Month: December 2020

After attending a secret gala for Young Republicans maskless on Thursday night that blatantly defied COVID guidelines, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz became the target of a press conference held by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, who was not happy. The “ordinarily mild-mannered” politician was anything but as he eviscerated Gaetz for the irresponsible party, which was blasted all over social media. Murphy also gifted Gaetz with new nickname that’s sure to stick around. Via NBC New York:

“That guy in the middle, the tall, handsome fella in the gray suit, that is Representative Matt Putz – oh sorry, Matt Gaetz, and based upon his past performances, it is obvious being a knucklehead is not beyond the pale for him,” Murphy said at a news conference. “He was actually Sarah Palin’s backup act for this event.”

Murphy then gave Gaetz a stern warning, “I hope you’re watching Matt — you are not welcome in New Jersey, and frankly I don’t ever want you back in this state.”

The event was a holiday gala for the New York City Young Republicans who secretly held the event in Jersey City, only to turn around and brag about defying COVID restrictions on social media. Those in attendance, including Gaetz, thumbed their noses at New York City Governor Andrew Cuomo.

However, the open display has now put the venue and the party’s organizers in the crosshairs of Jersey officials who are looking into legal action. As it turns out, Governor Murphy wasn’t the only one with a message to Gaetz. Jersey City Chief Prosecutor Jake Hudnut also had a warning for Congressman Putz.

(Via NBC New York)

When Joe Biden becomes the president on January 20, 2021, at noon EST, hopefully we never have to hear from the MyPillow guy ever again. But until then (and what a long “until then” the next month is going to be), Mike Lindell was interviewed on Friday on Fox News, where he claimed that Donald Trump will be the president for the next four years.

During a protest outside the home of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, complete with a “hearse carrying some ballots representing dead people,” Lindell was asked by a Fox News reporter about the state’s upcoming runoff election that will determine control of the U.S. Senate. I want the word to get out that Donald Trump will be our president for the next four years,” he replied, via Mediaite. “I talked to [former-Trump campaign attorney] Sidney Powell about three, four days ago, so I know firsthand.”

“When I go all in like I did for the president in 2016, I do my due diligence and I get out there, and I could sit here and tell you, 100 percent. Not 98, 100 percent.”

The MyPillow CEO and founder is part of the March for Trump bus tour, which is going all the way across the country, I sponsored this, and we are going to end up in D.C. I want people to have the awareness of what went on because the mainstream media is not showing you this, but all the corruption, by the time it’s all opened up here and they see it, even the Democrats are going to go, ‘Wow, at least my party tried to steal it.’”

This is what the “mainstream media” doesn’t want you to see:

You can watch the Fox News interview here. Lindell also did… whatever this is.

(Via Mediaite)

Chance The Rapper is reportedly being sued by his former manager, Pat Corcoran, for $3 million in commission according to legal documents apparently filed with the Cook County Court and reviewed by Uproxx. The docs were shared by Courthouse News Services but cannot be confirmed on the Cook County Online Case Search as of press time.

The lawsuit alleges that Chance fired Corcoran as a response to the poor reception of his “debut” album The Big Day and now refuses to honor the terms of his original management agreement with him. Pat asks for amounts due per their contract, as well as damages for breach of contract. Per the documents, Corcoran and Chance entered their agreement in 2012, with Pat helping to drive Chance’s brand to its current level of success. However, once he’d reached that level of notoriety, Chance allegedly began ignoring Pat’s management advice, unilaterally announcing The Big Day‘s release and proceeding with the rollout despite Pat’s counsel that there wasn’t enough lead time due to Chance’s upcoming wedding.

Pat claims that Chance’s decision to cancel the accompanying tour for the project was made in response to poor ticket sales and a mediocre reception for the project, which Pat says was made in a haphazard process counter to their meticulous one for previous mixtapes Acid Rap and Coloring Book. However, Chance blamed Pat for the album’s disappointment and began to replace him as his manager with his father Ken Bennett. Pat says Ken booked Chance’s appearances on Good Morning America and Ellen, digging more of a hole for the rapper and prompting Pat to cut ties — but not before demanding back pay for all the projects he helped Chance with, including merch.

Unfortunately, Pat’s agreement with Chance appears to be a “handshake deal,” meaning it’ll be hard for him to prove he’s truly owed 15% of everything. Meanwhile, Chance’s dad has already offered a $350,000 lump settlement — far short of the 15% proportion of the millions Chance has made since 2012. Pat says the amount is closer to $3 million and an account of Chance’s true income for the last eight years to prove it.

While the documents provided aren’t currently available on the Cook County system, the documents show a filing date of November 30, meaning they might just not have been digitized yet. You can review the docs as scanned and uploaded by Courthouse News Services here. Uproxx has reached out to Pat and Chance but has not received a response as of press time.

Things are getting weird on the monolith front, which means many people no longer think it’s actually aliens or something that may end life as we know it on earth. A third monolith has been found, the second one found in America in the last few weeks, and this time the reaction from the general public has been very different.

The first monolith found in the Utah desert shortly before Thanksgiving had already vanished when a second, scuffed up version was discovered in Romania. Reaction to the news that a third one was found in California this week, however, led to violence against the art installation/marketing scheme/ancient artifact intent to spell doom for humanity. And it’s already led to some copycats.

But, more importantly, many people seem to be dreading whatever the truth behind these metal structures actually is.

As the old saying goes: The first time you stumble upon a monolith is a mystery. A second time is a trend and a third time is probably a marketing campaign.

Perhaps the reason so many people are skeptical is, well, they’ve seen this kind of thing fall flat before. And they’ve also watched as countless companies have tried to springboard off the viral attention for their own marketing purposes.

Netflix marketing stunt was a popular answer as speculation about the third structure grew.

But just as quickly as the third mysterious monolith appeared, it was gone.

According to Vice, that’s because men attacked it and knocked it down while chanting “Christ is king” among other things.

In a way, it’s very fitting that this quickly went from a unique curiosity to something that spirals out of control in a matter of days. We’ve gone from bighorn sheep scouting to evangelical lunatics toppling what might be a marketing campaign near a California hiking trail in the middle of a pandemic in a matter of days. It would be a new record if not for, well, everything else that’s already happened in 2020.

Most Christmas songs are about the joy of the season, snow, spending time with family, and other jolly things of that sort. 100 Gecs, who are fresh off a collaboration with 3OH!3, have made a Christmas song, and of course, they didn’t do things the traditional way. Their new tune is called “Sympathy 4 The Grinch,” and like the famous green character, they too have a bone to pick with the holiday season.

Throughout the ska- and punk-influenced song, the duo tell a story about being scorned by Santa Claus. The song begins by setting the scene: “Wanted some speakers, Xbox, and t-shirts / I’ve been good like every single day / Looked under my tree, my box was empty / Santa made an enemy that day (what the f*ck?) / Done being jolly, time to be naughty / Think it’s time we settle up the score / Fill up the wishlist, let’s cause some mischief / Grab my keys, I’m headin’ out the door.”

From there, the story continues with 100 Gecs breaking into Santa’s house to steal his magic bag and make a getaway. It’s both exactly what one would expect from a 100 Gecs Christmas song and something that we couldn’t have seen coming.

Listen to “Sympathy 4 The Grinch” above.

Over the past decade, there’s a been a sea change in perspective when it comes to marijuana and its usages and benefits. It’s now legal for recreational usage in 11 states and for medical purposes in 34 states. In the most recent election cycle, five more states voted to legalize it, while South Dakota and Mississippi — states that have been historically more conservative on the topic — voted it in for medical purposes in the most recent election cycle.

A big reason for this change in thinking is the touted medical benefits associated with it, as various research studies have shown it can be a safer alternative to pharmaceuticals in pain management, as well as a host of other ailments. Still, the stigma surrounding it has slowed its progress, but more and more sectors of American life are continuing to come around.

The NBA, for instance, will reportedly discontinue random marijuana testing in the coming season, a continuation of the pause they placed on that testing during the Orlando bubble. The league will, however, continue to test “for cause,” but is apparently shifting its focus to more dangerous PEDs.

The NBA has officially suspended random marijuana testing for the 2020-21 season …

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) December 4, 2020

The policy on testing is still built into the CBA, but many believer that will be re-evaluated in the next collective bargaining negotiations. Players Association chief Michele Roberts, who recently joined the board of directors on Cresco Labs, a marijuana startup, in part because of their social initiative to help minorities get past marijuana convictions expunged, said the following in a recent GQ interview:

“When I was watching the cannabis industry grow, again I saw an opportunity for communities of color,” Roberts told GQ. “I thought it was especially appropriate given there are so many poor people and people of color who ended up paying huge penalties for being involved in an industry that is about to be, within the next 10 years, legal throughout the United States.”

The NBA is still a long way from eliminating the testing altogether or advocating for its medical uses, but all the recent trends show that it’s heading in that direction.

This year has been awful in too many ways to count, from tiny inconveniences to total devastation. Like its cousin the hospitality industry, the live music business has been flattened by the pandemic. If 50 people is too many to inhabit a bar or restaurant, then clearly 300 in a club or 50,000 in a stadium isn’t going to work. And unlike professional football or baseball, rock and roll really doesn’t make sense without a live audience. Livestreams can be fun, but sweaty lovefests they ain’t. Which means that not only are bands left adrift, but so are the places where bands ply their trades: bars and venues.

Like a lot of us, Rocio Verta-Ray had big plans heading into 2020 — one of them being a series of vinyl singles featuring a variety of bands she admires, all recorded at the vintage-leaning studio she co-owns with her husband Matt. (You might recognize his name: Matt Verta-Ray has done time in ‘90s pop outfit Madder Rose as well as Heavy Trash with Jon Spencer.)

But not long after a recording session with the Spanish band Go Cactus at NYHed Studios, that Big 2020 Event That Shall Not Be Named happened. Instead of continuing on from New York City to Austin for South By Southwest, Go Cactus had to flee, not even sure they could easily get back into their home country. Singer-guitarist Pau Gual, after charmingly apologizing for his perfectly good English: “We weren’t sure if Spain had closed the border. We had to go so fast. We were so happy to have recorded some songs, though.”

With her vinyl series already in the works, Verta-Ray added an element of giving, dubbing the endeavor Vinyls For Good. It’s right there in the name: The records wouldn’t just benefit bands or the studio, but something larger. With bars and restaurants particularly battered by world events — government help is still minimal at best — she envisioned donating proceeds to the businesses that needed them badly, which also happened to be businesses that traditionally support live rock ‘n’ roll.

The format was never in question: Nothing digital would do. “We use a more naturalistic approach to miking at NYHed,” she says. “We like to record the sound of the room. It’s a more old-fashioned type of recording, which I guess is fashionable again. It’s the same thing with vinyl; everybody’s loving vinyl again. People thought for a while that it was dead, but obviously it’s not.”

With bars and music taken care of, the missing ingredient was beer — and the financial support that beer companies often bring to the music world. (Where would every music festival, big and small, be without them?) Verta-Ray happened to know somebody in the biz, or rather a whole bunch of somebodies.

“All the men in my family work at this beer factory in Spain called Mahou,” she laughs. “All the women work in film and music. My father worked in this factory, my two brothers, my nephews — we have a long history with this beer company.”

So it was easy enough to get Mahou, which has been brewing beer since 1890 but only recently started making inroads in the States, involved in the project. And Verta-Ray knew that the first band would be — like her and the beer — Spanish in origin. She immediately thought of Go Cactus, a young, garage-rocking trio that fit perfectly with NYHed’s ethos: recording live, in a room, on tape rather than computer. They’re messy and brimming with life, a ray of rock sunshine in a dark time.

And the only way to get a copy of this special Go Cactus single — ”Would You Hold My Hand” b/w “Hippie Jump” — is to make your way, safely of course, to a bar that sells Mahou. The record is cheekily priced the same as a can of the beer. “Our studio is mainly analog with vintage gear,” says Verta-Ray, “and Mahou wanted to be associated with that sort of artisanal way of making things. Anybody can buy the record for the cost of the beer, and the proceeds of the record go to the bar itself.”

She hopes that the Go Cactus single is just the first of many, and Vinyls For Good will continue to raise money for bars and venues as long as there’s a need. Verta-Ray hopes it will be safe enough soon to get bands back into NYHed’s Lower East Side studio for sessions and singles, and she thinks it’ll be an American band next.

The last live show that Gual and Verta-Ray attended, he was on stage and she was in the audience: Go Cactus played at Pianos just before things fell apart. They can’t wait to get together again. “I’m looking forward to personal interactions, and to having bands back in the studio. After the 70s, everything about recording was so separate and compartmentalized. When we record bands, they like to all be in the same room playing, and that’s something we’ve been deprived of by this horrible situation,” she says. “We’re ready to be together.”

For more information on Vinyls For Good, check out their website.

A new report from Fred Katz and Kelly Iko of The Athletic details from both the Wizards’ and Rockets’ sides why the John Wall-for-Russell Westbrook trade happened, and the main takeaway is that despite their long history of close friendship, Westbrook and James Harden simply could not co-exist “in a realistic basketball situation with a championship as the long-term goal.”

The adjustment both players had to make to sharing the ball, control of the team, and the spotlight, was not as smooth as expected despite their relationship, the report says.

Here’s more on the breakdown of their partnership in Houston:

In a realistic basketball situation with a championship as the long-term goal, sources said, Harden and Westbrook simply couldn’t co-exist on the floor. This isn’t a knock on their personal relationship, an aspect that has been misconstrued in recent weeks. Harden and Westbrook have a deep-rooted friendship that spans over decades, but the NBA is a business. Individual legacies are at stake and winning a championship seems more unlikely by the year. At 31 and 32, respectively, Harden and Westbrook aren’t exactly NBA spring chickens anymore, either.

Nine years ago, when both players were in Oklahoma City, this awkward pairing might not have mattered. Westbrook and Durant shared the spotlight with Harden excelling as the spark plug off the bench. Since then, dynamics have changed. Both Harden and Westbrook have won MVPs, a host of personal accolades, and have established brands for themselves. This, combined with the never-ending clock that is Father Time, made a split almost inevitable.

As Iko notes, Harden faced a bigger change to his offensive style than expected, with Westbrook posting a usage rate 10 percentage points higher than even Chris Paul’s highest-usage Rockets season. That reared its head especially once Westbrook got to the Bubble after recovering from COVID-19 and a quad injury and was less able to create for himself.

With few options on the table via trade because of Westbrook’s enormous salary, the Rockets now face another interesting feeling-out process with Wall.

After previously featuring on Big Sean’s “Friday Night Cypher,” Detroit rappers Kash Doll and Tee Grizzley reconnect on the boastful “Bossa Nova.” Produced by Hit-Boy, the new single combines a skittering snare rhythm, ghostly chants, and a whining lead to backdrop the two Motor City MCs’ chest-beating rhymes. Kash establishes her dominance early, questioning, “What the f*ck I look like hoppin’ out a Uber?” Then Grizzley steps up to the plate playing lothario with a lustful verse of his own before Kash bats cleanup, dragging would-be players with “air in his Magnum.” Yikes.

Kash is a little over a year removed from her last full-length project, Stacked, but she’s kept her buzz louder than a packed barbershop with singles “Wake Up,” “Rich Hoochie,” and most recently, the DJ Infamous, Mulatto, and Benny The Butcher team-up, “Bad Azz.” “Bossa Nova” is yet another in-your-face single from her upcoming sophomore album, which doesn’t have a title or release date as yet.

Meanwhile, Tee Grizzley is fresh off the release of his 2020 mixtape The Smartest after losing his aunt/manager to gun violence last summer. He teamed up with Motown rap vet Big Sean twice this year — once on the latter’s Detroit 2 in the above-mentioned “Cypher,” and again on “Trenches” from The Smartest.

Listen to “Bossa Nova” above.

New York rapper Lil Tjay has been gaining popularity ever since featuring on the 2020 XXL Freshman Class, rewarding him for his standout album, True 2 Myself, and mixtape, State Of Emergency, and dubbing him one of the hottest rising stars in the rap game. His latest single may solidify that status, as it samples one of music’s biggest hit makers, Justin Bieber, borrowing the Canadian singer’s breakout hit “Baby” and repurposing it into “None Of Your Love.”

Tjay’s newfound stardom may be the reason the song exists in its current form at all. The 19-year-old originally put the track on his YouTube in July 2018, but couldn’t keep it there due to sample clearance issues. Then, over two years later, he made the announcement on Instagram that the song had been cleared for an official release, allowing him to bump it to streaming services and expose a whole new audience to his warbling rhymes.

The pop-leaning song arrives at an opportune time for Tjay; with the eyes of the world watching to see if he lives up to his Freshman placement, expanding his range from the Bronx-approved street tales of his prior projects may improve his mainstream appeal as he works to complete his sophomore album.

Listen to “None Of Your Love” above.