Month: February 2021

Samples have always been the backbone of hip-hop. The very first raps were performed over beat breaks, which were looped and extended to provide B-boys a platform for their gymnastic dance routines and rappers their bombastic bars. However, despite hip-hop’s preference for calling back to the past, making history as modern as a freshly-released single, the genre has oddly few examples of another tool for paying homage to the forebears and icons of days past.

Last week, M1 and Stic.man of revered revolutionary rap duo Dead Prez revealed that the late, great Los Angeles legend Nipsey Hussle reached out to them prior to his death for permission to remake their seminal 2000 debut album Let’s Get Free — but the idea was never executed, as Nipsey passed away before he was able to begin work on the project in earnest. Besides this one high-profile example, there aren’t very many other albums by current rappers that seek to recreate the classic works that have inspired and influenced them. So, why doesn’t hip-hop have many cover albums?

Part of the answer may stem from rap music’s status as a young genre. Just 30 years ago, the culture as a whole was still fighting for its legitimacy, dismissed as a passing fad. However, that didn’t seem to stop musicians in other disciplines from nearly constantly covering each others’ songs to the point that there is widespread debate about the “best” versions of hits like “Respect,” originated by Otis Redding and made classic by Aretha Franklin; “Proud Mary,” a Creedance Clearwater Revival turned rocking revue by Ike and Tina Turner; and “Strange Fruit,” the defiant ode to Black resistance in the face of monstrous treatment sung by Billie Holiday and further popularized by Nina Simone.

Rock artists have also had a long history of reinterpreting classics for new generations. Consider Dirty Projectors’ Rise Above. In 2007, bandleader David Longstreth set out to replay Black Flag’s 1981 album Damaged from memory despite not hearing in for 15 years prior. If that sounds ambitious, Beck’s 2009 project Record Club would seem downright obsessive, as the genre-hopping multi-instrumentalist sought to cover whole albums in just one day each with a fluid collective of musicians. These included Leonard Cohen’s Songs Of Leonard Cohen, The Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground & Nico, and INXS’s Kick.

The form is a staple of other genres, such as rock and soul, but seems foreign to hip-hop, despite the fact that hip-hop now has enough history behind it to have several generations of “old-school” music, as many a millennial has been dumbstruck to learn in recent years. Where a 35-year-old today may have cited NWA, Public Enemy, or Run-DMC as “old-school” based on their high school experiences, a 15-year-old today looks at that 35-year-old’s high school faves like Jay-Z, Ludacris, or Nelly, and sees only a pack of old fogeys — Public Enemy may as well have been recorded on Fred Flintstone’s Dictabird.

Further complicating hip-hop’s relationship to cover projects is its reliance on samples and insistence on originality. Biting lyrics is a no-no of the highest order in hip-hop, and while sampling is the foundation of the art form, rarely are songs recreated or reinterpreted — and sometimes, choosing a sacrosanct record to recreate is seen as blasphemous. Just look at the reaction to DJ Khaled’s Outkast sample on his 2019 song “Just Us.” Borrowing the melody of “Ms. Jackson” didn’t work out any better for him than J. Cole’s similar homage — borrowing the loop from “Da Art Of Storytelling, Part 1” on “Land Of The Snakes — did for the North Carolina MC.

However, there is one example of a hip-hop cover album that was both well-received and tastefully done. In 2011, former Slum Village member Elzhi set out to pay tribute to one of his favorite MCs, Nas, by recreating Nas’s revered debut album Illmatic with a live band. The resulting mixtape, cleverly titled Elmatic, saw Elzhi putting his own unique twists on both Nas’s rhymes and the ’90s masterclass beats; Elzhi deftly re-worded some of the more iconic lyrical sequences, keeping the familiar diction and cadences, channeling them to flip Nas’s autobiographical tales into narratives of his own Detroit upbringing. The band embellished on the Ahmad Jamal, Gap Band, and Michael Jackson samples, bringing their musicality to the fore, where previously the drum tracks were the centerpieces of the album.

Elmatic‘s success only highlights how intriguing the idea of hip-hop cover albums truly is. Rap music, despite its reputation as a youth genre with little use for its elder statesmen, has always held a deep reverence for the history, breadth, and depth of Black music. Puffy can sample Diana Ross for a celebratory posthumous Notorious BIG single and Three 6 Mafia can turn a 30-year-old Willie Hutch soundtrack cut into an international players’ anthem, thoroughly disproving the trope that hip-hop doesn’t respect its elders. Rappers and producers simply choose to reinterpret what has already been done. If that’s not the essence of a cover, nothing is.

Nipsey Hussle and Elzhi both understood this, and both were willing to take the plunge, risking the disapproval of hardcore hip-hop heads to salute their musical forebears. That’s to be applauded — and imitated. Hip-hop now has a rich history of its own, just waiting to be mined, paid homage to, and translated into new terms for younger ears that may not be familiar with it, but are certainly much more receptive than they are given credit for. Whether it’s a New York boom-bap standard, a West Coast G-funk essential, or a Dirty South crunk classic, it’s time for hip-hop to begin giving its older albums some fresh looks.

Nipsey Hussle is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Jacob Chansley, the infamous QAnon Shaman currently facing prison for his role in the Jan. 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill, is once again pointing the finger at Trump as part of his defense strategy.

After Chansley’s arrest, he quickly turned on the former president, accusing Trump of lying to his followers and sparking a heated debate within QAnon circles online. In Chansley’s latest plea for leniency, his attorney Albert Watkins used some strong language to describe how his client was “groomed” into carrying out treason on Trump’s behalf.

“For years during the Trump administration, the President honed and routinely utilized his mass communication means to effectively groom millions of Americans with respect to his policies, protocols, beliefs, and overwhelming fixation on all matters conspiratorial,” Watkins wrote in his motion, according to Newsweek. “Months before the 2020 Presidential election, former President Trump heightened his public propaganda such as to alarm, alert, and amass his supporters and cause them to be concerned about an inevitable voter fraud being perpetrated upon the United States of America and, in turn, theft of our nation, loss of our democracy, and the seating of a falsely/fraudulently elected individual other than former President Trump.”

Though true — Trump did spend months sowing doubt around the election process and making baseless voter fraud accusations — Chansley’s most recent attempt to escape the consequences of his own actions is not the best choice of words. “Grooming” is the process by which an individual builds a relationship with a child or young adult to emotionally and/or physically abuse and manipulate them. Chansley is a 33-year-old man who just couldn’t be bothered to fact-check his leader’s propaganda. It’s really not the same thing.

But the QAnon Shaman didn’t just want to paint himself as the victim in this whole “topple democracy” plot, his attorney also plead with the courts to release his client because of Covid-19 concerns and his ongoing digestive issues. Chansley demanded to be fed an organic diet while in jail because of his underlying health issues and though that request was granted, the motion filed by his lawyer claims he has “experienced significant digestive tract issues attributable to the sustenance accorded the Defendant while in custody.” The motion goes on to say that while Chansley doesn’t have an “underlying medical condition which makes him especially vulnerable” to Covid, his “faith precludes him” from getting a vaccine that would protect him from the virus, making his jail time especially dangerous.

You’d think a grown man who storms government buildings in war paint and a Viking headdress would be a bit tougher than this, no?

(Via Newsweek)

You don’t really go to Inside the NBA for hardcore basketball analysis. That’s been pushed further and further to the sidelines over the years to make room for its oversize personalities to simply entertain us. To be certain, they throw out basketball opinions left and right, although it can oftentimes feel like that’s more designed to illicit a reaction than anything.

Heck, you don’t even expect them to be particularly knowledgeable about today’s players. I mean, one of their longest-running gags is literally called “Who He Play For?” a game in which Charles Barkley hilarious and incorrectly makes wild stabs in the dark about where a particular player happens to be suiting up this season.

So it’s no surprise they’ve tweaked that idea a little to showcase Shaq’s similar lack of knowledge about players’ first names with a segment called “Shaq’s First Name Game,” a nod to his recent inability to come up with Pascal Siakam’s first name.

“Do I get a lifeline?”

“Shaq’s First Name Game” went as expected. pic.twitter.com/qMygFgNHax

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) February 26, 2021

As you may have guessed, Shaq didn’t fare too well here, but the results were hilarious. “Eli” Monk got us off on the right foot, and it only got better from there. Shaq’s ownership stake with the Sacramento Kings couldn’t help him figure out Richaun Holmes’ name, though we suppose “John” was close enough?

He didn’t do much better with Immanuel Quickley (“Gerard”), but “Stuart” Robinson (Mitchell) was the icing on the cake before correctly coming up with Desmond Bane’s name to cap off a 1-for-5 performance. Granted, there are 450 some odd players in the NBA, so it’s impossible to keep track of everyone, but most of these are relatively well-known, especially if you are in the business of covering the league.

Still, we wouldn’t have it any other way. The results are comedic gold.

Ted Cruz was at CPAC on Friday, speaking to conservatives about cancel culture, Star Wars and just generally screaming about civil war.

But back in Washington, however, his work friends seem to really dislike the Texas senator who fled the state he represents during a climate disaster. According to NBC News, Cruz was called out by some memes posted in the congressional gym after his extremely embarrassing Mexican vacation episode earlier in the month:

When senators arrived at the Senate gym on Wednesday morning, they found that one of them had taped memes on the lockers welcoming Cruz home and showing him in the short-sleeve polo shirt, jeans and Texas-flag mask that he had at the airport, according to two people familiar with the prank. “Bienvenido de Nuevo, Ted!” was the “welcome back” message typed at the top of the color printouts, one of which was viewed by NBC News.

The rendering featured a manipulated photo of Cruz from his well-documented trip to Mexico, dragging his luggage across an arctic landscape while holding a tropical cocktail garnished with a slice of fruit in his other hand. He is shown walking toward an image of a masked Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. with his arms crossed and wearing striped, knitted gloves — a pose famously captured during January’s inauguration.

The report says that the memes were taken down on Wednesday, and no complaints about any wrongdoing have been filed. But considering just how much noise was made about Cruz’s aborted trip to paradise, it certainly seems reasonable that some actually escaped the internet and found their way to Cruz in real life.

Cruz felt it was OK to joke about his Cancun trip on Friday, though at this point his only real goal as a senator seems to be trolling rather than governing.

But if he wants any advice on how to do that more effectively, maybe he should ask his fellow senators. At least they seem to have access to the good color printer.

With the consistent haze of winter slowly fading into the rearview, 2021 is finally starting to kick it into high gear on the new music front. This week, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen are digging into new releases from Julien Baker and Cloud Nothings, but not before taking a moment to eulogize the end of Daft Punk after 28 years.

For Julien Baker, Little Oblivions is her first album in nearly four years, and marks a turning point for the 25-year-old songwriter. Where her arrangements were previously sparse and centered around a looped guitar or a piano, the new album incorporates a full band aesthetic with drums and much more space to roam. What does a fleshed-out sound mean for one of indie’s most earnest songwriters?

While Baker was quiet for nearly four years, Cloud Nothings have been more active than ever during the pandemic, turning to a Bandcamp subscription plan as a way to keep fans engaged. They released the home-recorded The Black Hole Understands in July of 2020, and have already followed it up with the proper next studio album, The Shadow I Remember. Where does it stack up in their nearly decade-long discography?

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Hyden is honoring the late Miles Seaton by revisiting the catalogue of his band Akron/Family, while Cohen has been enjoying the new EP from Canadian outfit Arm’s Length.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 28 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — We all know this but it’s nice to say it anyway

The thing I like about WandaVision is that it’s given Kathryn Hahn an excuse to go wild for 30 minutes every week. I suppose that’s not the only thing I like about the show, if we’re going to be all comprehensive about it. I just wrote a thing earlier this week about how cool it is that the show is super-weird despite being a valuable cog in a money-printing machine. And they rolled Randall Park into the story a few weeks ago, which is great because Randall Park rules and I get for-real excited whenever I see him pop up in a thing I’m watching. But this isn’t about any of that. This is about Kathryn Hahn.

I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to really think about the answer before you blurt it out: Have you ever, in your entire life, in all of the television shows and movies you’ve watched, seen Kathryn Hahn miss? Have you ever seen her appear in something and come away thinking “Eh, could have done without that”? I promise I do not mean this in a hyperbolic way, like how sometimes people will all decide something is good and start yelling about it together. (“Epic bacon, my dude!”) I mean it seriously. Think about this. Take as long as you want.

But I bet you just said “no, I have not” and moved straight into this paragraph because, seriously, Kathryn Hahn is so good. She brings this crazed energy to a comedic role that is hard to define in terms that don’t make you sound crazed, too. It’s a blast. It works great in WandaVision because she gets to play — spoilers coming in hot here, just through last week’s big reveal — a secret evil witch who has been ruining everything while also playing various versions of nosy neighbors as depicted in sitcoms of years gone by, which is a perfect role for Kathryn Hahn. But she’s been doing it for so long. Look at this clip from Step Brothers, maybe with your headphones in if you’re somewhere that a woman shouting about a man living inside her private parts is frowned upon.

Do you see what I mean? The mania in the eyes? The willingness to go huge and be a little abrasive? It’s a skill not everyone has, or is willing to tap into, and it’s one she’s been bringing to a slew of screens for almost 20 years now. Go look at her filmography. She was in Anchorman. She was in Parks and Recreation. She’s done voice work in Bob’s Burgers and Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse. She’s been making things you like better for close to two decades, reliably. Who else can you say that about? This is, admittedly, a tougher question than the first one I asked. The best answer is probably Kenan Thompson, who I just wrote about last week for a similar reason.

That’s why it’s so cool to see her get showered with praise for what she’s doing right now in WandaVision. She’s not doing anything new, at least not for her. She’s just showing up and doing her job and making an already fun thing significantly better. The difference is that people are noticing now in large numbers. I like how I said “people” there as though I’m somehow above it. I’m only writing this article because she’s been so good on WandaVision, too. The lack of ongoing Kathryn Hahn appreciation is as much my fault as anyone else’s, and arguably more because I have a weekly column where I get to write about almost anything I want. I could have written this months ago. I probably should have.

Better late than never, though, I guess. And it’s nice to have a really good excuse to do it, one like “she’s stealing every scene in the most buzzy television show currently airing.” It’s nice that everyone is in full agreement on it, too. Kathryn Hahn deserves it all. Because Kathryn Hahn does not miss.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — This is very silly and I am very excited

This is the first look at the upcoming seventh Mission: Impossible movie. I suppose “look” is stretching things a little bit. It is a silhouette of Tom Cruise running through a foggy doorway. That’s not much to go on. It’s kind of a hilarious amount of “not much to go on,” actually. It might not even be Tom Cruise. It could be a lookalike or a clone. And I suppose we can’t be sure that it’s a doorway either, on account of the fog. Which could be smoke, now that I think about it some more. So I guess here are the main takeaways:

• The movie will star someone who either is or looks like Tom Cruise
• This person — possibly a robot, too, I guess — will run through a doorway or some other doorway-shaped opening
• There will be smoke or fog involved in some way, possibly due to a fire or them being in London, or both

So there’s that. It’s not nothing but it sure is close enough to nothing that it could reach out and touch nothing’s nose. And yet, here I am, excited about it. Part of that is just the way I’m wired. I’m an excitable person. But part of it is, like… I miss movies. Big movies. Big loud action movies where Tom Cruise jumps out of or onto or into things in a dangerous fashion. Teasers like this imply that things are on the right track. That there is a future where I can see this movie in a theater. Not until November, when it is set to drop, but still. There’s this, then there will be a poster, then there will be a trailer, then I will fully freak out, then, eventually, I will buy a ticket and watch this movie while consuming a package of gummi bears and a Diet Coke as big as my head. This is the plan.

There’s more Mission: Impossible news, too, if we want to be technical about it. The studio announced that the movie will come to Paramount Plus — the new streaming service it would very much like you to subscribe to, if you are the type of person who has been waiting 20 years for a Frasier revival — after just 45 days in the theater. That’s… cool? I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that, or if I’m supposed to feel anything about it at all. I think I almost started to feel something about it but then I went to the Mission: Impossible 7 Wikipedia page and saw a whole section titled “Polish railway bridge controversy.”

I can’t be expected to focus on theatrical windows at a time like this. I have links to click on.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Martha Stewart can hold a grudge

Martha Stewart fascinates me. She fascinates me for a bunch of reasons, too. She fascinates me because she’s a self-made female billionaire in a world where there are not too many of those. She fascinates me because she — the woman who at one point had the most Connecticut energy of any person alive — has this whole second (or third?) act where she and Snoop Dogg are best friends who hang out and have a cooking show that airs on VH1. But mostly, she fascinates me because she went to prison. I know that’s not a nice thing to say or even a nice way to phrase it, but you were thinking it, too. She’s lived about as full a life as anyone can live. Fascinating.

She did an interview this week with Harper’s Bazaar where she talked about that life. It’s a good read and you should maybe bookmark it to read it this weekend but, I’m sorry, I’m going to blockquote the jail part.

The experience, she’s said, is one of many things that helped her bond with Snoop Dogg, who had spent time in jail on drug charges in the early ’90s. “Yes, that [conviction] helped because people knew how crazy and unfair … all of that was,” she said on CBS’s Sunday Morning in a joint interview with the rapper in 2017. “And in Snoop’s world, it gave me the street cred I was lacking.” Nevertheless, there’s one thing Stewart wishes she could do over. “My only big regret that I can talk about is that Saturday Night Live asked me to host. My probation officer wouldn’t give me the time,” she says. “That really pissed me off, because I would have loved to have hosted Saturday Night Live. I’d like that on my résumé.”

The other thing to know about Martha Stewart is that she is ruthless. It’s probably how she became one of the only self-made female billionaires in the world. It’s definitely how she came to compose the tweet I embedded at the top of this section, which she posted over four years ago on Thanksgiving and has lived inside my brain ever since. Martha Stewart absolutely still knows the name of this parole officer and would bring this up right away if she ever runs into him again. She’s like Michael Jordan like that. Read that quote again. There is an implied “and I took that personally” in there.

Let’s let her host SNL. I bet she’ll call the probation officer out by name in the monologue. It’ll be great.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Okay, now we have to ask every celebrity about their first kiss

One of the many interesting things about life is that you can grow up to be a talented and charismatic adult and still have a slew of painfully awkward stories about your adolescence. There’s a good reason for this: adolescence is painfully awkward for everyone, even — some might say especially — for the type of people who grow up to be interesting adults. It’s one of many reasons that I enjoy Netflix’s super-raunchy animated comedy Big Mouth so much. It’s also a nice excuse for me to post a funny story LaKeith Stanfield told about his first kiss.

Context, briefly. W Magazine is doing this series of profiles on actors and actresses who have turned in notable performances this year. One of those profiles is for Stanfield, related to his role in Judas and the Black Messiah. One of the questions they asked him in that discussion was about his first kiss. And he said this.

“On the playground, in kindergarten or first grade. But it really wasn’t a first kiss. I just liked this girl and I thought, If you like a girl, you go kiss her. And so I ran up and kissed her on the cheek. And then, since we were on the playground, she was kind of sweaty so I had a bad taste in my mouth, and I threw up all over the playground. She was there and just kind of kept walking. So I got my karma for running up kissing people.”

That’s a perfect little short story. It’s got everything. It has a beginning, middle, and end. It’s got desire and romance and a life lesson learned. It’s got, uh, vomit. It’s a good story. They asked Tessa Thompson about her first kiss, too, and she told a story about kissing a boy named Floyd on camera during a music video shoot. I think the lesson here is that you should, if you are interviewing a celebrity, ask them about their first kiss at some point. It’ll probably be fun

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — This is better than most television shows I’ve seen this year

This is a TikTok video of a dude smashing a door with a hammer. It’s delightful. I really recommend downloading TikTok if you haven’t already. There’s madness like this all over it. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I’ll just scroll through it for an hour and watch goofballs do perfect little comedy bits. It’s so much more joyful and soothing than any other social media platform. I doubt I will ever post anything on it because that would require, like, shaving and making myself presentable, which I will only do for weddings and funerals. But lord in heaven, do I ever love scrolling through it.

Here’s another video of that guy smashing stuff with a hammer. It’s a shower door this time.

See what I mean? This guy is legitimately funny and has better comedic timing than some professional comedic actors you see on television and in movies. It’s great. He’s just whacking stuff with a hammer and it’s making me so happy. There are two things to take away from this, I suppose:

• The internet is very large and contains many things and it’s probably worth it every now and then to tiptoe into new corners of it to find the happy stuff, especially if you spend too much time on the depressing and bleak parts of it
• Smashing stuff with a hammer rules

These are equally important.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Sara:

I need to thank you for introducing me to Zac Efron’s travel show. I wouldn’t have watched it without your recommendation and it was so pure and fun. The only drawback has been my husband adding the word “sick” to his daily vocabulary. The other day I told him we were getting pizza for dinner and that was his entire reply. He’s 43 years old.

I know you like celebrity-hosted travel shows like this one and The Wine Show so I have two questions. Have you seen Stanley Tucci’s new travel series in Italy? And if you could pick any celebrity to host a food travel show, who would it be? I’m sure your answers will be … I’m sorry … sick.

Well, this is a wonderful email, Sara. For a bunch of reasons. Let’s rip off some quick replies via bullet point before I get to the meat of your question:

• Zac Efron’s travel show was honestly one of my favorite shows of last year, just so pure and sweet and earnest, a couple bros desperately trying to teach other bros about the Earth
• I’m sorry I have ruined your husband
• I, somehow, have yet to watch Tucci’s travel show but I assure you I will be remedying that as soon as this weekend

To the larger question: My answers here are boring, for now, because they are my answers to everything (McConaughey and Tracy Morgan). I would like to see Guy Fieri tour China. I would like to see Anna Kendrick do a wine tour of France, both because Anna Kendrick is cool/fun and because she was hilarious with the “water sommelier” on Efron’s show. The Efron Cinematic Universe is real.

The other nice thing about this email is that it gives me an excuse to tell everyone that Ludacris has a cooking show now. It’s going to be on Discovery Plus and it’s called “Luda Can’t Cook” and it will feature the Atlanta rapper and Fast & Furious tech wiz learning to make all sorts of stuff with the assistance of celebrated chef Meherwan Irani. Via Eater:

The one-hour episode features Bridges, who humbly admits he’s no whiz in the kitchen, cooking up chicken and potatoes for the chef before attempting to cook a menu of Indian dishes guided by a very patient Irani for a roomful of VIPs and his mother, Roberta.

This is awesome. I love it. And hopefully, it will convince executives to finally highlight my idea for a DMX-hosted outdoor cooking series called “X Gon Grill It For Ya.” No losers involved in this development.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Arizona!

The authorities in Arizona accused a man of going to extreme lengths to get out of work this month, saying he faked his own kidnapping, bound his own wrists, gagged himself and invented a story of treasure hidden in the desert.

Well, guess what: I love this guy. My love of him grew as I made my way through that sentence, too. By the time I got to “invented a story of hidden treasure in the desert,” it was a wrap. It’s so unnecessary in every way and it makes me so happy. Tell me more.

When the officers arrived, they found a man, later identified as Mr. Soules, with his hands bound behind his back by a belt and a purple bandanna “stuffed in his mouth,” according to the police. A photo from the Police Department showed the man with his hands tied while lying on his side on the ground.

I need to know how he did it. I need to know everything about it. But mostly, I need to see this loosely factionalized in the cold open of an episode of 9-1-1. We’ll have to spice it up a bit. Maybe we add a snake. I don’t know. They’re the experts here.

The men, according to Mr. Soules, “drove him around in a vehicle before they left him in the area where he was found,” the police said. Mr. Soules was taken to a hospital, where he was evaluated and interviewed by the police. According to the department, he told investigators that he had been kidnapped because his father had a large amount of money hidden throughout the desert.

I don’t want us to lose track of the most important part of this story: he did this to get out of work. To get out of work! He could have just said he was sick. He could have said he had diarrhea. It’s embarrassing, sure, but no one would expect you to come to work in that condition. He didn’t have to jump straight to “I was kidnapped by goons who wanted the money my father hid in the desert.” I kind of respect it, though.

Eventually, and after repeatedly confronting Mr. Soules with problems in his account, the detectives concluded that “his story was fabricated and no kidnapping or assault occurred,” the police said. They also determined that the account of hidden treasure was false.

It would have been cool if everything about the story was fake except for the treasure. Then he wouldn’t have to go to work anyway. Bingo bango, problem solved.

Donald Trump Jr. can’t be happy about reports of the Manhattan DA investigating him as part of a criminal probe into the Trump family businesses. He’s also been very amped up about the like The Muppets (and their faux-cancelation) and teacher’s unions while appearing in front of a wall of guns. That doesn’t even begin to approach his recent slurry Motel 6 video, but on Thursday evening, Don Jr. made it his mission to defend his dad’s refusal to accept election results while speaking with Sean Hannity.

During the interview, Don Jr. declared that his dad is better than most Republicans, who would “rather lose gracefully, I guess.” That’s not really a plan that I would go with, but it’s what they’ve done.” This discussion continued for about seven minutes, and when things were over for Hannity, Don Jr. certainly wasn’t ready to say goodbye. And the eldest Trump son got all kinds of flustered while trying to get a word in while Hannity powered through with his own declarations. And then, boom, bye for now, Don Jr.

Here’s what happened: “When you really want to say something but Hannity ends the interview mid-sentence.”

It was super awkward, to say the least. Don Jr. is not used to someone cutting off his energy. That messes with his amped-up mojo that he’s usually letting fly in lengthy Rumble videos. People really enjoyed this spectacle.

Don Jr. is scheduled to speak at CPAC on Friday, where I assume that he won’t be cut off by anyone. Should be fun!

You can watch Don Jr.’s full interview with Hannity below.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) kicked off last night in Orlando, Florida, an “oasis of freedom,” according to governor Ron DeSantis, in a country that’s otherwise “suffering from the yoke of oppressive lockdowns.” (More than 30,000 Floridians have died from COVID-19.) But inside the Hyatt Regency Orlando, everyone is required to wear a mask, something that did not sit well with conference attendees.

Two CPAC organizers, executive director Dan Schneider and planner Carly Conley, were met with a rain of boos when they asked the conservative crowd to put on masks. “We conservatives believe in the rule of law, because we know that when the laws enforced, our rights are protected. But also to mention one thing, and I know this might sound like a little bit of a downer, but we also believe in property rights, and this is a private hotel. And we believe in the rule of law,” Schneider said. “So we need to comply with the laws of this county that we’re in. A private hotel just like your house gets to set its own rules.” With all the feeble enthusiasm of an in-over-their-head babysitter, Conley added, “We are in a private facility and we do want to be respectful of the ordinances that they have as their private property. So please everyone, when you’re in a ballroom, when you’re seated, you should still be wearing a mask. So if everybody can go ahead, work on that.”

Instead of “working on that,” the crowd booed and one person yelled “freedom!”

CPAC 2021: already off to a golden start.

(Via Mediaite)

Morgan Wallen is embroiled in controversy after a video emerged of him saying a racial slur, which led to swift and intense backlash: His label suspended his contract and radio stations took his music off the air. Recently, though, Knoxville, Tennessee-based station WMYL, aka 96.7 Merle FM, started playing his music again after their listeners strongly indicated they’d rather hear Wallen than not.

The station launched “The Morgan Wallen Verdict Poll” on their Facebook page on February 7, writing, “We think LISTENERS should determine if 96.7 Merle plays Morgan Wallen or not.” The poll was open until February 16, at which point it was revealed that of the 35,000-plus people who voted in the pole, an overwhelming majority of them — 92 percent, or around 32,000 respondents — were in favor of the station playing Wallen’s music. Sharing the verdict, the station wrote, “96.7 Merle LISTENERS have spoken. YOU have spoken and we LISTENED. Morgan Wallen is back on the air on 96.7 Merle. Share this post, tell your friends, and tune in to the only country station in Knoxville playing Morgan Wallen!”

Ahead of the poll, WMYL station owner Ron Meredith said, “We were disappointed by the behavior in the video, but we were also uncomfortable with sitting in judgment. We are going to now literally let East Tennessee country listeners vote. If they say no, Morgan’s music stays off 96.7 Merle. If they vote yes, we will play the songs local country listeners want to hear most. That’s the business we are in.”

Despite all the backlash Wallen has faced, it’s actually unsurprising that people still want to listen to Wallen: His new project, Dangerous: The Double Album, is No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and has been for weeks now, even after the controversy surfaced.

The pop docs are in right now. Recent documentaries about female pop stars include Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana at the beginning of 2020, a film that portrays an expertly guarded intimacy shepherded by the genre’s best strategizer, and Ariana Grande’s tour “doc” Excuse Me I Love at the end of the year, a piece even more sparing with any personal details, serving primarily as a catalogue of her Sweetener era live show. The most private moment we get of Ariana is a clip of her belting in the car while driving to her show at The Forum — which isn’t exactly breaking any new ground in the singer’s chaotic personal life.

In sharp contrast with those two coiffed and polished films, a new documentary on Billie Eilish, The World’s Little Blurry, reveals an astonishing amount about the experience of the young singer and her family and her quick rise to fame. Though Eilish has been catching industry attention since her debut single, “Ocean Eyes,” hit Soundcloud in 2015, this new film by R.J. Cutler primarily focuses on the writing, recording, release, and reception of her critically-acclaimed, Grammy-record-breaking debut album, When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?

While these types of films often need to be artist-approved, and therefore leave out anything uncomfortable or actually revealing, it’s clear from the jump the cameras aren’t just there doing carefully rehearsed vignettes. From teenaged Billie’s whining and complaining about how hard songwriting is, to Finneas’ worried concern that the record they’re writing doesn’t have a hit on it, neither of the O’Connell siblings look perfect in this film. Instead, they look like people — and that’s what actually makes them even more appealing.

To hear Eilish talk about who much she thinks she sucks, or get jealous about how quickly Finneas can bust out a song is a new layer to their relationship; to watch their parents Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Connell debate whether giving their ultra-famous daughter a souped-up muscle car for her birthday is the right move brings them back to earth as real parents, ones who have the difficult job of balancing their daughter’s looming star power with her adolescence.

Even more so, Billie is in a relationship that is clearly one-sided, with a boyfriend who can’t quite be there for her and is often unreachable or emotionally distant when she needs him most; all of that is shown instead of scrapped. Even when he ditches her at Coachella, a performance that is presumably one of the most important moments in her career, he’s using the passes she got him to be elsewhere.

Still, neither Billie nor the filmmaker vilify her soon-to-be ex’s inability to be there for her. Nor do they dramatize the bouts with Tourette’s syndrome tics that emerge during a meeting with her label, or the very stark descriptions of her experiences with cutting as a pre-teen. These aren’t things Eilish hasn’t shared in public before, but seeing them in the context of her larger narrative — with her mom looking on, or taking place in the family’s small Highland Park living room — gives a new weight to what her life has been like. Eilish’s music isn’t dark because it’s trendy, or it sells, or because she’s assuming a pop star persona, it’s dark because that’s what she’s really like. And her translating that lived experience with the darker side of life is why her work resonates so deeply with not just her generation, but the ones who came before them, too.

On a lighter note, we also get to see Billie live her dream in a different way. Her former idol and object of teenage romantic obsession, Justin Bieber, not only gets on a remix of her song but also ends up becoming a friend and peer for her. From an initial social media exchange (which led to the remix of “Bad Guy”), to their long, emotional hug at Coachella, where Billie literally cries in his arms, to his phone call on the night of the Grammys, when she broke almost every record imaginable, the arc of their relationship mirrors everything else that is changing in her life. But using Bieber as a foil also deepens our understanding of what’s happening to Billie, and what happens to every teen pop idol.

At 25, Bieber is just old enough to feel comfortably distant from his teenage years, but not old enough to forget the crushing pressure of stepping into the spotlight while still navigating tasks like getting a drivers license (word to Olivia Rodrigo), breaking up with an apathetic partner, or trying to figure out if fan meet and greets are emotionally sustainable. Though Bieber has been through the wringer with his rise and fall, in Billie’s eyes, he never once lost an iota of importance. In the car, after their fateful meet-up she laments to her family how embarrassing it was that she sobbed, until they remind her that she knows exactly how that feels like, her fans often break out in tears when they see her, too.

It’s a subtle but mind-bending comparison that humanizes Billie by revealing how cyclical the process between idolizing others and self-actualizing can be. And, it’s a cutting reminder to the audience that the famous teenagers we tear down, scrutinize, surveil, and pass judgement on are likely dealing with the same degree of insecurity and uncertainty as the rest of us. Bieber’s latest single, “Lonely,” throws his own story into stark contrast, as does a recent documentary exposing how terribly Britney Spears was treated in the early 2000s. Particularly in the context of these two older stars, Billie’s decision to let this documentary take an extremely intimate look at her life, and her real struggles, rings true.

In one scene, Billie meets Katy Perry in passing at Coachella, who expresses that she’s a fan and offers a listening ear if ever needed. “This is gonna be wild for ten years, it’s gonna be crazy,” she says. “Let me know if you ever wanna talk, ’cause it’s a weird ride.” The World’s A Little Blurry gives us at least the first chapter of Billie’s weird ride, but maybe in a decade Cutler and his crew will follow up.