Month: November 2020

On its surface, Danny Brown‘s “Savage Nomad” video appears simple; a lot of backstage footage from the pre-COVID North American tour in support of his 2019 album Uknowhatimsayin? as the song plays over the grainy, hand-held shots of him and his tourmates living it up. However, the longer you watch it, the more you’ll realize just how much work and forethought went into the video’s concept. As Danny rips his way through the boisterous verses, viewers may notice how his outfit changes but the lip-sync doesn’t.

In other words, he performed a version of the song backstage at nearly every stop on the tour, then went back after the fact and spliced each video together to make one coherent whole — some of the footage even overlaps to show how many potential takes there were to choose from. Director Realestphotographerever truly outdid himself, making sure to include cameos from each of Danny’s supporting acts: Ashnikko, Skywlkr, Zelooperz, and more make appearances, acting up backstage and generally doing all the stuff you’d expect rappers to do.

Danny also used the video to promote his upcoming Bruiser Thanksgiving 7 Tour, continuing his tradition of putting on a live show each year the night before Thanksgiving. Of course, circumstances being what they are, this year’s show will instead be a live stream with performances from Bruiser Wolf, Shigeto, Tiny Jag, and Shigeto, performing from the house Danny used to shoot his “Best Life” video. Danny also provided a link to donate to https://insideoutdetroit.org/donate benefitting youth in his hometown.

Watch the “Savage Nomad” video above.

Even before the presidential race was called for Joe Biden nearly two weeks ago, Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney to outgoing POTUS Donald J. Trump, was on the warpath. In one ridiculous press conference after another the former NYC mayor has alleged voter fraud, but has yet to offer a shred of hard evidence. His latest couldn’t quite top the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle, but it came close, with its My Cousin Vinny rhapsodies and weird dripping goo. Even Fox News, long the place Trump could rely on to make him feel better, is crying foul, at least at Giuliani.

Correspondent Kristin Fisher was asked to weigh in on the latest bonkers Giuliani to-do, and she didn’t even try to spin it to a positive. “Well, that was certainly a colorful news conference from Rudy Giuliani,” the exasperated reporter said, “but it was light on facts.” She continued:

“So much of what he said was simply not true or has already been thrown out in court. Giuliani opened by making this really bold and baseless claim, that a lot of this alleged nationwide voter fraud that he’s referring to all came from one centralized place. He called it a ‘nationwide conspiracy.’ And yet he failed to provide any hard evidence to back up that one specific claim, especially when you’re dealing with a claim that really cuts to the core of our democratic process.”

Mind you, Fisher didn’t go full-in and call Giuliani a “liar.” But she stepped right up to the line, and the gist of her argument was unmistakable.

It hasn’t always been easy to focus on the content of Giuliani’s words during recent press appearances. You try to pay attention to what someone is saying when their head is melting dark syrup. But it’s all been fanciful nonsense, and so far all but one of many attempts to take voter fraud allegations to courts have been tossed, including by Republican-appointed judges.

To their credit, Fox News hasn’t been going along with Trump and company’s attempts to flip the election. While the likes of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have aired his baseless allegations, the network was calling states like Arizona for Biden on Election Night. Even Fox & Friends hosts have been calling bull on certain claims, going so far as to ask him to work with Biden’s transition team. Trump hasn’t taken any of this sitting down, of course, but even if he winds up starting his own rival network, his old friend Howard Stern gives that the same odds as Trump Steaks.

NLE Choppa may be best-known for his viral “Shotta Flow” videos and recently going vegan and getting really into meditation, but he’s also something of a music industry trailblazer. Not only is he signed to a groundbreaking record deal that affords him an unusual amount of flexibility but he also has some other innovative ideas for how to present his music. The latest is the first-of-its-kind video for his From Dark To Light mixtape single “Bryson” featuring an AR hologram and he’s offering his fans a chance to be part of it.

Partnering with RisingStar AR, the 18-year-old … uh… rising star is challenging fans to create their own videos vibing along with his holographic avatar and post them to social media with tags #BrysonHologram, #FromDarkToLight, @NLEChoppamusic, and @RisingStar.ar. Choppa will pick his three favorites and they’ll be compiled into the official music video for “Bryson.”

NLE Choppa made waves after the release of his debut album Top Shotta when he announced he’d no longer rap about violence in his music. While From Dark To Light sort of undermined those plans with a few records indulging in his former content, his social media has better reflected his resolution as he advised fans to adopt plant-based diets and took a hard turn away from the sort of rabble-rousing topics he used to post.

Find out more about the contest in the video above and watch NLE Choppa react to classic videos “Crush On You” and “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See.”

NLE Choppa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Michael J. Fox made his battle with Parkinson’s public over 20 years ago, and ever since then, difficult as it’s been, he’s tried to stick with the profession that made him a name. And he’s tried to stay busy, even if he wasn’t always acting. But you may not see him act, for a while, at least. According to People, Fox says that health concerns have forced him to retire from acting, at least for now.

The problem stems in part with what it’s done to his short-term memory. “The nascent diminishment in my ability to download words and repeat them verbatim is just the latest ripple in the pond,” Fox told People. “There are reasons for my lapses in memorization — be they age, cognitive issues with the disease, distraction from the constant sensations of Parkinson’s, or lack of sensation because of the spine — but I read it as a message, an indicator.

“There is a time for everything, and my time of putting in a twelve-hour workday, and memorizing seven pages of dialogue, is best behind me,” he said. “At least for now.”

The onetime Marty McFly did try to stay positive, playfully referring to this as a “second retirement,” but also adding that we may see him perform onscreen again. “That could change, because everything changes. But if this is the end of my acting career, so be it.”

Over the last few years, Fox has been blunt about his failing health. In 2018 he broke his arm after a fall resulting from Parkinson’s, and he underwent surgery for a noncancerous tumor on his spine. That forced him to learn how to walk again. Recently he said that his “short-term memory is shot,” and had openly questioned whether he could return to acting. On the plus side, there’s one talent that hasn’t been robbed from him: He’s become a prolific writer, his fourth memoir, No Time Like the Future, having arrived this week.

“My guitar playing is no good. My sketching is no good anymore, my dancing never was good, and acting is getting tougher to do,” Fox told People earlier this month. “So it’s down to writing. Luckily, I really enjoy it.”

(Via People)

Around the country, COVID-19 cases are spiking yet again as the United States deals with record numbers of positive cases as the pandemic continues on into its ninth month. The federal response to the pandemic has continued to be a general refusal to issue anything approaching nationwide mandates, leaving the decision to individual state governors and legislatures, who have by in large approached the public health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic divided across partisan lines.

In Michigan, governor Gretchen Whitmer has introduced the return of various restrictions in the state to once again try to slow the spread of the virus, including closing high schools, movie theaters, and indoor dining as we continue the cycle of imposing, lifting, and imposing restrictions again.

As has been the case for the entirety of 2020, the response to those mandates has been split with plenty of people being very vocal against the restrictions on gatherings. Kelly Stafford, the wife of Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, is apparently among those as she went on a Instagram Live tirade in which she likened living in Michigan to a “dictatorship” because of the restrictions.

Unsurprisingly, not long after, she issued an apology noting she was just heated in the moment and loves living in Michigan.

In Michigan, like most other states, they are currently dealing with a record number of cases each week, with Thursday bringing 7,592 more cases and 134 deaths, with last week setting a fifth straight weekly record at 44,019 cases, per the Detroit News. The frustrations with public health mandates and restrictions on gatherings and dining have been consistent throughout the pandemic, in part due to the fact that when those restrictions are successful, they appear to be overreactions because case counts stay low. There has been an undoubted financial toll on workers and business owners across most all businesses during this period, particularly in the service and food industries that have opened and closed numerous times. It has been a disaster for small businesses and the working class, and the anger is undeniably justified.

The righteous fury tends to be misguided against mandates rather than towards the lack of federal response, however, particularly in the form of financial compensation to help float businesses and workers so that there aren’t the massive losses of jobs and businesses that we’ve seen. From the beginning, the pandemic response has been inconsistent and mismanaged, failing to provide for those who need it and the result is a ninth month of the restriction rollercoaster, with no end in sight until a vaccine comes available, because that’s just about all state governments are capable of doing.

In two months, Donald Trump will be out of the White House but, at the last minute, it looks like we may have found the best, if not the most unusual, impression of him out there.

Stand-up comedian James Austin Johnson has been impersonating the president since he was elected, but it wasn’t until recently he figured out the right approach. Trump is such an over-the-top character in real life that he’s tough to spoof.

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“When he first got elected and I was playing with the voice in 2016, 2017, it would show my sort of left-wing anger a lot. I would be like, ‘We’re going to kill everybody. We’re blowing up everybody’s houses I don’t like,'” Johnson told Vanity Fair. “I’d be more openly racist and homophobic as Trump.”

However, that didn’t seem to connect with audiences.

Johnson was raised as a conservative Christian in Tennessee, so he took his intimate knowledge of Trump supporters and used that to help shape his impersonation.

“Trump manages to uncomplicate the world for a lot of people. They don’t give a shit about, he fucks porn stars and he fucks around on his wife. They don’t care about any of his earthly sins,” he told Discourse Blog.

“He repeats their own values back to them. And all they want to see is their values reflected in the world,” Johnson continued. “The fact that we don’t all see Trump in the same light could be a reason for why a lot of the Trump comedy doesn’t hit.”

So instead, he focused on Trump the “bullshitter.”

“Whenever I ramble in that Trump voice, I’m hoping to just sort of subtly illustrate, like, this guy just has no idea what he’s talking about,” Johnson said. “He just talks out of his ass and he’s pure Americana. He is confidence without substance. He gives voice to that angry confidence and he doesn’t have to be right.”

Johnson went viral for a lo-fi video he did of Trump discussing the music and career of “Weird Al” Yankovic. The impression is great because he masterfully recreates Trump’s rambling style while speaking passionately about something pretty pointless.

Which is a lot of what Trump does at his rallies.

Another popular video is trump discussing Scooby-Doo.

“Scooby-Doo, they call him Scooby-Doo. They call the show Scooby-Doo. But Scooby doesn’t do anything. Scooby is not involved,” Johnson, as Trump, said in an August video. “Half the time Scooby is not involved. He’s just a bystander. It’s one of the worst deals we’ve ever had.

“Scooby, frankly, gets much too much attention, money,” Johnson said later in the video. “We’re giving way too much attention to Mr. Scooby.”

While a lot of comedians focus on the ’80s womanizing version of Trump, Johnson sees him as an old many with terrible sinuses.

“I tend to hover around Rally Trump, and there’s absolutely no rehearsal there. I pick a pop-culture topic, usually something that is an actual opinion I actually hold,” he said.

Johnson, an avid gamer, also did a hilarious video as Trump conflating his election day performance with Pokemon.

Johnson believes the key to doing Trump is to be as unrehearsed as the president. “I think I might have written out a couple of things a couple of times, and I just noticed that those wouldn’t take off online and it was missing some mojo of what makes Trump Trump,” he said.

“Trump is not written out, and he’s not rehearsed,” he said.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are continuing their incredibly busy offseason, with a new report indicating that the team is in conversations with the Golden State Warriors on a deal involving one of their recently-acquired players. According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the Thunder are conversing about a deal that would send Kelly Oubre Jr. to the Bay Area.

The news of a deal was confirmed by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

The Thunder got Oubre in the deal that saw Chris Paul join the Phoenix Suns. While the soon-to-be 25-year-old wing does theoretically fit the Thunder’s timeline as a rebuilding team, he is coming off of a season in which he was incredibly productive, averaging a career-high 18.7 points and 6.4 rebounds in 34.5 minutes per game. He also connected on 35.2 percent of his attempts from three, which also served as a career-best mark.

It is unclear what the Warriors would send back in this sort of deal, but the last 24 hours have been rather hectic for the team. In more somber news, Klay Thompson suffered a torn achilles, which is slated to keep him out for the entirety of the 2020-21 season. Golden State did have a good night in the NBA Draft, though, acquiring Memphis center James Wiseman with the No. 2 overall pick and selecting former Arizona guard Nico Mannion in the second round.

Good news, Eminem fans: You can now live where the Detroit rap legend used to live for less than $4 million. According to WCRZ, the “Lose Yourself” rapper’s former Oakland County home went up for sale recently, and while there are undoubtedly Eminem stans who would pay way more for it — they get him tattooed on every square inch of their available epidermis, after all — the owners are letting it go for only $3.75 million.

Of course, Eminem hasn’t lived there for about three years after selling it to the current owners in 2017. He originally bought the place in 2003 and WCRZ’s photos of the property even include Em’s old cars. It’s got six bedrooms, 10 bathrooms (!), wood floors, a hot tub, and a three-car garage on 17,500 square feet. There’s even a tennis court, although Eminem freely admits boxing is more his sport — and he’s not even very great at that.

This isn’t the first time Eminem’s former property was in the news this year. In May, it was reported Matthew Hughes, a 26-year-old Eminem superfan, was arrested for trespassing at the mansion looking for his hero — after Hughes had been arrested for breaking into Em’s current residence and confronting him face-to-face. Fortunately, nothing bad happened; Em called the cops, who promptly arrived and took Hughes into custody, turning up his previous attempts to contact Em in the process.

However, maybe the pressure of having crazed Stans pop up at the property at all hours has convinced the current owners of the Oakland County home to move on. More details are available at XXL.

While promoting his turn in HBO’s The Undoing, father of the year Hugh Grant shared his secret to making sure his kids fully appreciate his Oscar-worthy performance in Paddington 2. In what is (maybe?) a fictitious anecdote, Grant explained to Seth Meyers how he forces his unruly urchins to respect his work in the sequel after they weren’t exactly thrilled with their first viewing, which came as a shock to Grant as he considers the film to be “kind of a masterpiece.”

“I set up a special screening for them. That takes a whole cinema, I have hundreds of children. I got them in there and they pretty much hated it,” Grant told Meyers. “They kept whispering to me, ‘Why are you in it so much?’ I make them like it now. They have to watch it every night and tell me how good I am, otherwise they don’t get fed.”

That’s one way to do it! You can watch Grant talk all things Paddington 2 with Meyers below:

Jokes aside, Grant genuinely appreciates starring in Paddington 2, and he doesn’t think that’s a low point in his career despite some of the jokes he saw in the media following its release. In fact, he thinks it’s the best film he’s ever made. Via Vanity Fair:

“I was presenting I think at the Golden Globes, and they do that thing when you walk out, and they say, ‘From the forthcoming Paddington 2, Hugh Grant.’ And someone showed me Twitter afterwards, and it was…people were full of derision. ‘Christ, has it come to that. Poor old Hugh. Paddington 2. Sequel to a kids film.’” Grant smiles a bit ruefully. “It’s particularly annoying in the case of Paddington 2, because I genuinely believe it may be the best film I’ve ever been in.”

We’d have to agree, and not because Hugh Grant threatened to starve us.

(Via Late Night with Seth Meyers)

The biggest player option decision this offseason was in the hands of Gordon Hayward, who had to decide between picking up his $34.1 million option with the Celtics or entering free agency as one of the best players on the market — but on a market that has very few teams with significant cap room.

The two teams with significant cap space this offseason are the Hawks and Knicks, who, unsurprisingly have now been tied having interest in Hayward. The latest report from Marc Stein of the New York Times indicates the Knicks have been “aggressive” in their pursuit of the wing and may be poised to lead the chase for him if he enters free agency.

It should be noted that Ian Begley offered some further reporting, indicating that the Knicks use of their draft picks on Wednesday may point to them having cooled some on Hayward, although they did clear massive amounts of room earlier on Thursday by declining team options and letting the likes of Taj Gibson and Bobby Portis walk.

Even with the Knicks drafting Obi Toppin and Immanuel Quickley, Hayward could still fill a significant need on the wing for a New York squad that could desperately use a solid defender in that spot as well as some on-ball creation. Just before the 5 p.m. ET deadline, word emerged that Hayward was indeed declining his option and would become a free agent.

That would put the Knicks and Hawks at the front of the line for Hayward, with New York apparently having significant interest in the wing.