Deepfake audio technology is becoming incredibly convincing, so much so that Jay-Z apparently took legal action against an AI-powered impersonation of him this year. Eminem is the latest rapper to receive the deepfake treatment, and in a new digitally fabricated song, he goes after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The video was created by YouTube channel Calamity AI in partnership with another YouTuber, 30HZ. Calamity AI explains the song, “An Eminem diss-track written by Artificial Intelligence. We inputted the title ‘Mark Zuckerberg Diss in the Style of Eminem’ and let the A.I. write the rest. From there, we sent the lyrics to 30HZ, who synthesized and created the vocals. The audio was not record by Eminem.”
Lyrically, the track is hit-or-miss. Some of the words actually make sense as slights towards Zuckerberg, like when the song begins, “Yo, I’m comin’ for the Zuck / The epical CEO who’s on a sack of fail / When he ain’t doing shrooms and having sex in VIP / He’s rage-querying his ex-employees that he got rid of.” It later continues, “All the people that helped you build that sh*thole of a site / Are shaking their heads in shame at what you’ve become / And they’re running from your dreams like you’re the devil. Shieldin’ their eyes from the tragedy you’ve become.”
Then there are the parts that aren’t quite as focused, like the lines that dwell on Zuckerberg’s hair: “You got those glossy eyes, and you’re all hairy, too / You’re so hairy, you’re getting hairier every day / I’m making a Photoshopped picture of you tomorrow / I’m gonna make you into a real big hairy steamboat.”
If you’re a beginning bourbon drinker, you can easily pick up a few bottles in the $30-50 range that you’re sure to be happy with. Sip it over ice, mix it into an old fashioned, or even drink it neat. The joy of being a newcomer is that your expectations are significantly lower.
As you progress and your palate grows more refined, so too will your tastes. As your tastes evolve, the price tags on your favorite bottles will get steeper. It’s a boozy layer cake.
But no matter how elitist your palate eventually becomes, $100 will always get you a lot in the world of bourbon — where there are no international tariffs to be paid. In fact, there are lots of amazing, high-quality bottles for at or under $100. We’re talking actual sippers. To find them, we hit up the experts — asking a handful of our favorite bartenders to tell us the best bourbons for under $100.
Check their answers below.
Jefferson’s Ocean Cask Strength
Seth Falvo, bartender at The Hotel Zamora in St. Pete Beach, Florida
I really enjoy Jefferson’s Ocean Cask Strength. Despite its high proof, it drinks very smooth, and the salty, briny notes the bourbon picked up at sea complement the salted caramel and tobacco forward flavor profile of the base whiskey.
It’s a unique bourbon that belongs in any whiskey drinker’s collection.
Basil Hayden’s 10 year is a great bourbon to drink neat. Clocked in at 80 proof, ice and mixers should be on the sidelines for this bottle. The characteristics and flavor would be lost if anything were added.
Do yourself a favor and pick one up after reading and you’ll see what I mean.
Cory Coose, bartender at Tak Room in New York City
Pinhook’s Bohemian Bourbon flagship, which was just released this year. Extremely reasonably priced and with a taste of high end. Fun spices along with some tropical fruits.
Can be used for all types of cocktails or just on the rocks.
Josh Curtis, bar director at Carbon Beach Club in Malibu, California
Buffalo Trace is my favorite bourbon because it has such a unique flavor profile. Espresso, oak, toffee, custard, and mint rove across the palate. It’s perfect for sipping neat or mixed into your favorite cocktails.
One of the best value bottles on the market, if you ask me.
Ben Potts, owner and bartender at The Sylvester in Miami
Michter’s makes some great stuff. Their 10 year doesn’t quite hit the under $100 mark, but their core bourbon is fantastic. It has a great level of sweetness with hints of honey, vanilla, and charred oak.
Blake Jakes, director of beverage at The Kennedy Bar in Pensacola, Florida
I’d have to say Four Roses Small Batch Select. They are usually always amazing and also high proof. I love that you can have 10 different Mash bills to choose from, which makes every single barrel truly unique.
High West American Prairie is an excellent bottle that checks a lot of boxes. The flavor is superb, there’s enough heat to stand up to a cocktail, and it’s also easily sipped.
It’s filled with pleasing flavors of brown sugar, vanilla, and rich caramel.
I don’t drop around $100 on bottles very often, but now and then I will throw down on a bottle of Old Forester 1920 or Four Roses Small Batch Select. Those are always on the shelf around here. If I can grab a bottle of Colonel E.H. Taylor Single Barrel or Barrel Proof at retail, I will jump all over either of those.
If I had to pick one for today, it would be Old Forester 1920 with its complex, highly sippable flavors
Angel’s Envy Bourbon. Angel’s isn’t a cheap bourbon, but it isn’t an expensive one either. I would have to say that it’s my favorite, thanks to is versatility. It’s great on its own straight, as well as in many whiskey driven cocktails.
It’s also not so expensive that I feel guilty adding it to cocktails.
Hudson Baby Bourbon. Tuthilltown Spirits Distillery is only a few miles from where I grew up in the Hudson Valley. Aside from the savory notes the whiskey offers, I love to support local businesses. Hudson distillery was the first whiskey brand to bring the spirit back to New York and also help create the laws and state requirements to be allowed to produce whiskey in New York.
Kevin Baird, bartender at Dead Rabbit in New York City
I really love Hirsch The Horizon’s distinguished, layered, rich yet dry flavor complex. This brand could possibly redefine the disposition of a high corn bourbon. Also, its slightly unconventional and not-too-fancy turquoise label with line work and symmetry provides a fun almost nautical accent to the juice.
It’s hard to a remember a time when the transition between two presidents was facing more scrutiny. The sitting president, Donald Trump, has been willfully and fruitlessly fighting off the results of a lawful election that saw Joe Biden selected to hold the office next. But Trump’s decision to litigate instead of concede has kept the entire nation rapt and watching how Biden and his team will handle the situation, and it also means that more people than ever are paying attention to Biden’s cabinet selections.
So tonight, when The New York Times broke the news that Biden is likely going to name Anthony Blinken as his Secretary Of State, research and commentary about this choice began to pour into my feed. As a music journalist, chief among the findings is that Blinken is definitely a music fan. Recently, Blinken was on TV segment and filming from his home as many are during the pandemic, and a guitar neck in the background drew some commentary:
It’s a Martin. Which I don’t deserve. And mostly blues and rock. Not good enough for bluegrass. https://t.co/WUWgtH1212
In fact, Blinken is more than just a fan, he also makes and records original music. Operating under the band name, Ablinken, a pretty straightforward band name made of his first initial and last name — which is also his Twitter handle — the purported nominee has a couple guitar-centric songs uploaded to Spotify. His Twitter bio also currently directs followers to his Spotify: “Follow Ablinken on Spotify.”
The music internet and political internet do tend to cross frequently, but this is one of those times where it’s a welcome crossover. Check out more reactions to Blinken and his band below.
Biden’s Secretary of State nominee has a band that he founded that based off “Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers.” Honestly its pretty good. The song “Lip Service” is like a weird mix of Alan Parsons and Blue Oyster Cult.https://t.co/VK4DAg0k0X
ok I listened to the Tony Blinken tracks on spotify and they’re not great but kind of a respect the effort for a middle aged guy with a serious job situation https://t.co/w9ioUobR3E
As a music critic, I’m happy to give my own take on the band. Blinken is the vocalist, and he has a deep voice with good tenor and just a hint of a polish, even if his phrasing is a little slow and clunky at times. The songs are both interesting melodically, but take a little too long to reach their groove. Ablinken sounds like a band with really good potential who needs to practice more and work on their lyrics. They cite ’70s classic rock and R&B as their influences, and that certainly rings true. The guitar solo on “Lip Service” toward the end, in particular, is great, but overall their slower number “Patience” is a little boring. Still, if they were playing in a little dive bar where I was having a beer, I wouldn’t leave. Hear Ablinken’s two tracks for yourself below:
(SPOILERS for this week’s The Walking Dead: World Beyond will be found below.)
It hasn’t reached nearly the heights of this season’s Fear the Walking Dead, nor is it anywhere as good as The Walking Dead is now, but the newest spin-off, The World Beyond, has finally reached the level of passably entertaining with a few cool tricks up its sleeve. It’s an interesting contrast to Fear the Walking Dead at the moment because Fearis telling compelling stand-alone stories — or mini-movies — while The World Beyond is trying to stretch a three or four-hour movie into 10 episodes.
It’s finally arrived to the third act, and it’s seriously starting to heat up, thanks in part to a twist in this week’s episode that few people saw coming. The episode itself largely concerns the death of Tony (and the presumed death of Percy) and the culprit behind it. Silas is the chief and only real suspect. Silas, like his father, has rage issues, and when he feels threatened, he loses his temper, become violent, and blacks out, forgetting the violence he perpetrates. We saw it earlier this season when Silas lost it and beat the holy hell out of a walker, and he’s been warning the others of his anger issues all season long.
In this episode, we finally get a flashback into his past relationship with his abusive father, who Silas violently beat to death, but only when his father first physically attacked Silas. In the Campus Colony, the reputation Silas had was of the guy who beat his father to death, and the reason he decided to go on this journey with Iris and Hope in the first place is that he wanted a “fresh start.” Tony’s death and Percy’s disappearance complicates things, because — though Silas doesn’t remember it — the most logical explanation is that he killed Tony. He was in the same room; the weapon used was Silas’s wrench; and he’s violently lashed out on a prior occasion, resulting in someone’s death.
Eventually, Silas even accepts that he was behind Tony’s murder himself, and rather than put the rest of the group in further danger, Silas decides to part ways with the group. Elton, who believes either that Silas didn’t kill Tony, or that Silas had good reason to kill Tony, also decides to leave the group and join up with Silas, because he doesn’t want to leave his friend to face the zombie apocalypse alone.
The one person who may have answers is Percy, who disappeared presumably into the river, where it’s believed that he would not have survived the undertow. It’s likely, however, that he survived, and that Silas and Elton will come upon Percy in the season finale and find out the truth.
The truth is probably this: Huck killed Tony.
Why would Huck kill Tony? Therein lies the twist. We learned in the opening episode of The World Beyond that Elizabeth — the lieutenant colonel of the CRM — has a daughter in the CRM. I believed that daughter was probably Isabel, the woman in the helicopter and with whom Althea in Fear the Walking Dead fell in love. I was wrong. Huck is Elizabeth’s daughter, and she’s been working with the CRM the entire time to help Iris and Hope journey to CRM headquarters in New York. When Huck left the group and traveled ahead, she was meeting with her mother at the CRM.
Chances are, Huck saw Tony and Percy as obstacles to that, and probably Silas, as well. Killing Tony removes those three complications, as well as Elton.
There does, however, remain some open questions. Iris and/or Hope is referred to by Elizabeth as the “asset.” Why? What do they want with Iris/Hope? Is she someone that they intend to try the cure on? Is she someone to whom they have already given the cure and want to see if it works? Or is she an “asset” because she is somehow being used as leverage to force their father to do something for CRM that he doesn’t want to do? Also, why is it necessary that they make the journey themselves? Why didn’t Elizabeth simply transport Hope/Iris by helicopter? What is valuable about the journey itself?
Most importantly, does this explain why Huck’s accent is so bad?
In any respect, it looks like Iris and Hope’s group will converge with the CRM in next week’s two-hour season finale.
BTS have been on a roll in 2020. Last week, the band welcomed their record Be, which impressively marked the K-pop group’s third studio release of the year. Continuing to keep up with the momentum, BTS brought their recently released tracks “Life Goes On” and “Dynamite” to the 2020 AMAs stage for a captivating performance.
BTS pulled out all the usual stops for their performance Sunday night. Opening with “Life Goes On,” the group reminded listeners of the importance of perseverance during tough times. But that wasn’t all. BTS then made a quick change to turn things up a notch with an energetic rendition of their hit “Dynamite.” The group wore pastel suits and shimmied around the stage with expertly choreographed dance moves.
Ahead of the group’s AMAs performance, BTS earned a number of accolades in 2020. Not only did the group release a head-turning amount of new music, but BTS also broke a handful of records. In August, the group made Billboard chart history by being the first all-South Korean group to ever top the Hot 100 with their buoyant song “Dynamite.” The song’s video also broke a few YouTube records. Their “Dynamite” video had the most concurrent viewers ever during a premiere and was also the fastest video to reach 10 million views, seeing nearly 100 million views in the first 24 hours alone.
Watch BTS perform “Life Goes On” and “Dynamite” at the 2020 AMAs above.
Few people can really say they’ve had a good year, but despite all the horrors of 2020 it’s safe to say Sarah Cooper has enjoyed it more than most of us. The viral sensation who has turned her impersonation of Donald Trump into mainstream success and some impressive TV work has plenty on her plate these days, mainly because of her work lampooning the president. But even she’s not exactly mourning the fact that Donald Trump lost the presidency.
In an interview with The Guardian, Cooper spoke about her meteoric rise in 2020 and what it’s done to her life now that people recognize her form TikTok and now a Netflix comedy special. We know by now that Trump was asked about Cooper’s impressions by name earlier in the year, though it wasn’t clear if he ever followed up on actually seeking her videos out.
Still, she admitted that she’s not worried about popping up in his Tweets anytime soon, as he’s still trying desperately to throw out millions of votes against him and somehow win the presidency.
“I feel that Trump has bigger fish to fry than Sarah Cooper. I think he has got stuff on his plate and so I’m not super worried that he will come after me.”
Cooper also didn’t seem too upset about losing the subject that gave her the breakthrough that’s changed her career. In fact, she said she would “be terrified” if Trump had managed to beat Joe Biden and established a “fascist state.”
But if he had won again, I would be very… I would be terrified. If he had won, and they kept control of the Senate, we would be going into a fascist state. I told my sister, they would be flying Trump flags with the American flag, and I think I would’ve had to start pretending I loved Trump. I think we’d all have to start pretending we loved Trump.”
Despite the apparent doom we avoided with Biden winning the presidency earlier in the month, his refusal to concede the election certainly has many people worried as November wanes and a transition of power remains jilted. But honestly, that wouldn’t be the worst thing for Cooper if he decided to stick around and, say, be on TV all the time after his presidency ends up. Even Cooper knows that.
“I hate him so much,” she said in the interview, “but he has provided my greatest material.”
Doja Cat has been a staple at awards shows this year after she took the stage at the Billboard Music Awards, the VMAs, and the MTV EMAs to offer renditions of her hit songs. The singer has brought a different energy to each show, and her AMAs performance with Bebe Rexha is no different.
Breaking out her recent track “Baby, I’m Jealous,” Rexha took the mars-like stage first. Doja then joined the singer to bring viewers to outer space as the two passionately delivered their soaring melodies.
Ahead of their AMAs performance, Rexha offered an explanation of the inspiration behind her single. “‘Baby, I’m Jealous’ is a song I wrote about embracing my insecurities,” Rexha said in a statement. “It’s about the way social media has heightened my jealousy which can affect how I feel about myself. We are constantly flooded with the highlights of other people’s lives, and at times I find myself comparing my worth and beauty to others. It’s part of the human process to experience jealousy—ultimately, this is an anthem to embrace those feelings as a form of empowerment.”
Watch clips of their show-stopping performance of “Baby, I’m Jealous” at the AMAs above.
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Lil Baby released his second album, My Turn, earlier this year, and songs off that release have been keeping him in rotation this year. The first of which, “We Paid,” is a straightforward braggart rap song about accumulating wealth, the second, though, “The Bigger Picture” was released in June of this year during the Black Lives Matter uprising. That song is an emotional reflection on the struggles he faced growing up as a young Black man in Chicago, and how the police violence against his community continues to harm not only him but the entire community.
For his performance on the AMA’s tonight though, Baby opted to show a more vulnerable personal side on “Emotionally Scarred.” His message of protecting mental health came through loud and clear during the emotionally performance. Similar in tone to “The Bigger Picture,” the downtempo song outlines exactly what has happened in Baby’s life to leave him with some battle scars. As one of the few rappers to take the stage tonight, Baby kept things exciting even on a slower song with a raging guitar solo toward the end of the track. It’s always interesting when rappers embrace rock in their work, and it pays off in a big way here. Watch the video above.
(SPOILERS for this week’s Fear The Walking Dead will be found below.)
Let me say this right up front: The lost character who resurfaced in this week’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead is not Madison. The fan community is very upset today with some online reviewers for vaguely teasing the possibility of Madison’s return in this week’s episode. The closest the episode gets to the return of Madison is a brief mention by Alicia of the Stadium. That’s it. Don’t listen to anyone who implies otherwise.
A lost character does resurface in the episode, however. Grace — the only character from last season we had not checked on yet — appears briefly in the final scene of the episode. She’s very pregnant, and Ginny is keeping her locked away in a small room for reasons we’ll get to in a moment.
The featured characters in this episode, however, are Alicia, Charlie, Strand, and Virginia’s sister, Dakota. Dakota is being transported by a convoy led by Strand, who seems to be eagerly doing the bidding of Virginia. The convoy, however, is massacred, Dakota runs away, and Strand is left up the proverbial sh*t creek without a paddle, knowing that if Virginia finds out he lost her sister, she’ll kill him.
Strand plays the only card he has: He reaches out to Alicia, who (along with Charlie) has been put on some sort of watch duty. Alicia, who is still pissed at Strand for how he played her in the season’s second episode, is reluctant to help, but eventually agrees to track down Dakota. Later in the episode — after she finds Dakota — Alicia radios Virginia, rats out Strand, and offers to rescue Dakota for Virginia in exchange for her and Charlie’s freedom. Alicia is all too willing to let Strand take the fall after what he did to her.
In the meantime, Alicia and Charlie track Dakota to the home of a taxidermist, and this is where things get disturbing: Ed, the taxidermist, has been working on zombies, attaching horns and antlers on to them to (as he explains it) scare people away from his home. I guess antler’d walkers are the post-apocalyptic equivalent of scarecrows.
Ed seems like a nice enough guy, just lonely, and loneliness in the zombie apocalypse is a dangerous thing. Turns out, Ed may have accidentally killed his family, and when Dakota and Alicia try to leave, Ed boards them in, because Ed needs the company. Alas, Charlie (hiding in the house with Ed unaware) tranquilizes Ed, although that doesn’t quite do the trick. When Ed and Alicia get into a struggle, Ed is impaled on a pair of his own antlers (that seemed inevitable) and the antler zombies -come crashing into Ed’s home. Alicia manages to fend off a few, but she is aided by the sudden appearance of Morgan, who arrives as he so often has this season) in the nick of time.
Once the zombies are cleared, Morgan and Alicia have some business with which to tend. Morgan tells Alicia about his hideaway, and because Alicia has grown fond of Dakota, she’s decided that they’ll take Dakota with them, Strand be damned. Morgan, however, has other plans: he wants to use Dakota as leverage to retrieve all their people still under Virginia’s control. Alicia, however, says no dice, and when she threatens to take Charlie and Dakota somewhere else (like the Stadium), Morgan says, “Oh wait! Nevermind! Let’s do this together.” He agrees to take Dakota back to his hideaway.
In the meantime, when Virginia learns that Morgan has Dakota, she blows a stack. She demands to know whose side Strand is on, and he says that he’s on her side (but is he?). That’s when Virginia shows Strand where she has a pregnant Grace hidden. In the closing seconds of the episode, Virginia tells Strand to leverage Grace for “every single person we took from that gulch.”
Virginia, it appears, is angling to start another All-Out War. Unfortunately, we have to wait until 2021 to find out what happens next.
Additional Notes
— The chessboard has been set up in a very compelling way moving ahead, with — as it stands at the moment — June, Strand, Sarah, and Wendell on Virginia’s side; Al, Dwight, Dakota, and Alicia with Morgan. John is in the wind, Daniel is working for Morgan from the inside, Grace is being held as leverage, and we don’t really know where Luciana and Wes stand at the moment. Plus, Sherry and her group are wild cards. It’s messy, but I expect that episode 8 (which was supposed to be the original midseason finale) will help settle these alliances.
— No word yet on when Fear will return in 2021, but it is filming. The Walking Dead returns on February 28th, so it’ll be interesting to see if Fear returns after their 6 episodes, or if it runs concurrently. I would guess that it would come after, which means we may not see the back half of this season until April, and it would end in June, or around the same time that Fear seasons usually begin. AMC’s TWD schedule is all out of whack.
— Madison is not coming back. It’s disappointing that a few reviewers hinted that she might because fans who would have normally enjoyed this episode were left feeling disappointed that she did not return, despite some hyping that she might. That’s not cool. It’s one thing to speculate about something that might happen in episodes that we have not seen yet — that’s something we all do — but it’s another thing to imply something is in an episode that a reviewer has seen when that something is not.
— Nobody believes for a second that Strand is actually working with Virginia, do they?
— While disturbing, the fact that a taxidermist only attached antlers to walkers is probably the least upsetting thing he could have done. I expected to see stuffed zombie heads hanging on his wall.
— Strand’s convoy, by the way, was wiped out not by the spray painters, but by Morgan. However, Morgan insists that he did not take down Tank Town. There’s still yet another unknown out there: the spray painters, and the key they are trying to retrieve from Morgan.
This year’s AMAs showcased some of today’s biggest stars with scheduled sets by Billie Eilish, BTS, Dua Lipa, and DaBaby, but the awards show also featured some veteran acts. Nelly was invited to the stage to give a performance of his 2001 hit “Ride Wit Me” and his song brought up mixed emotions for viewers.
As Nelly shared his Country Grammar track on live TV, there was a clear generational divide seen on social media. Some viewers from the younger generation admitted they didn’t know who Nelly was while others were shocked to see that it’s been nearly two decades since the release of his seminal debut album.
Sharing their thoughts on Twitter, many were shocked to see that Gen Z didn’t recognize the singer.
if u dont know who nelly is ur too young to be on twitter i dont make the rules
Nelly’s performance also made some feel nostalgic.
Thank you Nelly for taking such great care of yourself. It’s truly an honor to still be crushing on you 20 years later. Congrats sir. #AMAspic.twitter.com/Zgj7q6uVvJ
In other Nelly news, the singer is currently appearing on this season of Dancing With The Stars — and he’s not sacrificing his style. Producers told the singer that he needed to wear approved dance shoes during his performances, but Nelly didn’t want to sport the classic all-black kicks. Instead, the singer was able to find a shoemaker to update his Jordan 3s with a Dancing With The Stars-approved heel.
Check out fans react to Nelly’s appearance at the 2020 AMAs above.
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