The ensuing televised melee-because really, what good is a new boyfriend who doesn’t jump up onstage and punch out your nasty ex on live TV?-puts both Noni’s future at the record label and Kaz’s political career in danger. As an act of revenge, Kid sexually humiliates Noni onstage during their live duet at the BET Awards in a hard-to-watch number that evokes both slavery and S&M in its use of bondage imagery. Against the advice of Kaz’s father (Danny Glover), who’s trying to launch a career in politics for his squeaky-clean son, the cop and the pop star start to fall for each other, and she breaks things off with her former fling, white rapper Kid Culprit (played by rapper Machine Gun Kelly). In the press conference that follows the incident, Noni’s people try to pass it off as an accident rather than a suicide attempt, which rubs the scrupulously honest Kaz the wrong way.īut when Noni shows up at Kaz’s door a few days later to thank him for saving her life, he can’t resist going for a drive with this rising star who, he soon learns, feels hopelessly boxed in by her sex-doll image and her controlling momager. He’s been stationed outside her hotel room to fend off groupies-but when he hears a scream from Noni’s horrified mother, Macy (Minnie Driver), he bursts into the room and rescues the young woman from the ledge.

Noni and Kaz meet under circumstances that kick things off at a high emotional pitch: She’s about to throw herself off the balcony of her Beverly Hills hotel after winning an award for her hypersexualized R&B video.

Beyond the lights