Month: October 2020

Memphis rapper Blac Youngsta was arrested in Dallas over the weekend on a weapon charge, according to XXL. Blac Youngsta, aka Sammie Benson, was picked up for unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon on Sunday (October 11) during a traffic stop. During the stop, the arresting officer reported that he found a handgun between Benson’s legs.

Blac Youngsta was booked at the Suzanne Lee Kays Detention Facility and posted a $5,000 cash bond early this morning. He seemed unfazed by his stay in the jail, posing in a photo with his attorney Andrew Wilkerson on Instagram. Wilkerson captioned the photo, “Oh… cause I thought an attorney that’s all cap said something…. I stay on the job… he say ‘I like ya energy my n***’ naw fr.. this my city!”

Blac Youngsta, who rose to prominence in 2017 with the viral single “Hip Hopper,” has had his fair share of run-ins with the law. In January 2016, employees at a Wells Fargo believed that the rapper was robbing the bank when he withdrew $200,000 from his account, calling the police, who released him at the scene and prompted him to accuse police and Wells Fargo employees of racial profiling. In 2017, Youngsta was arrested for allegedly shooting at Young Dolph’s bulletproof SUV over 100 times. In 2019, the charges were dropped.

Most recently, Blac Youngsta released a joint album with fellow Memphis rapper Moneybagg Yo, who had some firearm problems himself last month.

Let’s start here with an understatement: a lot of gruesome stuff happened on Game of Thrones. That includes pretty much every wedding scene, as well as Dany chomping on a horse heart, multiple instances of sexual assault, and Theon losing his “favorite toy.” The list goes on and on, but one of the more brutal fight scenes (other than the Red Viper/The Mountain showdown) involved a doozy from Jason Momoa’s Khal Drogo.

That’d be the moment when Khal Drogo gets to show off his fight moves, and his finishing flourish sees him rip Mago’s tongue out of his throat. Mago had committed the grave offense of insulting the Khaleesi, and here he is, paying the price.

As it turns out, the gross-tongue thing came straight from Momoa’s brain, according to James Hibberd’s new oral history, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, which is yielding all sorts of previously unknown tidbits. Episode director Daniel Minahan related that Momoa was opposed to turning this into a beheading scene because that seemed too, you know, run of the mill (Momoa is quoted as saying, “We’ve chopped off so many people’s heads. I think I should cut his throat open and pull his tongue out through his throat”). Yet where did that idea come from, exactly? The Aquaman star nabbed it from his own bizarre dream: “I had a dream where somebody dumped on my wife and I ripped his tongue out through his throat.”

I don’t even want to know if Momoa meant “dumped” in a literal or figurative sense, but co-showrunner David Benoiff added that the fight scene probably wouldn’t have happened at all if Momoa hadn’t insisted upon Drogo being able to demonstrate his prowess, rather than having people take the show’s word for it:

“Jason had a high batting average of ideas he’d come to us [for, and] that we liked and ended up using. And one thing he said fairly early on was, ‘I’m supposed to be the baddest man on the planet, I got this long braid because I’ve never lost a fight, and everybody is afraid of me. But nobody sees me fight, and isn’t that kind of lame?’ We told him, ‘No, it’s good, you’re so badass you don’t have to prove yourself. You’re the victor of a thousand battles, Jason, go back to your trailer.’ But there was something kind of strange with not getting to see this guy do what he does best.”

And that’s how we got the Khal Drogo “come at me bro” meme, so it’s a good thing that people listen to Jason Momoa.

(Via James Hibberd’s Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon)

Today is Columbus Day, but some folks are instead choosing to observe Indigenous Peoples’ Day; both are among the top-trending topics on Twitter today. One band in the latter group is Portugal. The Man, who have teamed up with “Weird Al” Yankovic for a new (non-parody) song, “Who’s Gonna Stop Me.”

The lyrics are about trying to get by in a world where you aren’t a priority, and the video features indigenous people lip syncing the words. The clip also features Yankovic playing a wolf spirit character. In a statement accompanying the track, Portugal. The Man discussed the colonization of America and human progress before noting:

“Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, mother earth is reacting to the past few hundred years of neglect. The earth is sending out pandemics, fires, hurricanes, and so on. The indigenous say that it’s the earth’s immune system calibrating itself. The indigenous people of the Americas, and the rest of the world, have stewarded their sacred planet for tens of thousands of years of recorded history — likely more. The PTM Foundation turns a conscious heart to the ancestral youth of the indigenous elders to shepherd our sacred planet and peoples through this time of difficulty.”

The PTM Foundation, by the way, is the band’s organization that is described on its website, “PTM Foundation is focused on building community resilience, empathy, and awareness through music, stories, art, education and connectivity. We aim to convene and organize partnerships and projects informed by community need, then mobilize Portugal. The Man’s listeners and supporters around that shared vision.”

The band said in a statement about the track, “For all those who thought we reached the pinnacle of our career, we just wrote a song with Jeff Bhasker and Paul Williams featuring Weird Al Yankovic and The Last Artful Dodgr. Then we made a video with all our best friends in our backyard and in the river, we live on. So there.” Elsewhere in their statement, the band also wrote of Yankovic, “To us ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic has always been a figure of playful boundary-breaking. His work makes us take less seriously, the things that we take so seriously, like what’s cool, or what’s trendy. ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic has been an inspiration for Portugal The Man since their inception until now.”

Listen to “Who’s Gonna Stop Me” above, and find the band’s full statement about the song below.

“They say barbwire was the death knell of the cowboy. It was the end of the open range and the end of open pastures. Before the cowboys, for time immemorial, the indigenous peoples of the Americas looked to the earth as their spiritual authority. They did not parcel the earth any more than Christians, Muslims, or the Jewish faith would parcel out God. That would be sacrilege. But along came the colonists and they did just that. After the genocide of the indigenous peoples, once our white picket fences and barbwire and border walls were erected, the ancestors of the colonists made a lot of technological progress. We invented cars, skyscrapers, cheeseburgers, and smartphones! And yet now, at the dawn of the 21st century, mother earth is reacting to the past few hundred years of neglect. The earth is sending out pandemics, fires, hurricanes, and so on. The indigenous say that it’s the earth’s immune system calibrating itself. The indigenous people of the Americas, and the rest of the world, have stewarded their sacred planet for tens of thousands of years of recorded history — likely more. The PTM Foundation turns a conscious heart to the ancestral youth of the indigenous elders to shepherd our sacred planet and peoples through this time of difficulty.

The PTM Foundation is a platform for artistic collaboration between materialist culture, the arts, and indigenous paradigms. For the video for “Who’s Gonna Stop Me” we created a collaboration between indigenous artists, friends, artistic collaborators, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic, and Indigenous organizations to explore the possibilities of collaboration in this new time. To us ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic has always been a figure of playful boundary-breaking. His work makes us take less seriously, the things that we take so seriously, like what’s cool, or what’s trendy. ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic has been an inspiration for Portugal The Man since their inception until now. In the tradition of the indigenous cultures of the western North American territories, the Coyote represents the trickster and the maker of new worlds. The trickster is an archetype that can be found in nearly all indigenous and ancient cultures; the trickster not only is playful and a comedian but through their playfulness, they connect people. PTM Foundation sees music and art as a similar tool to make new connections and we consider this video to be the beginning of a campaign of many collaborations to come. PTM Foundation strives to forge bridges between the materialist contemporary culture in which we are immersed and the indigenous stewards to whom we strive to give a larger voice.”

Portugal. The Man is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

LeBron James won his fourth NBA championship on Sunday night, adding his fourth NBA Finals MVP award with it, as he led the Lakers to a dominant Game 6 win to closeout the Miami Heat.

In the process of winning his fourth title in Year 17, James continued to assert himself as the league’s best postseason finisher, showing an array of abilities that make him nearly impossible to stop on the offensive end. It is that diversity of options to attack you that has been the biggest growth in James’ game, as he’s gone from the most physically dominant force since Shaq to someone who has harnessed that physical skill with the mental understanding of exactly how to pick an opponent apart — and has added the skills needed to attack an opponent from wherever on the floor.

After hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy once again, James talked with Scott Van Pelt and was asked about the biggest difference between 35-year-old LeBron and 27-year-old LeBron when he won his first title. James pointed to that mental side of understanding his game as the biggest difference, and said that his current form would “dominate” his younger self from the Heat days.

Given that 27-year-old LeBron was in his physical prime it’s a bit surprising to hear James say he’d “dominate” him now, but at the same time it’s not as if the current form of James is exactly a slouch in terms of athleticism. He may not be quite as quick or quite as bouncy, but he still has plenty of burst and, coupled with where he’s at mentally with his understanding of both himself and his opponents, LeBron seems to think it wouldn’t be much of a competition.

Sometimes the best new R&B can be hard to find, but there are plenty of great rhythm and blues tunes to get into if you have the time to sift through the hundreds of newly released songs every week. So that R&B heads can focus on listening to what they really love in its true form, we’ll be offering a digest of the best new R&B jams that fans of the genre should hear every Friday.

This week, Trey Songz releases his album Back Home, Queen Naija delivers the visual for “Lie To Me” featuring Lil Durk, and Ella Mai performs her new single “Not Another Love Song” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

Trey Songz — Back Home

Award-winning singer Trey Songz made a return to his Virginia roots at the top of this year and during that time he conjured up his latest album release Back Home (in between fighting for social justice), which has finally arrived with 22 sensual and loving tracks. From the album’s opener “Be My Guest” to the previously released single “Back Home” featuring Summer Walker, Trigga really does seem to be right back home musically, as well.

Queen Naija — “Lie To Me” Feat. Lil Durk

Rising R&B star Queen Naija released her song “Lie To Me” featuring Lil Durk last week and this week she delivered (another) visual directed by Teyana Taylor for the catchy number. Naija’s debut album Misunderstood is scheduled for release on October 30 and is set to feature “Lie To Me” as well as her previously released songs “Pack Lite” and “Butterflies Pt. 2″ featuring Wale.

Ella Mai — “Not Another Love Song”

During Rihanna’s SavagexFenty show, Ella Mai surprised fans with her new track “Not Another Love Song” and this week she performed the song on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. It’s a deep R&B cut that explores all the swimming thoughts of a new love that’s drowning in vulnerability, over Boi-1da production. “Not Another Love Song” is a sweet introduction into the next era of Ella Mai.

Bjrnck — “Waiting On You”

Up-and-coming R&B singer Bjrnck performed a soothing live version of her song “Waiting On You” with a live band and it’s the closest thing we’ll get to a live show from talent like this during the pandemic. Bjrnck shows off her vocal talent with poise and proves why she’s up next.

Q — “Take Me Where Your Heart Is”

Florida native Q comes through this week with a visual for his soulful track “Take Me Where Your Heart Is,” which is the first release from his forthcoming collection of songs off The Shave Experiment . The project is expected to be released this fall and should be filled with enough moving soul-pop numbers to get through cuffing season.

Allyn — “Richie Rich”

As the follow-up to her Mozzy-assisted single “Tap In,” Allyn returns with her latest release “Richie Rich.” The up-and-coming R&B singer lets it be known that cash rules everything around her for anyone trying to get close.

MarMar Oso — “Slide” Feat. Eric Bellinger

MarMar Oso drops off an animated visual for “Slide” this week featuring Eric Bellinger of his project Marvin’s Room. “Slide” is the follow-up to MarMar’s remix to his viral song “Ruthless” with G-Eazy.

Yola — “Hold On” Feat. Brandi Carlile, Sheryl Crow, and Jason Isbell

Yola’s new single “Hold On” sees assistance from Brandi Carlile, Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell on guitar for a soulful cut reminiscent of the 1960s, which was made to benefit the efforts of MusicCares and National Bailout Collective. The song was inspired by conversations Yola had with her mother growing up about the challenges of being a Black woman in America.

Riley — “Creepin’”

Amber Riley of Glee, now simply known as Riley, is finally listening to fans and has released some music this year with a 6-song self-titled EP that includes her song “Creepin,’” which just received the visual treatment

Sainvil — “Sweet”

Sainvil returns this week with another enigmatic R&B track in the form of “Sweet.” It’s the second single off his upcoming project aptly titled 2020 Was Hijacked. The visual features Sainvil soaking in a tub while crooning about the pleasures of oral foreplay.

Check out this week’s R&B picks, plus more on Uproxx’s Spotify playlist below.

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

Now that Logic’s making a ton of money streaming video games on Twitch, it would appear he’s got a lot of disposable income. It’s already well-known he’s pretty geeky — again, the man streams video games for a living — and it’s also equally well known that geeks love dropping insane amounts of money in pursuit of their passions. Lots of income and geeky habits are sure to produce some attention-grabbing results and according to TMZ, that’s exactly what happened.

When a rare Pokémon card went up for auction, Logic was more than willing to spend more than most folks make in a year to secure it — a record-breaking $226,000. The card — a “PSA 10 Base Set 1st Edition Charizard” — sold for $183,812.00 with a 20% buyer’s premium tacked on.

Logic copped the card despite recently complaining that his former label, Def Jam, wasn’t paying his collaborators for their work on his retirement album, No Pressure. He also backed Kanye’s accusations against labels, alleging that Def Jam wouldn’t pay Lil Wayne’s fee to appear on the album. Fortunately, should Logic release the mixtape he’s been threatening, his seven-figure Twitch deal should be more than enough to cover those fees and make sure everybody gets paid — and if he’s worried about royalties, maybe he should talk to ASCAP or BMI.

Many years after her previous album, Fiona Apple returned this year with Fetch The Bolt Cutters, one of the most critically beloved albums in recent memory. The album came out towards the start of the pandemic, and thus, she hasn’t been able to tour in support of it. Apple hasn’t really hopped on the livestream concert train yet either… before this weekend, that is. She and her band participated in the virtual New Yorker Fest on Saturday night (October 10) and performed Fetch The Bolt Cutters songs for the first time. She opted to play the album’s three opening songs: “I Want You To Love Me,” “Shameika,” and the title track.

She also chatted with Emily Nussbaum and discussed a number of topics. Regarding Trump and race, she said:

“I mean, the Supreme Court, all that — all the federal judges, my God. I mean, oh, my God. There’s Proud Boys and our president — our president is a White Supremacist who can’t even manage to deny that he is which I guess is good. But I mean, it’s been so insulting, the way that he’s just gaslighting people in America.

I threw my hands up here right now because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I think that something good that’s happened this year, I mean, through all the bad stuff that has been happening, I think that, one big thing is happening is that I think that a lot of us have been looking at — or a bigger portion of white people had been examining themselves for the kind of racist tendencies they may have without thinking of themselves as being racist.

Like, thinking about like how do I think about this and why — I think that people are finally being able to, like, look at themselves without getting so defensive that they can’t hear what people need them to hear. I feel like we finally been, like, OK, this is too important. I got to check my ego out of this and just be like, I mean, look at myself and let me look at the people around me…

She also said of performing live:

“I think that — I hope that — what I’ve been told about, like, how this album has — had an effect on people or what it’s done for them, what I’ve been told that it makes me feel so proud and I feel like I really succeeded because I’ve always thought that in, like, putting on — like when you do concerts and stuff, when you do anything in public performance, I always — I don’t feel like I need to address people in the audience and tell them how good looking they are or tell them that — or really, like, shake their hands and I’m not saying that that’s bad, that’s wonderful.

And certain shows are great, like that and people go there to bond with each other and watching music. There are certain types of shows that you want to be able to, like, see the person pointing at you and smiling at you and saying, I see you and I love your outfit and shit and you want to have that experience.

But for shows that I do, the way that I want to do it is I want to actually go through something and forget that everybody’s and just go through something and really just do it for myself because I feel like that’s the kind of show that I get something more out of is when I’m watching something, somebody go through something private and I feel like I’m alone with that person and I’m part of that and I’m going through that, too.

And somehow, that connection works and each person in the audience can have that connection with you and be alone with you if you’re not talking to everybody.”

Watch the performance above, find interview clips below, and revisit our review of Fetch The Bolt Cutters here.

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Doja Cat and Bebe Rexha team up, Reason drop his long-awaited album, and rising artists Kississippi and Petey making strong impressions. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

Doja Cat and Bebe Rexha — “Baby I’m Jealous”

Not long after declaring that her third album is all done, Doja Cat returned with a new single, the Bebe Rexha-featuring “Baby I’m Jealous.” The groovy tune is a fun character-driven affair, with Rexha revealing her insecurities before Doja comes in as the full embodiment of them and assures Rexha it’s not her fault her man is lusting after her.

Trey Songz — Back Home

It hasn’t all been great for Trey Songz lately, as he revealed recently that he tested positive for COVID-19. Thankfully, he seems to be doing mostly okay, and he can now bask in a glow of a new album, Back Home. An expansive effort clocking in at about 70 minutes across 22 tracks, he peppered a handful of features throughout the tracklist, including guest spots from Swae Lee, Summer Walker, and Ty Dolla Sign.

Reason — New Beginnings

The TDE roster is one of the most stacked and esteemed in hip-hop, and now Reason has dropped his first new release as part of the storied label. Aside from labelmates Ab-Soul, Isaiah Rashad, and Schoolboy Q, he also gets assists here from contemporaries like JID, Rapsody, and Vince Staples.

Future Islands — As Long As You Are

The band’s Samuel T. Herring recently told Uproxx about the new album, “This one was really about us capturing our vision and how we heard things and taking the time to do that. The Far Field was just so rushed that we didn’t want to have that happen again, that there was a deadline that decided when the album was done. We wanted to decide when the album was done.”

Dinner Party — Dinner Party: Dessert

Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, 9th Wonder, and Kamasi Washington have linked up to form one of the year’s more interesting supergroups, Dinner Party. After releasing their self-titled album earlier this year, the group has returned with a more guest-packed version of it: Dinner Party: Dessert features new contributions from Herbie Hancock, Cordae, Snoop Dogg, Rapsody, Buddy, and others.

Benny The Butcher — “Timeless” Feat. Lil Wayne and Big Sean

The Griselda Records core has been on fire lately, with Westside Gunn, Conway The Machine, and Armani Caesar all dropping superlative releases lately. Now Benny The Butcher is getting in on the fun, as he shared the new single “Timeless,” which features hip-hop titans Lil Wayne and Big Sean.

Anderson .Paak — “Jewelz”

If you need to smile, hit up Anderson .Paak, because his is huge and contagious. It shines through even on his music, as it does on “Jewelz,” an upbeat and boastful track produced by Timbaland.

Victoria Monét — “Touch Me” (Remix) Feat. Kehlani

Monét didn’t include a ton of features on her latest album, Jaguar, but she made up for that last week by linking up with Kehlani. On the new remix of “Touch Me,” Kehlani adds some more sultry lyrics to a track that already had plenty of charge in that regard.

Wild Pink — “The Shining But Tropical”

Wild Pink has offered a new taste of an album, A Billion Little Lights, he’s expecting to drop in 2021, and John Ross recently told Uproxx of that record, “Making music is escapism and I get lost in the albums I make while I’m in the process of making them, this one especially. It’s a fantasy world where I can be somewhere else when I’m listening. There are old western elements as well as heavily electronic ones.”

Stevie Nicks — “Show Them The Way”

A skateboarding dude drinking cranberry juice has given Fleetwood Mac a new wave of popularity in 2020. Stevie Nicks probably wouldn’t have believed that if told in the ’70s, but regardless, the singer has capitalized on the moment by dropping “Show Them The Way,” her first new single in years that features another beloved rock icon: Dave Grohl.

Kississippi — “Around Your Room”

Kississippi (aka Zoe Reynolds) showed a lot of promise with her early material, enough to become the newest signee of Triple Crown Records. Her first new music since the announcement is “Around Your Room,” a playful, Swiftian effort that has us excited for whatever she’s cooking up next.

Petey — Checkin’ Up On Buds

Petey is impossible to not love. He’s a master of doing his own thing, and his own thing offers a lot of fun in a time when we could all use some. Ahead of his new EP, Petey dropped “Don’t Tell The Boys,” which has his characteristic blend of tongue-in-cheek lyrics and genuine moments that make his music a delight to play and replay and replay and…

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

The Fargo Frozen Five is Uproxx’s weekly collection of thoughts, observations, and goofball screencaps from each new episode the FX limited series’ fourth season. We do not guarantee that there will be five items every week. There could be four, or six, or a dozen. Who knows? This show doesn’t follow the rules. We shouldn’t have to either.

EPISODE 4 — “The Pretend War” (or, “The Puke-Scented Loot Sack”)

5b. The episode opened with Cannon’s gang staging a theatrical gun heist involving a ring of fire, which was cool to look at and kind of hilarious to think about. The whole thing was ordered by Loy Cannon as retribution for the attempted hit on his son (ordered by Gaetano without Josto’s knowledge), which was itself ordered as retribution for the robbery at the slaughterhouse (committed by Zelmare Roulette and Swanee Capps, on their own, with no Fadda involvement). The result of it all is that we are now teetering on a violent mob war based on a series of misunderstandings that appear to be growing instead of shrinking as the season progresses. To quote Doctor Senator in his reply to the Fadda’s consigliere over breakfast: “It seems to me that you ain’t tracked into all the critical goings-on in your house these days.” This applies to everyone and is also something I now desperately want to say to someone, just once in my life.

5a. During the fire-circled gun heist, in response to Calamita’s relentless lip-running, a member of the Cannon gang held the barrel of his gun in the flames and then pushed it into the Fadda hit man’s cheek, leaving an O-shaped burn wound on his face. I point this out for two reasons:

• It does not seem like something I want to happen to me, ever
• It is actually the second time this year a prestige period crime drama has featured a red-hot gun barrel searing someone’s flesh, as it also happened to my sad king Matthew Rhys in the early stages of HBO’s Perry Mason

One more makes this a trend, like the time a couple of years ago when multiple television characters were killed in air conditioner related events, including one on Fargo that involved a character named Nikki Swango and the actor Scoot McNairy, whose real name sounds more like a Fargo name than half of the real characters in the show. This all has very little to do with anything beyond me just wanting to point it out. Moving on.

4b. A good lesson to take from this week’s episode: Don’t go snooping around people’s apartments when you’re there to clean them, because you might stumble upon their secret murder closet filled with poisons and mementos from the various murders they’ve committed while serving as a nurse at a number of hospitals. Admittedly, this lesson might be too specific to be helpful to most of us, but it sure would have helped Ethelrida, who left her journal in Oraetta’s murder closet while doing the aforementioned snooping. One imagines this will come up again, probably sooner than later. The woman already tried to incapacitate her with an ipecac-laced pie for the crime of — as far as I can tell — having gumption. Snooping around the murder closet probably ranks as a more serious offense.

4a. Although now that I think about it, I guess there are really two lessons here. That first one, yes, sure, but also it’s flipside: Don’t leave plucky neighborhood teens alone in your apartment if you have a secret murder closet in your hallway that is filled with incriminating evidence. Also a little specific, I guess. But still.

3. Hey, speaking of misunderstandings and poison, let’s briefly track the action around the slaughterhouse robbery:

• The Smutnys took a loan from Loy Cannon and got in too deep
• Zelmare Roulette and her partner Swanee Capps heard about this and busted out of prison in part to help
• Swanee ate about half of the poisoned by that Oraetta brought for Ethelrida
• Zelmare and Swanee robbed a slaughterhouse that had recently been taken from the Fadda family by the Cannons, and the poison from the pie caused Swanee to vomit all over the money
• Zelmare gave the money to Thurman Smutny to pay off his debt, which he did
• Loy Cannon smelled the puke on the money and appeared to put it all together, after originally blaming the Faddas
• Everything is going to heck in about six different directions

Fargo is a fun show.

3b. On the subject of Zelmare Roulette: Both she and her niece, Ethelrida, appear to be afflicted with visions of creepy zombie-type monsters and/or indoor rainstorms where the precipitation is drops of blood. This is obviously not ideal for either of them, or for me, as I do not like creepy zombies or raindrops of blood, in general. It does raise the important issue of how this all plays out, though. It could lead to nothing, really, and just serve as a window into the family’s mental health issues that cause them to be the way they are. It could also, because this is Fargo, a show that once featured a literal alien invasion, result in the creepy zombie bonking Gaetano Fadda on the head with a frying pan and leaving him sitting on the ground with little cartoon birds fluttering around his head. Could go a lot of ways, really.

2b. Really just a magnificent week for the Fadda brothers. Mainly Josto. I know I’ve been focusing mostly on my sweet “if Charlie Chaplin had been a rodeo bull” son Gaetano, but let’s not overlook the work Jason Schwartzman is doing here. There was the enthusiastic lovemaking and windpipe obstruction with Oraetta, there was the scene where he got to yell at some underlings about talking back to him, and there was the scene where he held a gun to Gaetano’s jimmies while staring him down. Both of them are just going so big with so much of this in a way that works well in contrast to the quieter Cannon/Smutny side of the equation. I really like the scenes where Josto and Gaetano play out their sibling rivalry six inches from each other’s faces. There’s a strange dynamic between them. It always looks like Gaetano is two seconds from whomping his brother on the top of the head so hard that he ends up planted in the ground like a carrot, and yet Josto still carries himself like the one in control. Would I watch an entire season about their childhood? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Picture a giant 8-year-old Gaetano terrorizing him elementary school. Maybe a cartoon. I’m willing to hear some other ideas here.

2a. Yes, yes, fine, Josto. But also: Gaetano. I was so excited when I saw the stand-off with U.S. Marshal Deafy Wickware brewing and I was only a teeny tiny bit let down that it did not explode like a can of soda in a campfire. I knew better. I knew it was too early for a full-on showdown. But I did kind of want it. I blame Justified for conditioning me to see Timothy Olyphant as a lawman and expect gunplay to break out. This did have a very Justified vibe to it, too, with two imposing figures trading barbs and stink eyes while a cloud of impending doom hovers over them. The main differences here are that a) there was that super Fargo thing where the strings kick in and the camera very slowly zooms in on someone to let you know things are about to get very intense, and b) Olyphant’s character was eating carrots while delivering his menacing speech about murdering mafia members in Utah by dragging them behind his horse until their heads popped off. My point is that I would really like to see Wynn Duffy from Justified introduced into the Fargo universe, exactly as is, Winnebago and all. That would be fun. For me. That’s what is important.

1. The biggest surprise of this episode, one filled with visions of monsters and fire-based gun heists and puke-scented money and secret murder closets, was that Fargo introduced us to the words “fluffy whiz bang”…

… and it was in reference to drugs and not some quirky hitman from Minnesota named Fluffy Whizbang. I’m somehow both ecstatic and very, very disappointed. I might go change my name to Fluffy Whizbang this afternoon to see if it helps. I don’t see how it can hurt.

With everything that’s gone on in 2020, numerous outlets have made efforts to recognize and amplify the individuals who have been working for social justice. The latest entity to pursue this goal is the Billboard Music Awards, instituting the first-ever Billboard Change Maker Award for the upcoming 2020 BBMAs and announcing its inaugural recipient: Killer Mike. The award will be presented during the show by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, with whom Mike has worked over the past year.

Even before Mike was active in politics, meeting with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in September and working with Mayor Bottoms on her transition team in 2018, he was outspoken about the need for social change — even when he occasionally put his foot in his mouth. Both in his solo output and as a member of Run The Jewels, Mike has been a loud critic of the American government, the criminal justice system, and Wall Street, while he’s also shown a willingness to work within the system to prompt change as well. In 2019, he filed a legal brief in a Supreme Court case about rap lyrics, stumped for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and helped him educate voters, and passed out meals in Atlanta during quarantine.

Mike’s being honored with the Change Maker Award specifically for using “his platform to educate, inspire, and motivate an entire generation to become the change they want to see.”

The 2020 Billboard Music Awards air Wednesday, October 14 at 8 pm/7 pm CT on NBC.