Month: February 2021

Olivia Rodrigo has the first major hit single of the year with “Drivers License,” and after all the chart accolades, Rodrigo has hit another major milestone: Last night, she made her TV debut on The Tonight Show and performed her signature tune.

The performance began with her dramatically lit while singing and playing piano, and during the song’s climax (which she delivered on and turned into a big TV moment), it was revealed that she was joined by an orchestra as well.

In a recent interview, Rodrigo said that due to the pandemic, she hasn’t often experienced the success of “Drivers License” in a huge real-world kind of way, although she has had some brushes with what major celebrity feels like. She said, “I went to two drive-throughs since the song came out, and I got recognized at both. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s weird.’” She continued, “My mom was walking around my neighborhood the other day and a car pulled up next to her while she was waiting to cross the street — the car’s windows were down, and they were blasting ‘Drivers License.’ That’s insane. People in the real world, they’re listening to it and loving it. That’s just the stuff that is really surreal to me.”

Watch Rodrigo perform “Drivers License” on Fallon above.

Shootouts, buried treasure, and horseback chases are all features of Rexx Life Raj’s video for “Bounty” which released overnight. Leaning into the song’s theme of being a marked man, Raj adopts a Wild West desperado concept for the video, riding a horse with a poncho and ten-gallon hat as he flees the law. Over the course of the clip, a card game gets belligerent, Raj practices his quick-draw technique, and he rustles a flock of sheep, all in a far-flung desert setting straight out of a Sergio Leone flick.

The Berkeley rapper has developed a penchant for executing high-low concept videos like “Bounty” over the past months, bringing his absurdist sense of humor to clips like “Bad Bad Bad.” In that one, he wears a futuristic safety suit as he tries out everyday activities during the pandemic, including playing a game of outdoor basketball.

Meanwhile, the indie fixture has been raising his profile as well, thanks to some high-profile placements that landed on TV spots and timely compilation albums. His G-Eazy collaboration “Bounce Back” was on ESPN, while he and Grammy nominee D Smoke worked together on the Empire records protest compilation single “Optimistic.” Finally, Raj released his California Poppy 2 EP, teasing more new music ahead.

Watch Rexx Life Raj’s “Bounty” video.

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

After taking a break to show viewers what’s happening outside Westview, WandaVision returned to its sitcom concept with Episode 5, “On A Very Special Episode…,” and along with it came another ominous Easter Egg-filled “commercial.” Each product has ties to a traumatic moment in Wanda’s life, and this latest spot for “Lagos” paper towels certainly delivered in that department.

For those of you who don’t keep a map of every significant Marvel event handy, Lagos is the location of Wanda’s first mission as an Avenger in the opening of Captain America: Civil War. Despite doing her best by carefully following Captain America and Black Widow’s training, things go south when Frank Grillo’s Crossbones triggers a suicide vest after losing a fight with Cap. Wanda reacts quickly to contain the blast, but in the heat of the moment, she inadvertently hurls the exploding Crossbones towards a building, killing eleven Wakandans in the process. That event triggers the world governments to demand that The Avengers sign the Sokovian Accords and become a peace-keeping team that only operates with U.N. approval, which ends up tearing the team apart as Captain America and Iron Man have very different views on the subject.

Knowing that Wanda’s actions not only killed innocent lives, but ultimately led to the breakdown of The Avengers, which gave Thanos an opening to assault Earth while gathering Infinity Stones, that makes the tagline for the “Lagos” paper towel commercial even more brutal: “For when you make a mess you didn’t mean to.” Whoa.

Marvel fans noticed the gut punch in the Lagos ad, and they couldn’t help but feel for Wanda who’s clearly going through some things:

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen made made their on-screen debut when they were nine months old as Michelle Tanner on Full House. Their sister, Elizabeth, waited until she was all of four years old before appearing in the twins’ TV movie, How the West Was Fun. What a slacker. The WandaVision actress later showed up in The Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley series and had an uncredited role on Full House, but most of her memories of the charmingly-corny ABC sitcom involve being off-camera. “It was insanity,” Olsen told Entertainment Weekly about filming WandaVision in front of a live studio audience. “There was something very meta for my own life because I would visit those tapings as a kid, where my sisters were working [on Full House].”

This week’s best-yet episode of WandaVision, “On a Very Special Episode…”, isn’t a direct spoof of Full House (it’s more Family Ties and Growing Pains than anything else), but with the debut of Wanda and Vision’s twins, it still made people think of Mary-Kate and Ashley, and how odd it must have been for Elizabeth to essentially recreate her childhood. There are also a number of people who are only just finding out that Elizabeth is related to Mary-Kate and Ashley (the last name is a giveaway). They need a crash course in Olsen family history, beginning with a double feature of Double, Double, Toil, and Trouble and Martha Marcy May Marlene. They’re basically the same movie.

Cardi B just dropped her first new single of the year, “Up.” In the midst of that, she sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to chat about the song and more. At one point, the conversation turned to “WAP,” and Cardi expressed how shocked she was by the overall reaction to the song, especially since she thinks it’s “really mild.”

Cardi said:

“I was just really surprised. I was just so surprised, because everybody was raging. Like, ‘Oh my god, this song is so freaky and nasty.’ Even when I hear it, I’d be like, ‘This song, to me, is not as nasty and freaky,’ because I grew up listening to freaky-ass rappers. I grew up with Lil Kim, Trina, Khia, Foxy, everybody. I feel like this is really mild, but I don’t know. Nowadays, people just want to rave about everything. I feel because people have been wanting me and [Megan Thee Stallion] to collab, so when a record like that was too freaky… I guess they wasn’t really expecting that or something.”

She then got more specific about the outrage over the song expressed by conservatives, saying:

“I mean, because nowadays, people are just more open about their sexuality and everything. When ‘WAP’ came out, the people that was criticizing it the most, they were like, ‘This is so nasty. This is so freaky.’ I don’t even think it was like, I don’t know, religious people. It was really a lot of Republicans. Like, big Republicans. Not like senators… Like that. It was literally like those motherf*ckers that got blue checks on Twitter. They are big influencers. It’s just like, out of anything that y’all could have talked about… Since, like I said, I was endorsing. I used to endorse Bernie [Sanders], and then Joe Biden. They was just trying to figure a way out to pick on me. Like, ‘Oh, Joe Biden, is this the girl you were doing an interview with? The girl that’s talking about ‘WAP?’ That’s what you want America to be influenced by?’ It’s like, ‘Bro, come on, now.’ It was just a lot. I couldn’t believe it. When I saw that, when I saw Fox News talking so bad about ‘WAP,’ I was like, ‘Are you serious? Really?’

Watch a snippet from the interview below.

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

This week’s episode of Indiecast kicks off with an enlightening discussion of which indie bands should release greatest hits albums. Then, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen are diving into one of the biggest releases of 2021 so far: Foo Fighters’ tenth studio album Medicine At Midnight. The album doesn’t really sound like anything the Foos have released to date, continuing down the path that began with 2014’s Sonic Highways, moving away from the thrashing rock that seems to have culminated in 2011’s Wasting Light. 25 years into the band’s career, Hyden and Cohen try to figure out where the experimental Medicine At Midnight stacks up in Foo Fighters’ massive catalogue.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Cohen is loving Earbudz, the first charity compilation from artist development company No Earbuds, which is now available for Bandcamp Friday. All proceeds will be donated The Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cannabis-related criminal justice reform. Hyden, on the other hand, can’t get enough of Yasmin Williams’ captivating instrumental guitar album Urban Driftwood.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 25 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.

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

Last week’s episode of WandaVision built upon all of those easter eggs that propped up HYDRA to remind everyone that Wanda Maximoff can never escape her traumatic past. So, we got a lot of Age Of Ultron references, which led people to believe that we might be seeing Wanda’s brother, Pietro, reenter the MCU. Of course, Pietro died in Age Of Ultron, if Pietro was gonna make a comeback, an adjustment needed to be made. After all, Wanda couldn’t simply conjure the guy back up… actually yes, she could do that if she wished. We learned that much last week from Monica/Geraldine’s revelation that “it’s all Wanda” (although many suspect that it’s also “all Agnes”) during the SWORD agent’s final moments in Westview.

Well, Episode 5 told us, over and over again, that Wanda is in control here. This isn’t an illusion; it’s reality. She’s controlling the town’s citizens and essentially holding them hostage by changing their personalities and writing the script on what happens, who does what, and yeah, the Agnes stuff is getting complicated. We can’t tell if Wanda’s controlling her too, or if Agnes is pulling strings with Mephisto in the background, but we do know that Vision is attempting to get Wanda to stop causing so much “pain” to those who she’s controlling. Whether or not that helps to qualify Wanda as a future MCU big bad, we don’t know yet, but we got a massive payoff at the end of the episode.

Pietro is back, only he’s not the MCU Pietro/Quicksilver we know from Age Of Ultron. Instead, Wanda has recast Aaron Taylor Johnson, as Darcy observes.

Instead of Aaron, we see Evan Peters, who played the same character in the X-Men movies. Quicksilver asking, “Long-lost bro get to squeeze his stinkin’ sister to death or what?” is pretty swell. I love how he referred to Vision as a “popsicle,” and given what we saw last week, dude is an undead popsicle. This seemingly simple moment easily qualifies this episode as the best WandaVision entry thus far. The live audience obviously loved it, and Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige has done the thing, y’all.

With a solitary chess move, Feige has combined the MCU and the FOX superhero universes. The implications here are huge. Disney+ and Marvel Studios can now pull mutants into the game, and who knows, we might even see Deadpool shimmy into the party sooner than expected. It’s mind-boggling, how casually this is all going down.

Once again, too, I’m reminded of how Feige dropped those telltale hints like he does. Ahead of WandaVision‘s debut, he talked about how Wanda’s was the most powerful Avenger vengefully facing off against Thanos during the Endgame final battle. She was incensed (and rightfully so) about everything in her world being taken away, and Feige characterized that as “interesting,” almost with a wink and nod. (Ain’t he a stinker?) And in WandaVision, Wanda’s been taking everything back while bending reality like we saw her do in Age Of Ultron. After that, of course, Wanda was sidelined and largely relegated to romantic interest, which angered me at the time, but given that the romcom-y stuff has been superbly played up in this Disney+ series, it’s all coming together more than I could ever have imagined.

Has Kevin Feige really been planning this all along? Did he really push Wanda into the background with the intent of knocking our socks off in Phase 4 by obliterating her “romantic interest” purpose and finally elevating her as the all-powerful being she was forecast to be (from the very moment she was introduced in the MCU)? I think this episode confirms the answer is “yes,” but again, we’ll have to wait and see where this show takes us next. It’s worth noting that Monica and Darcy did pay debate whether Wanda or Captain Marvel was more powerful against Thanos.

“Scarlet Witch” could become the dominant Wanda moniker at some point, and I suspect that Agnes will play into that, since all signs have pointed toward Agnes truly being Agatha Harkness, a sorceress from the comics who helped Wanda come into her powers while training with HYDRA.

We also know that Wanda will play a pivotal role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so it feels safe to assume that Pietro being “recast” has opened that door as well. Are we in the multiverse now, baby? It kind-of feels like it.

Whatever the case, Marvel fans are thrilled and tipping their nerd-hats to Kevin Feige.

Fans are now placing all of their trust in Feige, which is a good thing. After all, there’s no going back now.

‘WandaVision’ will stream new episodes each Friday.

It’s been years since fans have heard Chance The Rapper and Vic Mensa on a track together. The Chicago natives were side-by -side during the early stages of their careers and produced standout efforts like “Cocoa Butter Kisses” and “Tweakin” which appeared on their respective Acid Rap and Innatape mixtapes. Things would seemingly go left between Chance and Vic for a moment, but they would patch things up with a reunion at 2017’s Lolapalooza Festival. Despite this, fans did not receive any new tunes from the duo in the following years. Thankfully, all of that changed on Friday when they got back together for their “Shelter” single.

In their first collaboration in almost a decade, Chance and Vic show that their chemistry is still intact despite the wide gap since their last effort. Together, the two rappers speak on their efforts to provide protection to loved ones in a world filled with dangers for the average Black life, which includes police brutality and the coronavirus pandemic. Chance mentions Kenneth Taylor, the boyfriend of the late Breonna Taylor, and Philando Castile, and their desire to simply protect their families. Vic Mensa also touches on police brutality with a mention of Elijah McClain as he questions the country’s refusal to value Black people at all moments.

The track also comes after Vic surprised listeners with his strong V Tape EP last summer. The seven-track effort with features from Snoh Aalegra, Saint Jhn, BJ The Chicago Kid, Peter CottonTale, and more was one of the Chicago native’s strongest releases in a while. Chance The Rapper spent most of his 2020 as a guest feature on tracks that included Justin Bieber’s “Holy,” Peter CottonTale’s “Together,” and MadeInTYO’s “BET Uncut.”

You can listen to “Shelter” in the video above.

Yesterday, The Weeknd have a press conference where he discussed this weekend’s Super Bowl halftime show. Elsewhere during the day, he also spoke with NFL Network, where he revealed that, despite how these halftime shows usually go, there won’t be any special guests joining him for his performance.

He smiled and shook his head while the question was being asked and then replied, “I’ve been reading a lot of rumors. I wouldn’t bet on it. There wasn’t any room to fit it in the narrative, in the story I was telling in the performance. So yeah, there’s no special guests.”

Meanwhile, during the aforementioned press conference, he noted that what fans can expect is a family-friendly show, saying, “I definitely want to be respectful to the viewers at home. I will still incorporate some of the storyline. It’s a very cohesive story I’ve been telling throughout this era and throughout this year. So the story will continue, but definitely we’ll keep it PG for the families. I’ll try my best.” He was also asked if his performance would feature any social justice themes and was vague with his answer, replying, “Hopefully, they can come up with some of their own theories and conclusions for what the show is saying and the story I’m telling with the performance.”

The ghost of The Karate Kid‘s superior sensei, Mr. Miyagi, loomed larger than ever in the newest Cobra Kai season, which included a better-than-it-should-be scene of Daniel-san gaining access to his in mentor’s letters. Anyone who watched this season felt the hard-hitting significance of that scene, which really drove home how special those original movies were, and how wonderfully they rendered an underdog story while managing to be invigorating and forgivably embracing the power of underdog clichés. Well, those The Karate Kid films would never have translated with a lesser Miyagi actor than Noriyuki “Pat” Morita. He was Oscar-nominated for the first film, and as Ralph Macchio reveals in More Than Miyagi (a new Love Project Films documentary), his one Morita-centered regret is not being able to walk the awards red carpet with his friend. In turn, the film shows us how one would be hard-pressed to find a stronger Hollywood underdog story than that of Pat Morita. In other words, settle down, Daniel LaRusso, because the man who played your mentor came by the role more than honestly.

More Than Miyagi comes full circle like that, while being chock full of revelations like Macchio’s admission, without delving into sensationalism, and there’s something very refreshing about the documentary’s straightforward format. Viewers receive exactly what the title promises, and there’s no flashy filmmaking to be found. Instead, there’s an impressive assembling of Morita’s well-known co-stars, all of whom express nothing but love and respect for an icon. We get the traditional splicing of old interviews and home footage and a huge focus on the path that led to Miyagi. Obviously, things are weighted to give a lot of facetime to the Karate Kid crowd (Macchio, William Zabka, Martin Kove, and uh, Hilary Swank), but one receives a hefty revisiting of Morita’s breakthrough role on Happy Days when Henry Winkler comes to town, and other familiar faces guide us through Morita’s other TV roles. And one surely can’t neglect presences like Tommy Chong, who relates memories from the legend’s stand-up days.

That’s the point where the audience shall begin to realize that Morita’s early life filled itself with sadness, and he turned to comedy while resolving to bring people happiness during his career. Shades of Robin Williams and Dana Carvey appear when it becomes apparent that the “Tears Of A Clown” pitfall is all too true here. Morita’s often-comical, early-to-mid professional exterior fueled itself through extreme self-deprecation, which helped to mask the challenges he faced. Those tough times include recovering from a debilitating, years-long struggle with spinal tuberculosis and being shipped off (as a Japanese American) to Internment camps during World War II. He then did what he had to do to make it in Hollywood, even though that meant working with a prescribed toolbox of Asian stereotypes. Watching this happen in retrospect is sobering, for Morita pushed through an industry where Asian roles including Genghis Khan and Fu Manchu went to John Wayne, Christopher Lee, and Boris Karloff.

I’d like to say that times have changed on that last note, but it’s only been a few years since Scarlett Johansson starred in Ghost in the Shell. (At least the MCU’s making strides by authentically casting movies like Shang-Chi, but that move comes after a relevant Doctor Strange whitewashing controversy.) In the case of Morita’s career, he began on the stand-up circuit, where he once found himself stunned to gaze into an audience of Pearl Harbor survivors in Hawaii. He quietly endured barriers of institutional and casual racism, even while bringing his beloved Happy Days cook to life. He guest-starred on countless TV shows and eventually became the first Asian-American leading man on television. That endeavor didn’t last long, but he was a trailblazer in that way. Eventually, he fought his way into the Miyagi role (amazingly, producers resisted casting him because he was too funny on TV) and graduated to legend status.

More Than Miyagi doesn’t have to work too hard to elevate Morita. His words during old interviews, and in-depth anecdotes from his co-stars, do all the legwork. There are, thankfully, no surprises there. No one comes forward to share any accounts of Morita-as-monster, although we only hear from his third wife, Evelyn Guerrero, who doesn’t shy away from sharing how Morita buried himself in alcohol, perhaps literally. Nothing is made explicit about Morita’s early-to-mid Hollywood experiences contributing to his profound sadness, but there’s a lot of suggestion here. And clearly, demons from Morita’s childhood and time in Internment camps plagued him enough throughout his life, even while he exuded warmth and sweetness to those around him. Morita’s kindness and generosity shines through even when he’s drunk as a skunk, and I’m reminded of that saying about alcohol magnifying one’s true personality. An inebriated Morita is just as lovable as the most sober moments when we see him during home footage and interviews, but he turned against himself with decades of hard drinking until his death at age 73. It’s a heartbreaking end to his multi-faceted underdog success story.

Still, More Than Miyagi emerges as an uplifting story despite soaking itself in sadness at times. And obviously, the timing couldn’t be more right for this documentary to arrive, so Cobra Kai fans can tuck into an extra dose of his spirit. In less than 90 minutes, the film glides through a crash course of Morita’s pre-and-post Miyagi life events. This should be informative, since it’s safe to assume that multiple generations of Cobra Kai fans don’t realize that Morita led a very full and varied career before getting dramatic as a sensei. Yet comedy was integral to Miyagi, too. I mean, c’mon, it takes considerable talent to pull off the “honk” with a deadpan touch. And here’s an inarguable truth: the dude was funnier than most of us combined. Pat Morita deserves respect for that honk-scene and so much more, and this documentary knows exactly how to give that respect to him.

Directed by ‘The Karate Kid’ enthusiast Kevin Derek, ‘More Than Miyagi’ will be available on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and more on February 5.