Month: February 2021

Although Megan Thee Stallion’s fans were critical of the Harper’s Bazaar photos that accompanied her cover story in the March issue, apparently, Megan herself loved them. Not only did she share the photos herself on her Instagram, but the photographer taking heat for the “lifeless” shots revealed that Megan had plenty of input on them before the issue went online.

The photographer, Collier Schorr, posted the photos to his own Instagram, offering some backstory on the shots in his caption. Characterizing the shoot as “a most remarkable experience,” Schorr explained that Megan “discussed each picture and edited afterwards with me. In charge of herself.” Schorr said their work was made in “total collaboration as it should be,” saying he’s “grateful to work this way.”

Of course, some fans noted that the stills Megan posted to her Instagram have been brightened with Instagram’s tools, drawing the comparison between the approved photos and the ones she shared with her fans.

More than anything, the entire incident appears to be an instance of fans being protective of one of their favorite artists. The way fans invest in artists is completely different in the era of social media when artists can communicate directly without media outlets as a go-between, and as we’ve seen recently in the Framing Britney Spears documentary, fans and artists alike both have more than enough reason to distrust some outlets.

However, there’s no agreeing with someone’s taste 100 percent of the time. Fans drawn to Megan’s usual colorful, anime-inspired looks might have expected something similar from her Harper’s shoot, while Megan herself may have wanted a more down-to-earth look. While it is important to question unconscious biases and call out representation in media, sometimes, it’s just as important to consider getting the truth straight from the horse’s mouth — no pun intended.

The Daily Show has dragged Tucker Carlson plenty of times before, but this time it went deep by devoting a whole brand new segment to him. In the first installment of “The Daily Showography,” Carlson’s entire media career is hauled under the microscope starting with his wealthy childhood as an heir to the Swanson frozen food fortune. The Daily Show segment painstakingly lays out Carlson’s start as a friendly, “non-white supremacist-y” conservative who people actually seemed to like. Carlson’s affable demeanor landed him gigs on PBS and eventually as the host of CNN’s Crossfire where he famously quit after getting ruthlessly read for filth by Jon Stewart who called Carlson a “hack” to his face and asked him why a 35-year-old old man still wears a bow-tie.

After licking his wounds after the CNN debacle, Carlson went to work transforming himself into a radio shock jock under the tutelage of Bubba the Love Sponge. (Yes, the guy whose wife made a sex tape with Hulk Hogan.) While working with Bubba, Carlson began adapting an anti-feminist persona and would often rant about how he doesn’t want to hear women talk. He also made controversial remarks about how underage marriage isn’t really that bad because at least the statutory rapist is making a life-long commitment to their victim.

While those kind of remarks would absolutely destroy a career today, it landed Carlson a plum gig at Fox News, where he started leaning even more heavily into anti-immigration and white supremacist rhetoric while attempting to pass himself off a man of the people who’s different than the other media elites who talk down to audiences. Just ignore the fact that Carlson is a millionaire who regularly talks down to audiences. Case in point, The Daily Show feature highlights Carlson’s more recent remarks where he mocks anyone who doesn’t recognize that the Bidens’ marriage is a PR stunt to hide the President’s senility, and he’s even gone so far as to peddle conspiracy theories about vaccines.

As for what form Carlson will take in the future to stay on the air, “The Daily Showography” notes that he’ll do it with a smile or “whatever’s going on there.”

Welcome to our new weekly streetwear series! Every Thursday we’ll hit you with the hottest fits dropping each week in order to ensure you’re always all geared up for the season and looking your best. Follow our weekly guide and one day, when this pandemic is behind us, you’ll be able to step out into the world looking more fly than you ever have in your whole damn life. We can’t say when that day will be, but we can promise you that your wardrobe will be filled up with the most cutting-edge streetwear currently on the market.

As of now, we don’t have a cool name for this series (hit us in the comments!), but… maybe it doesn’t need one? If you’re looking for sneakers to complete your look, make sure to check out our new SNX DLX series, which has been expanded to include even more shoes per week. But for now, let’s dive into the dopest apparel drops of the week, featuring new looks from NOAH, Teddy Fresh, Gucci, Supreme, and more.

BBC Ice Cream Spring 2021 Collection/Jun Inagawa Capsule

NIGO and Pharrell’s Billionaire Boys Club Ice Cream label has just launched a pretty expansive Spring 2021 collection of streetwear essentials. The offerings include lots of outerwear, like denim jackets, sweaters, varsity jackets, sweats, and long sleeves — featuring loud and colorful pop-art-inspired graphics that slot nicely alongside the typical Ice Cream aesthetic.

Highlights include the puffy patch-laden Eye See varsity jacket, as well as the anime-inspired Shocked Long Sleeve. Speaking of anime, BBC Ice Cream also teamed up with Japanese artist Jun Inagawa for a playful collection that celebrates the Magical Girl genre of anime, featuring original art by Inagawa himself.

The BBC Ice Cream Spring 2021 collection releases today at the BBC Ice Cream online store.

Supreme Spring Summer 2021 Collection

Supreme has been on a minimalist kick for the last few years, so we’re happy to see them turn things around with their Spring Summer 2021 collection, which will be released in weekly drops for the next few months and features a louder and grittier style — inspired by Supreme’s home turf, New York City.

Supreme’s first drop of the SS21 season launched today with an outerwear heavy collection that is still fit for colder temperatures. Highlights include the bandana print Faux Fur bomber jacket, the cotton-filled Fuck Down Jacket (yes, that’s really what it’s called, how Supreme), and the classic Logo Trim zip-up cardigan, which features Supreme’s signature colors on a merino wool blend.

The Supreme Spring Summer 2021 collection is set to drop today and is available at the Supreme online store.

Ken Scott x Gucci Capsule Collection

For this capsule collection, Gucci pulled from the work of the late great Ken Scott, incorporating some of the designer’s iconic floral patterns and creating new patterns influenced by his work into a wide-ranging collection. Featuring both Menswear and Womenswear, the full collection features everything from casual outerwear, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and tracksuits to straight-up dining suits, dresses, underwear, and bags.

Highlights include the collection of sneakers and footwear, as well as some of the more casual graphic t-shirts. If you’re looking to come out of this pandemic rocking a psychedelic vibe, this is the way to do it while still looking luxurious and not like a hippie. Not that there is anything wrong with dressing like a hippie!

The Ken Scott x Gucci Capsule collection is out now and is available at the Gucci web store.

NOAH x Barbour Spring Summer 2021 Collection

If you’ve been wondering why Supreme isn’t quite as hot a brand as it used to be, it’s because one of the brand’s best designers, Brendon Babenzien, left to start NOAH. For Babenzien’s latest collection, NOAH teamed up with Barbour for refreshes of two of the workwear brand’s best jackets, the paisley adorned Beaufort wax jacket, and the Zebra-print Bedale.

Both jackets feature a loose and layer-able unisex silhouette that is highly functional and looks great. We’d pick a favorite but it’s a little tough, either could be a wardrobe favorite.

The NOAH x Barbour Spring Summer 2021 collection is set to drop today. Check out the full capsule at Barbour, NOAH, or Dover Street Market.

Teddy Fresh

Our favorite color-block-obsessed streetwear brand Teddy Fresh is back with a small February drop featuring high-quality fabrics in the brand’s signature pastel aesthetic. Highlights of the collection include the striped pastel crew neck sweater, a heart-printed hoodie and sweatpants set, some dope four-color socks, and a button-down featuring drawings by the brand’s head designer and founder, Hila Klein.

The Teddy Fresh February 2021collection is available now at the Teddy Fresh webstore.

Andrew Walker x Off-White

For this capsule collection, Virgil Abloh’s Off-White linked up with designer Andrew Walker for a small collection consisting of t-shirts, track pants, sweatshirts, and a bag. The design here is incredibly minimal, with some items consisting only of a watercolor impressionistic airplane flying over a sun-set tinged, mango-colored cloud. The graphic appears on a sheer shirt, a t-shirt, and on a leather black bag.

The collection’s sweater, which is available in black or white, is also incredibly minimal, with added drawstrings extending from the shoulders. The collection’s most annoying detail would have to be the double loop in the sweat pants. Just give us one loop to tighten our pants, Jesus Virgil.

The Andrew Walker x Off-White Capsule collection is available now at the Off-White webstore.

Finesse 2021 Drop

Finesse is a very interesting brand that just landed on our radar recently and produces looks using data from artificial intelligence and machine learning in an attempt to predict the fashion trends of tomorrow. It’s an interesting experiment and while it doesn’t always land pefectly, the brand consistently puts out a few outfits and collections that are winners, whether you’re looking for that future clubbing look, something interesting for an artsy photo shoot, or something that fits more along the lines of modern unisex streetwear.

Right now, Finesse has seven active looks and we’re really loving the beach-friendly Lexi, the puffer jacket from the Burbie V2, and the tennis-inspired Bella. We’re digging the Euphoria vibes from Finesse.

Check out the current Finesse drops here.

When you think about women in rap, how far back does your memory go? Sure, we all know Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B, they’re all over the radio and our phones these days as tracks like “Savage,” “Up,” and “WAP” generate inescapable memes and irresistible beats, rhymes, and choruses. Many fans’ memories begin with Nicki Minaj, widely credited — incorrectly, I might add — as the sole dominant female presence in hip-hop for much of the 2010s.

What about Foxy Brown and Lil Kim, who ruled the latter half of the ’90s, or MC Lyte and Queen Latifah, who did the same for the first few years of that decade? Maybe, if you’re old enough, well-read enough, or just an avid consumer of Netflix biopics, you know about Roxanne Shante, the center of the so-called “Roxanne Wars” that rocked New York record stores in the ’80s. That’s admirable, but you’re still well short of the full range of women journalist Clover Hope covers in her new book The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop, out now through Abrams Books.

Over the course of the book’s 238 pages of essays, factoids, interviews, and gorgeous illustrations by Rachelle Baker, Hope leaves very, very few stones unturned in pursuit of a fuller, richer, more in-depth history of women’s contributions to hip-hop music than has ever been attempted before. I first gleaned a true understanding of the breadth of Hope’s research and commitment within the first two with the mention of Ebony Eyez, an oft-overlooked personal favorite MC from St. Louis who enjoyed a modest hit with “In Ya Face” and released her sole album 7 Day Cycle on Capitol Records in 2005 before fading from public view.

My own personal interest in the subject aside, The Motherlode represents something that was sorely needed in hip-hop’s various histories, retrospectives, and analytical texts: A woman’s perspective. Women have long been a foundational subset of the genre’s creators and for just as long, they’ve been overlooked, minimized, and left out of the narrative. Not only were MCs like Sha-Rock, Lisa Lee, Sweet Tee, and others part of the genre’s origins in 1970s New York, but women have also driven many of the genre’s innovations, produced some of its most respected hits, and in general, been a part of the rich tapestry of rap and hip-hop.

The Motherlode doesn’t just seek to correct those oversights but to also refocus the lens, to show that women belong at the center of the discussion, not its outskirts (no pun intended). Considering the massive overlap between Hope’s work and mine at Uproxx, I knew I had to talk with her about the process of adding these layers to the established history, from excavating these stories from the women who lived them, to questioning the way the history was established in the first place.

I’m sure that there are so many people who don’t even know that there are 100 plus women who made hip-hop. Where did the inspiration for this book come from?

I’m glad you said that, because I feel like one place to start is that the average person can probably name between 10 and 15-ish women rappers, either their favorites or people they grew up on. Part of it was that I wanted to increase that number, and I wanted people to get familiar with names that they hadn’t known before. Also, if they were already familiar with certain artists like Queen Latifah or MC Lyte, be able to read about them and just see them in a different context — or just in a context that brings their significance to hip-hop more to the forefront. There are people that I learned about while researching this book, and while writing it.

I think if the whole point of it, and the whole inspiration behind it was to have other people have that discovery also, where you could flip through and be like, “Oh, I remember this person,” or you could be like, “Oh, I don’t know who this person was. Let me kind of check them out.” It was really to give some visibility to women who created the culture, in a space where a lot of times they don’t — sometimes not even intentionally — get recognition. People just tend to rely on a default story of hip-hop. The more you go deeper and see all these figures, and all these women who played a role in it, the more you can see how integral they really were, and just creating a culture and not just being secondary to it.

That was the inspiration. A good example is probably MC Sha-Rock, who was one of the earlier women, one of the earlier entries in the book, and one of the earlier creators of hip-hop. She was around in the ’70s and really is considered the first prominent female MC. She performed with her group, The Funky 4 + 1 on SNL. That was one of the first, nationally broadcast performances of rap, and that contributed to spreading this culture and this genre around the world.

When you think about how this young Black girl was in the center of that stage, on national television, transmitting hip-hop to the world, at a time when it wasn’t available. People weren’t seeing hip-hop being performed. That’s major. I wanted to put it into that context, and let people see how the culture was created by women. If you could tell this story from a different angle, it’s like tilting the camera a little bit so that you see the other people you might not think about.

Now in terms of the 100 plus women, there are definitely a lot of interesting names. What was interesting to me was this tension of, or this question of, who gets to be the hundred, and who gets to be the plus. Naturally, there are some women who are given, like Queen Latifah and MC Lyte, but then you have Lady T and these other names that have to be mentioned. What was it that drew you to these specific stories?

That’s a great question. I had to experiment with the length a little bit because I do only have a certain amount of pages. I couldn’t do 500 pages, although I wish I could have.

Kim, I knew was going to be the longest, Foxy, Queen Latifah, people like that. I knew that there will be more pages for them. I basically, dedicated a certain amount to them. From there, I basically tried to decide who would get a longer profile, who would get medium, then who would get the shorter one. Some of it was based on who I got to interview.

I interviewed one-half of the Conscious Daughters — the other half, she passed away. That entry is longer because Carla gave such great information, and there was enough to make it a “need.” There Bytches With Problems. I spoke to both of them, so that is a longer entry in the book, partly because they gave me so much relevant information to the story of hip-hop. I tried to base it around, if I spoke to someone and their information was told a story about hip-hop that I need to include, I just made their entries a little bit longer. JJ fad was another one.

A lot of pluses left out, and even now I see names brought up, or just something will even just randomly catch me. I’m like, “Oh, yeah.” I don’t want to say forgot, but that person isn’t in the book. The whole point is that I can’t capture them all, it’s great that not everyone can be captured in the book. The “plus” is to signify that there are way more than even what’s in here.

So obviously this is a very personal project. You don’t do something like this unless it’s meaningful to you. So who were your first female rappers?

Definitely Missy, Salt-N-Pepa, Eve, and Kim. Those are kind of the ones I just remember feeling the most attached to, for different reasons. And Missy was just like a phenomenon and she just showed me the possibilities of just being creative and taking what’s inside your head and making it real. For Kim, it was like just, I think a lot of little girls were growing up listening to her and Foxy and kind of growing up at the same time. When she was out, she was like 18 or something, I was probably like 14. So having that young adult phase, you’re drawn to that… the mature music.

I look at them like upperclassmen. You’re a freshman but you want to be like the seniors.

Yeah, exactly. It was like we want to grow up fast. And then people like Salt-N-Pepa, I just was in love with them. They were fun and cool and they looked cool and I would buy these CDs and the whole thing was that it was not just the look and sound, but their style that I was into. They all were just so stylish and I was not at all stylish so it was kind of aspirational. Eve was like someone I felt like would go to my high school and she would be the hood girl that I would want to be friends with in school.

So in the process of expanding on your hip-hop knowledge through the process of writing this book, did you come across new favorites? What were some of the names that maybe you didn’t know before that, “Oh, this sparked something,” or this person said something, or you were surprised by this?

Definitely speaking with Bytches With Problems, just like me growing up in Queens, on the East Coast, there were definitely west legends who I did not even remember hearing the names of when I was a teenager. In the mid-’90s they were poppin’. Speaking to both of them, it was like an education for me because I’m like, “Oh yes, they were kind of pushing along this conversation about women in hip-hop and misogyny.” And “bitch” is implanted in their names. So they were kind of bringing that kind of provocativeness to the genre. Learning about their movement for me was new and it was refreshing and it definitely made me realize how much of a regional kind of bias we had growing up. Because it was always just radio.

I found a lot of stuff through radio. The “internet” was AOL. There was no kind of social media at all. So I was finding artists through Napster. It wasn’t as easy to access people from different regions. So that was a real cool discovery.

It was great to talk to people like Sweet Tee, who I kind of knew about a little, but not her story or her being part of different groups at the time. I had no idea about the story of the first women, that there was this whole kind of wrestling with who came first and who was the first female MC and how that’s been something they’ve been tossing back and forth over the years. That was probably the most poignant thing because that’s why the book is worthy. Those stories get lost through time. And like you said, there aren’t records of certain groups like Mercedes Ladies. I looked for articles about them and all of this and there was just … It wasn’t like there were reporters implanted at parties. These things were just happening and you had to be there. So the remnants are like flyers and things like that.

One of the more interesting women, I think at the beginning of that, was Roxanne Shanté because so much of her legend is built up out of other people talking about Roxanne and their songs in the Roxanne Wars. But that story finally gets to be told in the Netflix film, Roxanne Roxanne. If you could pitch your Netflix movie for a female rapper who you think doesn’t get enough shine, who would that be and why?

The one that came to mind immediately was MC Sha-Rock, because that’s, again, instantly a compelling story. It’s someone who helped create hip-hop and feels like they weren’t recognized. And she wrote a whole book about it and then still feels like she hasn’t been recognized and is kind of pushing to just have her place in this culture that has blown up and kind of, in a way, forgotten about her.

I don’t know, there’s so many. I would love to see a Queen Latifah biopic because I’m sure she would be involved in it. And the thing is, these are just starting to pop up because hip-hop biopics, in general, have just been kind of … it’s still pretty new as a subgenre… Like Straight Outta Compton, Notorious, and then the Tupac biopic. Those were, I guess because the genre is so, so young, the first kind of hip-hop biopics. Then, Roxanne Roxanne being the first for a female rapper is pretty huge.

Those stories, I think, will keep continuing because people want what they did to be remembered.

One thing that I noticed was that you have such great wordplay throughout the book, so many great one-liners, metaphors, similes, double entendres, which begs the question, did you ever rap? What was your rap name?

No one has asked me this. No, I have not rapped, but I mean, I used to write poetry that I would kind of write as spoken word. I may have done a spoken word performance once when I was very young. Very light, drunk freestyling is the most that I would do in college. My whole shtick in college was when we were drunk I would freestyle with friends. And it was the worst, lamest freestyles.

I never thought about a rap career, but I did used to want to be a recording engineer, and be in the studio, behind the boards. So I did mix some beats.

I did not have a rap name. I probably had a couple that friends gave me, like nicknames or whatever. But I think they were all based on rap names that already existed. One of my high school friends called me C-Lover because it’s still Clover. So maybe that would have been my rap name, C-Lover.

Well, I’m glad that things worked out the way they worked out because who knows, maybe you would have been one of those stories that nobody ever told. And now you’re the one telling the stories.

I guess one thing I’m trying to leave people with is to share the information of the book with a young person because I think a lot of history gets lost in the age. It’s like the digital era and some of these stories are not available online, which is why I had to track the people down. So I want young people to know a fuller history of hip-hop.

I feel like part of being a hip-hop fan or connoisseur is knowing the history has always been built into being part of the culture. You have to be in it. If you love it, know it. So I just encourage young people to just try to read it or borrow it from a friend or something … and if you can, buy it.

The Motherlode is out now via Abrams Books. Get it here.

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

In the years between Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harrison Ford starred in The Mosquito Coast, a Peter Weir-directed drama about an inventor (Ford) who takes his family from the United States to Central America to build a utopian civilization. You can probably guess how that turns out. The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Justin Theroux’s uncle, and to bring things full circle, Theroux — who is part of the Star Wars universe, like Ford (he played a slightly less iconic character) — is starring in the Apple TV+ series, The Mosquito Coast.

The seven-episode series, described as a prequel to the movie, will once again follow a character named Allie Fox (then: Ford; now: Theroux; extremely handsome wither way), but this time, he moves his family to Mexico. “The Mosquito Coast is a gripping adventure and layered character drama following the dangerous journey of a radical idealist and brilliant inventor, Allie Fox, who uproots his family for Mexico when they suddenly find themselves on the run from the U.S. government,” the official plot synopsis reads. Melissa George, Logan Polish, and Gabriel Bateman co-star.

“I have a long history with the novel in that I read it as a kid, and this was one of those happy accidents where the stars aligned for me to do it,” The Leftovers star said. “This is Allie seen through a different prism. You’ll see the evolution of this character in subsequent episodes.” The Mosquito Coast premieres on Apple TV+ on April 30.

At a certain point long ago, I discovered that with certain movies, it was far more entertaining to hear them described by critics than actually watch them. And in fact, that one could essentially recreate an entire movie using only expository quotes from reviews.

Never has this pastiche method seemed more appropriate than with Music, a musical an about an autistic teen directed by the musician Sia. The film was originally shot in 2017 starring Kate Hudson with a shaved head and now-even-more-famous Leslie Odom Jr. in a supporting role, but became a source of controversy after autism groups objected to casting a neurotypical actor as the autistic teen — Sia’s “muse” and the star of her previous music videos, Maddie Ziegler.

The film shuffled distributors for a few years and looked like it was on the verge of being buried, The Day The Clown Cried-style, but then those wacky scamps in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association decided to nominate it, at 11% recommended on RottenTomatoes, for two Golden Globe awards. Including Best Picture Musical Or Comedy (!!) and Best Actress In A Musical Or Comedy for Kate Hudson. Music is available now as a VOD rental, but more importantly the reviews started rolling in last week, so let’s dig in.

—

IMPORTANT BACKGROUND

Music is a musical about a girl named Music. (HollywoodReporter)

The film was directed by mono-monikered Australian singer-producer Sia, pulling behind it more baggage than a pop star’s tour bus. (HollywoodReporter)

Its release has been marred by controversy after the announcement that Sia’s neurotypical muse Maddie Zeigler (Empire)

who appeared on the reality TV show Dance Moms (The Guardian)

would play the autistic teen lead character, Music. (Empire)

It was co-written by kid’s lit author and inspirational social media personality Dallas Clayton, whose first son with actress Shannyn Sossamon was famously named “Audio” (short for “Audio Science”). (Indiewire)

THE SETUP

The film begins with Ziegler performing an interpretive dance set to a new song by Sia about bodies failing and spirits being set free. (NY Times)

In the film’s primary plot, Music lives in a New York City apartment with her grandmother Millie. Assorted neighbors and friends help keep an eye on Music when she has her daily walk each morning by herself around the neighborhood, including Felix, the lonely adopted boy who lives with abusive parents across the street; grumpy recovering building supervisor George (Héctor Elizondo); and down-the-hall resident Ebo (Leslie Odom Jr.). (HollywoodReporter)

Music cannot speak outside of a few phrases — she yells “Make you eggs!” when she wants breakfast — and, as played by Ziegler, always has her mouth open with a wide grin and exaggerates facial expressions like she’s Marcel Marceau. (NY Post)

After her grandmother drops dead on the kitchen floor, remaining there until Hector Elizondo as the obligatory kindly neighbor discovers her… (Chicago Sun-Times)

…Music’s drug-dealing half-sister becomes her new caretaker. The sibling’s name? Kazu. Who was their father? Harpsichord? (NY Post)

‘ZU, PLAYED BY KATE HUDSON

Music’s drug-dealing half-sister becomes her new caretaker. The sibling’s name? Kazu (Kate Hudson). Who was their father? Harpsichord? (NY Post)

Zu’s first impulse is to call Child Protective Services and ask if they do “drop-offs.” (Indiewire)

Zu: “Do you guys do pickup?”

Receptionist: “Pickup, you mean like a laundry service? No, we don’t do that.” (Chicago Sun-Times)

Zu is flaky, reckless and sad, and makes ends meet by dealing pills for a kindly LA drug lord. (The Independent)

On probation provided she keeps attending AA classes, Zu has been sober for about a month, but the new responsibility of looking after Music, whom she barely knows or understands, will test her sobriety. (HollywoodReporter)

EBO

Zu struggles and needs money, bonds with Music, and discovers forms of magical thinking from (Independent)

… a sexy neighbour, played by Leslie Odom Jr, who conveniently knows a lot about autism (New Statesman/Independent)

and utters upbeat African wisdoms. (NY Post)

He had a sibling back in Ghana who was like Music. (HollywoodReporter)

MAGICAL MUSICAL VIDEO LAND

Zu is ill-equipped for the responsibility of watching Music, but the attention of Ebo provides her with enough incentive to stick around. As Zu and Ebo begin to imagine what a family with Music could look like, they sing Sia songs composed specifically for the film in their fantasies. (NY Times)

Each one takes place in a Dylan’s Candy Bar from hell. (NY Post)

The lyrics, jaunty platitudes about Music’s “magic mind” and failing body, are offensive too. (The Guardian)

The walls are mostly hot-pink and Ziegler dons brightly colored tutus with Whoville hair. She runs from a man dressed up as a shaggy dog while performing the angular dances that made her famous. Then she’ll jump with Hudson into a swimming pool filled with foam blocks… (NY Post)

…the sight of Odom shedding his “Hamilton”/”One Night in Miami” dignity to sing an entire solo number in a pair of pants with a 100-inch-or-so waist (Variety)

…plays like Cirque du Soleil doing a commercial for Pepto-Bismol (Chicago Sun-Times)

…rejected Target commercials from a dystopian back-to-school campaign that was commissioned for the kids in “Logan’s Run” (Indiewire)

…quick-cut, frenetic, orange-tinted fantasy musical number when the title character flails about making exaggerated facial and body contortions that would embarrass the worst mime ever to work a city street corner. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Ziegler has been directed to pantomime an exaggerated apery of disability. She gapes, her eyes wide and unfocused, as the choreography leads her through a cruel approximation of twitches and whoops. (NY Times)

RESTRAINT

Sometimes the world gets to be too much for Music and she loses her composure and flips out, and it’s at this point that another character comes in and physically restrains her or sits/lies on top of her, which, according to autistic groups and individuals who’ve taken issue with this project, is not an accepted way of handling such situations (RogerEbert.com)

Using a widely debated method called “restraint,” Ebo attempts to calm Music down during an outburst … by hurling himself on top of her.

“I’m going to crush you now and make you feel safe,” he says.

“You’re not hurting her?” replies a panicked Kazu.

“No, I am crushing her with my love!” (NY Post)

GETTING TO KNOW MUSIC

Ziegler spends the majority of the film’s running time with a beatific grin on her face. (RogerEbert.com)

Music’s function in the film is to be the magical disabled person who facilitates the romance between Zu and Ebo. (HollywoodReporter)

Music is less a girl than she is a prop, a concept or a sentient “Live, Laugh, Love” poster – something to be talked about from across a room, to be used as a font of wisdom, or to be planted face down on the floor when she’s being too vocal in public. (Independent)

She’s a problem, a burden, an issue. She’s defined in relation to other characters’ responsibility to care for or “deal with her.” (RogerEbert.com)

She’s not the main focus of Music at all. (New Statesman)

THE BEST ACTRESS CANDIDATE

Hudson’s character hogs the screen, a drawling, plucky wild-child and ex-addict whose solipsistic world-view (and growing romance with the sexy neighbour) overwhelm the narrative. (New Statesman)

Rocking an arresting buzzcut and frequently dressed only in skimpy sports bras and pants in order to show off her famously well-toned body — Zu also comes off as a narcissistic monster. (HollywoodReporter)

THE CAMEOS

There are distracting cameos (from Juliette Lewis, Henry Rollins and Sia herself), odd stabs at celebrity satire, and a lack of internal logic when it comes to the colourful daydreams. (Independent)

There’s a deep disconnect between the film’s two modes: the music fantasy numbers and the funky downtown indie about gritty “real” things (RogertEbert.com)

…which encompasses so many serious issues, from autism to alcoholism to drug addiction to AIDS to parental abuse to death itself, it’s a like a Tragedy Movie Checklist. (Chicago Sun-Times)

(the generic scene where she smells an opened bottle of alcohol and then pours it down the drain) (RogerEbert.com)

Sia’s cameo is also the film’s most baffling scene, as the pop star — playing herself — buys a massive amount of Oxy and Percocet from Zu with plans to get around the red tape and use her private plane to fly them directly to Haitian kids in need. “Pop Stars Without Borders,” she says with a smile. (Indiewire)

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT

Music isn’t actually an autism movie. It’s a story about recovery from addiction, and restless people striving to be better. But that only leads to further problems. (Independent)

Music is really about its creators’ own vanity, an advertisement for Sia’s and Clayton’s brands. “The people who made this are good and magical,” the film insists in every frame, even as it makes one ugly, unforgivable blunder after another. (VanityFair)

We’re talking about a Mickey Rooney-in-“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” level of wrongheadedness. A neurodivergent minstrel show. (RogerEbert.com)

Let’s toss a huge wig over this thing and pretend it never happened. (Independent)

—

God, I love awards season.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

This is a formal petition for Hollywood to let Rosamund Pike play more sociopaths. I’m not saying this campaign should take precedence over other movements. The fight to stop awards shows from trying to convince us Jared Leto can actually act, for instance, is still of paramount importance. The crusade to launch an internet debate over “Hollywood’s Best James,” the likes of which will one-day rival the current “Best Chris” discourse, cannot and shall not be forgotten. And of course, the noble work of pressuring Disney to give Oscar Isaac and Pedro Pascal the Star Wars rom-com they deserve will never truly end.

But Pike, who’s been faithfully strapping herself into corsets for Jane Austen romance dramas and hot-ironing her hair for period pieces and donning power suits for Tom Cruise-led action adventures for over two decades now, well … she deserves this win. She’s earned this victory. And rewarding her relentless on-screen efforts benefits us too. After all, no one plays unhinged quite like Rosamund Pike. She’s got a knack for bringing NSFW characters to life. Not NSFW in the way that watching a Bridgerton episode or those Michael B. Jordan Super Bowl commercials might be. No, it’s more that, when you’re watching Rosamund Pike go absolutely apesh*t on screen, you too feel a strange desire to crawl out of your skin and ram a hammer into your face. And, as entertaining as that might be to watch, you just know your high-strung cubicle mate couldn’t handle the sight of that much blood.

I blame this renewed fervor with which I’m advocating for Pike’s murderess renaissance on her latest on-screen downward spiral, I Care A Lot. In it, Pike plays Marla, a grifter in monochromatic suits who smirks her way through courtroom hearings and gangster shakedowns as she cons old bitties out of their financial stockpiles. Marla is a woman who preys on the elderly, reveling in their misfortune of having their fortunes stolen by her, living it up with her lesbian lover Fran and dragging the hell out of life through the mouthpiece of her beloved vape pen. I knew when the trailer featured the actress narrating Marla’s scheme that deranged Rosamund Pike was back. I knew, because any time Pike is voicing over her own on-screen downward spiral, what she’s really doing is choosing violence.

She’s done it before, most notably in David Fincher’s muted thriller Gone Girl.

Now, your average cinephile might remember that movie as the first on-screen credit for Ben Affleck’s peen — or, side-peen — but to focus solely on the shadowed genitalia of a Dunkin Donuts mascot would be a grave mistake. No, the real chaos-causing performance in that film comes from Pike’s Amy Dunne. Amy Dunne, who fearlessly faked her own death simply to teach her cheating husband a lesson. Amy Dunne, who slit the throat of a grown-up Doogie Howser mid-climax. Amy Dunne, who gave us one of the most scathing, insightful monologues on sexism in society with her “Cool Girl” speech. Did she kill, maim, and leave scorched earth to be watered by Affleck’s tears in her wake? Hell yes, she did, and she loved every minute of it.

The thing is, so did we. How could we not, when Pike herself admitted to having a damn good time acting out her inner weirdness on screen?

In a 2015 interview with Collider, Pike shared how liberating it was to wear Amy’s skin, saying “it’s a version of being a woman that isn’t contained in any way. She’s extreme. Yes, it’s a film about a murderess, but it’s very empowering, in some ways. It’s great to get to make good on every insane thought you’ve ever had.” At one point, Pike even went to a butcher shop to use a box cutter on a pig carcass so she could understand how “much force you needed to slice someone’s throat.”

And this is a woman who commits, whether it’s a Fincher-directed Oscar contender or an obscure music video for an 80s era British electronica group.

Isn’t everyone’s greatest fear while riding the subway that a metallic robotic ball will appear and melt your brain? Pike undoubtedly modeled her wild interpretive dance on Isabelle Adjani’s performance in the 1981 film, Possession, but watching her writhe on dirty subterranean tile, bash her head against brick walls, and quite literally howl with laughter into the echo chamber there’s a thought that scurries across the surface of your brain like a sewer-dwelling rat and nestles itself into your subconscious until it becomes fact: Rosamund Pike was born to play a maniac.

She’s done it in other films too, as a gun-wielding hostage-taker in the tense drama 7 Days In Entebbe, as a famous 19th-century scientist fighting against misogyny in her field in Radioactive, and as a female war correspondent sporting one hell of an eye-patch in A Private War. Even when she was confined by the shackles of ridiculous notions like “reality” and “historical accuracy” playing these characters based on real-life figures, Pike squeezed every ounce of Kool-aid from their antics and drank it up.

Can Rosamund Pike play the sweet, girl-next-door? Sure. Is she able to embody the class and poise of a British-born royal? You bet your a** she is. But what Pike really wants to do — and what we want to watch her do — is spiral. Spiral so fast and so far down that we question our own sanity while watching her do it. She wants to vape and cackle, con and grift, murder and mayhem her way through every trope Hollywood tries to box her in with.

Rosamund Pike wants to be her best-self on-screen and Rosamund Pike’s best-self is her most deranged self. Who are we to question that?

Elliott Smith has come to be an inspiring force behind a lot of today’s musicians, and it turns out that includes Slowthai, whose brand of in-your-face hip-hop isn’t exactly the kind of thing Smith did. Still, Slowthai is a fan, so he decided to cover Smith’s “Needle In The Hay.”

The cover comes as part of Slowthai’s Apple Music Home Session, for which he also recorded a rendition of “ADHD.” It’s not often that Slowthai sings, but he does his best singer-songwriter here, with vocals accompanied by an acoustic guitar. He says of both recordings, “The lyrics to both tracks mean a lot to me. ‘ADHD’ because I feel it’s inward-facing and ‘Needle In The Hay’ because that song got me through a lot of down days.”

Slowthai has spoken about his love for this song before. In a 2018 interview, he discussed Smith after being asked about an old artist he recently discovered, saying, “Did you know he died by stabbing himself in the heart? I knew ‘Needle In The Hay’ from The Royal Tenenbaums, but I’d never really gone into his discography. I was listening to that again recently and thought, ‘I love this tune,’ so I downloaded a couple albums and fully went for it.

Check out Slowthai’s cover of “Needle In The Hay” above.

Myles Turner didn’t exactly have his best game on Monday night. The Indiana Pacers lost to the Chicago Bulls, 120-112, with Turner scoring 11 points, pulling in six rebounds, and blocking six shots in the loss. It was simultaneously one of those games where you know Turner can do better — especially as a scorer, because he shot 2-for-10 from the field and hit one of his six attempts from three — but at the same time, it was a sleepy February loss to a team with playoff aspirations, which isn’t totally unusual.

Still, something memorable did come out of that game: Turner ended up giving someone the bare minimum amount of cash based on how he played, turning to an old school adage to let them know they are acknowledging that were not happy with his performance during the game.

What it appears happened is that after the game, the fan who Turner quote tweeted wasn’t happy with his performance, sending a Venmo request for $100. It is an outstanding heat check by the fan, admittedly, but it’s also one that Turner called in an equally outstanding way. We really could use more Venmo-based banter between fans and professional athletes, so long as that banter never reaches Twitter levels of extremely bad discourse.

Have you seen the first four episodes of Hip Hop Uncovered? The FX docuseries is telling the stories of “the person behind the person” so to speak — profiling the often-violent, highly charged early days of hip-hop through the prism of five power players.

As People’s Watch Party co-host Jasmin Leigh explains in video above:

You’ve got:

Eugene “Big U” Henley, who operates out of LA and Wiz Khalifa introduces as “the Godfather” of the LA rap scene.

“Aunt Deb” Antney, who put on French Montana, Nicki Minaj, Gucci Mane, and her son Waka Flocka Flame.

James “Bimmy” Antney, part of the famous Supreme Team street gang and managed LL Cool J and Run DMC.

“Haitian Jack” Agnant, a man who Tupac rapped about on the Makaveli album and who helped bring Wyclef to international fame.

And finally…Christian “Trick Trick” Mathis, who gets called the “mayor of Detroit” and is famous for creating the Detroit “No Fly Zone” where other rappers need to pay respect before being welcomed to the city.

It’s a hell of a lineup, as you can see. To talk about the show and breakdown its major characters, People’s Watch Party tapped Detroit icon Royce Da 5’9″ — famed MC and hip-hop cultural ambassador.

After providing context and personal background for each subject in the FX docuseries, Kweli, Leigh, and Royce chat about hip-hop culture’s halcyon days, the various ways rap music reflects street culture, and how institutional racism informs the genre. As Royce puts it, hip-hop is “Always a reflection of the environment. It always has been.”

You can check out the whole episode above and you can watch Hip Hop Uncovered on FX on Fridays at 10 PM or the next day on FX on Hulu.