Month: January 2021

In a late-night press conference after a loss to the Clippers, the perpetually forthright Draymond Green was asked about his thoughts on the difference between how justice was served to Jacob Blake, the victim of a police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, versus how it was served to the thousands of agitators who descended on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Green took issue with even calling the latter group protestors.

“That’s not a protest, that’s a terrorist attack,” Green said.

He continued that comparing violent insurrectionists to people peacefully calling for justice during the social uprisings around the country this summer in response to the death of George Floyd is a false equivalency.

“They’re not f*cking protestors, they’re f*cking terrorists,” he said.

In a subsequent answer, Green called the differing responses to Blake’s shooting, which happened in front of his children on a residential street and left him partially paralyzed, and the insurrection at the Capitol on Wednesday, a “f*ck you to every Black person in America.”

“It’s almost like they want to show you that they have power and want to show you that I can say f*ck you and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Green continued.

Around the NBA on Wednesday night, many players, from Jaylen Brown to Giannis Antetokounmpo to Chris Paul, opened up about the fear that once again went through their heads this week as America showed the disparate treatment it shows people who occupy traditional social power (supporters of the president) and those who do not (people of color).

Donald Trump practically lives to Tweet. It’s probably the single activity that he’s done most over the past four years, and no one can disprove that idea. It’s his favorite communication mode, by which he attacks rivals and disseminates conspiracy theories, often with all-caps rants. Well, he can’t tweet right now because Twitter suspended him for praising his rioting supporters (after he incited them toward an insurrection), and Facebook isn’t allowing him to post there for at least two weeks either. By power of the latter, he’ll also be blocked from Instagram. As Trump himself would say, “Sad!”

This will at least cover the remaining days until Trump leaves office, and after that, who knows? Twitter and Facebook could ban him forever. An easily embeddable tweet breaks the Facebook news while stressing, “We believe the risks of allowing President Trump to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”

“The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” wrote Mark Zuckerberg. “We are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

Too little and too late from social media platforms? Perhaps. But at least Trump’s video expressing “love” for his terrorist mob has been deleted from Twitter, along with a Wednesday afternoon tweet that claimed a “landslide” victory had been stolen from him.

And so, Dan Scavino, White House director of social media, posted a semi-concession statement from Trump on Twitter, who declared that “[e]ven though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th.”

As the world witnessed angry Trump supporters attempting to take over the Capitol Building yesterday in order to stop the electoral college from finalizing Biden as the new president, musicians from Selena Gomez to Cardi B condemned their actions. Demi Lovato took to social media as the events were unfolding to express her disappointment and anger over what she was witnessing. Along with speaking out against the rioters, Lovato says she plans to take her frustration to the studio.

After sharing a handful of posts condemning the actions of the Trump supports at the Capitol building, Lovato announced that she is “working on something special” after seeing the “assault on democracy” that took place in DC:

“My heart is broken. It makes me too sad to believe how naive I was to think this couldn’t possibly happen, and yet it did. Here we are. For everyone in my comments saying ‘where’s d7’ or wanting me to sing instead of speaking up about what needs to change in this country, THIS IS WHY I POST AS MUCH AS I DO. THIS IS WHY I CARE. THIS CANNOT HAPPEN ANY F*CKING MORE. I’m angry, embarrassed and ashamed. I’m in the studio working on something special after today’s assault on democracy.”

This is far from the first time Lovato has used her platform to share a political message. Ahead of the election, the singer accused the Trump administration of hypocrisy in her poignant single “Commander In Chief” while also urging fans to vote in their elections.

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

Snoop Dogg has stronger ties with the world of professional wrestling than just about any other musician: In 2016, he became the first musical artist to get inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame. So, seeing him make a guest appearance on All Elite Wrestling Dynamite last night wasn’t surprising. What was more of a shock, though, was seeing him do a frog splash, or “Snoop Splash,” off the top rope.

Snoop made an appearance to promote his new TBS show The Go-Big Show, which debuts tonight at 9 p.m. ET. Snoop mostly stood by the side of the ring during a fight between Cody Rhodes and Matt Sydal, but madness ensued after victor was declared in Sydal’s favor. After the match, Serpentico and Luther took to the ring to stir up trouble, and as Serpentico lay prone on the ground, Snoop climbed on top of a corner turnbuckle. After getting his footing, he awkwardly jumped on Serpentico with a frog splash-like move, which commentators dubbed the “Snoop splash,” and pinned him. After the feat, one of the commentators angrily said, “He’s nine feet tall! He’s a human piece of spaghetti, he shouldn’t be in there!”

Watch clips from Snoop’s AEW appearance above and below.

As a well-known activist, Killer Mike had some important and insightful commentary about yesterday’s Capitol riots while appearing on Late Night With Seth Meyers. Because of his political experience and central position in Georgia politics after the results of this week’s run-off Senate election, Mike would have already been the perfect guest to comment on the Democratic victory in the state, but after the events in Washington, D.C., it was only natural for the conversation to turn in that direction.

Mike said that initially, he’d woken up yesterday excited about the victory but was quickly informed by his teenage daughter that things were going sour in the US capitol. “It led me into a longer conversation with her,” he recalled, “About how I admired the fact that she participated in the political process by paying attention… and I really wanted her to understand that the people at the Capitol — although I encourage protest for any American, I don’t encourage what we saw. Essentially, it is violence, it is evil, it is “I didn’t get my way”-ism, it is the refusal to accept that this Republic is run by the power of the vote.”

However, he said he also saw an opportunity for a lesson. “What we have done in this state is more important than this ugly moment,” he opined. “I hope that all Americans plot, plan, strategize, organize, and mobilize for a union after this. We’ve done the Civil War once… it didn’t work out for this nation as a whole… We are on our way to a more perfect union but it will only happen if we use times like these as a way to cooperate and collaborate for the betterment of this Republic instead of displaying the type of behavior that we saw today.”

Watch Killer Mike’s interview with Seth Meyers above.

Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at [email protected].

Steven, could you go off at length about Jon Caramanica’s take on albums? — Lou from Warwick, R.I.

Hey Lou, Happy New Year! I was hoping that someone would ask me this, as I would like to expound on my rather tersely worded tweet on the subject.

For those who don’t know what we’re talking about: Last week, the New York Times published an article in which the paper’s pop critic, Jon Caramanica, expounded on “the utility of the album.” In Caramanica’s estimation, streaming services and social media platforms like TikTok have rendered the album obsolete for modern audiences.

“As awful as it sounds, an album is simply a data dump now,” Caramanica said. “That doesn’t mean that some artists won’t continue to aim to be auteurs of the form — say, Taylor Swift or Adele — but the minute albums hit streaming services, they are sliced and diced and the songs are relegated to playlist slots, and everything after that is a crap shoot. The truth is that albums worked as a medium only because everyone was a captive. When you look back at your favorite older albums now, I’m sure you see the weak spots that you’d happily have programmed out if you had the technology then.”

Now, some of what Caramanica says here is undeniably true. When an album goes up on Spotify or Apple Music, many listeners don’t listen them front to back, they do indeed “slice and dice” them into playlists or simply skip around among their choice cuts. But the part about how albums worked “only” because audiences had no other way to hear music — meaning that 21st-century technology has finally freed listeners from this so-called LP prison — not only rubs me the wrong way philosophically, it’s also just flat-out factually incorrect.

Back when I was a tween in the late 1980s, I would frequently tape my favorite songs off the radio on my crappy little boombox. Or I would borrow a cassette or CD from a friend and “dub” my own copy, often singling out my favorite tracks and excising the rest. This technology is primitive compared to what we have now, of course, but it accomplished the same ends. In fact, it was an easy and entirely effective way to “slice and dice” albums into the individual tracks I loved. (This is doubly true of the iTunes era of the mid-aughts, which made buying individual songs possible, to say nothing of the millions who simply pirated music at the time.)

Now, I’m sure there were music critics at the time who mused that home taping (or iTunes or online pirating) meant the end of the album. Actually, I know there were, because I’ve been hearing about “the end of the album” for pretty much as long as I’ve been listening to them. And yet albums continue to be made and heard and loved and debated over. Why?

What bothered me most about the Times article is that it frames art purely in terms of how it is received in the marketplace, without at all taking into account the intention of artists. The simple fact is that albums still exist because artists want to make them. I’m not just talking about critically adored indie darlings here. (Please don’t position this as another round in the endless and lame rockism vs. poptimism war.) As even Caramanica concedes, many of the most popular artists in the world — Taylor Swift, Adele, Beyonce, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, I could go on — consciously craft albums as complete statements. Even when they know full well that many or even most listeners might not digest their music that way, they make albums anyway. Just like filmmakers continue to make movies that are intended to be seen in cinemas, all while knowing that many viewers will be content to watch them on their phones. Artists do this because they care about the art form first, no matter the realities of the commercial world, as they should.

Now, I think it’s clear that I love albums, probably much more than Caramanica. I respect his perspective, and acknowledge that millions of people more or less share it. But the assertion that albums “only” work when people have no other options — or that even classic albums would be improved by getting rid of the “weak spots” — is only true for those who never had much use for the format to begin with. (One person’s “data dump” is another person’s “potentially life-changing work of art.”) For now, I’ll leave it at that. Nobody needs to hear a “deep listening over time can transform those so-called weak spots into your favorite songs!” lecture for the umpteenth time.

I just want to push against this notion of caring only about the corporate middlemen who run streaming services and social media platforms when evaluating the relevance of albums. Don’t the intentions and wishes of artists also matter? I would argue they do at least as much, if not far more. (Or they should, anyway, for music critics.) I don’t doubt that platforms like TikTok will change (or have already changed) how music is made and packaged, and I’m curious to see how that affects the experience of listening. But if technology was going to kill the album altogether, it would have already done so a long time ago. Besides, does everything have to be a binary? Can’t playlists and decontextualized TikTok videos coexist with the old-fashioned album? Isn’t it likely that all of these things, and more, already coexist in many listening diets?

When I was a home-taping tween more than 30 years ago, I still listened to albums because even at that age I understood that they offered a different experience from just listening to random songs I liked. For me, that experience was often deeper and more profound. Fortunately, there are still many of us — listeners and artists alike — who derive a lot of pleasure and fulfillment out of the format, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

What are your thoughts on the current state of rock documentaries? A working-class band today will release a 15-minute mini-doc on YouTube and a major artist like Taylor Swift will do a big glossy Netflix documentary – both types feel more like promotions than actual films. Will there ever be a version of The Last Waltz or DIG! or I Am Trying to Break Your Heart for today’s artists? — Matt from Chicago

Hey Matt, you hit upon the issue I have with many of the rock documentaries I see these days. For instance, I really enjoyed HBO’s recent rock doc, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in that band or just music films in general. However, as you say, it does feel like a promotion at times, particularly when the film fails to even mention the single biggest debacle of the band’s career, the 1978 film adaptation of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. There is no narrative reason to do this — it’s a super interesting part of their story! — and leaving it out actually distorts the band’s history. If all you know about The Bee Gees is from this movie, you would think that there was a backlash against them in the late ’70s solely because racist yahoos from the middle of the country were blowing up disco records. While that’s certainly part of the story, it’s also true that The Bee Gees were hurt by their own bad choices and hubris. Excising that stuff hurts the movie both as entertainment — again, Sgt. Pepper is a fascinating and unintentionally hilarious failure — and as journalism.

The impulse to whitewash the bad or embarrassing chapters out of a band or artist’s narrative is the single biggest weakness of most music documentaries I’ve seen in the past decade or so. It’s worth noting that the rock films that people remember — like the ones you mentioned, or Alison Ellwood’s highly rewatchable The History Of The Eagles — are usually the most candid. And that frankness actually makes the subjects more likable, even a band as hateable as The Eagles.

The Boygenius EP is one of my favorite records of the last few years. I like all three musicians’ solo work too, but that EP holds a special place in my heart, probably because I’ve always loved Crosby, Stills and Nash. And Boygenius was pretty overt in the way they invited comparisons to CSN. Now, I have no idea if there’ll be any more music from Boygenius as a collective, but if there is, my question for you is: Do they continue the bit and get themselves a Neil Young figure? — Ben from Philadephia

So, I’m going to break my answer into two parts. First, if they decided to, as you say, “get themselves a Neil Young figure,” I feel like there is one obvious choice. Like Neil, she’s an iconoclast. She’s independently minded. And she doesn’t really belong in a group, as she tends to overshadow anyone who comes into her orbit. I could see her drifting in and out of Boygenius, to the occasional delight and frequent consternation of her bandmates.

The choice here is Mitski.

Now, here’s the other part of my answer, which is whether they should get a Neil Young figure. And my answer to that is “no.” I actually prefer CSN without the Y. That’s not a judgment on Neil Young, who is obviously the best overall artist in the collective. It’s just that CSN guys complement each other really well, while Neil acts as a chaos agent in that band. That’s because Neil doesn’t need to be in that band like the other guys do. I feel like Neil actually screws up the dynamic for that reason. And I wonder if Mitski would do the same in Boygenius. So … forget I said anything.

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

Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t the only one late-night host with a lot to say about the pro-Trump domestic terrorists storming the Capitol building on Wednesday.

The Late Show host Stephen Colbert went “unexpectedly live” to address the Republican politicians responsible for the riots, while Late Night‘s Seth Meyers soberly called for President Donald Trump to be removed from office immediately. “As everyone knows right now, today was a day filled with surreal and horrifying scenes of armed insurrection in an attempt to destroy, through violent means, American democracy,” he said. “It was a sequence of events unseen in the modern history of this nation, and the images should be seared into our collective consciousness for the rest of our lives.”

The events of yesterday were “incited, directed, and encouraged” by Trump in his desperate final days as president, as well as Republican politicians and the right-wing media. “As we were all watching these stunning scenes of violence, and sedition, and insurrection against our democracy, anxiously hoping for a restoration of calm and order, the president of the United States told the traitors and the mob, ‘We love you, you’re very special, I know how you feel.’ And he does,” Meyers said. “He knows how they feel because he’s spent four years telling them in great and odious detail how they should feel. So we should be shocked, but we can’t be surprised… He told that same crowd just hours earlier that they should never concede, that they should show strength and fight.”

The only solution left: Trump must be “immediately removed from office by either the cabinet or the Congress and prosecuted. Anything less is tacit permission to continue to use his office, and his influence after he leaves office, to foment sedition and dismantle democracy.” You can watch the Late Night clip above.

Despite Donald Trump‘s campaign to overturn the 2020 election resulting in a violent, attempted coup on Wednesday, Rudy Giuliani soldiered on and continued to call senators in an effort to delay Congress certifying the electoral college vote. But, in true Giuliani style, he did it by accidentally calling the wrong senator and leaving a damning voicemail that was quickly forwarded to the press. The call intended for Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville was made at 7:00 PM EST while MAGA insurgents were still vandalizing the inside of Capitol building. Instead, an anonymous senator received the message and made sure the press knew what Giuliani was up to even after the mob attack. Via The Dispatch:

“I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you,” Giuliani said in a voicemail. “And I know they’re reconvening at 8 tonight, but it … the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow—ideally until the end of tomorrow. I know McConnell is doing everything he can to rush it, which is kind of a kick in the head because it’s one thing to oppose us, it’s another thing not to give us a fair opportunity to contest it.”

Giuliani urged Tuberville and a congressman to “object to every state,” so Trump and Giuliani would have more time to work on other senators who he claimed are “very, very close to pulling their vote” for the certification. Ultimately, that effort failed as the attack on the Capitol building prompted Trump-friendly senators like Kelly Loeffler to abandon their plans to overturn the election results. Tuberville, however, remained loyal to the president and was one of Republican six senators who continued to object to Arizona’s vote certification.

You can listen to Giuliani’s voicemail below:

(Via The Dispatch)

January 6 — a day forecast by Trump to be a big one for weeks on Twitter — turned out to be a real sh*tshow. The Capitol Hill siege (which began as Mitch McConnell publicly stood up to Trump while Electoral College votes were counted) by a pro-Trump mob, who met little if no opposition by Capitol Hill police on their way into the very building where the Senate and House convened. And on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough unloaded an impassioned, 7-minute rant that’s an essential listen after the deadly violence that had been incited by Trump earlier that day at a rally (and, arguably, ever since his “American Carnage” inaugural speech).

It’s quite a segment from Scarborough. At around the 5:00 mark in the above video, Scarborough’s fury hit its peak with an F-bomb and a shout directed toward Capitol Hill cops: “You opened the f*cking doors for ’em!”

The host spoke about his time working in D.C. on or near the insurrection site. He cited the massive amounts of security that he personally encountered, and he raged at how they were welcomed into the building and even took selfies with some cops. And Scarborough isn’t afraid to point out the obvious here. “If these insurrectionists were black, they would have been shot in the face,” Scarborough pointed out. “And my god, if these insurrectionists were Muslim they would have been sniped from the top of buildings.” Then he got even more real:

“So I want to know from the Capitol Hill police — what, is it just white people? Or is it Donald Trump supporters? Why do you scream at people for walking across the street three blocks away from the Capitol? Why are you known as these badasses around the Capitol? But then Trump supporters come in and you open the f*cking doors for them. You open the doors for them and let them breach the people’s house. What is wrong with you?”

However, Scarborough had “no questions” for the president. “He should be arrested today, he should be sent to jail today for insurrection against the United States of America,” the co-host continued. He also demanded the arrest of Don Jr. (for his incendiary behavior and speeches at rallies) and Rudy Giuliani, who’s been orchestrating the Legal Strike Force charade for nearly two months and was busted calling the wrong senator in an attempt to slow down the Senate’s voting session on Wednesday.

Ultimately, though, Scarborough directed most of his fury at the Capitol Hill cops, who he saw “patting terrorists on the back” after they busted up windows and scaled walls, only to be welcomed by smiling officers who were “politely opening doors” to the mob. “There has to be an investigation,” he argued. “How many of these Capitol Hill cops are members of Donald Trump’s cult? How many? How many allowed this to happen? And I do want to know, where the hell were the D.C. police?” All very fair questions.

During and following the events at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. yesterday, everybody from Cardi B to Jimmy Kimmel to NBA coaches have shared their disgust with the situation. Now Selena Gomez has weighed in, focusing on the social media and internet companies she believes help foster online hate.

In a tweet directed at leaders of internet companies, Gomez wrote last night, “Today is the result of allowing people with hate in their hearts to use platforms that should be used to bring people together and allow people to build community. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai, Susan Wojcicki — you have all failed the American people today, and I hope you’re going to fix things moving forward.”

On her Instagram Story, Gomez also shared a video from former CNN chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin, which Yellin titled “How Social Media Fueled Today’s Insurrection” and which features Yellin in conversation with Imran Ahmed, CEO of The Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCHD).

Gomez has long expressed her discontent with how Google and social media sites have handled hateful and/or misleading online speech. Just looking at Gomez’s Twitter timeline from December, near the start of the month, she went after Facebook and Instagram in response to a CCHD post that declares, “Neo-Nazis are selling racist products on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook has left these pages online, despite being told about them 3 days ago.” Responding to another CCHD tweet from last week about the spread of “vaccine misinformation,” Gomez wrote, “Scientific disinformation has and will cost lives. @Facebook said they don’t allow lies about COVID and vaccines to be spread on their platforms. So how come all of this is still happening? Facebook is going to be responsible for thousands of deaths if they don’t take action now!”

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.