Month: August 2020

The Cardi B-Megan Thee Stallion collaboration “WAP” may be an instant summer jam, but it’s had its share of vocal detractors. Some Republicans came out against its proudly risqué lyrics, prompting their own backlash. Another person who’s nonplussed: animal rights activist and Tiger King stand-out Carole Baskin. Her issue? That the song’s equally outré video features a pair of wild cats, and while they were obviously CGI’d in, she still thinks they probably weren’t treated well.

“My guess is that most people won’t even see the photoshopped cats in the scenes because the rest of it is so sexually explicit,” Baskin told Entertainment Weekly in a statement. “I was happy to see that it does appear to all be photoshopped. It didn’t look like the cats were really in the rooms with the singers.”

She continued:

“That being said, you have to pose a wildcat in front of a green screen to get that image and that doesn’t happen in the wild. It can’t happen in sanctuaries like ours where cats have plenty of room to avoid a green screen (or would shred it if offered access and could die from ingesting it). That tells me they probably dealt with one of the big cat pimps, probably even one of the ones shown in Tiger King, Murder, Mayhem and Madness, who make a living from beating, shocking and starving cats to make them stand on cue in front of a green screen in a studio. That’s never good for the cat.”

There’s another issue that enraged Baskin: the idea that it “glamorizes the idea of rich people having tigers as pets.” She doesn’t think any good can come out of wild cats being featured in a video by two of the most popular musicians out right now, even though few of their followers could get their mitts on them.

“That makes every follower of these artists, who doesn’t know better, want to imitate by doing the same … After tigers are too old for pay to play sessions by people like Joe Exotic, Bhagavan [Doc] Antle, Marc McCarthy, Mario Tabraue and others, they become a liability instead of an asset. While I think most are destroyed behind closed gates at that point, some end up being given away to people who want to have a tiger to show off. That never works out and the cats either die or end up dumped in sanctuaries or worse yet, breeding mills. There have been some accounts of tigers just being turned loose on communities when they no longer served as ego props. No matter how you cut it, it’s always abusive to the cat and dangerous to the public.”

So there you have it. Obviously Baskin does not know details of the shoot, so her complaints may wind up being moot. As of this writing, neither Cardi B nor Megan Thee Stallion have responded to Baskin’s criticism.

(Via EW)

The Philadelphia 76ers entered the bubble looking to capitalize on the layoff that allowed Ben Simmons to get himself healthy and back into the starting lineup for the restart after missing time with a back injury in February and March.

Unfortunately, the Sixers saw Simmons go down with a knee injury during the seeding round that has forced him to go get surgery and leave the bubble — and one would expect, end his season. That obviously put a dent in the Sixers hopes of toppling the top teams in the Eastern Conference, but on Sunday things got even worse for Philadelphia.

Playing the Portland Trail Blazers, Joel Embiid left midway through the first quarter with an apparent lower leg injury and was in the locker room for some time before word emerged from the team that he would miss the remainder of the game with an ankle injury.

At this time, the severity of the injury is unknown as Embiid checked out of the game, got his ankle looked at, and then went to the locker room. The hope, of course, is that the Sixers are just being understandably cautious with their star big man given the situation and he will be able to return soon. Still, we’ll provide updates when they are available on the All-NBA center who has been dominant in the bubble.

When Joe Kelly received a 10-game suspension for throwing behind — and then mocking — the Astros earlier this season the message from Major League Baseball was pretty clear. In the midst of a pandemic that is ravaging the country and has already led to a pair of teams having to shut down this season, baseball is walking a fine line already playing baseball in a non-bubble atmosphere.

As such, escalating situations into the potential for a brawl between teams is being policed strongly by the league in an effort to keep teams from the kind of face-to-face contact that could lead to inter-squad spread. On Sunday, the league’s nightmare situation came to life as the Oakland Athletics and Houston Astros squared off in the Bay, as the A’s Ramon Laureano got hit by a pitch and then was hearing it from the Houston dugout.

Laureano, being egged on by someone on the Astros bench, took off from first base to charge the dugout, where he was tackled and set off a subsequent benches clearing brawl.

The suspensions for this incident figure to be heavy, but what baseball will be most concerned with is if something happens in the coming days in terms of a positive test on either team, because it would almost surely force a shutdown for both. They’ll hand down suspensions tomorrow and then keep their fingers crossed for the next few rounds of testing, hoping that this simply ends at bad optics and doesn’t lead to anything worse.

Taylor Swift’s eighth album Folklore came as a big surprise to her fans, arriving with just 24 hour’s notice and less than a year after her Lover album. Despite the short notice, the album set records and quickly reached a number of milestones in its first week. Selling a million copies worldwide within the first day, Folklore would give Swift her seventh No. 1 album, tying her with Janet Jackson for the third-most no. 1 albums. Sure enough, in its second week, Folklore held onto the top slot.

Swift’s latest added another 135,000 equivalent album units, 102,000 of it are streaming equivalent album units, and 30,000 pure album sales. Right behind Folklore is Pop Smoke’s Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon, which jumped two spots to come in at No. 2, with 97,000 equivalent album units. Dropping down a spot from last week is Juice WRLD’s posthumous album, Legends Never Die, which clocks in at No. 3 with 88,000 units sold. Rounding out the top five is the original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton: An American Musical at No. 4 and Lil Baby’s My Turn at No. 5.

Newcomers in the bottom half of the top-10 include DaBaby’s Blame It On Baby album, which comes in at No. 6 thanks to its deluxe re-issue, and Beyonce’s The Lion King: The Gift, which also received a deluxe re-issue. (Surely her new film, Black Is King, available on Disney+, drew even more people to the album.)

You can read our review of Taylor Swift’s Folklore here.

(via Billboard)

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

Baseball continues rolling along with its shortened, 60-game season despite some hiccups in the form of teamwide outbreaks in Miami and St. Louis. One of the fascinating parts of the shortened season is how, in a sport that is typically defined by being a marathon of 162 games, every game and every key moment is magnified — for better or worse.

On Sunday, for the Los Angeles Angels, Jo Adell had one of those unfortunate moments that may turn out to be painful for his team when Nick Solak hit what should’ve been a fairly innocuous fly ball to the warning track in right field, with Texas up 5-2. However, as Adell tried to reel in the ball for an out, he somehow not only dropped it but slapped the ball up in the air and over the fence for a home run to give the Rangers a 6-2 lead.

It’s the absolute nightmare of every outfielder to have their Jose Canseco moment — although at least this one wasn’t a ball bouncing off his head and over the wall — and while the Angels would get that run back in the top of the sixth, it gave Texas an added insurance run as a gift that L.A. really didn’t want to provide them.

Life in the bubble is hard for everyone, which means things could get pretty weird in Orlando, Toronto and Edmonton over the next few months. The NHL and NBA are in it for the long haul when it comes to their bubble leagues, with the playoff picture in both leagues just getting settled over the next few days. Which perhaps makes what the NHL did on Sunday to thank its “fans” a bit more concerning when put in that context.

The big narrative out of hockey’s two bubble cities was all the Settlers of Catan players hoped to get in while they didn’t do much outside of eat and play hockey, and maybe that confinement is one reason for a very silly joke that happened on Sunday during NBC’s broadcast of a game between the Dallas Stars and St. Louis Blues. A graphic that read “THANK YOU FANS” appeared on the video board above the ice, while a narration from the National Hockey League thanked “fans” for all their support during the league’s return in the bubble.

“The National Hockey League thanks ALL of their fans for their support during the NHL’s return to play,” the narration read while the camera panned to the seats in the arena, empty save for four standing fans positioned there as mechanical spectators.

It’s a really strong visual joke right out of the old British shows Adult Swim used to air at 3 a.m.

It’s the kind of perfect dry humor that we need to get through this thing. So thank you, hockey. Thockey.

2 Chainz has been fairly busy this weekend. Kicking things off Thursday night, the Atlanta rapper was joined by Rick Ross for a Verzuz battle. The following night, 2 Chainz shared his “Money Maker” single with Lil Wayne, signaling that his Collegrove 2 effort with is, indeed, nearing an arrival. Closing his productive weekend, 2 Chainz officially joined Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote nonpartisan initiative with a message directed at the formerly incarcerated.

In his two-and-a-half-minute message, 2 Chainz urged former inmates to look into laws in their respective states and confirm whether or not they are able to vote in this upcoming election. It’s an effort to clear up a misconception in some cases that former inmates are no longer able to vote following their convictions. In the statement, 2 Chainz lists the main things that are the deciding factors for whether or not a former inmate will be able to participate in an election. While voting rights differ from state to state, 2 Chainz mentions that in most states, ex-inmates will have their rights restored following their release from prison. If ex-inmates see that they do qualify to vote, the rapper urged them to register if they have not in order to participate in the upcoming election.

2 Chainz’s message comes after Snoop Dogg revealed in an interview on Big Boy’s Neighborhood he never voted simply because he was unaware that he could. “I ain’t never voted a day in my life, but this year I think I’m a get out and vote ’cause I can’t stand to see this punk in office,” he said. “For many years, they had me brainwashed thinking that you couldn’t vote because you had a criminal record. I didn’t know that. My record’s been expunged. So now I can vote.”

Listen to 2 Chainz’s message in the video above.

Back in December 2018, Juelz Santana was sentenced to 27 months in prison following a March 2019 incident at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport where a loaded handgun and nonprescription oxycodone pills were found in his carry-on bag. After the discovery, the rapper was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and carrying a weapon on an aircraft. Completing 19 months of his prison sentence, the Dipset rapper was freed last week and according to a report from TMZ, he owes Meek Mill a big thank you.

Sources told TMZ that Mill wanted to ensure Santana’s early release request was filed correctly and that the entire process was followed in the best manner. To make sure this happened, the Philly rapper connected Santana’s wife, Kimbella, with a lawyer who made sure the entire process was smooth-sailing. As a result, Santana was able to come home early and steer clear from serving any time at a halfway house, seeing that most are closed because of the pandemic. He is now on supervised release and must submit to a drug test within 15 days of his release.

In other news, Santana has also committed to giving back to inmates by working with non-profits who aim to overturn sentences for wrongfully convicted inmates. He also aims to create a platform to share the music and movies written by inmates during their sentences.

(via TMZ)

Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Kanye West decided to tease some things he’s working on (outside of the music space) on Twitter over the weekend, with what appeared to be an art installation as well as browsing “underwater homes,” but what raised the most eyebrows was his tease of a Yeezy-Derrick Rose sneaker collaboration with adidas.

The Yeezy line recently debuted its first hoops sneaker — which is banned from being worn on an NBA court because of the reflective material on it — and it appears the next evolution in Kanye dabbling in the hoops space will come with fellow Chicagoan Derrick Rose, who has spent a decade with adidas, himself.

The problem is, no one knows what the hell to make of the picture Kanye put on Twitter on Saturday night teasing the collaboration, because, well, it looks more like an air filter or the cutout of a foam mattress they use to show you all the layers.

Kanye always loves pushing the boundaries of, well, everything — for better or worse — and the Yeezy-D Rose certainly would count as an avant garde attempt at a basketball sneaker. I am unsure how it’s supposed to fit snugly to one’s foot or what kind of support it provides, but it is certainly different. I think that’s about the nicest thing I can say. We will see if this ever actually comes to fruition from what is clearly, right now, a wild concept, but all I know is if it does, whether it’s actually functional or not, hypebeasts will be at your local court wearing these styrofoam coolers on their feet.

Former American Idol and current America’s Got Talent star Simon Cowell broke his back in an electric bike incident in Malibu that sent him to the hospital on Sunday. Cowell — who was just referred to as ‘Simon’ in a report from The Daily Mail, had his representation confirm the reports that the TV personality and music producer, 60, fell while taking a test ride of his new bike and was rushed to the hospital.

‘Simon has broken his back and will be having surgery this evening,’ Cowell’s representative confirmed to both The Daily Mail and Page Six. The latter has more details about the incident and his interest in biking, which he used as part of a weight loss program in recent years. People reported Sunday that Cowell required 5-hour surgery to recover from the incident, though a source described him as “lucky.”

“Simon had surgery overnight and is doing okay this morning. It was a five-hour surgery and he has had to have a number of fusions and metal rod put into his back,” a source tells PEOPLE.

“He landed on his back when he fell from the bike. The injuries are bad but he’s also been told he was lucky,” the source says.

Cowell was reportedly days away from shooting new episodes of America’s Got Talent, though it’s initially unclear if production will be delayed or he will recover in time to film.