Source: Instagram

You may remember Tionna Smalls from the 2010 VH1 reality show What Chilli Wants, starring TLC’s Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas. Tionna was the relationship guru attempting to help Chilli piece back together her mess of a love life, but what many don’t know about Tionna is that she has her hands in several industries. The 28-year-old media mogul has written a couple of books including Girl Get Your Mind Right and Men Love Abuse, in addition to launching her own book publishing company, Talk Dat Ish Books, which has published titles by Neffe Pugh and Tashera Simmons. She has also launched entertainment and film company, Talk Dat Ish Ent. Did we mention she also owns a jewelry boutique. It’s no wonder she’s earned the title as one of Brooklyn’s favorite entrepreneurs. Homegirl stays busy! And now, in addition to all of her thriving business ventures, we’ve just learned that she’s making history as well.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, MTV has just ordered 20 episodes of Smalls’ relationship series, Girl Get Your Mind Right. The new show is scheduled to debut May 20th and will air weeknights at 6 pm throughout the summer. The show will center around Tionna and her efforts to help young women conquer relationship issues. The folks over at THR are saying that each episode will document Tionna as she assesses her subject’s problems and “confronts them head on.” The ladies who make appearances on her show will also be getting makeovers that address their physical appearance and their attitudes.

“It’ll allow us to take a look into the specifics of many more girls and each episode will wind up being more relatable,” Tony Biari, senior vp of MTV series development said of the new series.

“Tough love, especially with a comedic tone, is something our audience is craving right now. They’re looking for guidance and boundaries from someone other than their parents. We felt the combination of the genre and the personality like Tionna, who is so unique, made a lot of sense for us,” he continued.

Girl Get Your Mind Right will also go down in history as the first daily MTV series produced by and starring a Black woman.

Way to go, Tionna!

So, will you be checking out Girl Get Your Mind Right when it debuts later this month?

Source: MTV

Marlon Williams is many things: a member of the season 28 cast of MTV “Real World” in Portland, a preacher’s kid, and an aspiring rapper. But one thing the 25-year-old Texan wants to make clear that he’s not is homosexual.

No, the situation here isn’t that Marlon is effeminate and people are making assumptions about his sexual orientation. He’s actually had sex with a man before, but insists that doesn’t make him gay. He even goes further to say how one identifies themselves sexually doesn’t even matter anymore in this day and age. That was the crux of his recent interview with The Advocate, which asked him to clarify his dealings with men and the current status of his dating life. Here’s a bit of the Q&A.

The Advocate: OK, this is awkward. MTV tells us “Marlon has had intercourse with a man before and does identify with being bisexual. But he says that he is more attracted to women and doesn’t think he would be with a man again.” We could just take their word for it, but we’d rather you tell us yourself how you identify and why.
Marlon WIlliams: Well, I don’t consider myself bisexual, because I’m not sexually attracted to men. I did have sex with a man but my reasoning for it was different. It was in a hectic time of my life filled with fighting a lot of life battles. I was just making a lot of decisions that I would not normally make. At that time in my life the gay community embraced me, and it is one of those things that just happened. I have nothing against people who are bisexual or gay, but that is not my preference.

How do women react when you tell them?
That’s funny, because it’s not a part of my conversations with women. It hasn’t really come up with any of the females I’ve been involved with. Most women I’ve been interested in lately don’t even care. I mean, whatever your sexual orientation is who cares? If you’re happy that is all that matters.

You’re the son of a preacher and were raised with conservative values. Does that cause conflict for you in terms of your sexuality? 
Well, sex in any form is hard, because the beliefs of my parents say that you are supposed to wait for marriage. The big misconception used in religion is that some sin is worse than others. That isn’t true. All sin is equal. Therefore, anything I do that is sinful can be forgiven if I repent and make changes. My belief is that God forgives anybody who believes and wants a new start in life.

You also rap under the name Jay Dillinger. Is the world of rap as homophobic as it is rumored to be? How do you deal with that?
At the end of the day it’s about the music. Frank Ocean definitely showed that if you’re talented, then you can make it happen. Being a rapper isn’t all about the hardcore gangsta stuff all the time. So I feel there is room for any type of artist to make it. You just have to be good. Me, personally, I just ignore the hate. Who somebody goes home with is their business. What difference does it really make in the end? None.

Reactions to Marlon’s interview have been mixed, with one commenter noting:

“He says sexual orientation doesn’t matter anymore but he still labels himself as straight. Doesn’t that mean it still matters to him, at least enough to align himself with heterosexuality?”

On the flip side, another person commented:

“A one-time thing with a man doesn’t make him gay anymore than a one-time thing with a woman would, necessarily, make him ‘straight.’ When he says ‘sexuality doesn’t matter,’ I assume he means as far as he’s concerned. What stood out for me is when he says it’s not ‘part of the conversations’ he has with women. I expect that to now change once the show is on.”

I would expect that to change too, just as I would want a man who had been with another man to tell me so before we were involved sexually. While I agree that a one-time sexual encounter doesn’t necessarily change your entire sexual orientation, I do need to know if you’re going to be inclined to go down that path again should the wind blow that way.

What do you think about Marlon’s interview? Does he seem to be on the DL or is he offering up valid points?

Peter Kaminski/WENN.com

After a lot of thought and consideration of things that seem to have a lot less to do with lyrical ability and more about whose buzz is the biggest in Hip-Hop, the MTV “Brain Trust” (Sway Calloway and some other folk from MTV who like Hip-Hop music) has finally rounded out their list of hot MCs, and picked the number one “Hottest MC in the Game.” Out of all the people on the list, Kendrick Lamar came in at number one, with the Compton kid besting 2 Chainz at number two and Rick Ross at the third spot.

When Lamar got the news from Sway with MTV’s cameras following, it was nice to see that the young spitter was genuinely surprised by his win, and checked it off as a goal accomplished. “You know what’s crazy, we were looking at the years of the different MCs, and we were always like, ‘Man, we gotta get on there. We gotta at least get on the list.’ But to make it #1, that’s a whole ‘nother thing.” Lamar was probably able to nab the number one spot due to all the positive chatter surrounding the recent release of his second studio album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, which has been critically acclaimed and done pretty good on the charts (as good as albums can do nowadays if you’re not Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber). When asked by Sway how the album came to life, Lamar commented that it’s pretty much something that has been in the works not for a few months or for a few years, but since he was 13:

“It wasn’t a six-month process; really a whole life experience. And that’s what really made this album: All my mistakes, all my thoughts, all my ideas of being a dreamer, all my homeboys’ faults, all the scoldings that my father used to give me. All that made up this album.”

If you ask me, Lamar is the right choice for the number one spot, but not everyone thinks so. Now, you probably already know that Kanye West wasn’t too happy with his placement on the list (7), nor was A$AP Rocky (8), and word was that Drake might not have been a fan of his fifth place ranking either, but 2 Chainz did express gratitude for his second place status via Twitter saying, “Thanks MTV, headed to the lab…”

So what is the full list? Goes a little something like this:

10. Meek Mill

9. Future

8. A$AP Rocky

7. Kanye West

6. Big Sean

5. Drake

4. Nas

3. Rick Ross

2. 2 Chainz

1. Kendrick Lamar

Do you respect the order? Who would you move to what spot? Who’s missing? Let us know your thoughts below!

Source: MTV

Six months ago, most of us had no idea what it meant to be “Catfished;” but in light of the hit MTV show and the recent scandal with Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o, it’s become a household term. Though it would seem that by now, people would be aware of when they’re being duped, all of these recent occurrences prove otherwise. So in the instance that you find yourself in an online relationship or long distance relationship and you’ve never seen this individual in person, here are some signs that you might be the latest victim in a Catfish scandal.

AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams

If you have seen the MTV show Catfish, I’m sure you’ve seen a whole new level of ratchet that is blowing everybody’s mind and has them tuning in every Monday. I’m a bit skeptical about whether or not the show is real, because too many people come out the boonies on that show looking like “Who Shot John” claiming they pretended to be handsome men and gorgeous women online to seek revenge or get attention. And how do you talk to someone for years and never FaceTime, Skype or anything!? A lot of the time, the stories are a little fishy to me…but I still find myself sucked in.

But that kind of online dating deception could really be happening in everyday life, because a storm of controversy has just surrounded Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o. The most decorated college football player of all time, Te’o had spent most of his senior year on the field making major moves, but also talking about his girlfriend, Stanford student Lennay Kekua. I’m sure you’re wondering why anyone would care about a college athlete’s love life, but this love story of his was one of the most complex and saddest stories ever told. According to Forbes, in September of last year, his girlfriend was believed to have died from leukemia, and Te’o even told reporters that before she succumbed to leukemia, Kekua told him that she had been in a damn near fatal car accident, the leukemia being found as she was treated for her accident injuries. What awful things to go through at one time, huh? And to make things worse, his grandmother had actually passed away hours before Kekua was believed to have died.

Well, the sadness surrounding his personal life spilled over into his athletic endeavors, as media was reporting the story of Te’o and his girlfriend and pushing it like hotcakes. Kekua had even allegedly told him NOT to come to her funeral if it was the same day as one of his precious games, because she’d rather he go out there and play for her. “Babe, if anything happens to me, you promise that you’ll stay there and you’ll play and you’ll honor me through the way you play.” This was an alleged direct quote from the young woman, which was given to CBS News. Coincidentally, his team was in the process of playing to get to the BCS National Championship Game. With the national media serving all these stories about this young man’s strength and perseverance through so much, he became beloved nationally by a great deal of college football fans, and went on to be a runner-up for the Heisman trophy, an award many were hoping he would win.

But just yesterday, it came to light that Lennay Kekua, her heartbreaking car accident, her sad death due to leukemia and her life in general, was fake. Fake as hell at that. Turns out, girlfriend, who was “the love of his life,” never existed. A family friend of the player, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, had concocted the woman and a profile to communicate with Te’o. The images people were seeing were actually those of a friend of Tuiasosopo who claimed she didn’t know Te’o, and was horrified that her photo was being passed off has her.

It was allegedly a prank that blew out of control because of Te’o's rising notoriety. And while the player and officials at the school are now saying that he was Catfished and bamboozled, some are wondering if he may have been in on the whole thing. Whether he was in on it from the beginning we don’t know yet, but according to Forbes, it seems that he “found out” about the scam by late December, and still decided to keep this information on the hush. According to Forbes, Te’o didn’t want the negative attention on him or his team before their big appearance in the BCS National Championship game on January 7. But the site, Deadspin, did some snooping and exposed the hoax of their relationship to the world last night. Now, Notre Dame officials and even Te’o are on the defensive, but they stand by the story that Te’o didn’t know that the girl didn’t exist, even though media reports from last year have his father on record saying that they had even met the girl before. Te’o put out a statement today saying, “To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone’s sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating.”

If he was duped by a jealous family friend trying to pull a prank, is that not just one of the most hateful things a person can do? But honestly, I just have the feeling that Te’o knew more than he wants us to believe. And is it not interesting to anyone else that a nationally known collegiate football star was carrying on an online relationship? Seriously? Was I the only one who went to school with popular athletes who stereotyped it up by messing around with all the thirsty freshman girls? But hey, whatever works. No matter what the truth is, this is some soap opera mess that we can’t believe. I’m sure Nev Schulman is somewhere wishing he could have blew the lid off of this one for MTV…Thoughts?

From StyleBlazer

Last year, we met a girl in a MTV series on an incredible journey. She was bubbly and ambitious, yet vulnerable and not yet sure of herself at times. Within her we saw a bit of ourselves. As Chelsea Settles transformed her body, and as a result her entire life in front of us, we’d watch her get closer to her goals and we were inspired to map out some of our own.

We caught up with Chelsea, and she filled us in about her life after the show, and how her journey still continues long after filming ended. In the final part of the StyleBlazer 5 Days of Fitness series, we believe her message about beauty and picking yourself up after falling down resonates with all women. We hope that she inspires you to pursue your dreams in 2013, and for the rest of your life.

Life when the director called cut…

“I left L.A. maybe three months after we stopped filming because I wanted to be near my family. It was actually the worst decision of my life. The people I grew up around, they were acting so weird. I don’t look at myself like any differently. I had an amazing opportunity but I’m still just Chelsea. I don’t need all of the bells and whistles that have come along with any of that. It was also hard to be back in a space where there was so much negative energy around, and I just felt like I was right back where I was when I was 325 pounds and feeling miserable. I’m actually finally out of my contract. I would never do another docuseries ever [laughs]. It was so hard for me, just filming for 12 hours, 8 hours some days, and the show was only 50 minutes. I feel like people didn’t get an accurate look of who I really am. I’m glad that I wasn’t shown in a bad way so I don’t want to sound ungrateful. Not something that I expected. But I might be overreacting a little [laughs]. I was just really thinking, I want to lose weight.

Check out the full interview on StyleBlazer.com.

Source: Tyrawm.tumblr.com

There is a picture floating around the internet of Daria, the fictional character from the MTV 1990s cartoon show of the same name, cropped onto the body of Lil K’s infamous Hard Core album art photo.  You know, the one where she squats, legs spread eagle?

I got a big kick out the reaction the picture has spawned from some people in my networking, who were left scratching their virtual heads about why so many of us “liked” this homage to two fem-positive symbols of the 90s. Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core itself stands alone in hip hop history for its brash and unapologetic delivery of black female sexuality.  As for Daria Morgendorffer, it was her sarcastic and deadpan realism, which made her stand out the most in a world that literally drew female characters as one-dimensional boy obsessed trend bots – even if they weren’t cartoon characters.

Although I was already out of high school and through my second year of college when the television show first premiered, “Daria” became a television redeemer for me. Still much in my awkward phase (which I would come to learn wasn’t really a phase and just part of my personality), not many people understood or even appreciated my dry witted and sometimes ironic sense of humor.  However there was commoradie in the girl with the round glasses and chunky black boots. She was smart, cynical and wasn’t the most fashion forward of women. She was the contrast to her homogenous community including her career driven mother and her bubbly, cheerleading younger sister Quinn. Her best friend was Jane, another outcast who was a bit on the Goth side but also was sort of a hippy too. Together, the two would stand around, usually outside of some space where the more popular kids were, and basically throw shade at everybody and everything in their upper middle class enclave.

Although I wasn’t exactly like the character, for me, Daria represented that kind of misanthropy, which can only come from always feeling like an actual outsider. It’s not easy being the square pegged girl in a sea of sameness, especially not for a black girl. I always found myself on the outs – sometimes it was through forced banishment and other times by choice. I hear traces of Daria in black women entertainers like Janelle Monae and Santigold. I see her visually in the forms of Issa Rae’s “J” and Aasha Davis’s Racey. And her voice is definitely ever presented throughout the black blogosphere, but there has yet to be a definite real life (or live action) Black Daria Morgendorffer to hit the scene. Okay, sure she is a cartoon but how come all of the real life representation of disaffected young woman only come in the form of Janeane Garofalo or Amy from the television show “Parks & Recreation”? The only non-white equivalent I can think of is Margaret Cho. But perhaps I’m missing someone?

One of the best things I loved about Daria was willingness to buck all sorts of social conventions, trends, and hierarchies, to walk in her own space in the world. When her sister was gaining popularity through cheerleading, Daria was at the school’s lunch table, reading books.  That doesn’t mean she was a loser. The much popular kids, including her sister, while obnoxious, weren’t abusive to her. Strangely enough, most of the characters on the show actually seem to like and respect her. No, Daria is outsider but only by choice.

In addition to the Michelle Obamas, the Oprah Winfreys and Gabrielle Douglas’, the women we regard most for their positive attitudes, I think that young black girls need that sort of woman with unflinching cynicism about the world as a role model too.  Someone, who won’t just go along with the façade of fairness or justice or even popularity just because it is the path of least resistance.  Like in this clip of the show I found on online, in which a school counselor badgers Daria to share with the group her goals in life. Daria shrugs and says, “I don’t have any.” The counselor, probably taking Daria’s indifference personally, asks her again, to which Daria replies rather matter of factly, “My goal in life is to not wake up at forty with the bitter realization that I wasted my life in a job I hate because I was forced to decide on a career in my teens.”  Burn!

WENN.com

As the saying goes, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I think I can hear many of you cheering through the internet as you read the title.

Allhiphop.com is reporting that during a new MTv Special titled MTV First: Lil Wayne, he spoke candidly with host Sway and gave him the real truth on what’s going on with his music and how much longer he’s going to be putting out albums. He told Sway:

“I’ve been rapping since I was eight years old. That’s a long time. I’d like to do so many more things, and when I like to do something, I end up loving to do it real quick. When I love to do something, I’m fully focused on it and it only. Music is sometimes not that it.

“I know ya’ll want me around for a little bit and Carter V is my last album.”

Well, when you look at it like that, Wayne has been rapping for like 20 years and with any other job, you want to retire (no, he didn’t have an album out at age 8 but he’s been hanging with Cash Money since he was about 13).  AHH does report, however, that he also has the I Am Not A Human Being 2 album coming out in February so for all the fans, don’t get too scared because that means you have two more albums coming from Weezy F. Baby.

Something tells me he’ll pull a Jay-Z and be back to music without ever even really leaving.

Source: MTV.com

President Obama has often referenced his daughter in the past few months on the campaign trail, mostly in reference to protecting women’s rights. But this time, in a recent interview with MTV’s Sway, the president spoke about his biggest concern for Malia specifically. Sway came at the president with three potential fears he has for Malia. See what he had to say.

I really dug the part about the girls finding men who recognize their worth. Something tells me that this won’t be an issue for Malia or Sasha.

From StyleBlazer

Over the summer (and with much fanfare,) MTV announced the relaunch of the network’s legendary fashion show House Of Style. To ramp up the nostalgic love for this late ’80s and early ’90s style-obsessed show, MTV opened up their archives and streamed all 12 seasons on MTV.com. After much anticipation, the first episode of the new season has finally aired. In the premiere, our illustrious hosts, models Joan Smalls and Karlie Kloss, take us backstage for Paris Fashion Week and give us behind the scenes runway magic at Stella McCartney’s and Jean Paul Gaultier’s shows.

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