Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Billie Eilish Has Unfollowed Everybody On Instagram After Promising To Unfollow ‘Abusers’

Currently, Billie Eilish has 64.8 million followers on Instagram. The amount of users she follows back is not nearly as high, though. In fact, that figure currently sits at exactly 0, as she recently unfollowed everybody she used to follow on Instagram.

On June 23, Eilish posted an Instagram Story that read, “If I am following your abuser DM ME & I will unfollow them. I support you.” Eilish later deleted the Story, with some suggesting the post was erased after users brought up that Eilish was following Chris Brown, XXXTentacion, Justin Bieber, and Ansel Elgort, all of whom have been accused of abuse (in Brown’s case, he pleaded guilty to felony assault of Rihanna). After the post, Eilish reportedly started to gradually unfollow users until her following count reached 0, where it remains now as of this post.

Following the flurry of social media activity, Eilish has not provided a public comment on the situation.

Meanwhile, Eilish hasn’t released new music in a bit, but she has remained part of the musical conversation in other ways. She and a number of other artists recently shared an open letter about police reform. Her music was also part of the inspiration for a new batch of charts from Billboard.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

A Police Officer Allegedly Slammed A Black Man To The Ground And Broke His Wrist After Mistaking Him For A Suspect


View Entire Post ›

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

9th Wonder, Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, And Terrace Martin Form A New Band, Dinner Party

Four of music’s most prominent, groundbreaking producers have teamed up to form a supergroup. 9th Wonder, Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, and Terrace Martin are veterans of the hip-hop, soul, and jazz worlds, participating in some of the most important projects and collaborating with some of the biggest names in music. Now, they have come together as Dinner Party and released their first single, the powerful and profound “Freeze Tag” with Chicago singer and producer Phoelix.

The group formed during a tour on which Martin and Glasper both participated. Martin and Washington have been friends in the LA jazz scene since high school, and 9th Wonder, despite not being a traditional musician, is connected to all three through various endeavors and mutual collaborators like Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Rapsody, and others. They’ve all collaborated in some capacity in the past, but in 2019, linked up as a group to record an entire album as Dinner Party.

Phoelix is also a producer of some reknown, helping shape the new Chicago sound of rappers like Noname and Saba, and is an accomplished vocalist as well. He contributes impactful lyrics to “Freeze Tag,” speaking to the mood of the current moment in America. “They told me put my hands up behind my head,” he croons. “I think you got the wrong one.”

Watch Dinner Party’s debut video, “Freeze Tag” featuring Phoelix, above. The seven-song Dinner Party album is due 7/10 via Sounds Of Crenshaw/Empire. You can pre-order it here.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Brittany Howard Details Growing Up Biracial With A Performance Of ‘Goat Head’ On ‘Fallon’

In September, Brittany Howard pivoted from her lead role in four-piece group Alabama Shakes to shine as a solo artist. The singer released her debut solo record, Jaime, which melts influences of rock, jazz, and R&B. Since its release, the singer has been gracing late-night television with select performances of her songs. In the past, Howard has stopped by The Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live. Now, Howard appears on The Tonight Show to give a moving rendition of one of her songs.

For the swaying Fallon performance, Howard tapped a full back-up band and elected to share a rendition of her poignant track “Goat Head,” which describes her experience growing up biracial. The song’s lengthy hook is all instrumental, with Howard’s band providing relaxing tones on a free-flowing keyboard. Just over a minute in, Howard’s vocals cut in. “My mama was brave / To take me outside / ‘Cause mama is white / And daddy is Black / When I first got made / Guess I made these folks mad,” she sings.

Ahead of the singer’s performance on The Tonight Show, Howard teamed up with radio streaming service Sonos Radio for her own curated station. Titled The Encyclopedia Of Brittany, the station features commentary by the singer along with an eclectic mix of music that is prompted by her influences and obsessions.

Watch Brittany Howard perform “Goat Head” on The Tonight Show above.

Jaime is out now via ATO records. Get it here.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

City Girls Turn Their Renewed Bond Into Another Big Win On ‘City On Lock’

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

The City Girls are back at full-strength and once again subverting expectations on their latest album, City On Lock — their first release since JT’s release from prison for credit card fraud. The two Miami go-getters haven’t lost a step on their new release, picking up right where they left off on 2018’s Girl Code.

At the heart of their lascivious luxury raps is the understanding that America is an unequal society. As JT says in the larcenous outro from “That Old Man,” these dudes are dumb — the quiet part is that those dummies somehow wound up with all the resources and power. If they’re desperate enough for a taste of affection from women who obviously only want to use them to get a leg up in a man’s world, that’s not the City Girls’ problem.

City On Lock arrives at a critical juncture in the duo’s evolution. They made their bones in early 2018 as a throwback to the fierce, unapologetic thirst trap rap of Miami forebear Trina, spitting blunt punchlines about transactional relationships with men over neck-snapping, high-energy instrumentals. Their brand was simple, but not basic, embracing the same logic that drives BackPage and OnlyFans accounts to this day. If someone is buying, they’re willing to sell.

They were also willing to make money in a more underhanded, Hustlers-esque way: Cracking cards and swiping away to get the glamorous accoutrements they rapped about. The life caught up to them, sending JT — the more lyrically-gifted of the two and the engine of their dreams of rap stardom — to prison for a year and leaving Yung Miami, who had been content to continue trading company for cash, to carry the flag alone.

Miami then got pregnant with her second child — a prospect that once would have derailed the entire enterprise due to the archaic and misogynist rules of the new game they’d chosen to play. Motherhood is already a fraught proposition; for rap starlets whose primary selling point is their sex appeal, it should have been disastrous. But JT came home, coronavirus hit, and sex work experienced a boom as more and more women were forced to turn to quarantine-safe occupations.

The resultant shutdown of normal, everyday life gave City Girls the time they needed to regroup and further normalized their brand of raunchy content. if you’re going to twerk to something on Demon Time, it should be something that feels empowering, not degrading, and that’s exactly what their brand of stripper pole-friendly scammer anthems do. City Girls judo flip the world’s masculine-feminine power imbalance on its head, making those transactions a matter of choice rather than survival.

That theme runs throughout City On Lock, from the high-maintenance demands of “Jobs” to the exacting standards of “Broke N****s” to the overt extravagance of “Flewed Out.” The latter adds a snarky layer of playfulness with its title, which Miami coined as part of their 2018 promotion for the song “Twerk.” After a certain class of fans sniffed and glared down their noses at her unpolished language, she simply made it part of the lexicon, earning her rightful place alongside her partner-in-rhyme.

Make no mistake, though; having JT back is this album’s biggest boon. While Miami shows improvement, JT is the driver of group’s lyrical direction, tossing off jeering wordplay reinforcing her and Miami’s dominant role in their dealings with men. “I’m goin’ in, like a bitch got a curfew,” she sneers on “Broke N****s,” “Don’t got my money? Go back to the bitch that birthed you.”

The pair relishes in their sisterhood even above their hunger for luxury, though, praising each other’s profit prowess on “That’s My Bitch” and inviting Doja Cat along for some slick, salacious “Pussy Talk.” Their bond is, after all, what got them here and what has allowed them to outlast their trials to date — including their most recent test, which perfectly demonstrated the skill with which they can reverse and counter any punch thrown at them.

City Girls weren’t set to release City On Lock just yet when it was leaked late on Juneteenth, quickly spreading across the rap internet. The girls responded by dropping the video for “Jobs,” then the entire album. While the duo expressed frustration at the unplanned leak, they had already turned it into a victory, taking the lemons life handed them and turning them into lemonade. In true City Girls fashion, they’re hustling that lemonade into power, profit, and the potential for another runaway hit, proving they really do have the city — and the rap game — on lock.

City On Lock is out now via Quality Control Music/Motown Records. Get it here.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

The ‘Breaking Bad’ Movie Likely Guaranteed That Bryan Cranston And Aaron Paul Won’t Be On ‘Better Call Saul’

The closer Better Call Saul gets to the Breaking Bad timeline, the likelier it is that Walter White and/or Jesse Pinkman could appear in a background scene or maybe interact with Hank Schrader, who made his BCS debut in season five. Not that we need a cameo, mind you. Better Call Saul is doing perfectly fine without the Breaking Bad leads; to introduce them in the show’s final season would be putting a hat on a Heisenberg hat.

They were also already in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, and as co-creator Peter Gould told Collider, that (probably) means we’ve seen the last of Walter and Jesse.

“I like to think that we don’t have as much of an obligation to have Walt and Jesse back in Better Call Saul because they’re such a great appearance in El Camino,” he said. “But having said that, I would love to have them back. I’d love to have Bryan direct an episode. I got to write an episode [of Breaking Bad] that Bryan directed and I was on set with him every day, and it was a wonderful experience… And Aaron Paul is possibly the happiest human being I’ve ever met, and he makes everybody around him happy. So yeah, I would love to have them back.” Gould’s comments make it sound like, of the two actors, Paul is more likely to reprise his role, while if Cranston was to return, it would be in a behind-the-scenes capacity. That’s fine. It means more screen time for Lalo.

The final season of Better Call Saul is expected to air next year.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Nicki Minaj Told Her Fans To Pester Kim Kardashian For Her Unreleased Kanye West Collaboration

There has been some sort of collaboration between Kanye West and Nicki Minaj in the works for some time now. In late 2018, Kanye teased that he and Minaj had made a song about slut shaming for Yandhi. Then, a few months after that, a Kanye/Minaj collab was further teased on an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Now, the song, titled “New Body,” has become popular on TikTok thanks to a leak of Yandhi. This has made fans thirst for the full song to be officially released, so Minaj gave her followers advice on how to make that happen.

In a now-deleted tweet, Minaj suggested that she doesn’t have control over the song at the moment, so she encouraged her fans to pester Kim Kardashian for the song. Fans have also been hoping for Minaj’s ASAP Ferg collab “Move Ya Hips,” and she addressed that in her tweet as well, writing, “Y’all gotta light up Ferg comments everyday if u want MTH. And light up KIM comments everyday if you want NB,” followed by a shrugging emoji.

Meanwhile, Minaj is having a stellar 2020 so far. She earned her first No. 1 song be featuring on Doja Cat’s “Say So,” and she just got her second chart-topper with her Tekashi 69 collaboration, “Trollz.”

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Gucci Mane Reveals The Release Date And Title Of His Next Album, Saying He Has A ‘New Situaton’

A few weeks ago, Atlanta trap rap pioneer Gucci Mane appeared to be disgruntled with his soon-to-be former label, Atlantic Records, accusing someone at the label of being racist and venting that all artists should go on strike until they receive more favorable record deals. Since then, he’s been using his Twitter to wonder aloud (so to speak) about possibly going independent and feeling as though people wanted to censor him. Yesterday, he promised to reveal his decision on the release date of his new album, So Icy Summer, which he set for July 3.

Early this morning, Gucci again logged in to ask fans whether he should renew with contract with Atlantic, although the question seemed more rhetorical when he tweeted it. “Should I renew contract with @Atlantic records or go independent?” he queried, promising a “big press conference July 3rd” and asking “who should do interviews???”

Gucci has been associated with Atlantic Records since 2016, beginning with the studio album Everybody Looking and including 10 projects in that time for an impressive clip of around two projects a year for the last four years. While he never did reveal what his disagreement with Atlantic Records was over, no one can say that the partnership hasn’t been productive. However, as one of the more prolific and successful independent artists in hip-hop, Gucci likely knows he can do it on his own should need be.

Whatever the case, we’ll all find out when So Icy Summer drops on 7/3.

Gucci Mane is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

In 75 years, the UN has made big leaps in improving global health — but we still have a lot to do

On June 26, 1945, delegates from 50 countries gathered in the Herbst Theater auditorium in San Francisco.

They were there to sign the U.N. Charter, a treaty that, in its 19 chapters and 111 articles, founded and established a world organization devoted to saving “succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” It would do so by maintaining international peace and security, strengthening international law, expanding human rights, and promoting social progress and better standards of life.

On that day, World War II was not even yet over — that day wouldn’t come until September 2nd, 1945 when the Japanese surrendered — but it established an organization that, as one of its first endeavors, helped distribute lifesaving supplies and medicines to countries reeling from disease, injury and the trauma of war.


And that would be far from its first milestone towards creating a healthier world. Improving health around the world has always been a key priority of the U.N.

In fact, when diplomats met to create the organization, one of the very first things they discussed was setting up a global health agency, something they did just three years later when, on April 7, 1948, they established the World Health Organization (WHO) with the mission to help deliver on the promise of health for all. It tackles infectious disease, reduces preventable deaths for girls and women, and improves access to safe water and sanitation; it fights for the rights of people with disabilities and mental health issues; and it strengthens health systems.

Now in 2020, the UN though WHO is once again providing lifesaving equipment and supplies to more than 130 countries — leading the global fight against COVID-19.

WHO is just one of the big leaps that the U.N. has taken towards improving global health. Here are a few of the many other accomplishments it has made:

1946: The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is founded to help provide support and relief to children living in countries impacted by war.

1950s: This is the golden age of antibiotics discovery and implementation, helping fight such diseases as bacterial meningitis (which was fatal for children 90% of the time before), strep throat, and the spread of ear infections to the brain.

1969: The United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) begins operations to empower women to decide if and when they have a family, to improve childbirth safety, and help children reach their potential.

1979: Smallpox is eradicated after a 12-year WHO global vaccination campaign with global partners.

1988: The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is established. Since then, polio cases have decreased by 99% because of access to immunizations.

2000: The largest-ever gathering of world leaders issues the Millennium Declaration, which lays out eight aspirational goals. Three of those goals are specifically designed to spur progress in child health, maternal health and combating disease.

2001: The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is created to help fight the three largest infectious disease killers in the world through global cooperation.

2006: The number of children who die before their fifth birthday declines below 10 million for the first time.

2015: All U.N. Member States adopt the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. One of those goals is to ensure health and well-being for everyone everywhere.

2018: WHO, the World Meteorological Organization, the UN Convention on Climate Change and UN Environment hold the first Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health at WHO headquarters in Geneva.

2019: 190 U.N. Member States adopt the historic political declaration on Universal Health Coverage at the UN General Assembly identifying ways to make health for all a reality.

UNICEF/Carolina Cabral

As we approach the 75th anniversary of the UN Charter’s signing, there is still a lot of work to be done.

At least half the world’s population is still without access to essential health services. Even though half as many under-5s die now than before 2000, still 5.4m children die before their fifth birthday each year. Racial and economic disparities are still rampant in healthcare, affecting maternal mortality rates, access to care, and quality of treatment. The proportion of mothers who do not survive childbirth is 14 percent higher in developing nations. And now, COVID-19 has created one of the most pressing public health crises we’ve experienced in the last century.

The pandemic is threatening to erode and reverse current progress, and yet, in May, President Trump announced the US’s plans to end its relationship with WHO. This move could hamper the world’s response to the virus, including vaccine development, science and information sharing, resource mobilization, and efforts to mitigate the impact of the virus on the most vulnerable. It also jeopardizes hard-won gains on diseases like polio, putting progress at risk.

If we don’t defeat COVID-19 everywhere, we won’t be safe anywhere — and we can only beat it by working together.

It will take action from everyone to build stable and fair health systems that challenge misinformation, invest in vaccines, and strengthen relief from disease outbreaks.

You can learn more about these goals by checking out “Voice Our Future” — an immersive and interactive reality experience exploring the then, now, and next of some of the most critical challenges of our times. You can also further the reach of your voice by taking the one-minute survey to help inform the UN’s thinking and priorities.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Zendaya Explained Why Being A Black Woman And A “Young Disney Actor” Made Her Feel Like She Couldn’t Make Any Mistakes


View Entire Post ›