Lemme keep it 100. I had no plans to watch or review Lee Daniels’ new FOX show Star. It just didn’t sound like my cup of tea. The commercials gave me Honey-ish vibes, and if you recall, that was a disaster. I also still haven’t recovered from Iggy Azalea. And there was the god awful quote Daniels gave on The Real about how putting the white girl at the lead of a show with a mostly black cast was “because the country… needed to heal”.

That explanation was ridiculous. Like, c’mon, mayne. Just say you wanted to increase the likelihood of a crossover show and you put the white chick there so white folk would have somebody they identify with and you could have the Eminem/Beastie Boys phenomenon happen for you the same way Fiddy and Russell Simmons made it work for them. I ain’t mad at the hustle. Just don’t BS me on the hustle.

There was also the Empire problem.  Lee Daniels also made Empire. I watched the first season. It was... many things, everything, all the things possible, at once, and in every episode. It’s a TV phenomenon. There’s a market for it. Clearly. But in the Power vs Empire war that Fiddy tried to make happen like “fetch”, I went with Power.

So. That’s a lot of reasons not to watch. So how do we get here with this review?

Because of a stroke of marketing genius.