Lifestyle
Irv Gotti Dead at 54
Irv Gotti
Dead at 54
Published
Music mega producer Irv Gotti — who worked with big acts like DMX, Ja Rule and Ashanti — is dead … TMZ has confirmed.
Multiple sources close to his family tell us he died Wednesday in New York City. It’s currently unclear exactly how he died.
Irv’s battled health problems recently since suffering a stroke last year, and has had to walk with the aid of a cane.
JUNE 2022
TMZ.com
The famed head of Murder Inc. Records has been open with his struggles with diabetes … saying he wasn’t consistent with taking his insulin. Irv also noted his doctors had encouraged him to change his diet, which he was struggling to do.
When he suffered his stroke, a rep told us diabetes was a factor … though, we were told Irv was improving his diet as a result.
Gotti had a legendary career in hip hop, producing “Can I Live” on Jay-Z‘s debut album “Reasonable Doubt.”
When Irv was at Def Jam, he signed DMX and served as executive producer on DMX’s first studio album, “It’s Dark and Hell is Hot.” He eventually launched his label, Murder Inc., under the Def Jam umbrella … and its first release was Ja Rule’s debut album, “Venni Vetti Vecci.”
Gotti also signed Vanessa Carlton to a record deal and produced her 2007 album “Heroes & Thieves.”
Irv and his former artist Ashanti had a war of words a couple years ago, when he opened up — on a now legendary “Drink Champs” episode — about what he described as their “relationship.” She fired back, saying it was never that serious to her, and accused Gotti of being salty he no longer had control of her career.
The rise of Irv’s label was the subject of the 2022 BET documentary, “The Murder Inc Story” … and Ashanti felt that was also part of why they beefed, because she chose not to participate in the 3-part series.
Gotti was 54.
RIP
Lifestyle
‘Wait Wait’ for January 31, 2026: With Not My Job guest Jon M. Chu
US director Jon M. Chu attends the 83rd annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on January 11, 2026. (Photo by Michael Tran / AFP via Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Chicago with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guest Jon M. Chu and panelists Negin Farsad, Peter Grosz, and Annie Rauwerda. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
Who’s Bill This Time
Let the Games Begin, Flotus on Film, Tree-N-Tree
Panel Questions
The Back Door to Heaven
Bluff The Listener
Our panelists tell us three stories about a surprising new international tourist attraction, only one of which is true.
Not My Job: Wicked and Wicked: For Good director Jon M. Chu answers our questions about Boston
Wicked and Wicked: For Good director Jon M. Chu plays our game called “Wicked good!” three questions about Boston.
Panel Questions
A Black and White Solution, Putting the WD in Whodunnit.
Limericks
Bill Kurtis reads three news-related limericks: Steel Cut Torment, Sssssssteam Engine, Open Ocean.
Lightning Fill In The Blank
All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else
Predictions
Our panelists predict, now that we know trees can explode, what will trees do next?
Lifestyle
Hot Stars From Texas … Yeehaw!
Yeehaw!
Guess Who
These Hot Stars From Texas Are!
Published
They say everything’s bigger in Texas … and these Texas-bred stars shine brighter than all the lights in Hollywood!
You’re gonna have to figure out who each one of these Texan ladies is before you ride off into the sunset … go ahead, cowpoke!
Saddle up, shine up them spurs, and get ready for a good ol’ fashioned guess who!
Lifestyle
‘Sanford and Son’ co-star Demond Wilson dies at 79
Demond Wilson (right) in a still from a 1974 episode of Sanford and Son. The actor played Lamont Sanford, the disgruntled offspring of Redd Foxx’s Fred Sanders (left), in the hit 1970s NBC sitcom.
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NBC Television/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
Demond Wilson, the actor best known for playing Lamont Sanford, the son in the popular 1970s NBC primetime comedy series Sanford and Son, has died.
The actor died from complications related to cancer Friday at his home in the Palm Springs area of Southern California. He was 79. Wilson’s publicist, Mark Goldman, confirmed the death in an email to NPR.
“I had the privilege of working with Demond for 15 years, and his loss is profoundly felt,” said Goldman. “He was an unbelievable man, and his impact will never be forgotten.”
Wilson was in his 20s when he landed the role of Lamont Sanford, the put-upon offspring of the cantankerous Fred Sanford, played by Redd Foxx. The dad got all the best lines, but junior held his own in their frequent disputes. Wilson reminisced about his time on the series in his 2009 memoir Second Banana: The Bitter Sweet Memoirs of the Sanford and Son Years.
Producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin based Sanford and Son on the well-known 1960s-early 70s British TV comedy series about a blue collar father-son relationship, Steptoe and Son. Sanford and Son was groundbreaking in offering a glimpse into Black family life rarely seen on network television at the time. “The character between the son and the father was very interesting to me and to Norman in the sense that, despite the fact that they lived together and complained and so forth, they couldn’t live without each other,” said Yorkin in a 2008 interview with NPR.
Wilson went on to star as a struggling gambler in the sitcom Baby…I’m Back! in the late 1970s, and as the more laid-back of the divorcees in The New Odd Couple, a TV show based on Neil Simon’s hit play The Odd Couple. His film credits include Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), The Organization (1971), Full Moon High (1981) and Hammerlock (2000).
Wilson was born in Valdosta, Ga., in 1946 to a working class Catholic family and grew up in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. He studied dance as a child and performed on Broadway. He went on to serve in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Upon his return, he appeared in various shows on- and off-Broadway, and eventually moved to Los Angeles. In 1971, Lear cast him in an episode of the popular sitcom All in the Family. The following year, Sanford and Sons set him on a path to stardom.
Wilson carried a strong Christian faith since childhood. After suffering a life-threatening rupture to his appendix at age 12, he sought to find a way to devote his life to God. In the 1980s, he was ordained as a Pentecostal minister, and went on to lead parallel careers in acting and preaching. His 1998 book, The New Age Millennium: An Expose of Symbols, Slogans and Hidden Agenda, is a critique from a Christian perspective of the New Age movement and Freemasonry, among other quasi-spiritual approaches.
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