REDONDO BEACH, Calif.—
Days before she found dead, former WWE star Chyna posted an online video in which she appears disjointed as she wanders around her apartment.
Police discovered the body of Chyna, whose real name was Joan Marie Laurer, at the home in Redondo Beach, California, on Wednesday. She was 46.
In the 13-minute YouTube video posted Sunday, Chyna wears headphones and a feather in her hair. She narrates as she makes and drinks a breakfast smoothie, trailing off and occasionally singing into the camera. At one point, while surveying the view from her seaside apartment, she asks, “How lucky am I?”
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A coroner’s official says police initially reported her death as a “possible overdose.”
Police in Southern California said they were responding to a 911 call from a friend of the former World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler when they found her dead in her Redondo Beach apartment.
The friend had gone Wednesday to check on Laurer after she had failed to answer her phone for a few days, Redondo Beach police said in a statement.
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“She was truly a pioneer in our industry, and she will be missed,” tweeted Stephanie McMahon, an owner and executive with WWE.
Laurer was “someone who wasn’t afraid to blaze her own trail and create a path for those who would follow,” wrestler Triple H said on Twitter. “A pioneer whose star shined bright. #RIPChyna.”
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Neither police nor coroner’s officials have released any cause of death, but investigators said there were no indications of foul play. An autopsy was planned in the next few days.
Laurer billed herself as the “9th Wonder of the World” because her wrestling predecessor Andre the Giant had already called himself the eighth.
She was a member of the wrestling squad that dubbed itself “D-Generation X,” was often pitted against men and at one point was the WWE women’s champion.
After leaving the WWE in 2001, Laurer was determined to stay active in the entertainment industry. She wrote an autobiography, became a semi-regular on Howard Stern’s radio show and appeared in TV sitcoms like “3rd Rock From the Sun” and reality shows including “The Surreal Life.” She posed for Playboy and appeared in adult films.
Laurer later came clean about her struggles with drugs on “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.”
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A statement posted Wednesday night on her website reads, “Today we lost a true icon, a real life superhero. Joanie Laurer aka Chyna, the 9th Wonder of the World has passed away. She will live forever in the memories of her millions of fans and all of us that loved her.”
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Laurer was a native of Rochester, New York, and graduated from the University of Tampa in Florida before taking up wrestling.
She joins a long list of WWE professional wrestlers who have died relatively young, including Rick Rude, Curt “Mr. Perfect” Hennig, the Ultimate Warrior and Owen Hart.
Associated Press
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9/20
A tropical island boat captain (Matthew McConaughey) and his much-abused ex-wife (Anne Hathaway) enter a vortex of rough justice and fancy riddles in “Serenity.”
(Graham Bartholomew / AP)
10/20
Capping the trilogy started with “Unbreakable” (2000) and the surprise hit “Split (2017), Shymalan’s treatise on superhero origin stories brings James McAvoy, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson together for a plodding psych-hospital escape.
(Jessica Kourkounis / AP)
11/20
Stephan James and KiKi Layne play Fonny and Tish, expectant parents in 1970s Harlem in the new James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
(Tatum Mangus / AP)
12/20
Washington D.C. power brokers Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) and Lynne Cheney have a date with destiny in Adam McKay’s “Vice,” co-starring Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.
Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actor for Christian Bale, Best Supporting Actor for Sam Rockwell, Best Supporting Actress for Amy Adams, Best Director for Adam McKay, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Hair and Makeup,
(Matt Kennedy / AP)
13/20
Queen Anne’s (Olivia Colman) court wrestles with the question of how to finance a war with France. Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), the Duchess of Marlborough, uses her wits, her body and the queen’s bed to coerce Anne into raising taxes on the citizenry in order to keep the off-screen battle going. Then the unexpected arrival of her country cousin, Abigail (Emma Stone), a noblewoman fallen on hard times. A dab hand with medicinal herbs, Abigail quickly rises above servant status to become the queen’s new favorite. Game on!
Nomainted for: Best Picture, Best Actress for Olivia Colman, Best Supporting Actress for Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, Best Director for Yorgos Lanthimos, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design,
(Atsushi Nishijima / AP)
14/20
This image released by Fox Searchlight Films shows Olivia Colman in a scene from the film “The Favourite.” (Atsushi Nishijima/Fox Searchlight Films via AP) (Atsushi Nishijima / AP)
15/20
A high-powered ad agency executive (Tika Sumpter, right) takes in her ex-con sister (Tiffany Haddish, center) in “Nobody’s Fool.”
(Chip Bergmann / AP)
16/20
Risk-prone 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic, left) shares some of his angst with one of the local LA skateboarding idols, Ray (Na-Kel Smith), in writer-director Jonah Hill’s “Mid90s.”
(Tobin Yelland / AP)
17/20
An Atlanta teenager (Amandla Stenberg) deals with the death of her friend in “The Hate U Give,” director George Tillman Jr.’s fine adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel.
(Erika Doss / AP)
18/20
In “First Man,” Ryan Gosling reteams with “La La Land” director Damien Chazelle to relay the story of astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon.
(Daniel McFadden / AP)
19/20
A grown-up Christopher Robin returns to the Hundred Acre Wood and his best friend Winnie the Pooh.
(Laurie Sparham / AP)
20/20
Dax (Lil Rel Howery) gave up playing basketball after getting a crucial buzzer-beater whapped out of the sky by his nemesis, Mookie (Nick Kroll). Now Dax coaches Harlem street ball and has sunk his life savings into the Rucker Classic tournament. Uncle Drew (Kyrie Irving) holds the key to Dax’s redemption.
(Michael Phillips / HANDOUT)
1/21
“Ye” isn’t so much a musical statement as a 23-minute, seven-track therapy session. Read the review
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
2/21
The new album embraces her individuality more explicitly than ever, both more autobiographical and more politically and socially direct than anything she’d recorded previously. It’s a rawer, less elaborate work than its predecessors, yet still hugely ambitious. Read the review
(Jean-Baptiste Lacroix, AFP/Getty Images)
3/21
On her seventh studio album, “Golden Hour” (MCA Nashville), the singer-songwriter doesn’t get hung up on genre. She’s made a style-hopping pop album that infuses her songs with a relaxed spaciousness while muting, but not ignoring, her country roots. Read the review
(John Konstantaras / Chicago Tribune)
4/21
After years of small, carefully articulated recordings and one-man shows, Moses Sumney has finally released his long-gestating debut album, “Aromanticism” (Jagjaguwar), and it’s as resistant to instant categorization as his earlier work. The self-produced album is strikingly, starkly intimate — it sounds like the loneliest place on Earth, wherever that might me (an island, a cave, someplace in the listener’s head). Read the full review.
(Jagjaguwar / handout)
5/21
“American Dream” is a breakup album of sorts but not in the traditional sense. This is about breakups with youth, the past, and the heroes and villains that populated it. It underlines the notion of breaking up as just a step away from letting go — of friends, family, relevance. Read the review.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
6/21
“Chuck” (Dualtone/Decca) very much sounds like a career capstone, a thank-you to the people who mattered most to him — from his wife of 68 years, Themetta “Toddy” Suggs to the fan in the second row at one of his concerts.
(Michal CizekI/ AFP/Getty Images)
7/21
Sir the Baptist, aka William James Stokes, is the son of a preacher, and his major label debut, “Saint or Sinner” (Atlantic), has one foot on the street and the other in a church. Read the review.
(Alyssa Pointer/Chicago Tribune )
8/21
So is there really something about Harry? The 10 songs edge toward ‘70s revivalism rather than 2017 hip-hop-EDM-urban-contemporary stylishness, a move presaged by One Direction tracks such as “Four” and “Fireproof.” Producer Jeff Bhasker specializes in freshening up retro-leaning sounds with artists such as
(Columbia Records / AP)
9/21
The title song from “Deliverance” is Grade-A late-period Prince, 3-plus-minutes of piano-organ interplay and sanctified backing vocals that impart an anthemic gospel feel. Read the review
(Bertrand Guay, AFP/Getty Images)
10/21
The self-released “Drogas Light,” Lupe Fiasco’s first album since severing ties with Atlantic, brought hope that it might rekindle the spark and freshness of his 2006 debut, “Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor.” Instead, it falters beneath its own cynicism. Read the full review.
(Kevin Winter / Getty Images)
11/21
“Nothing Feels Natural” doesn’t come off like a new band’s first statement. It sounds fully formed and wickedly confident, the work of four people who had to get a few things off their chest. Read the review.
( The Washington Post/Getty Images)
12/21
“Black America Again” (ARTium/Def Jam) arrives as a one of the year’s most potent protest albums. The album sags midway through with a handful of lightweight love songs, but finishes with some of its most emotionally resounding tracks: the “Glory”-like plea for redemption “Rain” with Legend, the celebration of family that is “Little Chicago Boy,” and the staggering “Letter to the Free.” Read the review.
(Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune)
13/21
Warpaint’s unerring feel for gauzy hooks and slinky arrangements germinated over a decade and flourished on the quartet’s excellent 2014 self-titled album. But the band has always nudged its arrangements onto the dance floor — subtly on record, more overtly on stage — and “Heads Up” (Rough Trade) gives the group’s inner disco ball a few extra spins. Read the review.
(Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
14/21
Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he’s really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave’s songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, “Skeleton Tree”, his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. Read the full review.
(Carl Court / Getty-AFP)
15/21
On “Here” (Merge), the band’s first album in six years and 10th overall, the front line of Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley once again trades songs (four each) and lead vocals, over sturdily constructed pop-rock arrangements. But the band has taken some subtle evolutionary turns to where it’s now a faint shadow of its “Bandwagonesque” incarnation. Read the review.
(Ross Gilmore / Redferns via Getty Images)
16/21
Now “Schmilco” (dBpm Records) arrives, a product of the same recording sessions that produced “Star Wars” but a much different album. Though it’s ostensibly quieter and less jarring than its predecessor, it presents its own radical take on the song-based, folk and country-tinged side of the band. Read the full review.
(Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune)
17/21
“Blonde” is a critique of materialism with Frank Ocean employing two distinct voices, like characters in a play, a recurring theme throughout the album and perhaps its finest sonic achievement. A party spirals out of control, the music rich but low key, a melange of organ and hovering synthesizers. Ocean uses distorting devices on his voice to add emotional texture and to enhance and sharpen the characters he briefly embodies. The upshot: They’re all little slices of Ocean’s personality with a role to play and they each sound distinct. Read the full review.
(Jordan Strauss / AP)
18/21
On their new album, “Existentialism,” the Mekons turn their audience and the recording space into accomplices for the band’s high-wire act. Read the full review.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
19/21
“Lemonade” is more than just a play for pop supremacy. It’s the work of an artist who is trying to get to know herself better, for better or worse, and letting the listeners/viewers in on the sometimes brutal self-interrogation. Read the full review.
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
20/21
In contrast, “Junk” (Mute”), M83’s seventh studio album, sounds chintzy — a bubble-gum snyth-pop album that indulges Gonzalez’s love of decades-old TV soundtracks, hair-metal guitar solos and kitschy pop songs. Read the full review.
(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
21/21
Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled, Unmastered” is presented as an unfinished work, though it rarely sounds like one. Read the review.
(Matt Sayles/Invision/AP)
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