Month: November 2020

On Thursday afternoon Miley Cyrus released the second single off her upcoming album, Plastic Hearts, a collaboration with fellow pop star Dua Lipa. After a raunchy, bloody-looking teaser, the video itself did not disappoint, with the kind of sexy chaos that makes for a great music video.

Not only that, but in a recent interview with Zane Lowe, Cyrus pointed out that the subject matter of the song is well-suited to everyone’s recent experience with quarantine this year. In her mind, the song is about confronting all the things that we’ve tried to suppress or compartmentalize.

“What I love about “Prisoner,” I mean, I think it’s also coming at a perfect time for everybody,” she told Lowe. “I mean, in a way …I feel too, I mean, we’re just trapped in our emotions right now. I mean, really me, there’s no escaping it. It’s like, ‘Locked up, can’t get you off my mind.’ Anything that you’ve tried to suppress or compartmentalize at that point, it’s coming up. It’s yours to own, to own it or release it.”

There’s certainly some weight to that point. “Prisoner” follows up “Midnight Sky,” the first single off her upcoming album. And from the strength of these too songs, Plastic Hearts is looking to be an excellent latecomer in a stacked year. Watch out for it next week and watch the “Prisoner” video below.

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Atlanta Hawks have spent big this offseason with the apparent goal of making it back to the postseason for the first time since the 2016-17 campaign. Their latest attempt at building a playoff-caliber roster involves adding some reinforcements to the backcourt in the form of a point guard who just won a ring.

According to multiple media reports, the Hawks’ reported pursuit of Los Angeles Lakers guard Rajon Rondo has paid off. Rondo is headed to Atlanta to deputize Trae Young on a reported two-year deal worth $15 million.

Rondo isn’t the only piece that Atlanta added to its backcourt on Saturday, as the team went out and acquired former Chicago Bulls guard Kris Dunn, too. As Wojnarowski pointed out, it seems pretty clear that the Hawks really want to get more stout on the defensive side of the ball, because as long as Young is in town, there will be zero concerns about what they can do offensively.

While Rondo didn’t do all that much during the regular season for the Lakers last year — 7.1 points and five assists in 20.5 minutes per game — he had a number of big games in the team’s run to a title, including a 19-point effort in L.A.’s Game 6 win over Miami. Gone are the days when he can be a reliable contributor on the floor, but Rondo’s an excellent mentor for Young and someone who can still ball out on his day.

In just a few years, Lil Baby has became one of hip-hop’s favorite artists, and the last year has been one of his most productive periods yet. In 2020 the Atlanta native has released his sophomore album, My Turn, which turned him into the first double-platinum album-selling artist of the year. His single “The Bigger Picture” also became one of the soundtracks to this past summer’s protests against police brutality. And none of it would have been possible if Young Thug didn’t push the 4PF rapper to pursue rap and take it seriously — something Lil Baby confirmed earlier this year during an interview on The Breakfast Club. Now, during a recent interview, Young Thug shared his side of it.

The Slime Season rapper joined T.I. and Benny The Butcher on the former’s ExpediTIously podcast and when he was asked about paying Lil Baby to take rap seriously, Thug confirmed the story. “I used to read that young n****’s captions on his pictures and call him like, ‘bruh, you know you can rap.’ He in jail like, ‘bruh, I’mma goddamn get out, I’mma goddamn get me some money, get me a bag and do what I need to do,’” he said. “Just to groom him to you really could get paid from doing it, like, no cap.”

In The Breakfast Club interview earlier this year, Lil Baby said he now appreciates everything Thug did for him. “My mind wasn’t where Thug’s mind [was] at because I hadn’t been through what I’ve been through now,” he said. “Now I appreciate everything he said and I understand everything he said. It still put something in my head, but I still couldn’t see it.”

Young Thug is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Black Panther is still a movie franchise without its lead star, as the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman late this summer has left the Marvel Cinematic Universe stunned. But it seems that Marvel is getting closer to finding a path forward, and at the very least they will have to find one by next summer.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, filming for the Black Panther sequel will start next July, and the direction of the script in a Boseman-less MCU is starting to come into focus.

Multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Marvel is now readying Black Panther 2 for a shoot that will start in Atlanta in July and last for upwards of six months.

Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta, who was one of the stars of Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico, is in talks to play one of the antagonists, sources tell THR. Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke and Angela Bassett are expected to return for the new feature, with some saying Wright’s character may take on a more prominent role.

The report indicates that Disney and Marvel execs are focusing heavily on TV projects as the MCU gets a bit less cinematic on Disney+. Wandavision has a release date, for example, and the other TV shows will take up a lot of time in the coming months. And while that’s always been the focus, there’s another obvious factor at play here: the long-term state of the movie industry is entirely uncertain nine months into a pandemic. With release dates shuffled around, filming interrupted and the pandemic making it significantly more expensive to attempt safely, it makes sense that there’s some things left to decide for the movie.

Still, focusing on Wright’s Shuri would also make sense for a Black Panther sequel, and the studio has already said no body double/CGI magic will plop a Boseman look-alike into the lead role. There will be a new Black Panther once the movie finally hits the silver screen, but whoever and whenever that actually happens is still far from official.

Bayer Leverkusen beat Arminia Bielefeld on Saturday, 2-1, to move into second place in Germany’s Bundesliga. They did not allow a single shot or a single shot on goal in the entire match, which makes the fact that they allowed one goal to be best described as a total accident.

What an accident it was, though. Shortly after halftime, Leverkusen was simply kicking the ball around among its defensive players while Bielefeld pressed. They did a pretty common thing in these scenarios and passed the ball back to their goalkeeper, Lukas Hradecky. It was at this point that calamity struck.

Hradecky, for reasons that I cannot fully understand after watching this a few dozen times, tries to boot the ball up the pitch and fails spectacularly. He doesn’t whiff completely, but whiffs in such a way that the ball got some wicked backspin on it and rolled right into his net.

The good news for Hradecky is that the team managed to come back and pick up the win thanks to a goal in the 88th minute by Aleksandar Dragovic. Still, this is something straight out of FIFA, and if this ever happened to me in the game, I’d turn off my console and never play it again.

For the past week, the music community has kept Jeremih in their prayers after his peers revealed the singer was “not doing good” after being diagnosed with COVID-19. The effects were so bad that the Chicago native was forced to check into a local hospital and was later placed in the intensive care unit. Thankfully, the singer’s family reportedly confirmed that he is no longer in the ICU. According to TMZ, Jeremih will now spend the next stage of recovery elsewhere in the hospital. Chicago’s Andrew Barber of Fakeshore Drive also confirmed the news in a tweet that said, “Jeremih is off the ventilator, out of ICU and has been transferred to a regular hospital room!!!”

Prior to the latest news on Jeremih, his family put out a statement about his condition, which emphasized that “COVID-19 is real and not to be taken lightly.” They added, “Also, It’s important for people infected to quarantine and let their families and friends know ASAP. There’s no shame in contracting COVID-19, and people that have it need to be responsible and considerate of others.” They also thanked “everyone who is praying, and we ask for continued prayers. The family believes in daily prayers to God,” adding, “A great team of doctors and nurses is helping him pull through.”

(via TMZ)

A few years ago Universal crapped the bed with their latest stab at The Mummy, a Tom Cruise-led fiasco intended to launch a new “Dark Universe” featuring the studio’s many classic monsters from the ’30s and ’40s. It didn’t work out so well. But this year they found great success with being less ambitious, while spending less money: They released The Invisible Man, an inexpensive and inventive reworking of the classic film. Its success inspired them to green-light other stand-alones, including their latest one: a more comic entry that reunites Channing Tatum with the directors of 21 Jump Street.

As per Entertainment Weekly, the very busy Phil Lord and Chris Miller have tasked Tatum for what’s described as a “modern day, tongue in cheek thriller” inspired by Universal’s classic monster movies. Details are thin on the ground, and it’s not clear if it will be a parody or which monsters, if any, it will feature. Maybe it’ll be somewhat in the vein of 1987’s Monster Squad, in which teens square off against Dracula, The Mummy, and the Wolf Man, who apparently has “nards.”

Starting with the 1931 Dracula, Universal’s line of monster movies helped make the then-struggling studio become one of Hollywood’s heavy-hitters. And it made stars of actors like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., even Oscar-nominated British thespian Claude Rains, who became a star with the 1933 The Invisible Man, despite only being seen once, at the very end. This year’s loose redo of that one starred Elisabeth Moss as a woman escaping spousal abuse, only for her tormentor to create a cloak that makes him invisible.

Meanwhile, Lord and Miller have more than rebounded from being booted off Solo: A Star Wars Story, which underperformed at the box office shortly before Spider-Man: Into the Multiverse, which they produced, exceeded expectations and even won them Oscars for Best Animated Feature. They’re currently working on that one’s sequel, a Ryan Gosling astronaut movie (not to be confused with this), and a reboot of the cult show that made them names, Clone High.

(Via EW)

The last month has been quite the time for Jeezy, with the Atlanta rapper dueling against Gucci Mane in a Verzuz battle, sharing his tenth album The Recession 2, and announcing plans for a new talk show on FOX Soul. He also has a podcast in the works. If that weren’t enough, now he has a video for “Almighty Black Dollar.”

It begins with Jeezy and Rick Ross arriving at the venue of a boxing match, rocking expensive furs and flashy diamonds. The rappers take their seats ringside, with Jeezy boastfully rapping and sharing a toast with Rick Ross before letting him take over. Jeezy’s fiance Jeannie Mai also appears in the video.

Jeezy’s video comes after the rapper recently spoke about his reconciliation with Gucci Mane. “For me to hear him say on a stage, ‘You extended the olive branch,’ let me know where we’re headed,” he said. “I would’ve never thought in a million years I would’ve heard that type of verbiage out of his mouth.”

You can watch the “Almighty Black Dollar” video above.

The Recession 2 is out now via Def Jam. Get it here.

Gucci Mane is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Acts of kindness and compassion are always inspiring. A veterinarian gave a different spin on the phrase “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”.

The poor little pup in this video walked into this shelter with a history of being abused. He was so traumatized that he wasn’t eating. The vet treating him wasn’t sure what to do, so he decided to book a table for two: a the dog’s place. It is not clear whether he got an official invite from the canine in question, but he felt pretty safe about showing up unannounced. He walked into the cage and sat down next to the dog. With his back up against the corner of his new (and hopefully temporary) domain, the rescue stared apprehensively at his human guest. The vet presented a dog dish with food and put it in front of the dog. The frightened pup just looked at the dish and made no attempt to eat. Then he broke out another dog dish identical to the one he just gave to his four-legged patient and started eating out of that bowl. And then came the turning point.

The man calmly took a bite to gain trust and develop a connection. Then he reached down and pulled a kibble out of the bowl in front of the dog and held the offering in his open hand. After a pause, the dog ate the nugget out of his hand. Then the vet did it again, and the dog ate that kibble, as well. The man then went back to eating out of his own bowl. That was when the pup looked at him, realized it was safe to eat and started to eat out of the dish given to him.

There is just something about the connection between humans and dogs. I have two. One of them is a rescue who bounced around from home to home because no one cold handle her so I took her when she was two years old. She was afraid of brooms which tells me it was probably the method with which someone saw fit to discipline her. She had no reason to trust me, but yet the moment I met her to take her to her new home, she jumped in my car with such joy. Yes, she was energetic, but it was because she was cheerful. Imagine getting in trouble for being too happy. I can safely say without bias that she is one of those dogs that everyone seems to love. And she loves them right back. In fact, I am pretty sure that girls I have dated have stayed with me a little longer than they would have just because they didn’t want to break up with my dogs, too.

My other dog is a beagle mix who I adopted at 8 weeks and has absolutely no idea how good he has it. I have cooked chicken and put it in his bowl for dinner. Yes, the same chicken you and I eat and he looks up at me as if disappointed that the balance of saffron and garlic was just a little off, and that makes him hysterical. They are family members and not pets, which is exactly the compassion that our hero in the video showed. My hope is that people can learn from his actions of kindness. Be the change. And you don’t even have to eat dog food to do it.

Do you know that guy who has never had an issue with his TV/internet provider? Neither do I. If you claim you have never had issues with your bill going up without warning, then you are either lying or you own the cable company. Jake Lawson apparently does not own a cable company, and was prepared to communicate his frustrations regarding his bill in a most creative way.

First off, Jake understands what everyone should realize. The customer service representative doesn’t own the cable company either, so yelling at someone who is just trying to make a living like all of us is not the answer. Their job is hard enough as it is so give them a break. Jake gave them more than a break. He gave them a song.

This video shows Jake calling AT&T and calmly questioning his rate increase. Anticipating that he was not going to get the answer he was looking for right off the bat, he came prepared. He asked if he could share a song he wrote about his thoughts on the matter. I must commend Jake on not phoning it in on the chord progression (excellent use of major to minor on the third and fourth chords in what I would have to deem as the verse). He starts off singing “This morning I woke up to an email, from AT&T that was bothering me.” He continues, “This happens every 12 months without fail, so I called up customer loyalty.” He goes on to sing that he is going to switch companies if he doesn’t get his old rate back. And Rebecca from AT&T made it happen.

The moral of the story is not that you need to write a song to get what you want, but as Jake will tell you, yelling and screaming isn’t the answer either. Just recently I was talked into bundling cable with my internet. They promised me I would get my same rate back if I didn’t want to keep the cable TV service. I called up to cancel two weeks later, and lo and behold my internet bill was $7 higher than it was just two weeks ago. I played the “I know you personally didn’t raise my rate, but I am sure you can understand how could feel a little wonky if you were in my shoes” card. I got my old rate back, although with not nearly the style that Jake flashed.

Customer service representatives can go above and beyond, too. Once I called up my TV provider to find out if the bouncing logo in the screen saver ever hits the bottom right corner. I kid you not, she put me on hold while she spent five minutes trying to find an answer for me. She came back on the line to inform me that while the logo has been known to hit the top right and left corners, she had no knowledge of it hitting either bottom corner, though it was unclear as to whether it was possible.

Jake, I tip my hat to you for spreading cheer even in times of frustration, and for popping out a pretty snappy tune. As for the logo in the screen saver, don’t ask me how I know it hits every corner (even bottom left) except for bottom right. And if you say you saw it happen, you are probably the same guy who says they called the Keyser Soze moment in the movie The Usual Suspects.