Month: October 2020

As they say, life moves pretty fast. We spoke with Samantha Bee Wednesday afternoon just before she was about to film the latest episode of Full Frontal. Naturally, the topic du jour was that shitshow of a debate. As you can imagine from probably feeling it yourself, Bee was, in her words, “spiritually exhausted,” talking via phone while laying on a couch after waking at 5AM to deal with the task of trying to make sense (and comedy) out of what we’d all seen the night before.

And now, a day and a half later as I finish typing this intro, President Donald Trump has announced that he and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for COVID. But you knew that, since it’s the only thing anyone is going to be talking about for a while, or at least until the next bombshell gets fired off, distracting, dismaying, and disorienting many of us. Because that’s how news works now, denying us the chance to sit with something and process it.

That’s a topic that came up during our chat with Bee, nestled alongside a discussion about the inexplicableness of undecided voters, questions about why any of us are surprised ever, Full Frontal‘s “I Know What You Did Last Election” campaign (where Bee inserts herself into various horror classics to promote voting and the show), and the show’s plans for whatever is coming from November to January.

Okay. [Laughs] So do you want to talk about the debate or do you want to just talk about like, anything else? Like fantasy football, whatever.

Samantha Bee: [Laughs] Yeah. If you want to go through some recipes that I’m thinking about… I just saw a really nice salmon recipe that seems really like spicy and flavorful. I’m really, really excited about it.

That’s honestly the best way. No, I guess what’s your snap read on the debate?

I think, for the record, we should state upfront that we both laughed our way through the idea that you could have like a different reaction. It [the debate] was the worst. It was literally the worst thing I’ve ever seen on television. I mean, there’s really no parallel for that. I feel like, I heard the psychic cry of the entire nation and I thought that I wanted to crawl inside myself. Like the whole thing, I was cringing so much, like the whole thing was so painful. I practically retreated into my own self. It was terrible in every way.

It felt like a horror movie.

It did! It was just a dreadful experience. And we just nationally had the same exact feeling of how awful it was. Like I think the whole country woke up with a low-grade headache today.

But does that make a difference? I guess that’s the question. Did anything really change in terms of who’s voting for who?

That’s the most horrific part of the whole thing. Like you would really want… The reason to have a debate is so that it moves the needle on that sliver of a population who haven’t made up their minds yet. If you haven’t made up your mind to this point, then you’re a crazy person. But then if you also watched that debate and you’re like, “I’m still not sure.” I feel like you should leave. You need to exile yourself to an island in the middle of the ocean and never talk to us again. Go away please forever.

Do you think his inability to reach beyond his base is a sign of him being a bad politician or is it a sign that he’s going to steal it and he doesn’t have to care?

Is anything intentional? Is anything intentional in his world? It’s hard for me to believe that there’s a strategy beyond, “I want to be popular. I talk now! I go! I’m a big boy!” [Laughs] I don’t know if he… I’m just in such a state of utter speechlessness today. I just don’t really think there’s a grander strategy other than, “I’m popular with these people and the ratings were great!”

Yeah. I mean, I want to think it’s all strategic. Like he was trying to throw Biden off his game and all this stuff, but it’s like, you’re probably right. It’s probably just ego consuming everything in front of him.

Yeah, he’s not playing three-dimensional chess. He’s playing 0.2-dimensional checkers. Like he only cares about the self and it’s pure ID and ego, and that’s about it. It’s impossible to deal with a person like that. We’re all still trying to live in a normal world. We’re all still trying to put him on a stage with a beautiful presidential carpet and have rules. I mean, Chris Wallace, trying to explain the rules of debating and the two-minute time limit and talking over people. [Laughs] It’s just a wash. He can’t comprehend it. He doesn’t know how to listen or care. What difference does it make to him? I don’t know why we’re all still shocked. I’m still shocked. You’re still shocked. Why are we?

I don’t know. It’s a good question because it’s like… he’s done all that before.

No, it’s nothing new. Are we the crazy ones?

Maybe! [Laughs] We’re really going through something here.

[Laughs] We’re going to work it out together.

So, the idea behind the horror theme of “I Know What You Did Last Election,” who are you speaking to with that campaign?

Okay, this will be surprising information probably, because it was very shocking to me, but as we were researching it two years ago, prior to the midterms, we did a game to incentivize people to vote. And we learned that roughly 55% of our audience was registered to vote. Which was astonishing to me because it’s so impossible for me to believe that anyone would watch the show and, like, after 30 times of saying it that you wouldn’t just be like, “okay, I grudgingly register to vote.” So, personally, I pray that that number ticks up.

It does strike me that this entire four year period feels like a horror film. Just this relentless cascade of horrific policies and disgusting appearances and hideous monsters getting charged with federal crimes. It just really lent itself to… And I love horror movies, quite honestly, so the two really merged perfectly. Sometimes you look at the number of my viewers who were registered to vote in 2018, you go, “Okay, well, what works? What actually gets you to register to vote?” What gets a person to vote? Is it fear? So I think we just took the approach of, “Let’s try fear.” [Laughs] Remind people that it’s incredibly scary to not vote this time around.

Do you think Democrats are as deft at using fear in that way to try and get people to vote and make clear how important this is?

I really don’t know. I don’t know how to make it more clear. I don’t know how you could honestly observe the news cycle and not think that we are at situation “Not Normal.” This is crisis time. So, there’s going to be some lines on voting day now, but we should all be braving them in one form or another. Mail in your votes, whatever. It’s very, very needed. So many celebrities are going to be manning the polls alone. [Laughs] All of Hollywood is signing up to be a poll worker. So, you know, it’ll be a fun experience this time around…

Yeah. It’ll be great. 15 Trump Army people up against Kristen Bell at a polling station somewhere.

[Laughs] Oh my God! Oh no, we’re in so much trouble.

How do we, in general, keep focused on stories that matter? Like the ICE whistleblower or the tax thing or anything like that? Because it just seems so difficult for things to stick now.

It’s so difficult to make a story stick. I mean, my God, the New York Times just blew that whole story open about $750 that he paid in federal taxes, and I don’t even think that anyone’s talking about it. And it’s only two days past. It’s a huge story. It’s a monster story. And too much has happened in the interim. To come back to the atrocities that we learned about in ICE detention centers, that was last week. We need a boring government. We want decent people who want to believe in experts. And we want a government that plugs along making laws and changing policies in a way that makes sense so that we can take a moment. We just take our feet off the gas pedal for one second. There’s so much work to do. Wouldn’t it be nice to just restore some wonky people in the White House, just for a moment? Just a brief interlude of calm, so that we could feel like progress is being made, or norms are being restored, or conversations would be being had about the Green New Deal. Things could be moving in a forward direction as opposed to regressive. I dream of a boring, wonky government. Things are dire. I dream of a government where I don’t have to talk about it all the time.

How has that lack of attention span — just population-wide when it comes to bigger issues — how has that transformed the way you all approach the show?

I think we’re pretty good. We do have the luxury of time because we’re not trying to do four shows a week. So we do have the luxury to sit back a little bit and go down the path that is most interesting to us. We definitely have the feeling of, “I can’t wait for this election season to be over.” Obviously, we’re all praying for the correct outcome, the correct and decent outcome. We just really want to move on. I want to be able to thematically move on. I just want to personally, professionally, psychologically move on from this dark period. And I hope that that comes to pass. Is it 40 days away or 10,000 days away? I no longer know. It’s cold outside now, and I feel like it’s maybe April again. There’s no sense of time. We’re in a state of great, great anxiety.

Do you allow yourself to think about what the show looks like in January with either result? And also, how do you plan for everything that’s going to come in between now and then?

I mean, we definitely have to think about it. And, in fact, we’re trying to plan the show because we have a show the day after the election. And obviously, it’s not knowable. And it’s not even knowable if it will be knowable who won. So trying to plan a kind of a longer form show, because it’ll be a bit of a longer show on November 4th with very little insight and also just two widely… Well, actually three widely different realities. It has been very challenging.

So in answer to your question, the answer is no, I’m not thinking about what the show will look like in January. Because I can’t quite figure out what it’s going to look like on November 4th. [Laughs] Once November 5th happens, I’ll start to think about January. [Laughs] The questions we’re asking each other in meetings are like, “Okay, if we’re all crying on the floor, should we do a 30-minute show or a six-minute show? And then if we’re relatively happy about the outcome, or if we’re jubilant about the outcome, does this content make sense? Or if we’re having a war in the streets, does this segment make any sense to do or will people…” [Laughs] That alone is really quite an undertaking, but it’s happening.

To be honest, how do you keep hope if it breaks down and if things go to the courts and it gets really ugly and really risky? That’s the thing I’m trying to figure out within myself.

I mean, we have to be hopeful. I would say a majority of people in this country are actually decent human beings who know the difference between right and wrong. But I’m hopeful. It’s like being in labor and having a baby. You’re like, “Well, this baby’s coming out. I don’t know how we’re going to get there. And there’s going to be a lot of pain along the way, but eventually, the baby’s going to be out.” So, I mean, I think we’re going to have a country at the end of it. I think. We’re going to still be a country at the end of all this. It’s going to be very painful along the way.

And we don’t know if the baby’s going to wind up being a serial killer.

We don’t know. It could be the baby from It’s Alive. With that little claw hanging out of the baby carriage.

[Laughs] I think that’s a good analogy and a hopeful note end on.

[Laughs] Yes, it’s beautiful!

‘Full Frontal with Samantha Bee’ airs Wednesdays at 10:30PM ET on TBS.

won’t really have a head coachKyrie Irving made headlines for a pair of things he said on Kevin Durant’s new podcast, The ETCs. Irving turned heads by suggesting that the Brooklyn Nets won’t really have a head coach, although his argument did make sense, as he mentioned that the team has a number of voices around first-time coach Steve Nash who can provide input and help the team make informed decisions.

The other raised a few more eyebrows. Irving, in praising Durant’s ability to score, said, “One thing I’ve always been comfortable with is, I felt like I was the best option on every team I’ve played for down the stretch. This is the first time in my career where I can look down and be like, that motherf*cker can make that shot too and he’ll probably do it a lot easier.”

Now, this led to a whole lot of eyebrows being raised, as Irving, you know, once played on the same basketball team as LeBron James. But Irving pretty obviously meant this as praise of Durant more than a knock on James — who, famously, stayed out of the way as Irving hit the shot that won the Cleveland Cavaliers a championship in 2016 — and after the comments made the rounds on the internet, Irving took to Instagram and tried to cool things down.

“Come on, y’all, don’t listen to the false narratives,” Irving said. “Let people live their lives. It’s just a game. Talk about the art, talk about the sport, you talk openly, you talk freely. But, because we live in a clickbait society, it becomes something bigger. You don’t have to defend it, that’s just what media is. It’s entertainment. I’m not gonna let it put me against anybody anymore at any point, because that’s not what it is about.”

Again, while there’s certainly a way to read Irving’s comments to Durant as a knock on James, it’s probably fair to take him at his word here. The two are close, and again, in the biggest moment of their respective careers, the ball was in Irving’s hands and he delivered. And besides, Durant very well might be the best 1-on-1 player to ever live.

Hip-hop is moving as fast as ever. Luckily, we’re doing the work to put the best music in one place for you. This week, there were new videos from Spillage Village, as well as Fivio Foreign and Polo G. There was also new music from Roddy Ricch, Don Toliver and Internet Money, as well as Megan Thee Stallion and Young Thug. Here’s the best of the rest:

Dyamond Doll — “DWade” Remix Feat. Trina, Ball Greezy

The Miami Heat are in the NBA finals, and Dyamond Doll linked up with fellow Miamians Trina and Ball Greezy for the “DWade” remix, where the three MCs liken themselves to the NBA legend, with Ball Greezy noting, “God knows we need a Pat Riley week!”

Flee Lord — “Line Stay Buzzin”

Flee Lord’s matched by few in the rap game. The Griselda affiliate just dropped 12 projects in 12 months. He celebrated his feat on “Line Stay Buzzin,” a grimey lyrical exercise where Flee bigs himself up and incredulously asks, “You on the same album? / I just did a dozen.”

Guap Tarantino — “Say My Name” Feat. Playboi Carti

Guap Tarantino enlists Playboi Carti to have fun with him on “Say My Name,” a feel-good trap burner where the two have fun over thumping 808s and producer DMCGlobal’s electro-inspired synths.

Jade Amar — “Rebound”

Though Jade Amar’s “Rebound” is set on a basketball court, the confident lyrics have nothing to do with her hoop prowess. Just her second single, the Ray Real-produced track shows her dropping basketball references like “real women take charge in the paint” while letting her new situationship know not to get ahead of himself.

Liam Bailey — “Champion” Remix Feat. Black Thought

Black Thought offered a thoughtful opening verse to UK artist Liam Bailey’s “Champion” remix, letting the woman of his eye know that, “if life is like a novel then you’re the star of the story” over a minimalist, Reggae-influenced production.

Lupe Fiasco — Tape Tape

Lupe Fiasco and producer Soundtrakk dropped off a two-pack with their Tape Tape project. “Oh Yes” is a smooth track where Lupe shows off his melodies and affirms, “I got architecture in my veins.” On “Apologetic” Lupe turns the energy up on the electro-hop, letting us know “if I drop a freestyle b*tch I drop it off the roof.”

Noodah05 — “Wild Child“ Feat. Lil Baby

Upcoming artist Noodah05 scored a big-time feature by having Lil Baby on “Wild Child,” where the two jump on a bouncy trap beat to share the trauma and danger of their upbringing and how it instilled their resilience today.

Wavy Navy Pooh — “Guwop” Remix Feat. Gucci Mane

There seems to be a new “Guwop” inspired song title or artist name every month. Gucci’s ringing in “Woptober” by jumping on Wavy Navy Pooh’s latest single, where he’s “ridin’ through the A with a K like I’m Guwop,” and Gucci reminds us he’s “Big Guwop the Rolling Stone / I put all these rappers on.”

Westside Gunn — Who Made The Sunshine

The beauty of today’s rap game is that artists can be an entrenched name before they even drop a studio debut. Such is the case with Westside Gunn, who’s releasing his debut studio album on Shady today. His Who Made The Sunshine project is another venture through Prada and peril on tracks like “All Praises” with Boldy James and Jadakiss. The album also boasts features from the Griselda crew, Black Thought, and Slick Rick who shines on the sinister “Good Night.”

Willie The Kid — Capital Gains

Willie The Kid is talkin’ money on his latest release Capital Gains.The 10-track album shows him locked in over soulful, brooding soundscape along with features like Action Bronson, Eto, Currensy, and Roc Marciano, who shows up on the jazzy “Durban Poison.”

YG — My Life 4Hunnid

YG is back with another dose of unflinching rap with mass appeal on My Life 4Hunnid. The 14-track project is stocked with guests like Lil Tjay, Ty Dolla Sign, Gunna, and Lil Wayne, who shows up on the flute-based “Blood Walk.”

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

Back in January, President Trump said that he had the coronavirus outbreak “totally under control.” Approximately 73 months later, over 200,000 Americans are dead and cases are back on the rise after a summer slowdown — oh yeah, and as we learned on Thursday night, Trump tested positive for the virus. In that sense, Alex Gibney, the Emmy- and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker behind Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and indie distributor Neon couldn’t have picked a more apt day to release the trailer for Totally Under Control.

In the documentary, Gibney, along with co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, examines the government’s “beyond incompetent” response to dealing with COVID-19; it did not “just disappear,” shockingly. “With damning testimony from public health officials and hard investigative reporting, Gibney exposes a system-wide collapse caused by a profound dereliction of Presidential leadership,” Neon notes.

Here’s more:

On January 20th, 2020, the U.S. and South Korea both discovered their first cases of COVID-19. However, 9 months later, the novel Coronavirus has claimed the lives of over 200,000 Americans and caused staggering economic damage, while in South Korea, there were no significant lockdowns and, in an urbanized population of 51 million, only 344 lives have been lost. Where did we go wrong?

As the presidential election nears, Americans are increasingly enraged by a lack of clear leadership, endemic political corruption, and left to wonder how did the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world manage to fail so thoroughly in its response to a global pandemic? … It will be a generation before we know the full extent of the damage wrought by this pandemic, but Totally Under Control will stand as the definitive account of the Trump administration’s incompetence, corruption, and denial in the face of this global pandemic.

Totally Under Control premieres on On Demand on October 13 and Hulu on October 20.

Kacey Musgraves has gotten familiar with storied American institutions. She has a well-established relationship with Willie Nelson, she guested on The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo to cover “Rubber Ducky,” and now she has met up with the Scooby-Doo gang.

She voices herself on a new episode of Scooby-Doo And Guess Who?, and she posted a clip from the episode, writing, “Scooby-Doo and the gang came on down to Nashville to help crack a major Country Music mystery! No — it wasn’t to solve the lack of female airplay!” While Musgraves’ clip doesn’t reveal what the mystery is, it does show her feeding Shaggy and Scooby a huge feast featuring a variety of hot sauces, one of which is intense enough to burn a hole through the wood floor.

On Twitter, Musgraves shared another clip, of her meeting the whole gang (she already knew Daphne since they’re best friends in the show).

Musgraves also offered instructions on how to watch the episode for free: “if you wanna watch it all you have to do is download the @boomerangtoons app (it’s free) and that episode is available also for free. (you don’t have to make an account or anything.) Click on Scooby Doo and then on ‘Scoobtober Premiers’ and my episode is the first one!”

Check out the clips from Musgraves’ Scooby-Doo episode above, and watch the full episode by following the directions Musgraves provided.

Despite justifiable concerns over South Park applying its brand of “both sides” humor to the deadly serious COVID-19 crisis in America, “The Pandemic Special” appears to be just the antidote that some viewers were looking for. The hour-long episode, which was simulcast on MTV and MTV2 along with its home on Comedy Central, brought in the best ratings for the animated series in the past seven years. Via Deadline:

The Comedy Central animated veteran scored 2.3 million Live+Same Day total viewers and a 2.1 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic on the network. That was the show’s highest L+SD demo number in seven years, up 168% vs. the series’ Season 23 average. It also ranks as the highest-rated scripted telecast on ad-supported cable in 2020.

Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that”The Pandemic Special” dropped in the middle of a content drought with the fall TV season being thrown into disarray when productions were scuttled during the pandemic. The fact that South Park scored the highest-rated show of the year would suggest that viewers stuck at home are hungry for entertainment, however they can get it.

That said,”The Pandemic Special” defied expectations as it heavily skewered President Donald Trump’s disastrous response to the coronavirus and offered a fair and insightful rumination on the lockdown through one of the show’s patented Stan speeches. Even more surprising, while creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have historically looked down on voting thanks to their libertarian views on the two party system, “The Pandemic Special” broke tradition and encouraged viewers to vote. It was a rare and welcomed moment for a show whose pathos for two decades has been “caring isn’t cool.”

(Via Deadline)

The deluxe version of ASAP Ferg’s Floor Seats II EP dropped today and so far, it seems the highlight of the tape is the Monica-featuring “Big ASAP,” which samples Keni Burke’s 1982 hit “Risin’ To The Top” and addresses the recent controversy in which ASAP Mob founder ASAP Illz claimed Ferg had been kicked out of the group.

“Some of my n****s got jealous, they see their man rose,” Ferg flexes on the first verse. “I can feel the resentment every time n****s speakin’ / They congratulate you, then they let the anger sink in.” Those bars are just the setup, though, as he questions Illz’s temerity straight-up in the second verse. “How you go and kick the leader of A$AP out?” he wonders. “I keep my foot on these n****s’ neck ’til they pass out.”

Although Illz is considered one of the founding members of the Harlem-based crew, another member, ASAP Nast, denied that Ferg had been kicked out. Meanwhile, Ferg himself was seemingly unfazed by the out-of-the-blue announcement, only posting an offhand Instagram video in response. He also had a similar unbothered reaction to the lukewarm reception of “Move Ya Hips,” another Floor Seats II single which fell short of the expectations of guest rapper Nicki Minaj’s more fervent fans.

Listen to ASAP Ferg’s “Big ASAP” featuring Monica above.

We could all stand to witness some sweetness and light today, and The Rock is here to oblige. The megastar recently opened up about his family’s struggle with COVID-19, but he seems to be feeling much better now. His spirits were certainly high enough to send a video (as posted by Twitter user Jamie Klingler) containing a serenade to 101-year-old Marie Grover on her very important day. Given that he was entirely alone while buzzing along on a golf cart, The Rock removed his mask and let his birthday tones fly.

“This is the joy that we need in 2020,” Klingler wrote. “Thank you @TheRock for helping us to celebrate #grandmomgrover’s 101st birthday! She loves you and we do too.”

This actually isn’t The Rock’s first rodeo with Grandma Grover. During happier times for all, The Rock still made time during his busy 2019 to send a centennial-themed shoutout her way. The gesture was noted by CNN and around the world, and thank goodness Grandma Grover is still kicking and surviving 2020. She (and her boundless enthusiasm) can be an inspiration for all in how to remain positive during incredibly negative times. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to be serenaded by a charismatic WWE-turned-movie star. Only hydraulic gates should be unhappy to see him coming.

To state the obvious, Cardi B often works explicit lyrics into her music. Heck, her latest mega-hit, “WAP,” is built on explicit lyrics. For her new Blackpink collaboration “Bet You Wanna,” though, she kept things pretty tame. However, that doesn’t mean Cardi didn’t want to go in a characteristically dirtier direction.

Late last night, Cardi took to Twitter to say that it wasn’t easy keeping the song clean and reveal the alternate lyric she originally had in mind: “Ok my last tweet of the night …It really hard for me to do a verse with no curse words and PG [crying laughing emoji]..I really wanted to say ‘I bet if you get me WET I’ll still be on fire’ [crying laughing emojis].”

Not long before that, Cardi also discussed how she sees the song: “No lie tho ,serious talk I really see this song on a girly movie .Like a girl trip movie,or like the last song they play on a movie when the girl gets marry and live happily ever after.What ya think ? Bardipink your area.”

The Album is out now via YG Entertainment/Interscope. Get it here.

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

The latest episode of Indiecast is presented by Steven Hyden’s new book This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ And The Beginning Of The 21st Century, and arrives on the same day that Radiohead’s seminal album was released in 2000.

It’s hard to believe in retrospect, but many music critics in the early ’90s assumed that bands who became popular after Nirvana could never last. With the success of Radiohead’s “Creep,” they were roped in with other bands that fizzled out after their one-hit-wonder, with many turning their noses up at the somewhat nerdy alternative rock outfit. Needless to say, those estimations couldn’t have been further from the truth.

In many ways, the band’s fourth album Kid A was the culmination of Radiohead putting their alternative rock era behind them, moving toward the more esoteric, dream-like sound that we’ve come to know and love. Twenty years after its release, Kid A is considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time, and marked a new beginning for the legendary British band.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Hyden is singing the praises of Bartees Strange‘s debut album Live Forever while Cohen is plugging Dubnobasswithmyheadman and Second Toughest In The Infants, the first two albums from British electronica band Underworld.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 10 below and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.