There is a house a little south of D.C. that is, most of the time, just a house. A tidy, brick-faced single-family home on a quiet street full of other similar, unassuming homes.
Washington, D.C
Washington’s most exclusive new music venue: Noochie’s ‘Front Porch’
“We back again, y’all,” the homeowner, 28-year-old Antwon Vincent, a rapper who performs under the name Noochie, announced to a crowd of about 10 one frigid December night. “Rain, sleet or snow. Whether it’s hot or it’s cold.”
Then he introduced that evening’s featured performer to the stage — er, porch. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Eric Roberson walked through the front door, shook Noochie’s hand and started crooning a slow-jam love song into a mic as if he were appearing on a late-night talk show with a studio audience.
Welcome to Noochie’s “Live From the Front Porch,” the D.C.-centric, residential equivalent of NPR’s “Tiny Desk” concert series. It has featured big-name acts like Raheem DeVaughn and Ruben Studdard and attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers on YouTube and Instagram.
“Live From the Front Porch” originated about five years ago, when Noochie, who had been signed to Atlantic Records, was in the process of leaving his contract. Since he was in limbo with his record label, he didn’t want to release any official music, not knowing where ownership rights would lie. Instead he grabbed his iPhone and a portable speaker and started recording himself freestyling over industry beats from his front porch. Then he shared the results on Instagram.
“I was like, let me do something that has no attachment to anything and let me just rap it. I’m not going to monetize from this, but it’ll just show people that I’m skilled and give people a visual, too,” the “Sneaky Tape 2” artist says. “It was completely out of hunger.”
Noochie kept up the performances through the pandemic, and in March 2023, his friend Tyler Benson offered to help him increase the series’s production value. Benson replaced the rapper’s iPhone with a professional camera, which gave the duo an opportunity to do multiple takes and edit as needed. Benson’s changes also meant Noochie could capture more of his front porch, so he had an idea: “Let me put a whole band on the porch.” He swapped his portable speaker for live instrumentals.
Expanding “Live From the Front Porch” to “Live From the Front Porch Presents” happened almost by accident.
“There was no goal to put other people on it,” Noochie says, chuckling. “This started because other people weren’t putting me on stuff. People weren’t calling me. … People that I wanted to work with weren’t working with me. So I was like, ‘You know what, let me just go to square one with my own people, at my house, with my skills that I know how to do.’ I mixed all the audio myself.”
Noochie had always dreamed of having go-go legends the Backyard Band perform for his birthday, so in July he made the invite, set up the porch and decided to record the session. “Instead of being selfish,” he remembers thinking, “I can give it to everybody.”
In the nine months since, the Front Porch sessions have animated the D.C. music scene, as followers try to track down the exact location of the house and speculate on the timing of the next concert.
But Noochie wants the events to be in service of the musicians as much as the fans.
That’s what Don Choo, a longtime family friend who used to work with Noochie’s father, D.C. hip-hop trailblazer Oneway Boobe (real name Roger Vincent), says is the real appeal of “Live From the Front Porch.” It gives artists an opportunity to home in on what they love most — the music.
“Some of the best jam sessions have happened here because there’s no ‘Lights, camera, action’ with thousands of people. This is just the artist vibing out. You get better music that way because it’s a performance that comes from the heart, it’s not to wow an audience,” Choo said on the night of the Eric Roberson concert. “Like there’s nobody here, there’s no audience, it’s just us.”
That feeling means a lot to Noochie — it’s the essence of what he’s trying to preserve and promote. The tidy, brick-faced single-family home used to belong to his father. It was here that he watched his father push through his own challenges as a musician.
“I grew up in the era of him pursuing hip-hop in a city that was really only accepting of go-go,” Noochie says. “It was kind of like I already got to experience seeing an uphill battle firsthand.”
The rapper inherited this house just a year before his father was incarcerated in 2018.
“My dad, he was the reason I started. He’s incarcerated right now, and this was his house. He tried to sell it, but I fought for it to make sure it didn’t go nowhere, and fast-forward, here we are, and it brought a whole other meaning to what this house has meant already,” Noochie says. “This used to be the studio; like Shy Glizzy got his start here, Fat Trel has been here, there’s a lot of history here.”
Noochie, who will perform this weekend at the National Cannabis Festival, sees “Live From the Front Porch” as a way of continuing his father’s legacy — and carving out his own.
“He was a nucleus to all these people, so I’m just keeping it going; that’s how I look at it,” he says. “It’s a different group of individuals, but the spirit of it is the same. Just making sure that we all chasing the dream and we all get closer to it together.”
Washington, D.C
‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington
The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.
In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.
“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”
Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.
Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.
“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.
“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”
Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”
A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.
Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.
Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.
But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.
“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”
At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.
The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.
Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.
For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.
“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.
“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”
For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.
In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.
Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.
“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”
Washington, D.C. (7News) — Rosselli is the newest restaurant to open in DC.
Bringing in classic Italian flavors, Chef Carlos explained how he hopes his food is a unique addition to the Italian food scene in the DMV.
Chef also demoed a signature dish with Brian and Megan.
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You can learn more and book your table here.
Washington, D.C
DC Navy Yard shooting: What happened in Washington? ‘Targeted attack’ feared as scary visuals emerge
A shooting reportedly took place in Washington DC’s Navy Yard on Thursday, and visuals from the scene were shared online. Independent journalist Nick Sortor shared a clip saying “Heavily armed US Capitol Police officers are RACING to a reported shooting in the vicinity of a high-ranking US government official in Washington, DC’s Navy Yard.”
Sortor noted that US Capitol Police were rushing to the scene. He noted that the black SUV seen in the clip was an armored Chevrolet Suburban which was used by members of the Congress and members of the President’s cabinet. Sortor further reported that it was ‘unclear’ if the attack was targeted.
The alleged shooter is reportedly not in custody yet and police are searching the area. “I personally witnessed that official be EXTRACTED via undercover Capitol Police officers, protected by uniformed officers carrying long rifles. I will not name the official without their express permission, as I don’t want to dox their home. Other officers can be seen sweeping the area for evidence like shell casings,” Sortor further said.
Also Read | Towson University: Shooting reports on campus in Maryland spark fears; first details
The DC Police Department and the US Capitol Police are yet to comment on the matter.
Navy Yard shooting: Reactions and fears
Several people wondered about the politicians who live in the Navy Yard neighborhood. Grok, the AI chatbot, helped out, saying “Publicly reported ones include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—she’s been living in a Navy Yard apartment for years. The area’s also drawn younger congressional staffers and some Trump admin folks in the past for the modern housing near the river. Can’t list “all” though—most officials’ exact homes aren’t public for obvious security reasons.”
It added “No, no current Trump cabinet members are publicly reported as living in DC’s Navy Yard neighborhood. Several senior officials (SecState Marco Rubio, SecDef Pete Hegseth, AG Pam Bondi, ex-DHS Sec Kristi Noem) have moved into secure military housing at Fort McNair or Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling for safety. Noem previously rented in Navy Yard but relocated. Exact private residences aren’t public record.”
To be sure, the name of the official has not been released yet, so Grok’s answers are only guesses based on public record or past information. One wild claim was made on X that the shooting ‘targeted Donald Trump’. However, this came from an unverified profile and no corroboration was provided. President Trump is not publicly known to be in the Navy Yard area, rather remaining in the White House when he is in Washington.
The news of the DC Navy Yard shooting comes days after a takeover by a teen mob. The unruly incident saw four teenagers charged with disorderly conduct, reports on April 12 noted.
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