Month: July 2020

One of the most memorable moments from the second season of HBO’s Succession was undoubtedly when Kendall Roy (played by Jeremy Strong) honored his father with a cringe-worthy rap song titled “L To The OG.” But, thanks to Cousin Greg (played by Emmy-nominated actor Nicholas Bruan), “L To The OG” has a new competitor: Bruan just released a pandemic-themed anthem titled “Antibodies.”

Braun’s tongue-in-cheek single was created after he posted the idea to Instagram and implored fans to help with the instrumentals. After penning the lyrics, Bruan knew the song had to be of the pop-punk persuasion and drew inspiration from Blink-182 and Papa Roach. “Do you have the antibodies? / ‘Cause if you don’t / You better stay away,” Braun sings a the chorus.

Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in an interview about the track, Braun said it was originally born out of quarantine boredom. Braun was staying at a friend’s house in LA and planned on going on a date before his friends advised him not to: “So I was in this two-week quarantine away from even my friends in this house and I think my brain just started turning like, what would make this okay? Or what would allow me to go on a social distance walk with somebody? And maybe it’s the antibodies. And, obviously, just felt like a punk song because it’s the word antibodies … I knew it had to be in the Blink 182, Papa Roach, POD realm.”

While the single may be less than serious, the actor knows the pandemic is no laughing matter. Proceeds from the track will benefit two charities, Partners In Health And Cope. Partners In Health is a global organization that helps people in communities that don’t receive adequate healthcare and Cope is a non-profit assisting the Navajo nation in the midst of the pandemic.

Listen to Braun’s “Antibodies (Do You Have The)” above.

Nicholas Bruan is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

You might be familiar with our Indie Mixtape newsletter. (If you’re not, go ahead and sign up for that right here or below.) But what if you could also listen to our newsletter in addition to reading it each week? Wouldn’t that be a dream? Well, we’ve got you covered.

Starting on Friday, July 31, Indie Mixtape is pleased to announce a new podcast called Indiecast, hosted by our very own Steven Hyden and long-time music critic Ian Cohen of Pitchfork and Stereogum fame. Each week, Ian and Steven will talk about all the latest news in indie music. They will review new albums, break down trends, expose exciting new artists, and give you all the necessary context to understand what’s happening in the indie world as well as moments that established the genre’s canon. Of course, they’ll also pointlessly rank things — whether it’s the best indie albums of the aughts, the greatest Phoebe Bridgers tracks, or their favorite chillwave songs. True to its name, Indiecast has you covered on everything indie.

The show debuts on July 31, and there will be new episodes every Friday. Listen to the trailer and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, Michael Jordan and Jordan Brand announced a pledge to donate $100 million over the course of 10 years to support the fight against systemic racism in America.

Now, Jordan Brand has put together its inaugural list of partners, in addition to a list of categories that each partner will fit into over the next decade of giving by the Nike subsidiary. The first group of donations includes $1 million to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; $1 million to the Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted People and Families Movement; and $500,000 to Black Voters Matter.

Jordan himself has also taken on a front-facing role in this program.

“I’m all in with Jordan Brand, the Jordan family and our partners, who share a commitment to address the historical inequality that continues to plague Black communities in the U.S.,” he said in a press release. “There is a long history of oppression against Black Americans that holds us back from full participation in American society. We understand that one of the main ways we can change systemic racism is at the polls. We know it will take time for us to create the change we want to see, but we are working quickly to take action for the Black community’s voice to be heard.”

With a name like Jordan’s and through Nike’s reach, this program is already showing the power it will have in the coming years.

After an absolutely horrid month it which it seemed a rift was opening between hip-hop and the Jewish community thanks to egregious comments made by certain elders of hip-hop, IDK and ASAP Ferg have arrived with seemingly the perfect remedy in the form of the video for their recent collaboration, “Mazel Tov.” The video sees IDK, Ferg and a few of their friends throwing a party in the hills, dancing the hora, and yes, lifting each other on chairs in celebration.

“Mazel Tov” was the first single from IDK’s latest project, the Basketball County soundtrack IDK & Friends 2. The album also featured a number of big-name collaborators for the DMV native as well as other PG County stars like Big Jam, Big Flock, Rico Nasty, Weensey of the Backyard Band, and Yung Manny. Among the bigger name stars, IDK invited friends like Denzel Curry, Maxo Kream, PNB Rock, and Wale, while he got a big co-sign from Memphis legend Juicy J.

IDK’s profile has risen considerably in the wake of IDK & Friends 2, culminating in his first late-night television appearance for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he bypassed the opportunity to promote his new singles in favor of a performance highlighting the social justice movement with his Is He Real? track “No Cable.”

Watch IDK and ASAP Ferg’s “Mazel Tov” video above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

August means a change in the craft beer world. The anticipation of summer is behind us and brewers are fully shifting into fall mode. Soon, you’re going to start seeing pumpkin ales and German lagers dominating the scene. Yes, it’s already pumpkin beer season. We’re going to wait another month before shouting any out, though — we’re not ready to let go of summer just yet.

We are ready for some crisp German lagers, however. There’s a fair amount of it coming out right now that’ll help us celebrate this year’s canceled Oktoberfest in our own backyards. Plus, a pale German lager makes for a great late summer sipper.

Hopefully, the eight beers we’re calling out this month will pique your interest and inspire you to explore exciting expressions made near you or sold at your closest bottle shop. The picks below are regional craft beer releases from breweries that we vouch for (we weren’t able to taste them all this month because of the continued pandemic, so we’re offering tasting notes from the brewers where necessary).

PACIFIC NORTHWEST DROP: Fremont Sky Kraken

Style: Hazy Pale Ale
ABV: 5.5%
Brewery: Fremont Brewing, Seattle, WA

The Beer:

Okay, Sky Kraken isn’t a new release this month. It’s a year-round powerhouse beer from Seattle. But, since Seattle (finally) got it’s own NHL team named the Seattle Kraken, we figured it was time to give some love to Fremont Brewing and their delicious pale ale.

Tasting Notes:

This hazy pale is all about the counterpoints. The nose races between tropical fruits and dank earthiness with a cut of citrus. That citrus carries on over the palate as those tropical fruits are spiked with black pepper and a real sense of grassy undertones.

SOUTHWEST DROP: San Diego Brewers United Double IPA

Style: Double IPA
ABV: 8.5%
Brewery: Collab between Stone Brewing, AleSmith Brewing Co., Modern Times Beer, Mother Earth Brewing Co., Pizza Port Brewing Co., Port Brewing Co., and Thorn Brewing Co.

The Beer:

This beer is a huge collab between some of the biggest names in San Diego’s craft beer scene. The beer is double dry-hopped, allowing the drinker to get a clear idea of the power of a classic craft double IPA from the West Coast. Profits from the brew go towards the San Diego Brewers Guild, a nonprofit that supports over 120 breweries in San Diego county trying to stay afloat during the pandemic.

Tasting Notes (from the brewers):

“It’s a West Coast IPA all the way, baby. It’s a super dank bevy with a bevy of bright tropical notes.”

ROCKY MOUNTAIN DROP: Uinta Fest

Style: German Lager
ABV: 5.7%
Brewery: Uinta Brewing, Salt Lake City, UT

The Beer:

Fest is here to celebrate Oktoberfest and we’re here for it. The beer keeps the hops in check and maintains a very easy-drinkability that plainly suits late summer thirst-quenching.

Tasting Notes:

You get a real sense of dialed up lager on the nose with whiffs of crusty bread next to dry straw. The sip is super crisp as those bready malts carry on with a nice backend of hop bitterness that leans mildly floral.

SOUTHERN DROP: Family Business Beer Co. Golden Age

Style: German Pilsner
ABV: 4.5%
Brewery: Family Business Beer Co., Dripping Springs, TX

The Beer:

Golden Age is an award-winning beer made for hot summer days spent under the shade of a big ol’ tree. The beer is a classic pilsner with a clear “Noble” hop essence that’ll surely go down easy.

Tasting Notes (from the brewer):

“Crisp and lively on the tongue, featuring a mild, earthy hop bouquet, and superbly clean finish.”

MIDWEST DROP: Lakefront Oktoberfest

Style: German Lager
ABV: 6%
Brewery: Lakefront Brewery, Milwaukee, WI

The Beer:

Oktoberfest from Milwaukee’s Lakefront is an easy buy. The beer marries Two-Row Pale, Vienna, Munich, Melanoidin, and 30ºL Caramel Munich malts with Mt. Hood hops, which is an American variation of the Bavarian Hallertau Mittelfrüher hop variety.

Tasting Notes:

You’ll be greeted by all those malts with a lean into a caramel sweetness. The sip is refreshing as the hops make an appearance as a supporting character to the bready maltiness. There’s a hint of nuttiness on the back end that helps bolster the caramel and malt.

NORTHEAST DROP: Hill Farmstead Edward

Style: American Pale Ale
ABV: 5.2%
Brewery: Greensboro Bend, VT

The Beer:

Edward is officially back. The brew is made with well water from the farm, American malted barley, and a matrix of hops alongside Hill Farmstead’s proprietary ale yeast strain. All of that makes for one unique and well-crafted can of beer.

Tasting Notes:

The unfiltered aspect of the ale really allows the hops to shine with a clear piney dankness and earthy nature. There’s a subtle citrus counterpoint to the resin that works a nice balancing act. The finish is long, lush, and full of hop pale ale vibes straight from a dank pine forest.

WILD CARD DROP: Brooklyn Summer Ale

Style: Pale Ale
ABV: 5%
Brewery: Brooklyn Brewery, Brooklyn, NY

The Beer:

Summer Ale is a necessary sixer right now if you want to hold onto summer. The beer is brewed to be light, quaffable, and tasty. There’s no challenging the palate, just good beer that goes down well when you have a hot dog in hand.

Tasting Notes:

This beer is light in all the right ways. There’s a clear citrus feel that leads towards a mild floral hop nature. That’s all underpinned by an easy maltiness with a slightly sweet caramel edge.

INT’L PICK OF THE MONTH: Oude Riesling Tilquin à L’Ancienne

Style: Grape Lambic
ABV: 7.7%
Brewery: Gueuzerie Tilquin, Rebecq, Belgium

The Beer:

Gueuzerie Tilquin’s Oude Riesling Tilquin is a f*cking masterpiece. The lambic is made by fermenting Riesling grapes in the brew. The beer is then left unfiltered and unpasteurized and is bottled and then ferments again while it rests in the bottle.

Tasting Notes:

The sip greets you with fresh lemons mingling with ripe grapes, sour berries, farmyard funk, bales of straw, and fruity vinegar. The palate ebbs and flows with those same touchstones as a certain minerality and a hint of pineapple arrives next to grapefruit pith. The end is dry and full of life as the sour, tart, funk, grape, and fruit explodes like fireworks on a late summer’s eve.

The NBA season tips off Thursday, and the league reportedly had zero positives tests in its latest round of results.

According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, out of 344 total tests, none came back positive.

The league soon put out a statement confirming that there is no COVID-19 in the bubble that they have identified.

As Charania notes, this is now two straight stretches without a positive, which is even more noteworthy considering the concern at the outset of the bubble experiment that false positives could throw everyone into chaos. The NBA has avoided infection, but they’ve also gotten lucky that no tests have wrongly displayed a positive for a healthy player or staff member.

This is particularly good news considering what is happening with MLB, which is already experiencing its first team outbreak on the Miami Marlins. Even compared with MLS and the NWSL, pro basketball has done well. Both American soccer leagues saw teams drop out of the bubble environment before games even began due to infections on participating teams. In the case of MLS, two teams entered the bubble then left after outbreaks, while the NWSL side that dealt with the virus never entered its bubble.

The NBA is already beginning to discuss next season and how to safely play in 2021, so the league and its teams will be glad to see infection rates zeroed out to begin the Bubble games on Walt Disney World property.

The NBA restart tips off Thursday at 6:30 p.m. ET when the Utah Jazz take on the New Orleans Pelicans.

Everyone who saw Hamilton in person, either on Broadway or while the production toured the globe, knew about The Gasp before the musical landed on Disney+ over July 4 weekend. But for those who weren’t willing to fork over $849 for one ticket, the ending — where Eliza, played by Phillipa Soo, looks out into the audience and gasps — was a total surprise. There’s been plenty of speculation about what the ambiguous ending means, with Lin-Manuel Miranda once saying, “I think it’s different for each Eliza.”

For the Eliza in the Disney+ taping, she thinks it’s a moment of meta realization.

While appearing on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show, Soo asked co-hosts Cagle and Julia Cunningham for their interpretations of the gasp. “I thought it was a breaking of the [fourth] wall, like why the story is called Hamilton. This is the point where it’s gone and people are hearing the story, a gasp,” Cunningham responded, while Cagle added, “I felt like she was seeing [Alexander Hamilton] because we were jumping several years ahead to her death, but I think in that time she was also realizing she had told his story.”

Soo can’t recall what she thought in 2016, when the Disney+ performance was filmed, but with the benefit of hindsight, “Yes, the character of Eliza sees Hamilton or sees that legacy or sees that orphanage … or sees her kids telling her story. It was an exploration for me everyday because you do a show eight times a week for a year and you find new things every single time.” She also confirmed that the fourth-wall interpretation was accurate, as Eliza would “look out and see all these beautiful faces and acknowledge that story we had all taken a ride to witness.” That was true for every night, except for when Mike Pence watched Hamilton. Then the gasp was replaced with a “boooooooo.”

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

In the midst of a global pandemic, plenty of the rich and powerful are coming out of the woodwork to use their resources to help those in need. Perhaps the most inspiring story, though, is that of Holli Morgan, an 11-year-old from DeKalb County, Atlanta. When Holli was worried about homeless people staying safe from the virus, she decided to make masks for them. She’s already made hundreds of masks, and she plans to make hundreds more.

At first, Holli made masks for healthcare workers. That is, until she saw a report on Channel 2 News about mandatory mask laws, and she asked her mother how these rules would apply to homeless people. She became inspired to help, and, eventually, Holli’s efforts became so large that she and her mother were interviewed on Channel 2 News itself. “She’s a little girl who wanted to be part of something big,” said Holli’s mother in the interview. “None of us really knew how big it would go.”

The pastor of Holli’s church, Dr. Kerwin Lee, has called Holli a “blessing to others,” and has taken it upon himself to distribute Holli’s masks to those who need them — and he should be pretty helpful, as he has congregations in three local counties. “Throughout our 25-year history, we’ve seen God use many young people to make a difference,” he said. “Holli is making a difference during a season of pandemic.”

In a WSB-TV article on July 10, 2020, Holli is quoted as saying, “I have 574 masks in total. My goal is 1,200 masks.” Then, in an ABC7-NY article on July 12, 2020, Holli is listed as having sewn 580 masks. This puts Holli solidly at six new masks in two days, or a rate of plus three masks per day. At this pace, Holli will reach her goal of 1,200 masks by Saturday, March 5, 2022, assuming she takes Sundays off. Keep going, Holli!

Holli’s mother said “ever since [Holli] was born, she’s always had this big heart.” Likewise, Dr. Lee emphasized, “It’s her own initiative. It wasn’t something that someone planted in her. She saw there was a need, and knew she was gifted to do this.” It’s amazing to hear adults singing Holli’s praises and give her credit for her hard work — however, Holli remains brave and humble, simply saying of the matter, “It makes me feel like I did something to help the Earth.”

It’s hard work to be there for yourself and your loved ones during a pandemic, and to do so for strangers is an even harder, nobler endeavor. Plenty of children are spending their newfound free time playing video games or watching TikToks — and there’s nothing wrong with that, but sewing classes are cheap, and people are dying.

After joking in an early March livestream that she wasn’t “scared” of coronavirus and calling it the “flu,” Doja Cat announced she tested positive in an interview last week. Fans have been pressing the singer for details about her experience with the virus, and Doja has finally answered.

The singer replied to several inquiries about the status of her symptoms on Twitter. Doja’s answers were fairly succinct but still offered some insight into how she is recovering. When a fan asked if she still had the virus, Doja replied “not anymore.”

The singer said she never had any respiratory issues, which is a common symptom of the virus, but she did have body aches, a two-day fever, and lose her sense of taste for a period of time.

From her responses, it seems as though Doja’s case was mild. The singer originally said she wasn’t sure how she contracted the virus in the first place, but assumes it may have been from ordering food delivery. “I don’t know how this happens but I guess I ordered something off of Postmates,” she said. “I don’t know how I got it but I got it. […] I’m OK now. It was a four-day symptom freak out but I’m fine now.”

Read Doja’s symptom updates above.

Drake is about “90%” done with his upcoming album, according to his friend and engineer Noel Cadastre, aka OVO Noel. Yesterday was Noel’s birthday but instead of a typical celebratory post, he instead shared a photo of a mixing board with the caption, “Studio for my bday… we 90% but y’all gonna have to wait on that last 10%.”

Likewise, Drake himself shared a photo on his own Instagram story of Noel, quoting his own hook from Future’s “Life Is Good“: “Working on the bday like usual…” he wrote, rephrasing his own words to fit the occasion. Drake previously said he was about “80% done” with the album, which he said would be more concise than his usual 20-song offerings. It likely helps that he was able to release the odds and ends that might have added filler weight as their own project, the mixtape Dark Lane Demo Tapes.

The progress reports on the album suggest that Drake is not only taking his time with the new project, but also putting some effort into the editing to make it fit his promise of a more reasonable runtime. Fans have been hoping that he could redeem himself from the angry-sounding Scorpion, which received a relatively lukewarm reception despite debuting at No. 1 and containing the monster singles “God’s Plan,” “Nice For What,” and “In My Feelings.” At this rate, we may not see the album until next year but considering concerts, festivals, and tours have been postponed til then, it might make it the perfect time for him to make his long-awaited return.