Month: February 2021

About 40 minutes into Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar there’s an epiphany. It’s the point of no return. It’s the moment in the movie where a viewer either realizes this is a movie made specifically for them, or, tragically, it’s the moment where there’s really no hope for that viewer ever liking this movie from that moment forward. That moment is a sequence and song known as “Edgar’s Prayer.”

In the film, Edgar, played by Jamie Dornan, is torn. He’s in love with the villain of the movie, Sharon Gordon Fisherman (played by Kristen Wiig, who, yes, also plays Star from the title of the movie). But he’s asked to betray Barb and Star (Annie Mumolo and Wiig) and he feels conflicted about what’s happening. Up until that point, we don’t really know what to make of Edgar. Is he dastardly? Is he a sad sack? It’s at this moment Edgar starts walking along the beach, singing about his woes and belts out the line, “Seagulls in the sand can you hear my prayer?!,” as the visuals we are watching show us Dornan acting out the very specific lyrics. This includes, “I’m going up a palm tree like a cat up a palm tree who’s decided to go up a palm tree,” and then we see Dornan’s Edgar clawing his way up a palm tree, which was a stunt that was actually done practically with a harness. What results is, arguably, the funniest, weirdest two and a half minutes of the last year.

To commemorate the hardest a lot of us have laughed over the course of this last, pretty lousy, year: Jamie Dornan (who, it should be pointed out, couldn’t stop laughing himself while discussing this scene), Annie Mumolo, and director Josh Greenbaum tell us everything we would possibly want to know about the creation, filming, and reaction to “Edgar’s Prayer.” Including how the idea spawned from watching Footloose, to the fact there’s a much longer version of “Edgar’s Prayer” out there that, from the accounts below, is anywhere between a minute longer to a full 10-minutes long.

Annie Mumolo: We basically found out that we were going to get to do the musical number and we were really excited. Then we found out we had a very short time to do it. I think we only had a day or two with these guys at Beacon Street. We went down there and wrote the song. When we were doing it, that just came out organically, the lyrics. When it was all said and done, recorded, can you think of any other titles to that song? You can’t. He’s praying.

Josh Greenbaum: It’s also so long and committed. There’s no reason!

Jamie Dornan: Edgar’s just a confused guy who just wants to be loved.

Annie Mumolo: We knew that Jamie could sing, and then he came in and started singing. He just was belting it out: just singing his heart out so earnestly. Yeah, we couldn’t have dreamed of a better situation.

Jamie Dornan: It’s almost so heightened and silly that he sees this as his “prayer.” Although it’s so ridiculous what’s happening, but it’s a very bizarre way of asking for something or looking for answers. It’s just so silly, but it made sense in this whole world of silliness that we find ourselves in. Actually, it would scare you how normal it felt to to be singing.

Annie Mumolo: We’d heard Jamie could sing, and we had listened to some stuff when we were in talks, like when he was reading the script and stuff. We were hopeful that he would do it. God, poor guy. We just sort of threw it at him. We were like, “Okay, you’re going to sing this crazy ballad. You’re going to be yelling. You’re just going to sing your heart out and belting out notes, and then you’re going to be dancing.” Yeah, he was so game for everything.

Jamie Dornan: He got caught up in this world, in this very strange set of circumstances: Ends up working for a villain, but actually he seems like this sort of sweet guy who just wants to be an official couple. It’s so pure and child-like, his motivations. I love him. He’s a sweetheart.

Josh Greenbaum: The scene exists to say he’s upset, right? That’s pretty much it. He’s upset with his current relationship. You don’t need two and a half minutes to say that, but we took it. We took all two and a half minutes to say it, which I think is part of the joke. I mean, Letterman used to do it. It’s an old trick in comedy, like just keep hitting that joke. The first time it feels long, the second time you’re like, “Oh my god they’re still going,” and by the third chorus you’re like, “Oh, I love this, I can’t believe how committed they are.”

Jamie Dornan: It feels like it’s almost fairly linear storytelling until that point. It’s definitely tricky, but I feel like this “prayer” almost works as a catalyst for like, oh, now it’s going to get really weird. In the best way, it sets the tone.

Annie Mumolo: Honestly, it was like these things were just flowing out of him. These things are just flowing out of him, comedic instincts. He was just overflowing with it. His character, he has to walk a very difficult line. It’s really not easy to do. It’s like a tight rope situation and he did it effortlessly. Fluidly and just perfectly. It was really exciting to watch because we knew he was funny and it was really fun to see him just kind of roll and just go. It was awesome.

Josh Greenbaum: Kristen and Annie went with the guys at Beacon Street, who did a bunch of our music, that song in particular, and wrote those lyrics very quickly. Part of it is, okay, we’re going to do the fun joke of being really literal about these lyrics. So he’s narrating that he’s running to the left, to the right. He’s doing splits, he’s climbing a palm tree. A lot of that is just, okay, where do we put the camera? How do we set it up? We did have a choreographer, but a lot of it was also just trying different things and freestyling with Jamie. Obviously a lot of it did involve rather elaborate stunts, like climbing the tree.

The choreography for the song that we see in the movie wasn’t really that planned out, script-wise, beyond a passing reference to the scene in Footloose when Ren (Kevin Bacon) goes to a warehouse and dances to the song “Never” by Moving Pictures. But the difference here is Dornan also has to sing the song.

Annie Mumolo: Jamie, did you tell him how initially in the script, it was just like, “And then there’s a dance number,” and then we actually found out we would actually have to do it?

Jamie Dornan: It said “Edgar dances emotionally,” or something like that, no joke. It’s when I got on the phone with Josh Greenbaum, he said something about, “And Edgar’s big dance and song, think like Footloose.” I was like, “Jesus, what does he even mean?” I had seen Footloose, but it’d been a very long, long time. We rewatched it.

Josh Greenbaum: The original script and the script that I first read, the script that he read, even before he got to Mexico City, to our set, it really did just say, “Edgar does an emotional dance a la Kevin Bacon Footloose.” That’s all it said.

Annie Mumolo: I think we sent him the script, “He breaks into an emotional dance, all off Kevin Bacon in Footloose,” or something. And that’s all we had. But then we really wanted to make our own thing and then it became what it was. We kind of put that in the script as a hopeful, almost like a joke, “and then this happens?” Hopeful with a question mark.

Josh Greenbaum: When Jamie showed up, I was like “Lets get going and rehearse this thing.” He was like “What thing?” Oh, you know the three-minute song where you’re going to dance on the beach really emotionally and climb a tree like a cat, et cetera?

Jamie Dornan: It’s that frustration and turmoil and, “Jesus Christ, the only way I can release this is if I sing and dance my way across the stage.” That’s what kind of works.

Josh Greenbaum: In Footloose it’s obviously very funny but also, again, it works.

Annie Mumolo: Ren finds uneven bars inside the warehouse, and he’s like swinging or something. It’s one of my favorite scenes of any movie ever. I just love it so much.

Josh Greenbaum: The whole point of it is to show his emotional frustration. We kind of thought, why don’t we take that same idea? He’s climbing a tree like a cat, but we’re also just trying not to push too hard. Just lifting his tiptoes up in the sand, he’s frustrated. Trying to express his emotion, it just happens to be very, very funny.

Jamie Dornan: I think Kevin Bacon would have been well capable of singing that and dancing, I’d imagine. It almost felt like you had to sing it to get yourself into it in a way? Particularly for the stuff where I’m singing what’s actually happening. “I’m going up a palm tree, like a cat in a palm tree.” Actually being able to sing the actions that you’re playing out is just brilliant and a real gift. Actually, I had to sing it.

Josh Greenbaum: Jamie did the wonderful thing you should do as any dramatic actor or actor in general in a comedy: just commit. Don’t play the joke. Play the true emotion and the context surrounding it will make it funny as opposed to trying to be funny. Which he did gloriously.

Annie Mumolo: He was doing all that in Caribbean summer temperature. It was like 100 degrees. The humidity was crazy. I don’t know how he did it. The whole time we were like, “Is this okay? Is he going to be okay?” Then he would just be like, “Okay!,” and bounce back up again and we were just like, “How is he surviving this?” Oh my god.

Jamie Dornan: Amy Keys was there, and also so incredible. Also, people are coming in to do one little bit for one day. They must have just been like, “What are these guys doing? What am I walking into? They’re lunatics!” She was a team player and just went with it and was unbelievable.

Though the final product seemed a little too long at the time, so it was trimmed down. Which means there’s a much longer version out there, somewhere.

Annie Mumolo: I don’t know if Jamie already said this, but it was longer. It was much longer. Jamie did a bunch of other stuff. For a time we had to trim it. If it were up to us, it would have been a 10-minute thing.

Josh Greenbaum: It’s not 10 but there’s definitely… I feel like there’s another minute we cut out.

Annie Mumolo: Well, it’s not 10 minutes, but if were up to us, it would be. We had a longer version that was in the original cut of the movie. Just for time, we had to make it shorter.

Josh Greenbaum: It’s always debatable what’s the sweet spot. It was like a montage of all the things where he started singing, running, skipping, dreaming, sleeping, eating, thinking. It’s just a quick montage of all these actions he’s doing but some of them are incredibly banal like napping.

Annie Mumolo: Yeah, there was some beautiful stuff in there.

Jamie Dornan: Oh my God. There was reading, crying, sunbathing.

Annie Mumolo: Eating a hamburger!

Josh Greenbaum: Yeah, he eats a hamburger. Oh, kicking, he did karate kicks!

Jamie Dornan: Laughing, eating, drinking. We did insane stuff that just didn’t make it in.

Annie Mumolo: It was all him being very emotional. Doing all these things, like he’s eating emotionally, he’s sleeping emotionally. Yeah, it’s been passage of time of all his feelings, but this was more over the course of a day. Now it’s more of this one moment.

Jamie Dornan: I think, also, we can potentially throw logic to the side at moments.

Josh Greenbaum: I’d love to release the footage. It’s always that weird thing of all of the editorial is shut down, but we should try to find it somewhere. It’s very funny and there’s stuff in there that I think people would really enjoy.

Of course, there were some technical aspects of what we do see that were a bit more complicated than we might expect. The seagulls themselves were difficult because the fear was real seagulls from a seagull handler would just think they were being let free. Dornan as Edgar ripping his shirt off was a challenge because shirts are built to not do that. And then they made Jamie Dornan actually climb a palm tree instead of using any kind of computer effect.

Josh Greenbaum: The reality is actual seagulls are pretty difficult, particularly out on a beach where I think the allure of maybe taking off is rather high. Like, “Oh, now that I’m here, see you later. Thanks for returning me home.” We got stuffed seagulls and I’m holding some of them and moving them. Then we added a little bit of blinking, I think, in the very first shot. Then, yeah, a couple of others in the group are stock footage. The “on a tire” is actually a comp. We couldn’t find a good shot of a seagull on a tire so that’s a heavy VFX shot basically where we comped the seagull on top of a tire on a beach that looked like it might be in the same space as Edgar. That’s how we pulled those off.

Jamie Dornan: I think everyone’s watched this documentary where I saw that even Hulk Hogan had his shirt pre-ripped? Yeah, if you can believe it, I’ve never tried to do it without someone helping me, but I can imagine it’s tough. I think we did one take where I did try to do it without help, and I was like, oh, wow, I really can’t do this. I’m going to have to get wardrobe in to make a couple of cuts.

Annie Mumolo: When you’re feeling frustrated and your emotions are so strong and running through your body, you become the Incredible Hulk! You become the Incredible Hulk. You can do anything.

Josh Greenbaum: Somebody actually asked me, they were like I bet you did that old Batman trick and turned the palm tree sideways and climbed it that way? No, we did it with a harness. That’s all practical. He’s physically doing it. Our great stunt coordinator, Todd Bryant, he hooked Jamie up to a rig. He was basically hooked on by his belt. Still, the shot is actually quite difficult. To make it look like he is climbing up a tree like a cat using his claws is more work than you’d think. He’s got to steady himself because he only has one anchor point. So, he could be swinging around the tree like a tetherball if he wasn’t doing it well. He, actually, as you can probably imagine, has very good body control and is very strong. So yeah, we had to do a few takes where I’m like, “No, no, you’ve got to just gingerly rest your fingertips on the side of this palm tree.” I’m a big fan of doing things practically. Even when Kristen and Annie float down in their culottes, we strung up Kristen and Annie and lifted them 100 feet in the air on a crane and floated them down. So it’s all done real.

Why is “Edgar’s Prayer” having the reaction it’s receiving? It does feel like a perfect storm of “our current situation” and then just seeing something so brazenly weird and funny. But it is certainly causing a reaction in people, even to some of the toughest customers.

Josh Greenbaum: We had previews, we were able to get a preview in before the pandemic hit, the sort of audience test preview. Not as many as we wanted because, obviously, then everything got shut down. But we had one. You sit in the audience and it’s such a nerve-wrecking experience because you’re with 300 strangers. I just remember seeing this one guy, a 300-pound dude, covered in tattoos, very tough-looking guy there with his girlfriend. Again, totally my bad for profiling but you kind of eye people as they walk in being like, “I don’t know if this is going to be his movie.” To be honest, I was validated because, for much of the first third of the movie, he was literally sitting there arms crossed, not really smiling. His girlfriend, you could tell, was digging it and laughing. But he was not into it. Then “Edgar’s Prayer” hit and I kept watching him. As the song got longer and longer, he was laughing. He started laughing harder. By the end of it, he was doubled over and hitting the back of the chair in front of him. I was like, we did it. We just converted this guy who was so anti this movie.

Jamie Dornan: My kids keep wanting to watch that scene. We let them see a bit of it, and it’s all that song obviously, and they always want to watch it. Our two-year-old, she just turned two literally yesterday, she doesn’t have a huge, wide vocabulary yet: but if she comes to grab your hand, she goes, “Daddy … naked … watch,” and she brings you into the TV room. By the way, I’ve had to rent it like six times. I press play and the kids watch it. I’ve seen it so many times now. I can watch it with the kids, but I can’t watch it without remembering how burning the sand was at that moment and how sweaty I was at that moment. And how that was really hurting my leg at that moment.

Annie Mumolo: Look, we’re in a pandemic. It’s been a year. We’re all locked up, and that’s on the lucky end if you haven’t lost a family member or something, which some people have. Or lost their lives. It’s such a crazy, dark time. I can’t speak for why. It’s hard for me to know, but I think for us, as a team, when we’re looking at the movie over the last few weeks, getting it ready and stuff, we all felt we were escaping by watching it. By looking back at it, there’s an escape aspect to it that the way it looks. You want to dive into the picture. I just want to go back there so badly. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. Maybe people just want to have a time where they just laugh and not think about anything.

Josh Greenbaum: I love that the song is good. I think that, hopefully, is the moment for a lot of people that they get it and they go, okay, these guys are just trying to have fun and make us laugh. Why am I resisting? Why am I sitting here with my arms folded and judging? Why don’t I give in to this hilarious madness and enjoy what these people are trying to do, which is just have fun and be silly? It’s so committed, which, again, I think is emblematic of our movie. It’s a big swing and we’re fully committed. It’s that unwillingness to bend or give up on what we’re doing and ultimately we, hopefully, win you over by that point. If we didn’t win you over by then, it’s definitely not a movie for you.

Annie Mumolo: Yeah, when I watch it, I feel lifted out of my seat a little. I feel high almost.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

[Spoilers for the new episode of WandaVision]

Paul Bettany caused a stir online earlier this month when he teased that WandaVision will feature a cameo from a top-secret actor. “Truth is, of all of the characters we were trying to keep secret, a lot of them got out through leaks,” he told Esquire. “There is one character that has not been revealed. And it is very exciting. It is an actor I’ve longed to work with all of my life. We have some amazing scenes together and I think the chemistry between us is extraordinary and fireworks on set.” It wasn’t Evan Peters and Fred “Sy Abelman” Melamed doesn’t appear to be coming back, so who could it be? The predictions ranged from Ian McKellen reprising his role as Magneto to Mark Hamill (the actual Mark Hamill, not smooth-faced Mark Hamill) to literally every famous actor alive.

Except one: Paul Bettany.

In the latest episode of WandaVision, “Previously On,” we learn that the Vision we’ve been following, the one living in domestic bliss in New Jersey, isn’t the “real” Vision. He was created by Wanda out of anger and sadness. The real Vision, the one who was killed by Thanos, is in pieces in a S.W.O.R.D. lab. Wanda didn’t steal him, as was originally thought; the footage in episode five was doctored by Director Hayward. But he’s resurrected in the mid-credits scene, now completely devoid of color. (Did anyone else pick up Engineer from Prometheus vibes?) That means there are two Visions on WandaVision: one red, one white — both played by Paul Bettany. Let’s revisit that quote: “It is an actor I’ve longed to work with all of my life. We have some amazing scenes together and I think the chemistry between us is extraordinary and fireworks on set.” It’s totally Bettany talking about himself, havin’ a laugh. What a stinker.

Other WandaVision viewers seem to think so, as well.

Chicago rapper Vic Mensa appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to perform a medley of new songs, “Shelter” and “FR33DOM.” Recruiting “Shelter” guest Wyclef Jean and longtime Windy City collaborator Peter Cottontale, Vic’s prerecorded performance finds him performing from the floor of an empty warehouse and visually condemning the prison system. For the second half of the performance, red highlighting accentuates a riotous rendition of the defiant “FR33DOM.”

Both songs are due to appear on Vic’s upcoming EP, I TAPE, the follow-up to last year’s V TAPE. The activist/rapper revealed the I TAPE due date via a press release after the performance: March 26. It’s clear that Vic is building up to a larger project, so a C TAPE can’t be very far behind that.

“Shelter,” I TAPE‘s first single, featured the reunion of Vic and his musical brother-in-arms Chance The Rapper. The two rappers came up at the same open mic together and had parallel career tracks early on, but when Chance’s Coloring Book took off, the two apparently had a falling out that lasted for several years. In the meantime, Vic released an experimental punk album, became an outspoken critic of various US policies, and even visited Palestine, deciding to recommit to the social justice cause and apparently getting back to his musical roots. You can read more in Uproxx’s new interview with Vic Mensa here.

Watch Vic Mensa’s The Late Show performance of “Shelter” and “FR33DOM” above.

I TAPE is out 3/26 on Roc Nation.

Lady Gaga was met with some distressing news yesterday, when it was reported that thieves shot her dog walker and made off with two of her three French bulldogs. Gaga has yet to offer a public statement about the dog-napping, but now her father, Joe Germanotta, has spoken out about it.

Talking with Fox News, Germanotta said, “Our whole family is upset and praying Koji and Gustavo are not harmed. Help us catch these creeps.”

It was previously reported that Gaga is offering a $500K “no questions asked” reward for the return of her dogs and information about the situation can be sent to [email protected].

Germanotta says the dog walker is a 30-year-old family “friend,” and at the time of the interview, he was unaware of their current condition. It was previously reported, though, that the dog walker was taken to the hospital and is expected to fully recover.

Germanotta continued, “Horrible people in LA. Shooting someone in order to steal dogs is wrong.”

LAPD Public Information Officer Jeff Lee told Fox News that the department is treating the case, which detectives are currently investigating, as “assault with a deadly weapon.” Lee added, “The suspect was last observed in a white vehicle northbound of Sierra Bonita Avenue towards Hollywood Boulevard. No arrest has been made yet.”

(Spoilers from Marvel Studios and Disney+’s WandaVision will be found below.)

We’re now in Week 8 of WandaVision. It’s the penultimate episode in a series that’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and yet, Kevin Feige is using the show to lay much more groundwork for Phase Four and beyond, even going so far to deftly combine two superhero universes, that of 20th Century Fox and the MCU, and that’s only one of the reasons why this show’s been a hit. A lot of the love for the series has to do with its flat-out weirdness and refusal to adhere to one genre, one tone, or even one decade (oh, there have been many). This week, however, a lot of the nerd-ery got temporarily shelved to strip the show back to its emotional bare bones and made it less weird, but that weird will possibly come raging back in the finale.

What we ended up with this week was Elizabeth Olsen and Kathryn Hahn giving us two incredible performances. After learning about “Agatha All Along,” we saw a bit of an Agatha Harkness origin story, but what really matters is how Agatha relates to Wanda Maximoff. Through a flashback-heavy exploration of the moments when Wanda and Pietro’s parents were killed, we truly got to see the roots of her trauma. We saw Wanda’s love of sitcoms from an early age, and all of these revelations easily flow into this series’ marvelous structure. And we saw Agatha — a sorceress from the comics who helped Wanda come into her powers while training with HYDRA — declare that Wanda is much more dangerous than she could possibly understand. She’s using her powers to manipulate energy and matter to cook up “breakfast for dinner,” which doesn’t sound all that evil to us in the audience. Yet Agatha’s characterization of this as “chaos magic” does come close to a “We’re not so different, you and I”-type declaration from villain to hero, and it does sound like Scarlet Witch is being set up as the biggest bad here.

Yep, Wanda recreated her perfect house and perfect husband and perfect life, despite all of the sadness that it now brings her. And we’ve definitely got Scarlet Witch now, baby.

So, next week is finale time. Guessing where we go from here feels like a shot in the dark, but it’s worth discussing how we have not seen Mephisto at all despite all of the hints that we’d be seeing the MCU’s version of the Devil). There were suggestions that Evan Peters’ Pietro could secretly be Mephisto, but a member of the WandaVision team shut down that theory. Fan theories abounded that Mephisto was Agnes’ husband and would be played by Al Pacino, but that never materialized. In fact, it sure doesn’t seem like we’re going to be seeing Mephisto at all?

Nor do we know if we’ll see Pietro next week, or what will happen to Wanda’s (fabricated-in-the-comics) kids, who are now in Agatha’s clutches. We don’t know if Agatha and Wanda will team up (can they go there, after Agatha killed Sparky?) and both go on to spread chaos magic in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (Elizabeth Olsen has what’s thought to be a significant role in the film). Darcy and Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeau (who’s got the Photon vibes doing as of last week) might be on deck again for finale time (all of that post-credit Hayward business about the true manipulation of Vision will go somewhere else, no doubt), but probably no Mephisto!

Unless…

Alright, so we did get one bit of weirdness this week. Bryan Cranston showed up, ever so briefly, while Malcolm In The Middle flashed onscreen as Wanda and Vision watched TV. This blip happened amid a bittersweet conversation, and it’s all very emotional as Wanda attempted to grapple with all of the devastating loss that she’s experienced in her life. All of this could build toward the kind of power we saw when Wanda took on Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, but for now, we’re also left with one parting thought: Bryan Cranston is technically now part of the MCU. Yet it’s too bad that this didn’t happen with him as Walter White. Let’s call it now: Walter White is Mephisto.

Disney+’s ‘WandaVision’ streams new episodes on Fridays.

While today’s Republicans are predominantly Evangelical Christians, they clearly missed the part in The Bible about building false idols. In a move that truly captures the apocalyptic vibes of his presidency, Bloomberg’s William Turton captured footage of a golden statue of Donald Trump being wheeled around CPAC on Thursday, and people are having a blast dunking on the graven image. Shortly after the footage hit Twitter, “Golden Calf” started trending as religious leaders and others pointed out the awkward (and hypocritical) Biblical implications of turning Trump into a golden idol, which is a big no-no, according to Christian scripture. And, yet, that’s definitely a gilded Trump wearing American flag shorts.

After the initial shock of watching Republicans worship a golden idol off, people started noticing that the statue looks like Bob’s Big Boy, which unleashed a new buffet of jokes. The restaurant mascot is still trending as of Friday morning.

Folks also notice that the golden Trump statue resembles Bart Simpson thanks to being wheeled around on what looks like a skateboard and the weird blocky cartoon feet. If you can’t tell by now, the whole thing is a comedy gold mine.

While the golden idol jokes are hilarious, there is a serious side to the whole production. According to Axios, Trump will attend CPAC and declare himself the “presumptive 2024 nominee” for the next presidential election in a show of his “total control” of the GOP. And, frankly, Trump’s plan might of off without a hitch. However, the former president is currently facing significant legal trouble after the Supreme Court ruled this week that New York state prosecutors can access his private tax records. He didn’t like that.

(Via William Turton on Twitter)

When Vic Mensa hops on Zoom with me, he’s riding in the back of an Uber as he heads to his next destination in Chicago’s South Side. It is a slight change of plans, as the rapper was meant to be just arriving from Oklahoma City after visiting death row inmate Julius Jones. But the extreme weather conditions halted plans.

Nevertheless, Mensa is adamant about rescheduling the meeting. “The prison system is the burning hell-fire of America’s death machine,” he explains of advocating Jones and others who are wrongfully convicted. “It’s the nucleus of all oppressions that we talk about, from economic exploitation to and the denial of women’s rights, everything is magnified in the prison walls, you know what I’m saying? So it’s just become a real focus of mine to advocate and dedicate myself to using my energy in any way that I can to bring freedom, especially to those who are incarcerated.”

This determination to shed light on this country’s injustices isn’t new for Mensa. While it may be rare for musicians to truly express themselves in such an explicit manner (and on a mainstream level), last year’s protests (a trigger response to America’s ongoing racism-driven murders) gave many the fuel to speak out. For Mensa, he dropped August’s V TAPE that explored redemption while displaying his masterful emcee skills.

He is following it up with I TAPE (expected soon), a project about the rapper’s quest to help others. Below, Mensa reflects on self-healing, activism, and what’s missing from Black History Month.

When you first started out, you didn’t necessarily show this side of your activism on a major level. When was the moment where you stopped caring about what the mainstream may think?

You know, the things that I rap about now, those are the same things that I was rapping about when I started at 16 years old. I think that it’s just the trajectory of growing up, being in the public eye, and reaching an international level all while being a kid. I started making music feeling the responsibility to really bring truth to the people

Where would you say that came from?

I think it came from my upbringing in Chicago and from the artists that I idolize. The way that I grew up in Chicago, I existed between two realities: I had a lot of privilege, but I was surrounded by the underprivileged. So it was blatantly obvious to me that sh*t was f*cked up. (laughs) I got two parents in the house and I’m blessed like that. My best friend who lives right down the street from me ain’t got a father and his mother’s on drugs, you know. Chicago is just a place that shows you the truth about America. It’s very segregated and there’s no sugar coating.

So in conjunction with the artists I love — Common, Lupe [Fiasco], Kanye [West], Tupac, and Black Star — they instilled in me the value of exposing the cracks and America’s broken meaning with their art, you know what I’m saying? Common taught me about Assata Shakur with “A Song For Assata.” When I was 12 years old, Talib Kwali was rapping lyrics from The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and Kanye West taught us about diamonds from Sierra Leone. Studying those artists in the way that I did, it made me feel not only like a responsibility, but it was fresh. I aspire to inform and open people’s minds with my music.

I’m curious if the rebellion in your music comes from your love for punk rock.

You know what? One of my biggest inspirations is Rage Against The Machine. Just one of the greatest groups. Rap is punk in a lot of ways. I mean, it’s a counter-culture depiction of working-class realities. They share the fact that generations before them denied the musical value of either one. Rappers are undoubtedly the new rock stars. What categorizes the rock stars? Newspaper headlines, the drugs, and the dying young. I don’t see a distinction between the two. I mention Rage Against The Machine, because Zack de la Rocha is literally just one of the best rappers to me.

He comes from a hardcore background and is rapping over Led Zeppelin riffs. When he’s like [raps 1996’s “People Of The Sun] “Since fifteen hundred and sixteen, Mayans attacked and overseen.” Or [raps “Down Rodeo”] “A thousand years they had the tools, we should be takin’ ’em. F*ck the G-ride, I want the machines that are makin’ ’em.” He’s rapping about socialism, communist ideas, and Marxism. He’s making references that I haven’t heard anybody else make. I take inspiration from all that sh*t.

I think the beauty of Black music is that it’s “ours.” But then when you look at it from an industry perspective, executives may frame our struggles and our culture as something marketable.

There’s a Ghanian writer, one of the best, a woman named Ama Ata Aidoo. She has a quote that I’ll paraphrase: Since we met you people 500 years ago, you’ve accumulated our wealth, our culture, and what do we have to show for it? Your diamonds, your gold, your music, your dance — everything you are is us.” And it’s the truth. The proliferation of Black culture has created the modern-day pop culture. Pretty much all forms of music and just every turn of culture. I think that’s being accepted as being true more, but it is what it is. You know, I think that hip hop is like specifically, I was talking to Lupe [Fiasco] and Royce Da 5’9’’ about this the other day. Hip-hop is Black pain marketed for white America and the world at large. Obviously we consume hip-hop, but we’re a fraction of the population. Hip-hop is our trauma, but with a publicist behind it.

They’re trying to sell records at the end of the day.

I also feel like hip-hop, oftentimes represents this deep American fantasy, although it at the same time it’s reality. America has a fascination with the fear of Blackness and the Black men as this —

He’s basically seen as boogeyman.

Yeah. The Black man has been this violent criminal and the Black woman is this hypersexual deviant, you know? It’s funny sometimes to just look at hip-hop. I was listening to Mystikal the other day and oftentimes what the lyrics are portraying is what white America has been afraid of the whole time. And you can look at female rappers right now. I ain’t gonna say no names, but think about those archetypes that white America has created in their mind and then listen to the lyrics.

But would you say it’s different because it’s coming from a Black voice who’s owning their agency? Or do you think they’re still perpetuating those stereotypes?

I think both are possible. You know what I’m saying? Hip-hop undoubtedly perpetuates stereotypes. How much of rap music is like [starts rapping], “I’m a cold-blooded killer and no one could top me!” (laughs) Or, “I could pop my p*ssy on a n**** face!” I’m not saying that in judgment of anybody. I’m just saying it as an observation. You could look at Bigger Thomas in [American author] Richard Wright’s Native Son and this idea of an uncontrollable rage of the Black man. You can literally turn on the radio at any moment and hear that exact archetype in rap music. It’s just an observation.

I’m thinking of last summer with all of the protests for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. June was such a moment for reflection, but also a moment of rage for Black people. So much music that stemmed from that, including your “No More Teardrops.” Outside of your scope, do you think activist-based music will continue or remain a marketable trend?

I think everything moves in cycles and hip-hop is cyclical. There have been moments in time when it was in style to comment on the real-life conditions of other people. And then there have been other moments in time when it was way more in style to just shuck and jive. I mean, I do feel that things are not going back to any sense of normal. Not that there ever was really a normal because the entire existence of Black people in America is just abnormal.

But now they’re just waking up to it all of a sudden like racism wasn’t around before.

Like this sh*t wasn’t going down. But I feel like certain curtains have been pulled back that I don’t know if they can be reinstated and people can pretend that it’s all good again. I think that in hip-hop there’s always going to be people that are talking about real sh*t. It was definitely dope in the past year to see artists that you usually wouldn’t expect to make those types of songs doing that. I thought that that was fresh. I don’t know, I can’t predict the future. But I know that hip-hop will always be like a form of journalism for our real experience, amongst many other things.

I often wonder how do we balance the line of not being too performative, but also being genuine in our messages.

That idea really started to occur to me in the last year. I’ve been dedicating my energy towards revolutionary causes and social initiatives for years. And more recently — obviously there has been a huge community of people doing these things for 60 years, 70 years — it’s become more popular. Five years ago when I was popping up in Flint, Michigan handing out water and doing music about that. I wasn’t dealing with people’s accusations of being performative. But now it’s definitely become more trendy. I’ve had to think about those things a lot more. Because in the activism spaces in Chicago I’ve gotten a lot of hate more recently and had to like think twice and three times: “Is this gonna look like performative? Like I’m doing something for clout?”

It’s like you said, you’ve been doing it for years. So it’s coming from a genuine place. But people may look at Vic Mensa as just a celebrity.

I ain’t going to lie though, no good deed goes unpunished too. I’ve definitely learned that whatever you do, especially as a person with some type of social capital or impact, you’re going to be met with criticism. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. But being a cis-gender male artist in these spaces you definitely just gotta be cautious of the optics. It’s something I’ve just tried to learn through my experiences. How do I shed light on the people that may be doing work and not getting the same exposure or celebration that I might get? How do I shed light on those people that don’t get posted on The Shade Room when they do something positive? People that are really doing this sh*t in the streets, living this sh*t day in and day out.

Your SaveMoneySaveLife initiative helps give people who don’t have a social platform a space to share. Like the Street Medix program, for example, where people can learn how to recover from tear gases at protests.

I was in Palestine and I met a kid who was part of an organization that was doing the exact same program. They raised X amount of dollars and were able to train and provide equipment for, I don’t know, 50 medics in Gaza because the Gaza Strip is obviously a f*cking war zone. It made me think instantly of another warzone: Chicago. I want to bring this program back to Chicago. So I went back to the crib and I started making moves to put the program together.

There’s organizations all over the world doing it. But I learned that there was an organization that was only one degree of separation away from me [in Chicago]. Shout out to them, their name is Ujimaa Medics. There’s a woman named Amika Big Tree Tendaji who has been doing amazing work in that space. So I tried to see, “How can I collaborate with y’all? How can we expand this?” The collaboration didn’t work out and next thing I know I’m being dragged and accused of co-opting someone else’s movement. I’m like, “Yo, I got this idea from halfway across the globe, man. I had no intention of co-opting anybody.”

Again, it goes back to having that celebrity platform.

That’s what I’m saying. I was just trying to address a need, you know what I mean? But I found myself getting sh*tted on for literally for trying to do something good, ‘cause that’s how this goes. But shout out Ujimaa, they have amazing sh*t and continue to do so.

Shifting a bit here, watching your “Shelter” video made me very emotional. When you put all your pain, frustration, and sadness in your music, it can feel confronting. How do you maintain that balance of processing trauma in a healthy way?

I believe that the intention that you put into art has immense significance and impacts the way that people are affected by it. When we made the “Shelter” music video it specifically has that healing property. So something like that doesn’t weigh on me emotionally, it helps me. I think any music that I make that’s emotionally impactful, it helps me to process pain.

Speaking of healing, I know you recently went to Ghana for a trip. Your dad is from Ghana, so did it help you find answers?

I’m blessed that I have a great connection with my ancestors, which has been stolen from a lot of Black Americans. As I grow, I just become more aware of the necessity of keeping in touch and the power of that. America so f*cking stressful, you know, and it don’t matter if you on the Southside, Brooklyn, South Central. So I do believe I was going there searching for a sense of peace. I felt far more peaceful when I was there. Communication with ancestors is like a big part of my culture and my Ashanti people [an ethnic group in Ghana]. It just ingrained in me how important it is that I be there regularly. There’s a lot more soul searching to do. I should have somewhere that I can go to be outside of this chaos and that is great.

Our chat is running at the end of Black History Month, but I know a lot of Black people have different thoughts about the month. Do you think it matters anymore or should we be celebrating it differently?

100 percent, we should be celebrating Black History Month. It reminds me of public school. I went through 12 years of public school and there was one class that I had to opt into. It was the one elective where I learned about African-American history or anything. And I went to school with at least half — if not more than half — Black people. But we spent the whole time learning about Eurocentric things. We had British literature class, obviously that’s all white people. AP literature, all white people. We’re learning about Rome, England, France and even go down to South America and Asia.

But they skip an entire continent.

They skip Africa entirely. I resented school for that for as long as I could really remember being cognizant of these things. I was acutely aware of their omission of my history. Even the Black history that we’ve learned begins with slavery and ends with the civil rights movement. Being Ghanian, I’m like “You motherf*ckers are finessing us!”

It’s all revisionist history.

Yeah. ‘Cause I’m learning about this history in my house. You know, Mansa Mussa of the Mali Empire.

Those are things this society doesn’t want us Black people knowing about.

That’s what I’m saying. They don’t want you to know about the medieval castles that were built in Zimbabwe. They want to depict it as being [made by] white people. They want Cleopatra to be Angelina Jolie. They don’t want you to know that the first pyramid builders were Black men. So Black History Month reminds me of public school because we got 12 motherf*cking months. And during one of them is there any emphasis put on our history. And even then it’s like, I haven’t heard much discussion of African history in Black History Month. By 2050, one out of four people on planet earth are projected to be African.

How do you fit damn near a quarter of the world’s population and their history in one month? I hate seeing schools say, “Tell children’s parents they can opt out of Black History Month. Shaun King said something I liked: “If they could opt out of that, then let us opt out of theirs.” I recognize that denial of people’s history and people’s contributions to civilization is a tactic of oppression and white supremacy. So any opportunity in which we get to share our narrative, I think it’s important.

I TAPE is out March 26 via Roc Nation.

Fans caught a bit of a new Leon Bridges on TikTok this month, as he and Keite Young debuted a cover of “Like A Ship” on the platform as part of its Black History Month program. Now, the pair have debuted the full track, and given that Bridges already has a soulful throwback sound, this cover works out fantastically. The track was originally recorded by Pastor T.L. Barrett in 1971, but Kanye West fans might recognize the tune as being sampled on The Life Of Pablo.

Bridges recorded the song as part of the Truth To Power Project, which is described on its website, “Dallas-based Eastwood Music Group has joined forces with the Dallas Mavericks and FirstCom Music UMPG to curate a ‘Soundtrack For Empowerment.’ The Truth To Power Project is a creative endeavor working to engage people with inspiring new music and multimedia content to encourage community involvement. Let’s bring truth to the light so that we can heal, grow, and prosper together. […] A percentage of the revenue generated from this project will support the next generation of emerging musicians through the Music Forward Foundation. This national nonprofit organization is dedicated to transforming young lives, inspiring careers, and championing a more inclusive music industry. ”

Young wrote on Instagram, “Thank you brother @skinwade and the @dallasmavs @mcuban and the @nba for making social justice a mission for your organizations. A VERY special thank you goes to my brother @leonbridgesofficial who answered the call with me along with the amazingly talented artist and musicians who gave of their talent and time to make this happen.”

Listen to “Like A Ship” above.

Aside from Billie Eilish herself, the most important person in her career is probably Finneas, her brother and her songwriting partner. That doesn’t mean their time collaborating always goes perfectly, though. In the new documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry, Finneas discusses some of the difficulties of working with his sister.

In the film, Finneas says (as ET notes), “It feels like kind of a minefield to me, because I feel like I’ve been told to write a hit, but I’ve been told to not tell Billie that we have to write a hit. And Billie hates writing songs in general, and is so woke about her own persona on the internet that I think she’s terrified of anything she makes being hated. I think her equation is that the more popular something is, the more hate it’s gonna get.”

After an emotional conversation with her parents about the direction of her career, Eilish says, “I hate writing songs. Every time that I’ve written a song that I actually like, I’ve hated the process.”

That said, in Eilish’s most recent annual Vanity Fair interview from November, she said, “I feel so much more confident in my writing. I feel like I know myself better, I’m better at advocating my opinions and communicating and I think Finneas and I have just seriously gotten in the groove.”

Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry is streaming now on Apple TV+. Watch a couple trailers for the film below.

Earlier this week, QAnon-obsessed and space laser-fearing congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) sunk to a new low when she hung an anti-trans sign outside her office door, directly across the hall from another politician with a transgender child. “There are TWO genders: male and female,” it reads. “Trust the science.” Taylor Greene put the sign up to troll Marie Newman (D-IL), whose daughter is transgender, and to protest the Equality Act, an “anti-discrimination bill that would extend civil rights protections to LGBTQ people by prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.” But mostly, she did it because she’s a terrible person (Oreo agrees).

Maybe the worst person of the year so far, according to Jimmy Kimmel.

“The frontrunner for worst human of 2021 is working to defeat the Equality Act right now,” the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host said during Thursday’s episode. “This is an act that would ban discrimination against Americans based on sexual orientation or gender identity.” He then played a clip of Newman displaying a transgender flag, only for Taylor Greene to respond with her hateful sign. “Now she trusts the science,” he cracked. Kimmel also called her a “Karen in Congress” and “so awful.” You can watch the clip above.