Month: February 2021

Flyin’ Ted Cruz might be having a career-worst day, but The Daily Show is here with a warm welcome party as he returns from Cancun. Is this the world’s shortest-ever leisure trip to Mexico? Perhaps. ABC News’ Peter Alexander reports that Cruz bought his ticket back to Houston at 6:00 a.m. on Thursday, which means that he definitely spent less than 24 hours on his sunny vacation as intended. That points to some hefty damage control hopes from the not-Zodiac Killer, who angered constituents (and the U.S. public at large) when he decided to abandon millions of Texans without power, heat, or water.

People are literally freezing to death, and even The View‘s MAGA diehard, Meghan McCain, has turned against Ted (referring to him as a modern-day Marie Antoinette), but The Daily Show is here for him. They’re fact-checking his self-professed work ethic with his own quotes, and it ain’t pretty (for Ted, anyway).

“It’s crazy that we’d be taking a recess,” Cruz once said while complaining that the Senate shouldn’t take days off. “Let’s not take any recesses. Let’s work every day. Let’s work weekends. Let’s work until we get the job done.”

That’s only the beginning of damning words for the lawmaker who hightailed it out of his state while his former senatorial rival, Beto O’Rourke, blasted Cruz (who he called a seditionist) for fleeing to 80-degree Cancun “when people are literally freezing to death in the state that he’s elected to represent and serve.”

Yes, it’s true that the U.S. Senate has been in recess since last Saturday, yet that doesn’t mean that Ted’s off duty, especially when his home state is dealing with an emergency, and the death toll is climbing. “Apparently, a game of pool is a higher priority to this president than to go to see the humanitarian crisis he’s created,” as Cruz once accused Obama. Yet Cruz decided that his (admitted) impromptu vacation during his state’s own crisis was a great time to get away. Once again, Ted Cruz is owning himself.

Good Trouble (Freeform series on Hulu) — The Coterie residents continue to juggle life and career and love while understanding that noise and some trouble isn’t a bad thing. This season, Callie’s back while Mariana can’t decide between Raj and Evan. Meanwhile, Malika’s dealing with legal proceedings, and Davia and Dennis look into the future together while Alice is attempting to make her comedy career take off. In other words, all of the drama that fans are accustomed to keeps on cranking.

Here are the rest of tonight’s programming highlights:

The Unicorn (CBS, 9:30pm EST) — Wade gets in too deep when he helps Shannon’s ex-husband find a job, which leads to some unintended developments with Shannon.

Clarice (CBS, 10:00pm EST) — The Silence of the Lambs franchise sees Clarice Starling and her team head to Tennessee to confront “The Statesmen,” a right-wing fringe militia group who are receiving the FBI crackdown treatment.

The Hustler (ABC, 10:00pm EST) — Host Craig Ferguson stands by while contestants compete for money, and “The Hustler” among them keeps doing his or her secretive and enigmatic thing.

In case you missed this recent awesomeness:

Red Dot (Netflix film) — This might be a cautionary tale for people who decide it’s a great idea to rekindle their marriages in the unforgiving wilderness — who knows? For sure, though, this is a claustrophobic tale about what happens when a sadistic killer points a red laser dot into Nadja and David’s tent, and that act sends them fighting for their lives. Naturally, a lot of marriage drama will happen along the way, as they attempt to save themselves in the snowy terrain. I guess couple’s counseling was a no-go, but that’s not nearly as entertaining as escaping into other people’s hell when they find themselves feeling like they’re on the other end of a video-game gun. Also, there’s a dog in this trailer, and nothing had better happen to him, or I’m gonna call for John Wick vengeance.

Squared Love (Netflix film) — This romcom follows a teacher who’s moonlighting as a model, all to pay off some debt, but then she meets a womanizer/journalist, who’s being blackmailed to appear in some advertisements. They become worst enemies, and we can probably guess (given the whole romcom thing) how these two will proceed, right?

Haute Dog: Season 1C (HBO Max series) — Admit it, you want to watch dogs being styled by competitive groomers and then watch those dogs strut their stuff, right? In this series, those groomers go head-to-tail for “Best in Show” and $10,000 prize, all while transforming K-9s into K-10s. With this batch of episodes, we’ll see a disco dog and a fairy-tale theme, and of course, we could use some safari and superhero dogs. This show is sure to take your mind off everything stressful because no one can hate on dazzling “trans-fur-mations,” right? Woof.

Ted Cruz left the frozen state of Texas on Wednesday night for a Mexican vacation, but after social media outrage Cruz is attempting to claim his trip to Cancun was just a day trip. Cruz, who requested a police escort to the airport while hundreds of thousands of Texans remain without power and drinkable water amid a winter storm that fried the state’s independent electricity grid, is grasping at any defense for his decision to go on vacation during the crisis.

The Texas senator who had previously criticized Democratic lawmakers for traveling during a pandemic got caught doing the same, though it also came as one of the most powerful Texan lawmakers alive did nothing to help millions of freezing, powerless, and water-less Texans. Earlier Thursday, as word spread that Cruz had fled the country amid a deadly environmental disaster, Cruz kind of threw his daughters under the bus for the decision. And in a brief interview before his flight in Cancun, Cruz reiterated that the trip was his 10- and 12-year-old daughters’ idea, not his. He was just there to drop them off and head back the next day.

“Yesterday my daughters asked us if they could take a trip, with some friends,” Cruz said. “Heidi and I agreed, so I flew down with them last night, dropped them off here and now I’m headed back to Texas and back continuing to work to try and get the power back on. What’s happening in Texas is unacceptable.”

As others have reported, though, Cruz’s original plans were to stay in Mexico until Saturday according to the airline.

And as many pointed out, Cruz sure packed a big bag for what he inexplicably claims was just an overnight trip. We’ll see what he has to say when he deals with more reporters when he lands back in Texas. And if he can do anything to actually help people or if he’s as useless as other Republicans seem to think he is.

Shortly after the reveal of Jay-Z and Nipsey Hussle’s Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack collaboration “What It Feels Like,” the song stirred up controversy when one of Nipsey’s long-time collaborators laid claim to ownership of the track. Guy Jaxzon Rae, an associate of Mississippi rapper Tito Lopez, posted an old recording of the song that originally featured Nipsey’s eight-year-old verse and Lopez’s, tweeting “that nipsey and hov joint was once a nipsey and tito lopez joint” and sharing the song’s audio on Instagram.

The confusion prompted the song’s co-producers Mike & Keys to reach out to HipHopDX to clarify how the newly-released version came to be. Keys points out the production duo “used to do a lot of work with Tito Lopez,” elaborating that “We was even working on his album when he was signed to Capitol Records. One of the tracks that we did, Nipsey was the first person to rap on ‘Feels Like,’ but the thing is with that hook, we had sampled a Tito Lopez hook.”

Meanwhile, as Mike furthers the story, “we were with Nipsey every day, so they always used to call us and be like, ‘Man we want to do something to that song.’ But it was originally for the Mike & Keys album, so that was our personal song that we did with Nipsey, actually one of our first songs we did with Nipsey. This was 2012. To be honest with you, there are a lot of people who have verses on that beat. Tito wasn’t the only person. There’s like four or five other people who rapped on that beat. Like I said, that beat is from 2012. Tito was trying to get on the song because Nipsey was on it from the jump, but that was never his song. If he did a version to it, we never had it or heard it.”

As far as how the song ended up on the Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack, the duo credits co-producers Rance and Mars of 1500 Or Nothin with putting the track in front of Jay-Z, who was inspired by Nipsey’s verse and the theme of the upcoming film (although his messaging is somewhat at odds with film subject Fred Hampton’s). While the duo expresses disappointment with Tito’s attempt to claim the song as his own, they spend the majority of the interview reaffirming their gratitude for working with Nipsey throughout his career: “I spent so much time with Nip that I had to figure out what he did and didn’t like,” Mike asserts. “What I learned from him is that he only did things that he was inspired by. He wouldn’t do nothing if he wasn’t inspired.”

You can read the full story here.

When Phoebe Bridgers guested on The Late Late Show in December, she declared, “I played a benefit concert for Tibet House and Carnegie Hall was the last place I played for human beings in a room.” This year, the annual Tibet House concert was forced to go virtual, and once again, Bridgers participated. The livestream went down yesterday and for the event, Bridgers was joined by some guests for an orchestral version of “Kyoto.”

For the performance, she was accompanied by Philip Glass (who puts on the Tibet House benefit), Jackson Browne (who backed Bridgers on her 2018 cover of “Christmas Song“), and the Scorchio Quartet. The collaborators joined each other remotely, with Glass playing piano and Browne handling backing vocal duties.

Elsewhere during the show, Bridgers performed “Moon Song,” joined by frequent collaborator Rob Moose on violin.

Meanwhile, Bridgers is fresh off being included on this year’s Time100 Next list, for which writer Carmen Maria Machado penned some words about her. In response to that, Bridgers commented on Twitter, “I barely graduated high school and today my favorite author wrote about me for the time 100 next list.”

Check out a clip from the performance above and buy access to the full stream here.

UK rapper Slowthai debuted his anticipated sophomore album Tyron this week, which boasted features from the likes of ASAP Rocky, Skepta, James Blake, and more. Shortly after the album’s release, he excited fans by unveiling late August tour dates this year. But he’s also wasting no time when it comes to new music. Slowthai has already begun devoting time to his third album, and it’s nearly 75 percent complete.

Slowthai sat down for an interview with Radio.com’s New Arrivals show with Bryce Segall on Thursday to talk about Tyron and some of the creative decisions that went into the album-making process. During their conversation, the rapper also hinted that he’s already making headway on the record’s follow-up:

“I got about 50 percent, I would say 75 percent [finished]. I’m so early in making it and I’ve got so much time now especially, that I wouldn’t like to put a number on it, but its already underway. […] I’ve become obsessed with a lot of songwriting and structures and how things are switching and chord changes and stuff and melody is something that’s important to me, so I want to explore that avenue a lot more, but then I want it to be left. I don’t want it to be like anything you’ve ever heard before, but I still want it to have them cliche schemes or themes, because its gotta come back to a point, you’ve always gotta have a point.”

Slowthai also revealed that Tyron was actually meant to be his third album. He eventually decided to release Tyron as his sophomore effort because it dealt with themes of mental health, something he thought people could relate to in this moment. “[Tyron] was meant to be my third album, I was gonna completely switch it and do something left, like completely left of all this stuff and then bring it back around,” he said. “But then being what I was dealing with, I felt it’s more pressing to deal with this now… and I wanted people to know they’re not alone in feeling these things, especially being confined to your own space and having to deal with yourself on the daily.”

Listen to Slowthai’s full conversation on New Arrivals below.

Tyron is out now via Method/Interscope. Get it here.

Shiva Baby has made the virtual film festival rounds since premiering at South by Southwest last year. The indie-comedy has also played at the Melbourne International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, where it’s been met with near-unanimous praise from critics. It’s easy to see why from the intriguing trailer above.

Directed by Emma Seligman, Shiva Baby stars Rachel Sennott as Danielle, a college student who “gets paid by her sugar daddy and rushes to meet her neurotic parents at a family shiva,” according to the official plot synopsis (for the gentiles in the crowd, a “shiva” is basically a week-long funeral). When Danielle arrives, she’s “accosted by various estranged relatives about her appearance and lack of post-grad plans, while her confident ex-girlfriend, Maya, is applauded by everyone for getting into law school.” As if the day wasn’t already stressful enough, her sugar daddy “arrives at the shiva with his accomplished wife, Kim, and crying baby. As the day unfolds, Danielle struggles to keep up different versions of herself, fend off pressures from her family, and confront her insecurities without completely losing it.” Seligman described her film as being about the “exhilaration, insecurities, confusion, and horror that accompany young female sexuality and the realization that your sexual power isn’t as far-reaching as you hope it to be.”

Also, Fred Melamed’s in it. It’s a must see. Great poster, too.

Shiva Baby, which also stars Molly Gordon and Dianna Agron, debuts on VOD on April 2.

YBN Nahmir may be the last YBN member left standing, but he’s waving the flag high and proudly as he promotes the new version of his 2019 single “Opp Stoppa” featuring 21 Savage. In the new video, Nahmir throws a front lawn party in the hood, complete with card tables, a box television set, and what appears to be a functioning oven, from which one of Nahmir’s guests produces a baked bird for the group to enjoy. Meanwhile, 21 makes his first appearance of 2021, and YK Osiris makes a cameo at the end of the video to show some love.

Nahmir was forced to realign after fellow YBN member Cordae dropped the crew’s acronym from his name in the wake of his solo success, prompting Nahmir to speak out. Although all three of the group’s most prominent members insist that they’re all still “brothers,” Cordae’s focus on his solo career seemed to put his priorities at odds with Nahmir’s, who wanted to pursue group hits as he kept the YBN family close to their gamer roots. Fortunately for Nahmir, he also had a pretty respectable solo following thanks to his breakout hit “Bounce Out With That,” which also helped land the crew their record deal with Atlantic. Repurposing his old single with a new verse from 21 Savage, he’s well on his way to capitalizing on his newfound solo status. He, Cordae, and YBN Almighty Jay have seemingly all landed on their feet, while other behind-the-scenes members have apparently moved on to other pursuits.

Watch the “Opp Stoppa” video above.

The Reddit-fueled GameStop stock craze seems to have died down in recent days, which means the next time you really consider the short squeeze market again may be when you see one or several Reddit-inspired movies on various platforms. But the incident, and Robinhood’s involvement with the controversial Wall Street escapades, were the talk of Capitol Hill on Thursday.

In a congressional hearing entitled “Game Stopped?,” Robinhood was put front and center as congress called witnesses in a hearing about exactly what happened in the late-January stock surges of retail stocks like GameStop, AMC and BlackBerry. It really did make for a surreal scene in Washington, though that’s honestly nothing new these days.

When the hearing was in session, however, it was even more odd. Starting with testimony from all over the place.

When Maxine Waters got to Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, though, things really got tense. The chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee made it clear she wanted answers about a variety of things, namely Robinhood limiting trading of GameStop stock and other volatile stocks, apparently at the behest of its lenders, while also telling the media publicly that the company didn’t have any problems with liquidity.

Tenev, however, tried to not answer the question as directly as Waters wanted: with a simple yes or no.

“I don’t have time,” Waters said at one point. “Just answer yes or no.”

Waters, who has a time limit when interviewing people at these hearings and tried hard to keep questioning moving, addressed the issues Robinhood has had with reports of them misleading customers, which surfaced well before the GameStop stock surge but only added to the issues the company has had in recent months.

“It seems retail investors often get a bad deal at Robinhood,” Waters said at one point. Later, she did the same to Citadel CEO Kennith Griffin, whose company took huge losses when its short sales of GameStop stock were called because of Redditors buying the stock and causing prices to soar.

You know things are bad when Meghan McCain is tearing into a Republican. Despite routinely defending her fellow conservatives, The View co-host set aside her party allegiance on Thursday to rip Senator Ted Cruz a new one for jetting off to Cancun while people are stranded without power in his home state of Texas following a freak winter storm. While calling Cruz’s trip “very Marie Antoinette,” McCain couldn’t contain her disbelief at the “worst optics I can possibly come up with in an era when there’s been a lot of bad political optics” as she equated the situation on the ground with “the apocalypse.” Via Raw Story:

“I read something yesterday that said that hospitals are out of power and that the people in hospitals were trying to find generators to sit around with blankets. I mean, the last time I was in the hospital was obviously when I was giving birth. I can’t imagine if the power went out. There’s a lot of heads to roll a lot of people to blame. I know what’s not helping right now is the fact that Sen. Ted Cruz is seen on a flight with his family to Cancun right now.”

While McCain was aware that Cruz is already on his way back to Texas, and noted that he’ll have lots of local media to answer to, her segment on The View arrived before Cruz managed to make things even worse by issuing a statement where he blamed the trip on his daughters. According to Cruz, he was just trying to be a good dad by accompanying his kids after they requested a trip to Cancun because school was canceled. Never mind that there’s a pandemic going on, and his wife seemed to be visible in photographs with their daughters, it was important that Ted went, too. For the children.

(Via The View)