Month: January 2021

While live touring remains shut down until at least fall this year, many artists and event organizers will continue to host virtual versions of their popular festivals. ASAP Mob has joined the trend, announcing that the 2021 Yams Day will be a virtual event live streaming on January 18, plugging the festival with a hilarious documentary-style trailer that finds ASAP Rocky accosting random people in the street to implore their attendance. There’s even a subtle call-out to the late MF DOOM, whose mask appears via an illustration floating over a fan’s face.

The video also includes the website YamsDay.com, but doesn’t offer up much other information besides that. At Yams Day 2020, the crew paid homage to their favorite WWE wrestlers and invited guest stars Kenny Beats, Lil Yachty, Metro Boomin, Nav, Pi’erre Bourne, Slowthai, Smooky MarGielaa, Young M.A., and more to perform at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, New York.

The Yams Day tradition started in 2015 as the Harlem-based rap collective sought to pay homage to their departed founder ASAP Yams, who died that year as a result of an overdose. Yams was instrumental in the group’s rise to prominence, helping to engineer the breakouts of ASAP Rocky and ASAP Ferg, and was referred to by them as “the mastermind behind the scenes.”

For more information, which is presumably forthcoming, visit YamsDay.com.

For years, the website Bandsintown has been a leader in helping music fans stay up to date on what concerts are happening where. Last year, there wasn’t much data for them to track, but they’ve bounced back with a strong new idea for 2021: They have launched Bandsintown Plus, a livestream concert subscription service.

For $9.99 per month (a 7-day trial is available), the Bandsintown Plus website promises “over 25 streaming shows a month with all your favorite artists,” “Q+As, live chats, and exclusive interviews,” “HD image and hi-fi-sound,” “exclusive interactive events with artists,” and “new shows and series added every week.”

They got a lineup of esteemed musicians to kick things off, as they have shows on the way in January and February from Adrianne Lenker, Chrome Sparks, Chromeo, Claud, Empress Of, Fleet Foxes (“solo,” so probably just Robin Pecknold), Flying Lotus, Nicole Miglis, Ian Isiah, Jeff Tweedy, Little Dragon, Local Natives, Lomelda, Omar Apollo, Phoebe Bridgers, Poolside, Q, Rexx Life Raj, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Sir Chloe, Soccer Mommy, Toro y Moi (DJ set), Tycho, Wallow, Waxahatchee, and “more TBA.”

For music fans who have enjoyed livestream concerts during the pandemic, $10 a month for a livestream show pretty much every day sounds like a great deal, so learn more about Bandsintown Plus here.

Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman is a verified Shakespeare when it comes to crafting articulate, downright eloquent takedowns of the worst GOP members.

Take his recent Josh Hawley takedown for example. Fetterman, who just announced a prospective Senate bid, guested on a Daily Beast podcast recently and unloaded on the senator from Missouri who championed Trump’s Electoral College challenge. Speaking to host and former GOP campaign consultant Rick Wilson, Fetterman called out Hawley for refusing to recognize Pennsylvania’s electoral votes, and for at least indirectly inspiring the attack by MAGA supporters on Capitol Hill last week.

“You know, he went to Stanford and Yale Law,” Fetterman said when addressing Hawley’s actions last week. “He knows better than anybody that this is all garbage. And this is the point, and that’s what makes him so reprehensible. You know, I don’t care what your political beliefs are. If you’re willing to damage and endanger over your ambition, your soul is dipped in dogsh*t. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Hawley infamously supported challenging the electoral college votes, which certified that Joe Biden had been elected president, claiming there was enough evidence of voter fraud and malpractice by certain states to warrant an investigation. Of course, plenty of court judges disagreed with him, throwing out lawsuits from Trump’s legal team by an embarrassing amount, but that didn’t stop Hawley from continuing to dissent, even after domestic terrorists stormed the Capitol and appeared ready to hold Congress hostage in the hopes of keeping Trump in power.

But being told your “soul is dipped in dogsh*t” also feels like just the right insult for someone who threw a tantrum over losing his book deal after sparking a political coup. Let this be a lesson to all GOP clout-chasers: don’t invoke George Orwell if you’ve never read 1984 before.

(Via Daily Beast & RawStory)

The Alabama Crimson Tide are national champions once more. On Monday night, Nick Saban’s bunch took on the Ohio State Buckeyes in the College Football Playoff championship game, and by the time the dust settled, the Tide came out on top, 52-24, cementing themselves as the undisputed kings of college football.

The score matched up with how the game looked. While the Buckeyes are an excellent team, Alabama appeared to just be a cut above — they outgained Ohio State by nearly 300 yards and did not trail at any point. That’s how it looked to the untrained eye, at least, because Bama running back Najee Harris made it clear after the game that he did not exactly have a good time playing against the Big Ten champions’ defense.

Harris was asked about “effortlessly” dicing up the Buckeyes to the tune of 158 total yards and three total touchdowns. When that specific word came out of the reporter’s mouth, Harris made a face and stressed that he had to work awfully hard to move the ball against the opposing front seven.

“Bruh, they was blowin’ my ass up,” Harris said. “You trippin’.”

A case can be made that this is the best team that Saban has ever had in Tuscaloosa, and their ability to make something as hard as playing against a very good defense look easy deserves plenty of admiration. Just don’t say that they didn’t have to work to make it happen, because they will not agree.

One of the primary jobs of being a parent is setting a good example and teaching your children right from wrong. 18-year-old Helena Duke caught her mother being a terrible role model and, in a powerful reversal, punished her for it publicly.

What else can you do after catching your mother harassing a Black woman while attempting to overthrow the U.S. government?

It all started when Helena’s mother, Therese Duke, claimed she was going to visit Helena’s aunt to accompany her for a medical procedure. However, Helena suspected she was really going to Washington, D.C. to attend the “Stop the Steal” Trump rally near the White House.

Therese conveniently turned off the geo-tracking app on her phone so she wouldn’t get caught.

But as the rioters have learned over the past week, there were a lot of cameras and photos taken of the insurgency. The day after the riot, Helena’s cousin sent her the video of a physical encounter on the stress of D.C. that featured some familiar faces.

The video shows multiple people harassing a Black woman who eventually becomes fed up and punches a woman in the face. That woman is Therese.

“My initial reaction was more like, Oh my gosh, I was right. I was actually right about them being there,” Helena told BuzzFeed News. “It was very surreal because it was an insane video, first of all, and then it was the revelation that, Oh, that’s my mother. That’s her.”

So Helena decided to out her mother as well as her aunt and uncle for their participation in the ugly scene.

On Thursday, Helena texted her mother asking where she was on Wednesday and didn’t receive a response. The day after, Helena texted again asking, “how’s your nose?”

“Please call me or talk to me if you really wanna know,” her mom wrote.

A big reason why Helena outed her family is that she had been kicked out of the house multiple times for being a liberal lesbian and attending a Black Lives Matter protest. Her mother was once a Democrat, but after Trump’s election, became a right-wing extremist.

“She told me she thought Black Lives Matter was a violent organization and they would be inciting violence,” she recalled.

“I always felt almost heartbroken over how they viewed the world and how skewed it was and how they wouldn’t allow me to express my views. But showing that they can act in such a horrible way is just really appalling to me,” she said.

“I am honestly very disappointed to have to be part of this family that is so…just, very not welcoming or supportive,” she added. “I don’t feel safe being part of this family.”

The Black woman, who later identified herself as Ashanti, was arrested for the assault but claims she wasn’t the aggressor in the heated situation.

“A video has surfaced where I was surrounded by a group of Trump extremists, and I honestly feared for my life. The video makes me look like I am the aggressor, but it does not show what happened prior to my defending myself,” she wrote on a GoFundMe page.

“People shoved me, tried to take my phone and keys, yelled racial epithets at me, and tried to remove my mask,” she wrote. “I asked them to social distance and stay out of my personal space due to COVID. They refused, and I was afraid of being hurt and harmed. After being assaulted, I defended myself.”

In the video, a man who was identified by Helena as her uncle, Richard Lorenz, is seen throwing a punch.

via Twitter

Since Helena’s tweet about her family went viral, her mother has been fired from her job at UMass Memorial Medical Center.

Helena has started a GoFundMe campaign to help with her college expenses.

Exactly one year ago tomorrow, the nominees for the 92nd Academy Awards — a.k.a. the Parasite Oscars — were announced. That won’t be the case for this year’s Oscars, after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pushed back the ceremony from late February to mid-April and the eligibility period to February 28. Meaning, any film released between January 1, 2020 (like Sonic the Hedgehog) and the end of next month can be nominated for an Academy Award, including Judas and the Black Messiah.

The biopic, produced by Ryan Coogler and starring Daniel Kaluuya as Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as FBI informant William O’Neal, will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on February 1 before hitting theaters and HBO Max on February 12. Warner Bros. is clearly positioning Judas and the Black Messiah for a big Oscar night. With a cast that talented, can you blame the studio?

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

FBI informant William O’Neal infiltrates the Illinois Black Panther Party and is tasked with keeping tabs on their charismatic leader, Chairman Fred Hampton. A career thief, O’Neal revels in the danger of manipulating both his comrades and his handler, Special Agent Roy Mitchell. Hampton’s political prowess grows just as he’s falling in love with fellow revolutionary Deborah Johnson. Meanwhile, a battle wages for O’Neal’s soul. Will he align with the forces of good? Or subdue Hampton and the Panthers by any means, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover commands?

Directed by Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah also stars Jesse Plemons, Dominique Fishback, Martin Sheen, Ashton Sanders, and Algee Smith.

Dan Le Batard has ventured off on his own after two decades at ESPN, as the longtime columnist, radio host, and TV personality parted ways with the four-letter on January 4 with an emotional goodbye on Highly Questionable.

In the week-plus since, Le Batard’s radio show has been doing a “pirate” broadcast now that it is independent and while there was ample speculation about where the wildly popular show would land, the answer we got over the weekend was that Le Batard and former ESPN chief John Skipper would be teaming up to launch a new media company. While we don’t know specifics on a launch date for the new outlet or even a name, we do have some details on who they will be targeting to bring on board.

According to Front Office Sports, they are going after a number of Le Batard’s former ESPN colleagues, including Jemele Hill (who confirmed discussions in the story), Bomani Jones, Kate Fagan, and Erik Rydholm — the producer and creator of Highly Questionable, PTI, and much of ESPN’s afternoon block.

“We’re trying to figure out the most productive way to work together,” Hill told Front Office Sports. “Both John and Dan know I have such a deep level of respect for them. So me working with them again always felt like it was inevitable.”

Hill has a number of projects she is working on, like her Vice show Stick To Sports with Cari Champion as well as a Spotify podcast, so it seems the biggest hurdle is figuring out exactly what her role would be and how involved she is. Jones is still under contract with ESPN, having taken over Highly Questionable in Le Batard’s absence among other responsibilities, so swiping him away would be quite the task.

In any case, the Le Batard and Skipper company clearly has a vision for the type of personality they want to bring on board and see themselves as capable of landing some very big fish — which also indicates they will have ample funding behind them.

Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.

Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week we got a Linkin Park remix from 100 Gecs, a collaborative cover from Vagabon and Courtney Barnett, and the latest new solo music from a member of Big Thief. Check out the rest of the best new indie music below.

Cheekface – Emphatically, No.

On their sophomore LP, Los Angeles trio Cheekface were inspired by the likes of Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, and Stephen Malkmus, the torch-bearers of great American talk-singing. Across thirteen tracks, the album dives headfirst into the break-neck pace of reality in the 2020’s, with lyrics about trying to balance everything at once, faltering mental health, the constant barrage of horrific news delivered right to our cell phone notifications, and much more. All told, Emphatically, No. serves as a document of millennial existence.

100 Gecs – “One Step Closer” (Linkin Park remix)

A few months after celebrating the 20th anniversary of Linkin Park’s debut studio album Hybrid Theory, hyper-pop act 100 Gecs has put their spin on the the album’s second track. “100 Gecs’ reinterpretation of the song is also sort of a cover, as the duo offers new vocal contributions as well as new instrumentation,” writes Derrick Rossignol for Uproxx. “As one might expect, a new frenetic electronic energy is introduced to the song, and 100 Gecs’ sensibilities play into the song wonderfully.”

Vagabon/Courtney Barnett – “Reason To Believe”

A month before the world went into lockdown, Vagabon and Courtney Barnett shared the stage for a show in Los Angeles, which sparked a lasting friendship. Now, the duo has released a twang-heavy cover of “Reason To Believe,” which was originally written and recorded by Tim Hardin in 1965 and has existed in many different iterations over the years, with many artists taking liberties and covering the track. For this new version, Vagabon and Barnett elected to give their take on Karen Dalton’s 1966 cover of the song, putting a modern spin on a classic number.

The Hold Steady – “Heavy Covenant”

Just a few weeks out from the release of their eighth studio album, Open Door Policy, The Hold Steady have shared another preview of the LP in the form of the driving “Heavy Covenant.” The track is about technology and traveling, and the ways they interact in the modern age. “This song is a great indication of where the band’s sound is at in 2021,” vocalist Craig Finn said in a statement.

Buck Meek – “Candle”

While Big Thief took a break in 2020, the band’s members were unable to do the same. Adrianne Lenker released two lovely quarantine albums, and now it’s Buck Meek’s turn. Two Saviors is set for release this week, and the guitarist shared another new track in the form of “Candle,” which Derrick Rossignol calls for Uproxx “a mid-tempo alt-country tune on which his languid vocals sound contentedly at home.”

Tigers Jaw – “Hesitation”

Tigers Jaw is one of the most underrated and consistent bands in the indie-punk world, and their new album I Won’t Care How You Remember Me continues a path of impressive releases over the last decade. “Hesitation” is a track about realizing that the person you love is starting to drift away from you. Despite its heartbreaking premise, the song delivers in its unfaltering energy and pristine vocal hooks.

Rhye – “Come In Closer”

After rolling out a few singles throughout 2020, Rhye is ready to unveil his latest album Home, which drops later this month. The upbeat, disco-infused “Come In Closer” presents how, “as relationships deepen and you invite someone into your world, your life, your home, layers of appreciation, vulnerability, and patience reveal themselves,” said Michael Milosh in a statement.

Alice Glass – “Suffer & Swallow”

Seven years since departing Crystal Castles and four years since her last release, Alice Glass is back with her debut solo full-length, which is set for release a bit later this year. “Suffer & Swallow” is the first preview of the album, building upon Glass’s penchant for dark, doomy pop tracks. The track is built upon basic electronic percussion, while Glass’s modulated vocals oscillate between a near-whisper and a scream.

TV Priest – “Press Gang”

Ahead of their debut album Uppers, London post-punkers have shared “Press Gang,” on which they take a turn criticizing the complacency of mass news media and their role in creating a “post-truth” world. Vocalist Charlie Drinkwater’s seething vocals really take the front seat here, anchoring the driving post-punk track and setting the bar high for the remainder of Uppers, which is due in February.

Kiwi, JR. – “Waiting In Line”

After catching our attention with the engaging “Cooler Returns,” the title track from their new album, Toronto’s Kiwi, JR. are back with another new track. “Waiting In Line” is a fun, lo-fi indie track packed with energy, a driving organ lead, and an excellent singalong chorus.

Sun June – “Everything I Had”

Along with the announcement of their upcoming “prom record” Somewhere, Sun June shared “Everything I Had,” a superbly focused and shimmering track that serves as an ode to the ever-changing nature of their hometown Austin, Texas. It’s a song about nostalgia, and trying to fight the feeling like your surroundings are evolving without you — something I think we can all relate to these days.

The Sonder Bombs – “K.”

A few weeks back, I got an exclusive look at “The One About You,” a short and sweet number from The Sonder Bombs that evoked a classic old-fashioned doo-wop act. Now, the band has shared a heavier look at their new album Clothbound, which features some chugging riffs and explosive percussion. The full album drops later this month, and I can’t wait to see how the divergent sound of the two tracks function in the sequenced tracklist.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ian Sweet shared her sophomore album Crush Crusher in 2018, but with her third LP, Sweet is realizing a new form of emotional freedom. After sharing a handful of singles, Sweet officially announces her next album Show Me How You Disappear with the serene “Drink The Lake” video.

Self-directed by Sweet, the “Drink The Lake” video depicts the singer getting mixed up in a lakeside brawl. To decompress, she floats tranquilly in the placid water. “This is the first record that I leave that space for myself,” she said of the single. “I feel a freedom on this one that I haven’t felt with the others. People always say ‘I put all of me into this’, but I actually didn’t this time — I left space.”

Further explaining her inspiration behind the song, Sweet says the single “taps into my own twisted logic to try and break away from obsessive thought patterns. It turned into a pop anthem of seemingly silly ways to try and forget someone, like saying their name backwards, but I feel these devices contributed to my healing.”

Watch Sweet’s “Drink The Lake” video above and find the Show Me How You Disappear cover art and tracklist below.

1. “My Favorite Cloud”
2. “Drink The Lake”
3. “Sword”
4. “Dirt”
5. “Sing Till I Cry”
6. “Dumb Driver”
7. “Get Better”
8. “Power”
9. “Show Me How You Disappear”
10. “I See Everything”

Show Me How You Disappear is out 3/5 via Polyvinyl. Pre-order it here.

Jack Quaid is enjoying a hell of a run on Amazon Prime’s The Boys as wee Hughie, who increasingly sees some sh*t after being the first character to, you know, see some sh*t on the show. He’ll also appear as part of the ensemble in the confusingly named new Scream movie, and my hunch is that could totally be the new killer. Heck, the guy is the son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan and manages to wear both of their smiles at different times, so he can pull off the Ghostface mask. You know it’s possible.

He’s a recognizable face now, but back in the day, not so much. As a result, some people are just now realizing that Jack appeared in the 2012’s The Hunger Games.

No really, look at his facial expression. Jack played a tribute from District 1 named Marvel, and since he was a Career pack tribute, he clearly had murder on the brain.

People keep stumbling onto Jack while rewatching the movie. As one Twitter user was heartbroken to recall over the weekend, Jack’s Marvel was the tribute was to take out Rue. Unforgivable!

Jack, however, knew that he did wrong. Once he was called out, he owned up right away with an apology: “Oh shit that’s right. Sorry.”

He also had a pretty good justification for his character’s mindset. “In all fairness, I met my demise VERY quickly afterwards,” he explained. “I was brainwashed by my luxurious District 1 upbringing. But yes incredibly sorry.”

Yet Jack Falahee from How To Get Away With Murder wasn’t letting Quaid off the hook so fast: “You POS.”

And Jack continued to faux-grovel: “I mean I can’t disagree.”

That wasn’t the worst of Jack Quaid’s misdeeds, though. He made another confession about murdering some fruit. Somebody stop him.