to the sugary-sweet collab between No Rome, Charli XCX, and the 1975: “Spinning.”

Too Many Tabs

Our fav reads of the week

Sunday’s historic interview between Oprah and Meghan and Harry is still at the top of our timelines and has produced a lot of great post-coverage and these are a few of our favorites: Doreen St. Félix’s incisive analysis of the interview’s place in pop culture for The New Yorker and Moya Bailey, who coined the term misogynoir, discusses how it nearly killed Meghan in Bitch

For Vogue, Jia Tolentino (no relation to Daysia—we think) profiles Selena Gomez about getting involved with politics, her music and navigating decades in the spotlight.

In a year where we could only experience music in isolation, some absolute bangers dropped. For its annual Music Issue, The New York Times Magazine chronicles 19 songs that matter now —from Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” to Koffee’s “Lockdown”—in a gorgeous interactive (view on desktop for the full experience).

Billy Porter has moved to Long Island and loves it. He talks to Jennifer Ferrise about the reason behind the move, fame and his fashion evolution in InStyle.

Surprising no one, we had to include Chris Gayomali’s profile of Steven Yeun for GQ: get sucked in by the fantastic images of Yeun as a cowboy and stay to learn about primal astrology and Yeun’s thoughts about Minari’s Golden Globes snub.

Glamour’s Christopher Rosa talked to Demi Lovato about her new documentary, her recovery, trusting herself, and embracing her queerness.

Plus… Jake Johnson is starring in a new show, creators' lives are in their fan hands—for a price, of course, the worst Golden Globes nominations of the past 20 years, the Armie Hammer exposé,and Michael B. Jordan is going to be a director.