10 pop-culture stories from the 2010s that most entertained, shocked and shaped Charlotte
More than any decade in Charlotte’s two-and-a-half-century existence, the 2010s proved to the rest of the world that the Queen City is, yeah, kind of a big deal from a pop-cultural standpoint.
To close it out, we narrowed what started as a pretty long list down to the 10 most memorable and significant Charlotte-centric pop-culture-related stories since 2010, from the best to the worst, from the weirdest to the wildest, all stuff that will continue to live in our collective memories — sometimes with fondness, sometimes not so much — well into the 2020s.
10. He got shot at in Charlotte, then rapped about it
Early on a Saturday evening in February 2017, as the city hosted the annual CIAA basketball tournament, as many as 100 gunshots reportedly rang out along the 600 block of North Caldwell Street in uptown. Among those caught in the crossfire? Young Dolph (née Adolph Thornton Jr.), a Memphis rapper who was in town to perform at a party at Cameo Charlotte nightclub later that night. Two months later, Dolph dropped an album titled “Bulletproof” — he claimed that the black SUV he was traveling in when the shooting took place had been reinforced to make it impervious to bullets — that featured the single “100 Shots” and was loaded with braggadocious references to the incident. A month later, another Memphis rapper (Blac Youngsta, née Sammie Benson) was among three men arrested under suspicion of being the gunmen; those charges were eventually dropped. Though the CIAA deserved none of the blame for any of this, since the party was not sanctioned by the athletic conference, it left a stain on the tournament’s image. That tournament, by the way, will leave Charlotte after the 2020 event. For better or worse, both Young Dolph and Blac Youngsta are scheduled to perform at parties that weekend. Separate parties.
9. So just dance, dance, dance, come on...
At the beginning of 2019, Nick Kosir was a household name only to those households that regularly watched Fox 46’s morning show, “Good Day Charlotte,” for which he serves as meteorologist. But then, during an otherwise typical Wednesday on the job in April, he won the internet in a way that people from Charlotte (people from Charlotte who aren’t already national celebrities) very rarely win the internet — by doing a short, hip-hop-inspired dance on his show’s set while wearing a suit, a tie, wingtips, and a silly grin. He wasn’t good but he wasn’t bad. He wasn’t cool but he wasn’t not cool. He’d inexplicably found some sort of sweet spot, and it worked like magic: Within a week, he went from 5,000 followers on Instagram to more than a quarter-million. So he kept posting dance videos, and he kept striking gold. The Charlotte Hornets invited him to perform during a game. Nelly and Salt-N-Pepa invited him backstage at a concert. The freakin’ MTV Video Music Awards gave him a cameo. Today, the 36-year-old father of one has 1.2 million Instagram followers — and on the regular, he continues to dance.
8. Woooooooooooooooo!
WWE Hall of Fame wrestler Ric Flair hasn’t lived in Charlotte for some time now (he now resides in the Atlanta area), but he showed up in Charlotte in November 2017 to put a happy exclamation point on a year that featured extreme highs and lows. The rollercoaster for the then-68-year-old Flair began with a serious health scare that August, when — after decades of hard-core alcohol abuse — he landed in the hospital because both his kidneys and heart were beginning to fail. He recovered in time to see the September release of a memoir he co-wrote with his daughter Ashley Fliehr (a Providence High School alumna much better known as WWE wrestler Charlotte Flair) and the October premiere of “30 for 30” documentary “The Nature Boy,” which was directed by Charlottean Rory Karpf and turned into a ratings hit for ESPN. Then in November, he surprised his daughter by showing up at uptown’s Spectrum Center for a hug and a good cry after she beat Natalya Neidhart to win her first WWE SmackDown Live women’s championship. In a post-match interview that aired on the WWE, he beamed as he stood next to her and crowed: “Providence High School should be over here enshrining her.”
7. It was an itsy bitsy, teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini...
Matthews native Brooklyn Decker — then 22 and just a few years removed from Butler High School — landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 2010 Swimsuit Issue clad in a bright-yellow bikini bottom (yes, it had polka dots), with the matching top slung over her shoulder, her left arm barely concealing her naked chest, and a smile flashing in the tropical sunlight. At the time, she told the Observer: “You look at the roster of girls who have shot it, all these iconic models, to be joining their ranks is gonna be great for my career.” And it most definitely was. A virtual unknown before the SI cover, she went on to become successful in Hollywood (she appeared in movies opposite megastars like Adam Sandler and Jennifer Lopez and is currently the star of the Netflix series “Gracie and Frankie”) and in business (she co-founded a digital wardrobe startup, Finery.com, that was eventually bought by StitchFix and with her husband, former tennis star Andy Roddick, is an ambassador for and investor in cookie-delivery company Tiff’s Treats).
6. The show must *not* go on
The entertainment industry largely did not take too kindly to the March 2016 passage of North Carolina’s House Bill 2, which some described as the most anti-LGBT legislation in the U.S. And celebrities didn’t just protest using words; they also took strong action. While certain artists (Mumford and Sons, Dave Matthews Band and Duran Duran, to name a few) donated Charlotte concert proceeds, or portions of proceeds, to LGBT-friendly groups, others felt cancellations would have more of an impact. As a result, one of the city’s biggest venues suffered a string of stinging canceled bookings: Nick Jonas and Demi Lovato, Cirque du Soleil and Maroon 5 all backed out of shows at uptown’s arena. On top of that, the TV and film industry got in on the action, too, with powerful entities like 20th Century Fox and Turner Broadcasting threatening to blacklist North Carolina over the political flap. Perhaps most crushing, though, was the NBA’s HB2-influenced decision to pull plans to stage the 2017 NBA All-Star Game in Charlotte, costing the city untold millions in economic development — and untold embarrassment. It remained a sticking point until the N.C. General Assembly approved a compromise bill that repealed HB2 in March 2017. Jonas, Cirque, Maroon 5 and the NBA All-Star Game all eventually returned.
5. A little dab’ll do ya
In 2015 — at the height of his popularity, the height of his cockiness, and the height of his team’s success — Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton started dabbing on opponents. You remember the dab, don’t you? (It’s where you drop your head, bend your right elbow and bring that arm to your face like you’re sneezing, and then extend your left arm like you’re pretending to be an airplane.) No, Newton didn’t create the dance move, and he wasn’t even the first NFLer to do the dab while celebrating a touchdown; but there’s no question the man who would go on to be the league’s MVP that season was the one who popularized it. Within weeks, it was everywhere — Panthers coach Ron Rivera and team owner Jerry Richardson were dabbing, high school and college athletes were dabbing, Hollywood celebrities were dabbing ... even politicians started dabbing. It was the epitome of a fad, and it got old very, very fast. By the following spring, Newton had sworn it off. Others kept doing it, but it eventually become a joke. In the 2019 movie “Us,” when a dad hits the dab, his children become instantly mortified.
4. Charlotte, will you accept this rose?
In an unprecedented move, the producers of ABC’s “The Bachelorette” moved production of its hit reality show from southern California to Charlotte to accommodate Emily Maynard, who was selected to star in its 2012 installment after she broke up with a guy she had gotten engaged to on “The Bachelor” the previous year. Then a 26-year-old single mom, Maynard agreed to do the show so long as she wouldn’t have to uproot her 6-year-old daughter, Ricki (from her relationship with late NASCAR driver Ricky Hendrick), for the filming. At the time, she told the Observer, “I believe it can work as long as you’re open to it” — “it” being true love. It didn’t. Though she got engaged to Jef Holm on the show, their relationship didn’t survive the year. Still, Charlotte came away smelling like a rose, with every shot of the city framed and lit to look ultra-romantic. (Remember their date at the Mint Museum?) And Maynard still got her happy ending: She married Tyler Johnson in 2014, and the couple has given Ricki three younger siblings. They still live in Charlotte, and she regularly posts family photos for her 600,000-plus followers on Instagram.
3. The odds seemed ever in our favor
The filmmakers behind the “The Hunger Games” — already a worldwide phenomenon thanks to Suzanne Collins’ popular series of young-adult fiction novels — decided to base production in the Charlotte area in 2011, bringing Hollywood stars like Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson and Lenny Kravitz to the area. One big reason: At the time, film production companies could get a 25 percent credit up to $20 million on qualifying expenses; it was one of the most attractive incentive programs in the country. Shooting locations included an abandoned mill village outside of Hildebran, an old warehouse in Shelby, the former Philip Morris cigarette manufacturing plant in Concord, and uptown’s Knight Theater. “The Hunger Games’” presence overshadowed a new series Showtime was filming in the area that same year, but after “Homeland” became a hit, Charlotteans were quick to brag about that being here too. Sadly, the “Hunger Games” filmmakers opted to shoot the sequel in Atlanta, and after three seasons of “Homeland” and three years of Claire Danes sightings, Showtime also shifted locations. And when North Carolina’s attractive tax incentive program was made less-attractive at the end of 2014, our brief reign as the Hollywood of the East was over.
2. ‘Was that George Clooney jogging down Tryon Street?’
On a normal day, the odds of seeing a national, A-list celebrity walking around uptown Charlotte are pretty close to nil. But for one week in September of 2012, when the Democratic National Convention was hosted here, famous faces were as common a sight on city sidewalks as Bird scooters are today. Jessica Alba and Zach Braff were spotted eating at the Westin (with their significant others, not together). An entourage that included Rose Byrne, Patricia Arquette, Tony Shalhoub and Wayne Knight (aka Newman from “Seinfeld”) dined at 5Church. Dave Grohl, Elizabeth Banks and Jeff Bridges were among a laundry list of celebs who had rooms booked at the Ritz-Carlton. Rosario Dawson walked the red carpet at an event at All-American Pub, while Eva Longoria did the same around the corner at Amos’ Southend. Jon Hamm. Jon Stewart. John Legend — check, check, check. (That George Clooney rumor, though? Never confirmed and highly dubious.) In the end, while there was also some serious political business to attend to, for rubberneckers, the week was a ton of fun. And the DNC firmly established Charlotte as a city capable of handling a gigantic event: Six years later, it landed the 2020 Republican National Convention.
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1. Ooh, DaBaby, DaBaby, it’s a wild world...
Charlotte-based rapper DaBaby (née Jonathan Lyndale Kirk) rocketed to A-list-musician status in stunning fashion in 2019, despite being found guilty of a misdemeanor weapons charge in the wake of killing a man at a Huntersville Walmart in November 2018, and despite appearing to have been involved with the beating of another man at SouthPark mall in May. Virtually unknown before he made headlines for the shooting (which he has maintained was self-defense), his single “Suge” — which was released in April and marked the first single off his by Interscope Records-stamped album “Baby on Baby” — eventually was certified double-platinum. (It also spawned a music video that was shot in west Charlotte and features several moments that could allude to the Walmart shooting.) In June, he won Best New Hip Hop Artist at the BET Awards; in November, “Suge” was nominated for a pair of Grammys (Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance); and in December, he was “Saturday Night Live’s” featured musical guest on an episode hosted by Jennifer Lopez. And yet his problems keep a-comin’: Earlier this month, he failed to show up for a concert he was scheduled to headline at Bojangles’ Coliseum due, reportedly, to a broken-down private jet; then, after performing a Dec. 23 makeup show, he was taken into custody by Charlotte police officers who say they found marijuana in his car. Seems like 2020 can’t get much better for DaBaby — or much worse, either...
This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 3:07 PM.
