Month: November 2020

2 Chainz released his anticipated album So Help Me God last week, which boasted features from the likes of Kanye West, Mulatto, and more. Despite not securing a verse from Jay-Z on the record, 2 Chainz paid homage to the rapper by sampling his Reasonable Doubt track “Feelin’ It” for his song “Southside Hov.” Now, 2 Chainz is celebrating his album’s release with a reflective video alongside the track.

The flashy black-and-white visual positions 2 Chainz in front of two Teslas while rapping about his beginnings. “I’m from the Southside where it’s lukewarm / where n****s set you up for robbery and help you look for ‘em / I’ve been a stepper, I walk around with my own shoehorn / This type of flow, I give the opposition goosebumps,” he raps.

Ahead of his visual’s release, 2 Chainz told The Breakfast Club that he sent Jay-Z the video after filming it. “Me and Hov cool so I sent him the video when I did it just to show him the angle that I wasn’t trying to be him,” he said. “But since it was a Hov sample and the things that I was talking about in the song was some Hov stuff, so I named it ‘Southside Hov.’ He was like, ‘I’m humbled by it.’ It was a cool back-and-forth we had.”

While the rapper said Hov was cool with the video, 2 Chainz has since given up on trying to collaborate with him. “As far as trying to get him on something, yes I’ve given up on that part,” 2 Chainz said. “I don’t like rejection. I got this little mental thing, people that I deal with don’t even know this, where I might ask somebody something three times over my whole life and secretly, after the third time, I won’t ever probably ask again.”

Watch 2 Chainz’s “Southside Hov” video above.

So Help Me God is out now via Def Jam/Universal. Get it here.

Shawn Mendes: In Wonder (Netflix documentary) — The floppy-haired heartthrob takes fans behind the scenes of his demanding rise to the top, which led him towards a reckoning of sorts. The film promises a heartfelt glimpse into the pressures experienced while coming-of-age in front of absolutely everyone. While charting his path from precocious troubadour to global superstar, the project also includes never-before-seen footage of his private life and worldwide travels.

His Dark Materials (HBO, 9:00pm EST) — The Dust-filled fantasy series picks up with Lyra and Will looking for answers at Oxford while Magisterium mulls over a choice.

Industry (HBO, 10:00pm EST) — The Succession-esque series for the younger crowd sees the grads facing the challenge of reeling in new clients when Pierpoint loses a big client. Meanwhile, Gus has to get creative to satisfy his new supervisor.

Filthy Rich (FOX, 9:00pm EST) — The Monreaux family is searching for Antonio’s missing son while Margaret discovers a secret about the plane crash, which unveils a lot about her family’s history.

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Glenn Close, Kane Brown featuring Swae Lee & Khalid

Jimmy Kimmel Live — Amy Adams, Jack Huston, Jewel

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon — Emma Stone, Ben Falcone, Josh Groban

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Michael J. Fox

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Mandy Moore, Jeff Tweedy

In case you missed these weekend picks:

Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square (Netflix film) — Everyone loves Dolly (who helped fund a promising COVID vaccine), so at least there’s one thing that you won’t be arguing about with your relatives (over Zoom) this holiday season. Featuring an album full of original Dolly music, this film (which co-stars Christine Baranski) revolves around how the coldest of hearts can melt in the face of family, love, and the enduring Christmas spirit of a small town.

Small Axe (Amazon film collection) — Five Steve McQueen-directed movies will drop each Friday over the course of five weeks. The stories, set in London’s West Indian community, will explore the endurance of the human spirit despite setbacks from discrimination and rampant racism, all set from the late 1960s to the 1980s.

Run (Hulu film) — Starring Sarah Paulson and directed by Aneesh Chaganty, this suspense film might be the perfect distraction. Paulson plays an obsessive mother who controls her daughter in total isolation, and her daughter’s now only beginning to grasp the secretive (and unnatural, possibly sinister) reasons for this behavior.

Mike Hadreas is often the focus of his Perfume Genius videos, but for his latest, he hands the reigns over to Pigman. The snouted character stars in the new “Some Dream” video, and in it, he works in a warehouse, comes across a burning house, and works a surprising twist in at the end.

Hadreas says of the single, “The song is about the sort of dream world I keep myself in, in order to write. Sometimes I wonder if there will be real world costs for staying there too long. I don’t want to pick my head up after a bunch of years go by and see a bunch of songs but nobody to love.”

Charles Grant, who directed the video alongside Hunter Ray Barker, also says of the clip, “I’ve loved Mike’s music for a long time. Marc LeBlanc is the star of the video — he plays the pigman. He’s an amazing actor and his performance in combination with how powerful and emotional Mike’s music is gave this whole project such amazing energy and spirit. Hunter and I are really grateful to have added to Mike’s creative world in a way that feels uniquely true to him, us and Marc all at once… We are all pigs.”

Watch the “Some Dream” video above and read our interview with Hadreas here.

The White House’s vaccine czar, Dr. Marc Siegel, had an embarrassing moment on Monday when his camera fell into his crotch during a Fox News segment. The blooper happened while Siegel was fielding a question about Regeneron from anchor Julie Banderas, only to have the camera give all of Fox News’ viewers a clear shot of the doctor’s pants, which he was fortunately wearing. While Siegel continued to talk as if nothing happened, you can tell by the look on Banderas’ face that she clearly saw what happened. She then tried to assure Siegel that these things happen, and it’s no big deal, which probably would’ve worked had she not quipped, “Nice jeans by the way.”

You can watch the embarrassing moment below, via The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona.

Of course, as entertaining as this moment is, nothing compares to Rudy Giuliani’s meltdowns over the past few weeks.

The Trump campaign attorney has been on an all-time humiliating hot streak going all the way back to October when his compromising scene in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was revealed. That led to a series of bizarre screaming interviews, which were merely an appetizer for Guiliani’s post-election behavior. America’s Mayor was front and center for the Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco, but Giuiliani somehow managed to top that debacle by dripping hair dye down his face during a deranged press conference that even Fox News denounced. In short, Rudy would probably kill for something as quaint as a mere camera to the groin. That’s like a walk in the park.

(Via Justin Baragona on Twitter)

The wheels appear to be turning on a follow-up to King Princess’ 2019 album Cheap Queen. She dropped the new single “Only Time Makes It Human” in October and now she’s back with “Pain,” a fun, upbeat tune that’s deceptively pessimistic about her love life.

She spoke about the song with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, saying:

“‘Pain’ is cool because… It’s probably my favorite song I’ve ever written. It makes me so happy when I listened to it. I haven’t gotten sick of it. I like when it’s on in the background or my girlfriend just did my new video, she was… I had to hear it a bajillion times through the editing process. I was just like, ‘This song makes me so happy.’ And I think what I love about it is it’s got that f*cking piano. It’s the ultimate George Michael meets Erotica-era Madonna meets an incredible remix if you’re in a gay club that makes you uncomfortable and horny.”

She also discussed waiting to release new music, saying, “Well, first of all, I totally respect anyone releasing music all the time, but I was just… between the global pandemic, and then a massive racial movement, I just didn’t feel like it was appropriate to be releasing music, just for me, personally, until time was right. And then early fall, end of summer, it was like, ‘OK, let’s start. Let’s put it out.’ I feel like there’s some room, and some breathing room to put out music and I just want to be respectful.”

Listen to “Pain” above.

The holiday season serves as an opportunity for people to do a whole lot of things, something that is doubly true this year as we take some time to be a little more appreciative of what we have in the face of a global pandemic. Today, we want to take a chance to celebrate the basketball players who use their platforms to help those who could use a helping hand.

In this episode of Dime Breakdowns, we decided to highlight a handful of individuals from the NBA and the WNBA. People like Russell Westbrook and Bismack Biyombo have their own charities through which they look to uplift others — Westbrook has done a laundry list of acts, like partnering with The Angelino Campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic, while Biyombo helps children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through the Bismack Biyombo Foundation.

Others, like Jrue Holiday and Patty Mills, took their salaries from the NBA’s Orlando Bubble and put them towards organizations that help Black and Brown communities — Holiday and his wife, Lauren, started their own fund with money going towards New Orleans, Los Angeles, Compton, and Indianapolis, while Mills’ money went towards charities in Australia. And of course, there is the remarkable story of Maya Moore, who has taken a leave from the WNBA to help a wrongfully incarcerated man named Jonathan Irons get his conviction overturned through more than a year of hard work.

These five players are just a microcosm of the numerous NBA and WNBA players who see individuals in need and make it a point to lend a helping hand. The world of basketball is filled with these sorts of folks, and with it being the holiday season, we wanted to shout a handful of them out for their efforts.

A life of crime is no joke, but apparently it can make for some very funny mob nicknames. And with many other aspects of life slowly slipping into the unknown grasp of a disease-filled winter, poking fun at potential criminals with eccentric nicknames is really the best we can hope for this holiday season.

Monday brought word that a mob bust in Philadelphia had wrapped more than a dozen suspects up in RICO charges. There were some incredible names in the news bulletin, starting first and foremost with a guy nicknamed “Tony Meatballs.”

The other names on the list were good, though, too. A guy named “Joey Electric” getting… charged… is pretty great. But the focus was all on Tony Meatballs on Twitter as the RICO news spread, and for good reason: it is very easy to make jokes about people with a generic first name and a last name that is also a food.

Amazingly, this legal trending topic had nothing to do with Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani.

Despite the bad news for all parties involved, they will have their day in court eventually. Which is how the criminal justice system works in this country, if only because it means a judge in Philly will have to say names like “Tony Meatballs,” “Joey Electric” and “Louie Sheep” out loud someday. It’s the least that 2020 can give us after all this, really.

In April, Post Malone set an impressive chart record. “Circles” spent its 34th week in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, which was the most time any song had spent in the top 10. A few weeks after that, “Circles” left the top 10 after spending 39 total weeks there. While Malone was setting that record, though, he was being chased by The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” which was also in the midst of a huge top-10 run. Now, The Weeknd has taken over the top spot: On the Hot 100 chart dated November 28, “Blinding Lights” is No. 7, giving the single its 40th total week in the top 10.

This comes just weeks after “Blinding Lights” set the record for the most weeks spent in the top five spots of the Hot 100. It was also revealed not long ago that The Weeknd will perform at halftime of next year’s Super Bowl.

Malone talked about his prolonged chart success in a recent interview with Uproxx, saying, “I can’t believe this many people still want to hear my sh*tty songs. It’s crazy with all the talented artists and all the massive records out over the past year or so. For me to have a song on the charts that long is just unbelievable.”

Check out our recent interview with Malone here.

When the PlayStation 5 made its wide release on November 12, the majority of those that bought the next-gen console on release day or via pre-order did so in order to play Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It is, by all accounts, an excellent game that takes the best of the first Spider-Man game and builds on the existing framework for a new installment — you can read our review of the game here.

However, as happens with any new game, there are glitches and issues to smooth out in the first weeks of the release and one such glitch that’s popped up is especially funny. On rare occasion, gamers have reported that they have gone from Miles Morales to becoming random objects on the street that still have the same functionality, just aren’t human. One video from Twitch streamer Froste shows him go from a block of snow that lands on a car fighting bad guys to a fence to, somehow, a rack of t-shirts before becoming the facade of a building.

Froste has the right response to this, which is to cackle wildly while seeing what happens next — and, impressively, he continues on with his mission even as he goes from object to object. He was not the only person to suddenly become an inanimate object with superpowers, as a post on TikTok showed another person become a heating lamp that shoots webs.

The delivery of “I’m the pole?” is incredible here, as the confusion is palpable in such a short clip.

The other Spider-Man: Miles Morales glitch that has gotten viral attention is how Miles is greeted by police after helping to recover someone’s stolen car.

Maybe a little heavy-handed, there. Again, these are seemingly rare glitches, but it is pretty hysterical to see a block of snow taking out bad guys in a car.

Oscar winner Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series is made up of five films, including Mangrove; Lovers Rock (out this week, and extremely good); and Red, White, and Blue. It stars John Boyega as Leroy Logan, a Black forensic scientist who becomes a cop to challenge the racist attitudes of London’s Metropolitan Police Force from within.

Red, White, and Blue is based on a real story, and the Star Wars actor met with Logan “to understand the man behind that decision, how the man was strong enough to take on that kind of conflict in order to give the police force the proper kind of representation it needed,” he told IndieWire. “Leroy actually had quite a comfortable life and could have just lived his life being a scientist, made his money, moved on. He actually chose the obstacle. He chose the challenge. And so for me, that difference was very important.”

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

After seeing his father assaulted by police officers, a young Black man is driven to join the force, with hopes of changing racist attitudes from within. He soon finds himself facing both his father’s disapproval and racism in the ranks.

Red, White, and Blue, which also stars Steve Toussaint, Tyrone Huntley, Nathan Vidal, and Jaden Oshenye, premieres on Amazon Prime Video on November 29.