Month: July 2020

Donald Trump once claimed that he was “the only person who immediately walked out of my Ali G interview,” which, no. According to Sacha Baron Cohen, who played the fictional “voice of da yoof” character, the future-president “was there for about seven minutes,” which, he noted, was “quite a long time” for an Ali G interview.

Even Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, bailed quicker than that.

Giuliani told Page Six that he called the cops on Baron Cohen after he crashed an interview he was doing it. “This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit,” he said with all the sensitivity you’d expect from this guy. “It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive”:

“This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shake-down, so I reported it to the police. He then ran away.”

Giuliani eventually realized the prankster was Baron Cohen (“I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me”), as he’s an admirer of his work. “I am a fan of some of his movies, Borat in particular, because I’ve been to Kazakhstan. ‘She is my sister. She is number four prostitute in all of Kazakhstan.’ That was pretty funny.” First off, what? Also, for more of Rudy’s movie reviews, give him your phone number and he’ll butt-dial you while watching Anger Management.

(Via Page Six)

In this weird, current era of hip-hop dictated by streams and social media, going viral can be a blessing. It can mean getting a leg up on the competition, getting your name out there while so many others languish in obscurity. It can be the difference between getting picked up and endorsed by major outlets and grinding out a few thousand YouTube views at a time, hoping to build an organic fanbase in a world where attention cycles are getting shorter by the day and more and more content fills the ether hoping to catch that dwindling supply of attention.

But going viral can also be a curse. It comes with expectations, assumptions, increased scrutiny, and even mistaken identity. That was the case for Portland rapper Wynne, who at 20 years old has gone viral not just once but twice. Both times, her freestyles so impressed viewers that numerous blogs picked up coverage of them and mistook her for Hailie Mathers, the daughter of Detroit rap legend Eminem — despite the fact that Hailie is four years older and looks nothing like Wynne, minus their characteristic blonde hair and blue eyes.

Wynne, who says she really doesn’t “want to be the viral white girl,” is flattered by the attention, but in something of an anachronistic relationship with modern zeitgeist, would prefer to build a grassroots following the old-fashioned way. She has leveraged the close-knit culture of her hometown’s hip-hop scene to cultivate a strong local following, and a chance meeting with Dreamville’s JID led to “Ego Check,” a lyrically gymnastic display of the duo’s verbal prowess that proved that Wynne could hang with some of the best.

On her independently-produced 2019 debut album, …If I May, Wynne’s skills take the forefront as songs like “Roll Call” address the elephant in the room when it comes to issues of white privilege in a Black culture such as hip-hop. Other highlights include “The Thesis” a Portland-centric posse cut that gets a boost in star power from Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard as his rapping alter ego Dame D.O.L.L.A., and “Ken Mastrogiovani,” an improvisational track named for the drummer who freestyles an unconventional beat that Wynne has no trouble dancing over with scintillating wordplay and impeccable cadence.

The album’s warm reception among fans, as well as Wynne’s previous connection with Dreamville through JID, led to her becoming the opening act on Earthgang’s Welcome To Mirrorland tour along with new Spillage Village member Jurdan Bryant and Mick Jenkins. Their stop at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood is where we connected for an in-depth interview that speaks eloquently to the current moment, despite taking place before 2020’s pandemic quarantine and civil uprising. Call it prescience, call it good fortune, or attribute it to the frustrating cycle of national indifference to the very real social cancer of systemic racism, but when Wynne talks about the need for white allies to tackle injustice alongside the oppressed, her words ring as true now as they did when tours were still a thing.

I don’t necessarily see a lot of young artists your age, who have your particular independent hustle and vibe and that ingenuity and that tenacity to just stick to it. Where does that come from?

I don’t know. I have great parents who work really hard and they instilled a lot of incredible qualities in me and my siblings about hard work and perseverance. And it was the kind of family that if you join a sport and you don’t like it, it sucks because you’re now on this team for two years.

That was their thing. So I took a lot of that. And really, I just, I was lucky enough to figure out what I wanted to do when I was 12. And I was like, damn, I’m going to lock myself in my room and I’m going to make this happen. I don’t think it’s very common that you know so early. And I think that helped me get a leg up because I spent all of college, all of high school, just studying and listening and looking and just trying to understand.

That’s crazy you say 12 because that is young. And also, not to down your hometown or anything, but like…

That’s a great question. So I’m from a suburb called Lake Oswego and it’s the whitest suburb you can imagine. And my older brother actually introduced hip-hop to me when I was nine. We just shared an iTunes account so I had all of his music. And I was asking him for recommendations and he played a lot of the Aftermath stuff at the time. This is like 2006, 2007. And so I just was listening to everything. He was on a lot of Lupe, Kanye, Jay-Z, 50, Eminem, and taught myself by learning to rap along with them. And then when I was 12 and I was in middle school was when I started writing music and I was like, shit, I think I could do this. I think I could be good at this.

And I feel like hip-hop has kind of an outcast art form and I very much was an outcast in my community. I’m not super social. I’m not about bougieness or glamor or anything. And my suburb is very much that way. So I was just to myself and found solace in my favorite MCs and really just fell in love with the way people could put words together and was fascinated by it. It was like a puzzle.

And it’s actually funny that you mention being an outcast and also mentioned Eminem because those are the two people who I think you draw the most comparisons to: Eminem and Iggy Azalea, who both talk about not fitting in and finding solace in rap. Why do you think people are so invested in connecting you specifically to people just because you look a certain way? Do you think that holds you back in any kind of way?

No. I think it’s, honestly, I think it’s fair. How many times do white people see one Black person and they’re like, “They must all be this way?” I spent a long time when I was younger wrestling with the idea of “am I going to be accepted?” and really just came to learn that if you’re authentic and you’re yourself, people will accept you. If you try to be fake, then they won’t accept you. And I think people like what’s familiar to them. So they see a white girl rapping and they think Eminem. Obviously I’ve taken influence from Eminem so it’s just an easy comparison. It didn’t help that I went viral as his daughter a year ago. That’s been a process.

It happened twice. I was offended on your behalf. Did these guys do any basic research where they just started throwing stuff out there?

No, it was a trip.

Going back to you pointing out that a lot of people will make a judgment based on a bias and prejudice, I noticed that very early on in your album you get that right out of the way. You just establish right out of the way, “I have a voice and a platform. This is what I intend to do with it.” Why was it so important for you to throw that line in there?

I basically went to college for studying social justice issues. So I spent a lot of time in political science and ethnic studies and women and gender studies courses, just trying to understand my place in the world and what that means. Especially as a person who participates in hip-hop, you just need to know your shit. That’s a huge reason why it exists: so people have a voice. And I think it’s super important for… I guess what I’ll say is the oppressed will not stop being oppressed until the oppressor realizes they’re oppressing.

The more white people talk about it, the more, hopefully other white people can recognize it. Especially because so much of my fan base is going to be white people. And I can’t fix all of them. I can’t have one-on-one conversations about this is what this means, but I can at least spark a thought. It’s going to take a lot of those sparks, but as many as I can put, I think that’s important. I have a lot of people come up to me like, “Hey, you’re opening a door for other white women to be rappers and that’s really dope.” And I’m like, okay, but…

That’s not the goal.

I’ve never set out to open a door for white women to be rappers. If white people are going to participate in hip-hop, they just need to know their shit. And so I just want to help set that standard that if there are going to be people after me, cool, but this is how I did it. So if I eventually get to a place, 10 years, where I can reach legendary status, hopefully there’s a blueprint of “know your shit.”

That’s actually funny because on the show that we do, People’s Party, El-P came on and said, “You can’t have love for the culture without having a love for the people.”

That’s huge.

A thing that I thought that you did on the album was very smart was the interlude where you immediately throw a lampshade on everything anybody can say about you.

Exactly. And the reality of it is I really don’t fit many of those stereotypes, but people think I do.

I was sitting there co-writing jokes. There’s a lot of sides to who I am that are very helpful because I can go viral. I’m clickbait. When I walk out there between Jurdan Bryant, Mick Jenkins, and EarthGang, people pay attention to me because it looks weird. It looks out of place, but it’s also, we need to get some shit out of the way first. If we’re going to get to this point and you’re going to respect me, let’s just throw this… You have to be able to make fun of yourself. I’ve known Cipha Sounds for a while. He was one of the first people to find me in 2016. And he does a lot of comedy stuff now and tours with Dave Chappelle and Michael Che. And I just knew that I wanted him to roast me. So I called him up and he was like, “Hell yeah, I’ll come roast your ass.”

It’s funny because I basically write articles all the time where I speak to these issues with white fans in hip-hop. It leads to some really angry comments and awkward moments in real life, but it feels necessary.

And it’s like let’s talk about it because when people say they’re colorblind… you can’t be colorblind because then you’re ignoring all of the differences between people that cause certain people to be oppressed and certain people to be uplifted. So it’s like let’s talk about these things and about how different I am, because I’m super different and that’s a huge deal. I didn’t fucking grow up like this. I don’t face these kinds of oppression, but I’m still participating in the music that is a reflection of those things. So let’s talk about what that means.

If you had to give somebody the Hollywood logline of what the album is about, what do you tell them? What’s the elevator pitch of your album?

It’s basically me giving myself permission to be a little bit dumb.

Because like I said, I really spent my… up until I was 20 locked in my room, learning how to rap. And then I was 20 and I was like, “Shit, I should be a college student.” So I did that and I turned up and I made all these fun memories and I came to LA and I went to some stupid parties. I went to some really sick ones. You have to go through shit to tell the stories. And so this was me letting myself come a little bit out of my shell and then tell those stories.

What are some of the drawbacks of doing it independently and what are some of the advantages?

Is actually, it’s really interesting because I’m not signed to a label, but I wouldn’t consider myself independent. I have a distribution deal. So I’ve had a little bit of funding for the project, but mostly just I have an incredible team who was able to connect me with a lot of incredible people. So it’s like I’m working with my idols. I’m working with Sounwave and Hit-Boy and Christo, all these incredible people, but I’m still a nobody. So I’m stoked. But it comes out and it takes time for people to discover it so the downfall is, we don’t have a shitload of money to just throw into marketing and publicity. And it’s hard because you spend so much time making this incredible body of work. To you, it’s the most important thing you’ve ever done. And that’s anything in the music business these days. It’s something’s hot for a week.

And so a huge goal of this project, between me and my engineer, Itay, who is also my tour manager, was to make a project that felt timeless. Something that maybe could have come out in 1997. And it maybe could have come out in 2019. Because instrumentation doesn’t get old. A fad does. Specific programmed 808s do. But when you have… it does something to your brain when you hear an acoustic guitar. It does something to your brain when you hear a drum loop that was recorded live. And that kind of thing, it makes it easier to put out a project independently because someone can discover it, in six months it’ll still be relevant. Someone can discover it in two years, it’ll still feel relevant. And it’s fun to grow day by day. It was overwhelming when we were going viral. I didn’t like that.

What you’re talking about as far as songs having to sit for a little while and build, when you think about Lizzo had “Truth Hurts” out for two years and nobody cared about Lizzo. Doja Cat had Amala, which is an incredible album but nobody cared. “Mooo!” comes out and suddenly everybody’s like, “Who’s this Doja Cat girl?” What’s the process or what was the conversation that was had around how we use this or do we decide not to use this?

I was very intentional about “I do not want to monetize this moment.” I always knew I was going to do this, but I didn’t know how it was going to happen, and I should have known it was going to be by going viral. And it did great things for me. It connected me with my team. It gave me incredible opportunities. It gave me a platform to be able to reach out to people. It was great. We sat with all the labels, but when we walked in, we said, “We’re not here to sign, but we just want to talk.” From there, they put you in a room with people and you can start negotiating, but it was just like, “I don’t want to be the viral white girl.”

I actually sat with a label who called themselves out because they brought me in because I went viral and I played my song, “An Open Letter to Donald Trump.” And the president of the label at the time starts tearing up. My publisher starts tearing up and I’m tearing up and they say to me, “We’re doing you an injustice because we brought you in here because you went viral and we sign however many acts a year for a couple hundred thousand dollars and then we get a hit out of them and that’s kind of it. And you’re not that.”

And that was huge for me because I’ve always known my worth. And I’ve always known there’s power in uniqueness. And I really didn’t want to capitalize on being the viral white girl that can freestyle on Twitter.

If I May… is out now. Get it here.

Well, guess what: I’m mad about Popstar. Again. I’m mad about Popstar again. This happens every now and then, to be fair, most recently a few months ago when I wrote about Walk Hard. There’s nothing I can do about it, really. Popstar, The Lonely Island’s music mockumentary that was released in 2016, is a perfect movie, basically, and no one saw it. You probably didn’t see it in theaters. Why didn’t you go see Popstar in the theaters? I didn’t either, if we want to be technical about it, but we’re not talking about me right now. And I was busy. Shut up.

This is a pattern with Lonely Island movies, sadly. They’re all terrific and they all bomb at the box office. Hot Rod is a perfect American story that no one saw. MacGruber is a work of unhinged genius that no one saw. Popstar opened in eighth place (eighth!), behind such cinematic classics as The Angry Birds Movie (in its third week) and That Ninja Turtle Movie With Megan Fox. It’s infuriating, is what it is. Popstar is so good.

The options for recourse are limited, unfortunately. Short of inventing a time machine and forcing people into theaters all over America through bribery and/or threats of violence, our best option is to just yell about it now, years later, in a cathartic screed about how good it is. Yes, let’s go ahead and do that. For now. Time machine is still on the table.

The time has come to talk about Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.

1. The plot of Popstar goes something like this: Andy Samberg plays Connor Friel aka Connor4Real, a big deal white rapper and former member of a group called The Style Boyz, which featured his Lonely Island partners Akiva Shaffer as Lawrence aka Kid Brain and Jorma Taccone as Owen aka Kid Contact. There is a fallout and a fissure. Connor goes solo with Owen as his DJ, Lawrence moves to a farm. The action picks up as Connor is preparing to release his second album, which is getting slaughtered in the press and by fans. The movie is a classic tragedy-to-redemption story, but with full-frontal male nudity and pancakes that contain dog poop. It does all of that in just over 90 minutes. The movie is as funny as it is ruthlessly efficient. I appreciate this.

2. A music mockumentary doesn’t work if the songs don’t. They need to be catchy and slick enough that you can buy them as real radio hits, but also stupid and funny enough to gets laughs. It’s a tough needle to thread. Walk Hard did it beautifully and, yes, this is mostly just an excuse to mention “Let’s Duet” again, but Popstar isn’t exactly a slouch in this department either. There’s the lunatic energy of “Finest Girl (Bin Laden Song),” the Macklemore-roasting of “Equal Rights,” and the Adam-Levine-featuring “I’m So Humble,” among others, all of them little slices of brainworm-y genius. But my favorite, if I had to choose, and I’ve kind of backed myself into a corner here where I do, is “Mona Lisa,” a full-length song — only featured briefly in the film — about how the famous Da Vinci painting is “an overrated piece of shit.”

It’s so powerfully stupid. I love it like a long lost pet who returned home after running away three weeks earlier. I have literally played this in my car. With the windows down. I feel great about it.

3. I’ve already mentioned Walk Hard twice so let’s just go ahead and do this. The two movies have so much in common. Let’s tick off some similarities:

• They’re both satires of music movies, with Walk Hard covering biopics like Ray and Walk the Line, and Popstar covering more modern-day iterations, like Justin Bieber and his 2011 documentary Never Say Never, complete with references to the Anne Frank museum and a strange attachment to an unconventional pet (Bieber: monkey; Connor; huge turtle)
• They’re both big cult hits after underperforming financially
• They both feature wieners a-hangin’
• I love them both unconditionally
• Judd Apatow was involved with both, producing and co-writing Walk Hard and producing Popstar, which I respect greatly because it means at some point he said “Well, apparently people don’t like goofy music satires enough to make them financially viable, but screw it, we’re doing another one!”

Bless you, Judd.

4. Ahh, wait. There’s one more similarity: both movies feature Tim Meadows, as they should, because Tim Meadows is the best. He doesn’t have quite as memorable a role here (there’s nothing close to “You don’t want no part of this” for him to sink his teeth into), but he’s just so good as Conner’s sleazy manager. Tim Meadows is never bad in anything. This is a fact.

5. Things really start going sideways for Connor when he brings a new act on tour with him, Hunter the Hungry (Chris Redd), a Tyler the Creator knockoff who loves pranks and is definitely crazy. This all leads to a prank involving stage tricks and fast wardrobe changes that leaves Connor nude on stage with his penis tucked back through his legs as headlines like “Connor The Dickless” appear on trashy tabloid shows all over the country. He’s embarrassed and ashamed and starts a downward spiral that leaves him all alone. It is so, so stupid. This is the major turning point in the movie. I couldn’t love it more if I tried.

6. Popstar is littered with dumb little jokes, like a massive bee attack that happens when the cameras aren’t rolling, or a whole bit involving Seal and “party wolves” gone mad, or long runs of fake EDM stars (DJ Tommy Pizza, Oprah Spinfrey, Vinyl Richie, R2LSD2, Ecstasy-3PO, LSD-3P0, Elton John) and weed strains (Witch’s Titty, Aqua Butt, Beethoven’s Nightmare, Frog Jizz, the last of which actually appeared to be just a jar of real frog semen). All wonderful little pieces of business, to be sure. But my favorite is the recurring fake TMZ bit featuring Rob Huebel, Eric Andre, Chelsea Peretti, and Mike Birbiglia.

It’s basically just them drinking from giant thermoses and devolving into a group of howling jackals over and over throughout the movie until it stops making anything resembling sense. Just shouting and slurping and wigs and even more shouting. I have no idea how it works, but it does. Well.

7. Connor’s post-tuck tailspin, in bullet point form:

• Has a fight with his band
• Serves pancakes laced with dog poop to his hangers-on to see if they’re just yes men, which pisses off Owen, who points out that he’s Connor’s oldest friend and not some lackie before leaving the tour
• Fires his manager
• His beloved turtle dies
• He’s just kind of cruising around passed out on a hoverboard.

It’s not ideal.

This brings us to the redemption. To the triumph. To a huge weed farm in the country where Lawrence has been living, building things out of wood and stewing over a years-long grudge about credit for a particular verse.

8. You really do need to watch the confession scene to grasp how funny it is. Words and screencaps will not do, although I’ll try. The short version: Connor holds a one-sided conversation with Lawrence in which he slowly, then quickly, changes his story as the truth becomes apparent to him. The delivery of the whole speech is so good, the kind of thing that Samberg has been doing well for well over a decade now. Here are some of the screencaps I told you wouldn’t do it justice. Ugh. Why are you still reading this, anyway? Why aren’t you watching Popstar again? Incredibly poor performance on your part today.

9. Popstar has a million music cameos in it. Mariah Carey, Ringo Starr, Questlove, 50 Cent, Usher, the list is absurd. Literally dozens of them. And I would list them all here for you if not for two small issues: One, I do not want to; two, I would rather point out that a musician named “Hammerleg” is mentioned a few times during the movie and we only get to finally see him at the very end of the movie and GUESS WHO PLAYS HAMMERLEG.

Oh hell yes, Weird Al. Weird Al is the greatest. The man has been doing nothing but producing joyful parodies of pop songs and being an absolute sweetheart for like four decades now. We do not do enough to thank Weird Al for his contributions to society. There should be statues of him and his accordion scattered across the country. His birthday should be a holiday. A fun cameo in a good movie where he plays a dude named Hammerleg is a decent start, I guess. I’m serious about the statues, though.

10. The movie ends with the Style Boyz reuniting on-stage to perform a new song titled “Incredible Thoughts,” a spoken-word performance that consists of dozens of stoner observations punctuated by a Michael Bolton chorus.

It is very dumb and very funny. Just like Popstar. A good movie.

Lana Del Rey has been teasing a poetry book, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass, and an audiobook version of it for a while. Now, it looks like we know when both are coming out. As Fader notes, listings for the book are available on Amazon (audiobook) and Waterstones (print book). The audiobook has a listed release date of July 28, while the book is expected to be released the next day.

Both listings include a statement from Del Rey, which reads, “Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass is the title poem of the book and the first poem I wrote of many. Some of which came to me in their entirety, which I dictated and then typed out, and some that I worked laboriously picking apart each word to make the perfect poem. They are eclectic and honest and not trying to be anything other than what they are and for that reason I’m proud of them, especially because the spirit in which they were written was very authentic.”

There is not yet a tracklist available for the audiobook, but the listings note that some of the poems included are “LA Who Am I To Love You?,” “The Land Of 1,000 Fires,” “Past The Bushes Cypress Thriving,” “Never To Heaven,” “Tessa Dipietro,” and “Happy.” Amazon notes the audiobook is 33 minutes long, and will be released via Simon & Schuster Audio. For the audiobook, Del Rey will read 14 poems (of the “more than thirty” from the print book) atop music from Jack Antonoff.

Meanwhile, Del Rey previously revealed that the book/audiobook will be followed by an album on September 5.

Disney doesn’t do “off” years.

Sure, in the pre-pandemic days of 2020, it might have seemed like the company was taking it easy after a record-breaking 2019 which had the highest-grossing movie ever, a new Star Wars, and Toy Story and Frozen sequels. But in February, Disney paid $75 million for the rights to Hamilton, the Tony Award-winning sensation that ensured no one will ever again confuse the guy on the ten-dollar bill with a president. The original plan was to release the musical in 2021, but then These Uncertain Times happened and, again, Disney doesn’t do “off” years, especially “off” years with baffling stinkers like Artemis Fowl. So, Hamilton was released on Disney+ over the Fourth of July weekend.

Disney is not throwing away its shot (at getting you to sign up for Disney+).

Hamilton was not only a huge get for Walt Disney Studios, it was also, I assumed, an expensive tactic to win a boatload of Oscars. But nope, it turns out the film, seamlessly made up of three performances from 2016, isn’t eligible. “Despite the various historical precedents that would seem to point toward Hamilton’s inclusion — most notably, the filmed version of Give ‘Em Hell, Harry, a one-man show about Harry Truman that earned a Best Actor nomination for James Whitmore at the 1976 Oscars — an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences source says plainly that, as a recorded stage production, Hamilton is not eligible for awards consideration,” according to Vulture. Lin-Manuel Miranda will have to settle for multiple Tonys and Grammys, an Emmy, a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Kennedy Center Honor. Poor guy.

If Hamilton had been eligible, a Best Picture nomination would have been likely in a weird year for movies. Deserved? Maybe, maybe not, for the same reason that I’m still angry at everyone who listed Twin Peaks: The Return as one of the best movies of the 2010s (IT’S A TV SHOW), but I digress. Let’s say, hypothetically, it was nominated for the top prize at the Oscars. And, hypothetically, it won. That would snap one of the oddest streaks in Academy Awards history, one that Disney desperately wants to end. Walt Disney Studios is a prestigious film studio that has been around since the 1920s and is considered part of the “Big Five,” along with Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, and Paramount Pictures. But no Disney film has ever won Best Picture.

Some of its subsidiaries have found success on Oscars night, like when the Disney-owned Miramax dominated the 71st Annual Academy Awards with Shakespeare in Love (two reasons it shouldn’t have won Best Picture: 1: “produced by Harvey Weinstein,” and 2. The Thin Red Line is better) and Pixar and Marvel have been nominated for Up and Toy Story 3 and Black Panther, but those companies were acquisitions. If we’re talking DISNEY movies, there have only been two Best Picture nominations: Mary Poppins in 1965 and Beauty and the Beast (the first animated movie to score a Best Pic nom) in 1992; they lost to My Fair Lady and The Silence of the Lambs. That’s tough competition.

With Hamilton out of the running, it’s unlikely there will be a third nomination, unless the “Bryan Cranston talks to gorillas” movie The One and Only Ivan turns out to be a masterpiece. No wonder Disney acquired 20th Century Studios, which, coincidentally I’m sure, is the production company with the most Best Picture noms. Not the most wins, though: that honor belongs to Columbia Pictures, which Disney should own by 2023.

Planned Parenthood has issued a response to Kanye West‘s recent Forbes interview in which he takes the organization to task amid a flurry of bizarre claims about his presidential candidacy announcement.

In the interview, Kanye said, “I am pro-life because I’m following the word of the bible,” while expressing a not-uncommon belief that Planned Parenthood clinics were “placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the devil’s work.”

Now, the organization’s Director of Black Leadership and Engagement, Nia Martin-Robinson, has issued a response. In an interview with TMZ, Robinson shot down West’s characterization of the organization, saying, “Black women are free to make our own decisions about our bodies and pregnancies, and want and deserve to have access to the best medical care available. Any insinuation that abortion is Black genocide is offensive and infantilizing. The real threat to Black communities’ safety, health, and lives stems from lack of access to quality, affordable health care, police violence and the criminalization of reproductive health care by anti-abortion opposition.”

Planned Parenthood has previously responded to anti-abortion activists by reminding the public that abortions are only a small part of what they do and that no abortions actually take place at their facilities. They’ve also taken other prominent public figures, such as rapper T.I., to task for making unscientific claims about women’s reproductive health through their Twitter and other outlets to try to re-educate the nation about things we all should have been learning before high school. Meanwhile, Brooklyn Vegan points out that the Supreme Court ruled to “uphold a Trump administration rule that allows institutions with religious or moral objections to opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s birth control coverage mandate.” This could lose up to 126,000 people access to birth control coverage in their employer-provided healthcare.

It looks like 50 Cent’s hijinks are actually the reason T.I. issued his Verzuz battle challenge. In a remote interview with All Def’s Roast This, T.I. explained why he really wanted to go at 50, saying, “It ain’t that many multimedia global moguls that can really see me. Everybody keep trying to put me with somebody else from Atlanta. Then they go kick some sh*t in New York City… Just to be honest with you man, I want Jay!”

However, he said, the probability of Jay doing a Verzuz battle with anyone seems low. He’s a billionaire. He’s married to Beyonce. That man is not worried about people on the internet. It’s been years since he last logged into Twitter — a rare enough occurrence that it caused a media frenzy as outlets scrambled to cover his list of lyrical inspirations for like a week after.

Which is why T.I. sees himself and 50 Cent as “neck and neck.” He also credits 50 for having the right disposition to handle his own energy. After all, T.I.’s initial challenge contained a number of goads that some might have seen as over-the-top, while 50 just laughed it up and took it back the memes. “I need somebody who I can talk to who ain’t gone feel like I’m pickin’ on him. I need somebody who ain’t gone be timid, who ain’t gone be shy. He’s the biggest bully y’all got up there.” And as he says, “How can you pick on a bully?”

And while T.I. doesn’t know “the analytics” on who has the most, biggest hits, he believes, “I’m doper.” He asserts that “I don’t care who sold how many records… I think my catalog is doper. That sh*t gone stretch all the way from 2001 to now. Which gives you a more multifaceted, diversified appetite for music.”

50 has yet to accept T.I.’s challenge, but he will most assuredly have some kind of response whenever he sees this interview. If the battle ever does happen, one thing is for sure — it’ll be one of Verzuz‘s most-watched events yet.

Watch T.I.’s interview with All Def’s Roast This above.

Ever since learning to pole dance for her “Cellophane” video, FKA Twigs has stuck with the artform. Now she has chronicled a moving experience she had with pole dancing in a new video, titled “We Are The Womxn,” made in partnership with WeTransfer.

The video explains, “In late 2019 FKA Twigs traveled to perform at Afropunk Festival in Atlanta. There she joined forces with healer and spiritual leader Queen Afua to host a moon dance in celebration of the sacred womxn. After the moon dance, Twigs led the womxn to Blue Glame: Atlanta landmark and the city’s first Black strip club. Summoning the divine feminine, together they created an environment in which womxn danced for each other.”

Twigs said of the experience:

“I decided to hold the second part of the all-female and femme sacred moon dance at Blue Flame, firstly to honor the heritage of pole dancing, but also to create a matriarchal dominance in a space that’s usually filled with, and run by, male energy. […] I found it incredibly powerful to see womxn admiring and encouraging each other to dance and celebrate all different expressions of femininity and the female form. The space was filled with laughter and joy, something that Queen Afua advocates as a form of healing for the womb. […]

For the past few years I’ve been curious about [my personal traumas], and actively trying to not only heal [them] but to also set free the ancestral traumas I carry with me. These traumas don’t belong to me, and should not hold me back, but they do…as a woman of color, the lineage of pain within my bloodline can be deafening, like tinnitus that only I can hear, so to be able to acknowledge my search for healing and peaceful silence amongst womxn who may feel the same was incredibly comforting. […]

I’m actually pretty shy, but I felt so encouraged to dance and enjoy my body by all the amazing womxn who came together. I particularly bonded with one dancer at Blue Flame [named] Kharisma. She had such vibrant energy and at the beginning of the night she called the other girls on to the stage to be admired and supported in their expression. My experience at the Blue Flame solidified that, although historically womxn are often pitched against each other for their looks or their assets by the patriarchy, when left to our own devices we are incredibly nurturing and healing for each other.”

Watch the “We Are The Womxn” video above.

The weeks and months leading up to the start of a new NFL campaign feature a whole lot of news and notes getting put out into the universe for football fans to pour over before the season begins. Tucked away in all of this is something of a rite of passage: members of the upcoming season’s rookie class learning what their rating will be in the upcoming Madden game. It doesn’t always go over particularly well when a guy thinks he’s being slept on by the folks at EA Sports, but to help soften the blow this year that can come with delivering that news, Madden got some help.

In a new video, Hall of Fame signal caller Steve Young revealed some of the ratings for four members of this year’s rookie quarterback class: Tua Tagovailoa of the Miami Dolphins, Justin Herbert of the Los Angeles Chargers, Jordan Love of the Green Bay Packers, and Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles. While we don’t learn their overall ratings in the video, Tagovailoa, the No. 5 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, will enter this year’s game as a 73 overall, while Herbert, who went one pick later, enters as a 70.

Madden NFL 21, which features Baltimore Ravens star Lamar Jackson on the cover, hits current-generation consoles on August 28. The exact release date for the game on next-generation consoles is still unknown, but we do know the game will be available on the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X a little later this year.

It didn’t take much for C.C. Sabathia to get used to retired life. The former Cleveland Indians, Milwaukee Brewers, and New York Yankees ace called it a career at the conclusion of the 2019 season, although for the last few years, Sabathia has had a pretty good idea of how life after baseball would go.

“I told everybody, really like two or three years ago, that I’m going to be really good at retirement,” the 2007 AL Cy Young winner told Uproxx Sports over the phone.

It certainly helps that his first foray into retired life is still within the world of baseball. Sabathia will serve as the creative director for a line of clothing that looks to pay tribute to the Negro Leagues in celebration of its 100th anniversary, along with the Black individuals who played such an important role in integrating the game. The initiative is the creation of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and the lifestyle brand Roots of Fight.

“Preserving the legacy of the Negro Leagues’ contributions to baseball is vital to growing our game’s diversity and popularity,” MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark said in a statement. “This partnership will help bring to life the spirit of these great players for a new generation of players and fans.”

While Sabathia was on his way to Yankee Stadium a little earlier this week, Uproxx Sports caught up with him to discuss the line, the role he hopes this plays in celebrating the Black individuals who are such an important part of baseball’s history, life in retirement, and getting to check out the Yankees during the team’s first televised intrasquad scrimmage.

How have you been keeping occupied the last couple of months, even beyond this being the first year where you’ve been retired from baseball?

Yeah, man. I told everybody, really like two or three years ago, that I’m going to be really good at retirement. I’m good just being in the house, being around the house, being with the kids. I traveled and played, really, all of my 20s and 30s, so being able to just kick back and hang with my family is a blessing, and it has been a lot of fun.

And actually, going through COVID and this quarantine and stuff, it was horrible for the country and we’re still going through it, but for us as a family, just getting that quarantine time, having all four of my kids in the house, there’s no school, there’s no extra activities. It’s just us kind of hanging out, being able to reconnect with them — was kind of a blessing in disguise for me, just getting back reintegrating with the family, if that makes sense.

No, for sure. I’m glad to hear it’s all going well and I’m glad to see that you have something really cool in the pipeline. Can you give me the backstory behind this line of gear that’s coming out — how it came about and when you came on board as creative director?

Yeah. So Tony Clark and I have a really close relationship, and we had been talking back and forth about wanting to do something special for the 100th year of the Negro Leagues. I think every Black player that has played in the league goes through Kansas City and goes to that museum, especially the guys that got to play at a time when Buck O’Neil was still around. And he would come to BP in Kansas City and introduce himself, and tell us stories about the Negro Leagues and just inform us about the museum and all of that stuff. So, really since 2001, I’ve been a huge fan of the museum and really had a good relationship with Buck, and been taking players there ever since. Every time I go into Kansas City, I take a trip to the museum. I try to take a couple of young guys and it’s just been my thing.

So, talking to Tony, we wanted to come up with something really cool. And immediately, I thought about Roots of Fight. I know [Roots of Fight co-founder] Jesse [Katz] and those guys, they tell great stories. I love the clothing that they do, the actual material of the clothing is incredible. And I knew that they tell really, really dope stories. So, I immediately just told Tony, I think this is the company we should go with and we just went from there.

So what became your stated goal when you decided to be a part of this project?

Just to bring awareness, you know what I mean? And tell the cool stories through this clothing line. I don’t think a lot of people really know about the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City, how nice it is, and how it could be a destination. And hopefully, people inquiring about the clothes, and seeing that it’s the 100th year, and seeing all the guys behind it, will bring a lot more awareness and get people educated and going through Kansas City to check out the museum.

Do you have a favorite piece of gear in the line, or is it one of those things where you just can’t pick one? Because like I said, it is a really, really nice line that you guys got coming out.

Yeah, I honestly cannot pick one. I’m wearing the “They Played For Us” shirt right now. I’m headed into the stadium right now and I have that shirt on. But I’ve been rocking this stuff every day, man. So, I can’t really pick one thing. They did such a great job with all of it. I’m just happy the way it all came out and I think people are going to be very happy with us just getting started with this.

How important is it to constantly reinforce the role that the Negro Leagues, that players like Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, etc., played in getting baseball to where it is today, both in general and as Major League Baseball is going through this moment where we’ve seen a decrease in the percentage of black players that are in the sport?

The slogan is actually, “They Played For Us.” It just came about just because, just thinking about those guys, what they sacrificed and starting their own league, and really playing amongst themselves and making it a league and making it this huge thing, and getting the game integrated, and letting the country know that we can play baseball. I wouldn’t be where I’m at today, none of us would be. So I think it’s just paying homage to those guys that — not just the Jackie Robinsons, obviously we know what he went through to be able to play Major League Baseball, but the Satchel Paiges, the Josh Gibsons, Cool Papa Bell, the guy that never really got their due. It’ll be cool to tell their stories and bring awareness to those guys.

So, it’s a direct effect, it’s a direct correlation. Those guys played baseball at a high level, they played so we can. And that was kind of the thinking behind it. It’s really simple, to be honest, and it’s easy for people to get behind because, like I said, there would be no Frank Thomas, there would be no Bo Jackson, you know what I mean? Ken Griffey Jr. It’s a bunch of different guys that wouldn’t have had a chance to display their talent had these guys in the Negro Leagues not done what they did.

This is the latest initiative that we’ve seen in celebrating the role that the Jackie Robinsons, the Cool Papa Bells, the Satchel Paiges and the Negro Leagues as a whole have played in baseball’s history. What impact do you hope this all has in this larger quest to reinforce how vital these individuals were in the game’s really rich history?

Yeah. It’s huge. And like you said in the last question, the numbers are going down, and it’s up to my generation of players to get back into inner city and get these Black kids back playing baseball. But it’s going to take for us to tell these cool stories about Satchel Paige warming up in the bullpen and Cool Papa Bell, and how we are huge figures in the game, and have been for a long time.

So, getting together with this players alliance that we formed, all the guys that we have in it. A hundred years later, after the Negro Leagues formed, we’re still fighting for some of the same things. So, it’s good to have the connection with all the guys that I have in the big leagues now.

So do want to toss a few baseball questions your way. I think I know the answer to this, but how quick did it take for retirement to set in? Was it a thing where, once you were done, you were like, “okay, whatever,” or are you still kind of processing that this is your first year without baseball since you were what, four or five years old?

No, if I had to say to somebody, do I miss it? I don’t miss it at all. I’m actually heading down in there now. So, I still get a chance to be around and hang out, but my time had passed as far as playing, I was way out of my prime, talent-wise. So, it just feels good to be able to still have the connection with the guys, and be able to go down there and hang out, and not have to actually pitch. So, that’s a lot of fun. Right after we lost in the ALCS to the Astros, I remember, I flew home, and my family was in Houston still. And I got home and I was the only one here by myself and I kind of just broke down. It was like a moment to myself, like, it’s over. And, I just got a chance to cry it all out, let it go. And then like 15 minutes later, I was good.

There you go. So is it one of those things where former teammates who have since retired are like, “We don’t need to give C.C. advice on retirement,” or do you have guys who were saying like, “This is what life is like now that you’re not preparing and dedicating 365 days a year to playing baseball”?

Oh no, I’m still always talking to the guys. I’m always talking to Andy [Pettitte]. I talk to Derek [Jeter] a lot. But me and Andy have a lot in common as far as family wise and things that we like to do. So I’ve been talking with him a long time. And like I said, amongst my friend, my circle, everybody knows that I’m going to be a good retired player. I’m pretty lazy, so I don’t need much to get going. So, just hanging around the family and doing simple things would be fine with me, I’m excited to just kind of do that.

I have to ask a few Yankee questions. First off, just how was it getting to be at the scrimmage last night and watching what was essentially a spring training game on July 6?

Yeah, it was crazy, man. Having the chance to be down there and watch those guys play, after everything that’s been going on. I know a lot of those guys were excited just to get back out there. But it was cool seeing baseball. Obviously, it’s been a rough summer for us. It’s July 7 and they haven’t played one game yet. That’s an unusual thing for a baseball fan, so being able to have baseball back at Yankee Stadium — when I pulled up last night, the lights were on at the stadium and it just looked cool driving in. So it was exciting. Hopefully we can just continue to keep being safe, do this thing right, and hopefully get a season off.

Yeah, obviously not a full live intense game, but just in what you got to see, how do you think the team looked?

I thought it was good. I don’t know if you watched, but Clarke Schmidt is going to be really good, so that was fun to watch. Watching J.A. Happ, I know he worked really, really, really hard this offseason to come back and be ready, so to see him be sharp as he was yesterday — I think we scored one run in the entire game. So, that just goes to show how good our pitching is, because our lineup is probably the best in the big leagues.

And then my last question, you know this as well as anyone, the expectations are always sky high in the Bronx. You’re still around the team, do you get the sense that even with everything that has gone on, the guys in the locker room are still as laser-focused as you have to be when the bar is win the World Series?

Let me tell you something, if a baseball season starts and the Yankees are playing baseball, every player on that team knows what’s at stake. Every time a pitch is thrown, every time it’s opening day and a pitch is thrown, all we’re thinking about is trying to win a World Series. That’s always the ultimate goal. So, no matter whether it’s a COVID shortened season, a strike shortened season, whatever, if they play baseball, every player in that locker room will be laser focused and ready to go, to try to win a championship. And, that’s the only reason you play in New York.