If there’s one performer on Fox’s The Masked Singer who didn’t stink, it’s Skunk.
But that wasn’t enough to stop the Skunk mask from being lifted on Wednesday night’s episode.
The two talents remaining in Group A were Skunk and Bull, who locked horns in this week’s contest for a place in the final.
Bull hit Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up,” and was joined on stage by Jesse McCartney, a competitor on Season 3, for a rendition of The Script’s “Breakeven (Falling to Pieces).”
Skunk went with a gorgeous cover of Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” before teaming up with Michael Bolton for “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” made famous in the 1960s by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.
Unfortunately for the classy Skunk, she was run down by Bull. Under the mask was none other than Faith Evans.
Evans is an eight-time Grammy nominee who collected a statuette in 1997 for “I’ll Be Missing You,” winner of best rap performance by a duo or group. The single, a collaboration with Puff Daddy, hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart and is one of 19 Evans titles to impact the survey.
Next week is the battle of the Group B survivors, Banana Split and Queen of Hearts.
Watch Skunk’s big reveal below.
NEWS
No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.
Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.
Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.
In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...
