In my mind (to justify this plot, which makes less than zero music-business sense), Anika had the authority (somehow) to terminate the contracts of everyone on the label and did so, leaving Empire scrambling to resign everyone before Creedmoor plucked them up one by one. Still doesn't make sense that she wouldn't have…

"If I was Lucious, I’d order a thorough audit on the “Drip Drop” video. It’s totally unclear where all that money went."

"Drip Drop" is very much on-par with what's played on modern mainstream hip-hop the last four years or so. With the Timbaland/Jim Beanz production, it's actually above-average compared the typical radio-friendly strip club record.

"But…that Jamal and Hakeem song built on “Money For Nothing” is so, so bad. That’s the song that’s going to convince investors to pump millions into the company?"

"…'cooking school!'"

Well, they _used_ to in videos and such before those budgets started tightening up. The glitz and glamour of Empire is roughly a decade out of date - but on purpose, because it makes for better TV (the era of iTunes and Spotify has resulted in significant tightenings of he belt at these labels).

I would go even further and say _most_ great rappers aren't producers as well. There are some (Big Boi and Andre of OutKast, for example) who know their way around the studio and can put some things together. Others leave it up to other people to craft tracks, and, if they aren't having beats made especially just for…

Lucious is supposed to be some sort of an amalgamation of Jay-Z, Quincy Jones, and Russell Simmons, so…sort of?

His name is Jim Beanz (James Washington). He, at the last minute, also stepped in to play the rap star Titan in episode 1.04 (the one with the Muslim mother that Lucious has Anika and Cookie competing to bring to the label).

At the time of Hubert's firing and replacement by Daphne Maxwell Reid, Will Smith did address it in an interview with an Atlanta-area radio interviews, and it was covered by JET magazine at the time, but it wasn't nearly as omnipresent in the news as it would have been today.

The news, I recall, handled it OK; not like they would today, but i na decently thorough manner. MTV did an instant special on her life, BET's "106 & Park" had a few memorial episodes - I recall Timbaland calling in in tears.

What did you all use to stand in for the hawk?

She was never as big as Mary or Beyoncé. Just under Brandy level, about equal to Monica (someone will debate me on the Monica part, but I'm standing by it). As I pointed out above, her records were significantly influential to the sound of R&B music during the late-1990s.

Aaliyah had gigantic hits on the R&B charts and a good number of Hot 100 top 10s and 20s (and one #1, "Try Again"), but she didn't get the chance to break fully into the mainstream.

It's intentionally terrible, however. Watch the last ten minutes again and listen very closely.

Everything but the scenes depicting the actual "Mantan" show and its commercials (which were shot on 16mm film) were shot on MiniDV (in PAL, not NTSC, to get the extra lines of resolution and a 25 fps frame rate) using Sony VX-1000 consumer-grade cameras. This was done to save production costs and time (which is also…

Of all things. Are they going to greenlight Back to the Future for pilot as well?

Yeah, it ran pretty long. Of all the Hal Roach properties, The Little Rascals/Our Gang suffered the most fragmentation and mishandling. The Laurel & Hardy library isn't nearly as difficult to parse through.

I did hear that Alfalfa urinated on the studio lights one day when one of the directors got on his case. When they turned the lights on, the resulting stench made it impossible to work and huge fans had to be brought in to clear out the air.

I know the short you're talking about. It's Football Romeo, one of the early MGM entires from 1938.