Month: November 2020

YG’s track “FDT,” featuring Nipsey Hussle, has had a long shelf life, and for good reason: It’s an anthem against the 45th president, released the year he was elected to office. After it was announced Joe Biden had won the 2020 election on Saturday, the song was frequently heard in videos posted the social media of people taking to the streets in celebration. Turns out it’s been popular all week.

According to Nielsen Music/MRC Data and Billboard, “FDT” saw its streams go up from 240,000 to 1,050,000 on Election Day, making for a 338% increase from the day before polls opened. The song also experienced a 221% jump in sales on Tuesday.

“FDT” has been the center of a few incidents in recent years. Last month a YG fan was sucker-punched for playing the track outside a Buc-ee’s in Denton, Texas. In the video, supplied by TMZ, the Trump fan, Jason Lata, is seen yelling at the individual playing the song and asking them to turn it off. Lata then took a swing at the fan, leading to his arrest a charge for assault causing bodily injury.

(via Billboard)

Nipsey Hussle is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Spike Lee never does anything by half-measures. He never holds back, not in his movies, not in public appearances, and certainly not in his front row seat at Knicks games. So when soon-to-be-former president Donald J. Trump — a man he’s mocked and called out in both BlackKklansman and Da 5 Bloods — lost his big for re-election, he didn’t do it lightly.

Early Saturday, a number of publications — CNN, The New York Times, even Fox News — finally called the election in favor of Joe Biden, the former Vice President to Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. The news was a huge relief, especially since there was so much build-up. It took four days after the election for certain battleground states, such as Pennsylvania and Georgia, to count all the votes, especially given the record number of absentee ballots.

Social media was quick to fill up with videos and photos of people taking to the streets in celebration, bidding farewell to one of history’s most hated commanders-in-chief. One of the first featured no less than Spike Lee, who, while actually born in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of the most famous New Yorkers, if maybe not as much as the Queens-born Trump. The Oscar-winning filmmaker took to the streets and, as you can see in the video above, he went full-on, jumping up and down as he popped a bottle of bubbly as everyone cheers.

In a way, the election is likely far from over. Trump never committed to a peaceful transition of power, and since Election Night, he’s filled his Twitter feed with misinformation, conspiracy theories, even claims that he won states he did not. He’ll almost certainly spend the next 2 ½ months filing frivolous lawsuits, trying to contest Biden’s win on flimsy or non-existent evidence. But today, let’s not worry about that. Go be like Spike Lee.

After years of rumors and fan demand, the worst kept secret in video games has finally been unveiled. There will be a remake of the original Mass Effect trilogy under the name Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

A trailer for the trilogy remake was revealed on Nov. 7, which Bioware has adopted over the years and turned into “N7 Day.” The trailer itself was not particularly shocking, with this remake being essentially an open secret, but it’s great to finally get an official announcement and a release timeframe for the game — the trailer says it will drop in Spring 2021, and we can only assume this remake will be coming to next generation consoles as a result.

Mass Effect was arguably Bioware’s biggest title from the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 generation of consoles. The original trilogy was insanely popular, but the franchise went silent during the previous generation. Mass Effect: Andromeda was supposed to be the continuation of the Mass Effect title and universe, but the game flopped and was universally disdained by fans and critics. Ever since, we’ve heard nothing of Mass Effect or its universe besides this trilogy remake.

Hopefully, the remake is able to meet the extremely high standards that Mass Effect has. You can only expect that it will be coming in with new graphics and a new engine, but with that comes the risk of new bugs and problems. Perhaps, then, this remake could be the chance that fans have been waiting for to get new Mass Effect games. This presents an opportunity to build a base on new hardware. If the remake is a success, then what is stopping Bioware from making new Mass Effect games on the same engine? This is purely speculative, but maybe could serve as that kind of test run.

The year’s presidential election has been a rollercoaster from start to finish. Following a pair of unorthodox debates as well as an election day that turned into more of an election week, the long ride is over: On Saturday morning, Joe Biden was officially crowned the 46th president of the United States. Shortly after the announcement was made the music world took to social media to celebrate.

Ariana Grande took to Twitter and wrote, “CRYING @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris,” followed by a group of white heart emojis, adding, “THANK GOD.” Chance The Rapper kept things simple by tweeting, “AYYYYYYYYYYY,” while John Legend opted for a longer message. “Congratulations to President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris!” the singer said. “Thank you for choosing to serve your country during these challenging times.”

Lil Nas X brought his trademark sarcasm, tweeting, “i used to take that lil n**** joe to school. lil bro used to always say one day imma be president. now look at em. sh*t crazy how life work! congrats tho lil bro.” Reason praised Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, writing, “WE GOT A BLACK FEMALE VP! AMERICA IS GREAT FOR THE DAY!”

You can find more tweets from the music world below.

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

Early in the morning on Nov. 9, 2016, right after it became evident that Donald Trump would shock the world and defeat Hillary Clinton and become President-Elect of the United States of America, Philadelphia Sixers standout Joel Embiid did what he does as well as anyone in the league: got a post off. Embiid said that Trump’s election was proof that “America is tanking,” and in a nod to his employer, said the country needs to “Trust The Process.”

Fast forward to almost exactly four years later and the tabled have turned on Trump. Multiple media outlets projected that Democratic nominee Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the Electoral College, making the former senator and Vice President the President-Elect of the United States of America.

NBA players have unanimously not been fans of Trump, who had used his status as the most powerful man in the world to demonize the league and its players. While he never singled out Embiid, the All-Star big man recalled his tweet from 2016 to troll Trump and praise America for getting him out of the White House.

Embiid is hardly the only Sixer to celebrate this — his teammate, Ben Simmons, tweeted that “good things happen in Philly” on Friday, a nod to both something Trump said during a debate and the role the city played in Biden erasing an Election Day deficit in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

On Saturday morning, not long before CNN, AP, The New York Times, and other sources called the election for his rival Joe Biden, soon-to-be former president Donald J. Trump announced a press conference. The Trump era has always been a weird one — among other adjectives — but the weirdness has really ramped up since Election Day, which has found the leader of the free world repeatedly being flagged for spreading misinformation on Twitter and even declaring victory in states he hasn’t won à la Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. Sure enough, this very simple act — one of his last acts before formally losing the 2020 election — was quick to take a surreal turn.

It began innocently, with Trump announcing a presser in Philadelphia, which has become one of the epicenters of the election, with an avalanche of absentee ballots being slowly but surely counted. At first he announced the affair would be held at the city’s swanky Four Seasons hotel. He deleted that, replaced it with a correction, deleted that correction, then posted a second correction, clarifying that when he said the Four Seasons, he meant…a landscaping business called Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

For the record, Four Seasons Total Landcaping is located in Tacony, in the city’s northeast section — quite a ways away from the hotel, which is located in Center City, just off of the scenic Benjamin Franklin Parkway. That would be an ideal place for a president, even one on the cusp of losing, to make a thunderous appearance. Instead, Trump and reporters were going here.

Journalists were surprised at what the found.

It was an interesting part of town, too.

The hotel’s social media team was also quick to put out a clarifying/distancing statement.

The other Four Seasons, however, was not so forthright with the press.

Some felt this was a perfect encapsulation of what may be Trump’s final days as leader of the free world.

And others just had jokes.

We’re almost certainly in for 2 ½ months of frivolous lawsuits from the Trump team, attempting to contest an election they clearly lost. But one person saw this Four Seasons mishegoss as a good sign.

The press conference, incidentally, was scheduled for 11:30am — about one minute after CNN called the race for Biden. So there you have it: One of President Trump’s last acts before formally losing re-election was being mocked on Twitter for doing something dumb. Sounds about right.

In less than two weeks, the second season of Verzuz will kick off with a battle between T.I. and Jeezy. The upcoming tussle came to fruition after T.I. spent a few months scouting for a competitor. Possible candidates included 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes, but the “Live Your Life” rapper settled on Jeezy and the two rapper will go head-to-head on November 19. As the new Verzuz season gets ready to run its course, co-founder Swizz Beatz revealed another duo for another battle in the coming weeks.

In an interview with DJ Capri on Instagram Live, the famed producer revealed that a Verzuz between Outkast and A Tribe Called Quest is “pending.” He then admitted that he may have been to quick to break the news and refrained from giving away any further details. However, he did take a moment to shoutout a member in each of the respective groups. “Q-Tip is my brother, but that man. Andre 3000, but that man,” Swizz said in the interview.

Some of the last season’s highlight moments include Brandy and Monica’s battle which saw over six million viewers in attendance. Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight’s Verzuz also caught a lot of attention, with almost four million people tuned in to watch.

LeBron James has never exactly been a big fan of Donald Trump. So as you can imagine, the news on Saturday morning that Democratic nominee Joe Biden has defeated Trump, the Republican incumbent, to become the next President of the United States led to James posting like the fate of the world depended on it.

To start, James decided to take a more serious approach, praising the efforts of his voting rights organization, More Than A Vote, to make sure the former Vice President of the United States ascended to the presidency with a GIF of himself celebrating the Los Angeles Lakers’ most recent championship.

James then decided to have a little fun. He quote tweeted a post by filmmaker Ava DuVernay which featured a GIF of Trump saying his famous phrase, “you’re fired,” with some hands waving him goodbye.

While I wish he would have gone with the Vic Berger bye bye video in this instance, James was not done. He busted out a photoshop of perhaps his greatest individual moment — blocking Andre Iguodala in the waning moments of Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals — with Biden’s face on his body and Trump’s face on that of Iguodala.

We will keep you posted on whether James refers to Trump as “u bum” again.

It took four days, but he did it: Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, defeating incumbent Donald J. Trump. The delay was largely based around the record number of absentee ballots, which in some key states, including Pennsylvania, weren’t allowed to be counted until Election Day. That meant that a lot of Biden votes weren’t counted till later in the week, and when they were, they revealed that enough of the state had voted blue than to flip the state, which had gone Trump four years prior.

While Trump will surely not go quietly — and will almost certainly spend the next 2 ½ months filing endless lawsuits all over the nation — for now Biden voters can breathe a huge sigh of relief. Some got emotional. One was CNN’s Van Jones, who was on air Saturday morning when the news network called the election for Biden.

When asked about his thoughts on the win, Jones, who rose to prominence after his passionate statements about Trump right after he was elected in 2016, initially couldn’t speak. He was choking back tears. Even as he delivered a beautiful ode to what a Trump defeat means for so many people, he had trouble getting the words out. Here, in its entirety, is what Jones said:

Well, it’s easier to be a parent this morning. It’s easier to be a dad. It’s easier to tell your kids, ‘character matters.’ It matters. Telling the truth matters. Being a good person matters. And it’s easier for a whole lot of people. If you’re Muslim in this country, you don’t have to worry if the president doesn’t want you here. If you’re an immigrant, you don’t have to worry if the president’s going to be happier to have babies snatched away or send Dreamers back for no reason. This is vindication for a lot of people who have really suffered.

You know ‘I Can’t Breathe’? That wasn’t just George Floyd. That was a lot of people who felt they couldn’t breathe. Every day, you’re waking up and you’re getting these tweets, and you just don’t know. And you go into a store and people who have been afraid to show their racism are getting nastier and nastier to you. And you’re worrying about your kids and you’re worrying about your sister. And can she go to Wal-Mart and can she get back into her car without somebody saying something to her. And you spent so much of your life and energy just trying to hold it together.

And this is a big deal for us just to be able to get some peace and have a chance for a reset. And the character of the country matters. And being a good man matters. I just want my sons to look at this. Look at this. It’s easy to do it the cheap way and get away with stuff. But it comes back around. It comes back around. And it is a good day for this country. I’m sorry for the people who lost. For them it’s not a good day. But for a whole lot of people it’s a good day.

Well said. If you’re reading this, go celebrate. Worry about what Trump will do next another day.

After former Vice President Joe Biden took leads in Georgia and Pennsylvania on Friday morning, while also maintaining leads in Nevada and Arizona, CNN has proclaimed Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. This puts him poised to secure 306 Electoral College votes, which puts him well above the 270 mark needed to win the American presidency. (And, coincidentally, 306 is the same number of Electoral votes Trump secured in 2016.)

Based on the “pathetic” address he offered Thursday night, Trump is not expected to concede and will surely continue to attempt to delegitimize the foundation of American democracy with baseless claims of election fraud, an ongoing effort of his for years now. As you may recall, Trump also falsely claimed that the results of the 2016 election, which he won, were also fraudulent, claims that were never proven by anyone, including the special commission Trump himself assigned to investigate.

Additionally, Trump will mount legal challenges in multiple states, but he and his campaign will need to provide solid evidence of voter/election fraud across the country for anything to result from the lawsuits, outside of blusterous political theater.

With all of that said, Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States of America.