"The Living Legend" Toni Braxton is accompanied by sisters Towanda and Tamar in the clip for her new single "Long As I Live" off of her new album Sex and Cigarettes. The video premiered last week after the season 6 premiere of the hit reality show Braxton Family Values. Sex and Cigarettes is Braxton's first album in 8 years and her first album to have a parental advisory sticker. I guess Birdman's gangsta ways are wearing off on her. 

Cardi B titled her debut album Invasion of Privacy, but truth be told we've been invading her privacy for years. That's kind of what brought her up to this point. 

Cardi B is arguably the first bonafide star to be born exclusively from social media. She is also the arguably the first and only star to be made from the Love and Hip Hop franchise. Besides K. Michelle and Remy Ma, Cardi is the only alumni putting out hit records these days. The former two ladies are already established before joining the series, so that means Cardi is the first artist to solidify the star making power of the show  

In honor of Cardi's rise and refusal to keep her life private from us. Lets revisit her rise to stardom with Cardi's Top 5IVE Instagram posts. 

​We all know how notoriously shady Mr. Sean Combs can be, but he still seems to keep making new friends. Last year, Diddy’s shade went viral when he infamously cropped Kylie and Kendall Jenner out of his pic at the Met Gala before posting it to Instagram. The term “diddycrop” became an internet sensation and everyone shared their “diddycropped” photos on social media, cutting out former friends or exes for laughs.
 
Now the “diddycrop” has gone even more savage, or should we call it the “diddyshop,” after Diddy savagely photoshopped Bad Boy recording artist French Montana from a photo taken at a recent grammy after-party. Even worse than the crop of the Jenners, French Montana was completely erased from the original photo where he was standing behind Nas and Kendrick Lamar. Diddy captioned the photo “Friends.” ​

​While Diddy obviously doesn’t consider French Montana to be a “friend”, he made sure to celebrate his old friend Mary j. Blige on her two Academy Award nominations. Diddy hosted a star-studded dinner for Mary at Tao Los Angeles. Beyonce, Jay-Z, Cassie, and Jessie Williams attended the dinner, which Diddy shared in a picture and called the attendees “The Family.”

​Alessia Cara responded to the recent backlash over her win for Best New Artist at this year's Grammys. While some were applauding Alessia for being the only female artist to win in one of the major categories, a lot of people, including myself were not criticizing Alessia, but rather the academy, for allowing her to win Best New Artist, when she's been out since 2015. Some are making the argument that this year is the year that Alessia broke out and gained mass recognition which is why she is eligible for the award, but I really must beg to differ on this one. 

In 2015, Alessia released her debut album on the strength of her debut single "Here," which reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified 3x platinum. Yes--Alessia Cara's debut single sold three million copies in 2015. Alessia's album Know-It-All also peaked within the top 10 of the Billboard 200 at number 9...in 2015. 

Alessia's second single "Wild Things"  was released on February 2, 2016 (two years to the date of this article). It wasn't as successful as "Here" and only managed to peak at number 50 on the Hot 100 chart. However, "Wild Things" still managed to sell a million copies and was certified platinum in the United States--pretty impressive. 

The third single from Alessia's debut, which came out in 2015, was "Scars to Your Beautiful," which became another top 10 hit for Alessia in 2016 and was certified double platinum. In the meantime, Alessia's 2015 debut album was also certified platinum off the strength of her three platinum hit singles. ​