Month: February 2021

After fans were buzzing about her recent single “Good Days,” SZA asked her listeners to submit clips to be featured in the song’s video. But the singer had actually never intended the song to be a proper single. She had first put a snippet of the track online, moving forward with it only after seeing the overwhelmingly positive response. Something similar happened with another teaser of a new song, which has since gone viral on TikTok.

Famous TikTok teens like Charli D’Amelio ripped SZA’s preview and made dances to the song. Because it’s not an official release, SZA hasn’t revealed her planned song title. Instead, TikTok teens have elected to name it “Shirt.”

SZA addressed the snippet going viral in a recent interview with CBS This Morning. She said she was surprised to see all the support the song was getting. “‘Shirt’ is super easy to remember and now every time I work on it in the studio I reference it as ‘Shirt.’ Some people call it ‘Blood Stain,’ which is very graphic,” she said. “Now this song, which I wasn’t even 100 percent sure of the placement on my album has centered itself on my album. Now we shot a video for it.”

But SZA isn’t content with letting her fans pick the name.”I don’t know, can we give that to them? I have to have some tiny choice, even if it is a pretend choice, so maybe we’ll call it something obscure, something bizarre,” she said.

Elsewhere in the interview, the singer gave a hopeful update to the status of her new music. “New music is literally on the way,” she said. “I haven’t slept, I’m coming directly from the studio right now. It’s 5 am. I left the studio at like 3:30.”

Watch SZA’s full interview on CBS This Morning here.

Both Dwyane Wade and Anthony Edwards Jr. were coached by Tom Crean, albeit many years apart, and while that’s the main tie that connects them, Wade believes that Edwards could one day surpass the standard set by him during his playing career.

Speaking on TNT on Tuesday night during a Timberwolves loss to the Lakers in which Edwards went off for 28 points, Wade described meeting Edwards during his junior year of high school while Crean was recruiting him, during a meeting in which the two watched film together and Wade saw Edwards’ thirst to get better.

“You set a bar so people can jump over that bar,” Wade said, “and I think he has the talent to be able to jump over the bar that I set, so I hope he do it.”

Still just 19, Edwards this season is averaging 14.8 points per game on just 39.1 percent from the field, but has been much better lately as a starter, scoring nearly 18 a night on 44.1 percent shooting. The Timberwolves’ season has fallen off the rails due to injuries to Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell, but Edwards has been a bright spot.

And after Edwards told reporters he had been studying Wade’s game, the three-time champion praised Edwards and graciously hyped up the rookie’s talent.

Every now and then, The Late Late Show shares a web-exclusive segment called “Tweet Dreams,” in which a guest from a recent episode reads and responds to a series of tweets of people describing dreams they had about the celebrity. The show shared a new installment in the series today, and this time, it’s Phoebe Bridgers’ turn. It was a wild time that involved Bridgers doing a spoken word Avril Lavigne cover.

One of the tweets read, “I dreamt I was a support act for [Bridgers] – I did a spoken word recital of avril lavigne’s ‘complicated’. It did not go down well, but phoebe loved it.” Bridgers responded, “That is exactly what would happen. I love that song.” Then, with jazz bass edited in, Bridgers recited some of the song’s lyrics in a disjointed, poetic rhythm while waving her hands around for emphasis: “I see the way you’re acting like somebody else, makes me frustrated.” She then spoke about her relationship with that song, saying, “I can never get it out of my head: It sounds like she’s saying “fakiss” in that song, which I don’t think is a word. But like, ‘Never gonna find you fakiss.’ So, I need some intel on what word that is.”

Bridgers had some other fun reactions as well, including one to one of Bridgers’ own tweets, so check out the video above.

Texas has been brought to its knees by a devastating ice storm that’s ripped the state’s free-standing power grid apart. Millions of residents are without power, and they’re literally freezing. People are justifiably angry and deserve answers on how this was allowed to happen, and this has led to the resurfacing of poorly aged tweets from Texas politicians, including the much maligned Senator Ted Cruz, who previously mocked California during its past power outages. Last August, Cruz sniped, “California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity… Hope you don’t like air conditioning!” Tragically, the situation in Texas is even worse with as least 17 people dead in weather-related incidents over the past few days.

Cruz, who spent the first days of this crippling Texas weather event fuming over being laughed at after he fell for a conservative parody story from the Babylon Bee, has heard all of the mockery being directed his way. He took to Twitter with an uncharacteristic slice of humility.

“I got no defense,” Cruz admitted in a tweet. “A blizzard strikes Texas & our state shuts down. Not good. Stay safe!”

Cruz has yet to address being called out for his previous Senate vote about Hurricane Sandy relief after he and fellow Texan senator John Cornyn joined forces requested federal assistance to help battle the current ice storm and the resulting fallout. “Prolonged sub-freezing temperatures, strained energy capacity, and treacherous roadways are just a few of the current dangers faced by all Texans,” Cruz and Cornyn wrote. “In the last three days, there have been 11 crash-related fatalities as road conditions deteriorate. More than 23,000 Texans have lost power, and frozen pipes have impacted water distribution across the state.” The situation has further deteriorated since that writing, and Cruz’s Twitter has taken a time out from his usual beefing to adopt the tone of an elected official. That hasn’t stopped calls for his resignation, however.

Celebrating the intersection of non-Western philosophy and creative mediums, Afrofuturism has long since evolved past its origins after being popularized by avant-garde jazz composer Sun Ra in the 1970s. As frontman of his ‘cosmic’ band Sun Ra And His Arkestra, Sun Ra enamored audiences with a magnetic ability to play a hybrid of free jazz, funk, and classical standards, inspiring succeeding generations of musicians.

Outside of music — and through science fiction and celestial interconnection — Afrofuturism has been personified as a movement that has reshaped the advancement of Black art, universally seen in films like 2018’s Black Panther, 2019 HBO miniseries Watchmen, and Beyoncé-led Disney+ visual album Black Is King. These visuals entranced viewers with shining examples of Black excellence through the growing presence of technology and fashion design, but Afrofuturist artists have also centered the Black American experience in their music.

In the last decade, multi-genre darling Janelle Monae ascended Afrofuturism by channeling feminism and queerness on her third album, Dirty Computer, while R&B polymath Solange transformed her hometown of Houston into a supernatural experience on her 2019 effort When I Get Home. Both albums pay homage to radical 1970s and ’80s Black artists like Parliament-Funkadelic, Prince, and Stevie Wonder, while creating their own narrative through futuristic vision.

While Afrofuturism in music can be free-flowing and optimistic, current-day Black artists have used the culture as a platform to vocalize their gripes with the system. Reclaiming free thought, ancestral origins, and dissuading the indoctrination of governmental authority, here are eight artists who have reintroduced Afrofuturism to the masses.

Flying Lotus

Superproducer and occasional rapper Flying Lotus is no stranger to channeling the astral plane — in fact, he inherited the ability as the grand-nephew of jazz and spiritual composer Alice Coltrane. Last releasing the album Flamagra in 2020, Flying Lotus frequently tackles the concept of mortality and gun violence in his music, especially as Black Lives Matter protests have swept the nation. Meditating on the inevitability of death, Flying Lotus’ music is covertly political and urgent, even in its stretches of disorientation.

Shabazz Palaces

Decades after his introduction as member of 1990s jazz-rap trio Digable Planets, Ishamel Butler reemerged into abstract, alternative rap as Shabazz Palaces in 2009. At 50, Butler hasn’t lost his affinity for wanderlust psychedelia, keeping his stream-of-consciousness intact on the 2020 album The Don Of Diamond Dreams. Through cerebral rhyme schemes and apocalyptic production, Shabazz Palaces disapproved of former President Donald Trump’s reign, while demonstrating prophetic wisdom through hallucinogenic elevation.

Moor Mother

Arguably taking cues from minimalist composer Steve Reich, lo-fi artist, activist, and poet Moor Mother preached the ‘distorted reality’ of democracy and hope for a Black planet through repetition on 2020 EP Circuit City. Debuting the album as a multimedia piece as performing arts theater FringeArts, the choreopoem mercilessly addressed the dilapidation of low-income neighborhoods, racism, classism, and police brutality over frenzied live instrumentation.

Serpentwithfeet

As soul music has embraced few queer Black men like Blood Orange and Steve Lacy — even following the 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage in the U.S. — Baroque pop and experimental artist Serpentwithfeet explores Black, gay relationships, and connectedness to the divine. Prepping his sophomore album Deacon for March, Serpentwithfeet was brought up in a Pentecostal church and references his Christian upbringing to vulnerably articulate his devotion for lovers both past and present.

Thundercat

While the cosmic singer-bassist has been beloved for his humorous reflections on public intoxication and his cat, Tron, on his fourth album It Is What It Is, Thundercat contemplated his existence and the severity of depression. As non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic men are less likely to have used mental health treatments than white men, It Is What It Is was Thundercat’s therapeutic refuge following the 2018 passing of friend and longtime collaborator Mac Miller. “I was posed with this moment where it was like: either it’s your turn to go or you walk the other way,” Thundercat said in a 2020 interview with The Guardian. “That’s what it felt like. You’re gonna stop or you’re gonna die.”

Georgia Anne Muldrow

On her twentieth studio album Mama, You Can Bet! released last year, singer and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow transitioned from experimental funk into her jazz alter ego ‘Jyoti’. Previously nominated for Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 2019 Grammy Awards, Muldrow’s 2018 album Overload lost to Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You, but her music has long questioned America’s perception of ‘Black genres’.

Proclaiming jazz as “music of the diaspora”, Muldrow shared her thoughts about the Grammy category being renamed Best Progressive R&B album. “I mean, it’s going to take more than just renaming stuff. It’s going to take people really getting into the heart of the matter,” she said. “And if you’re calling it progressive R&B, really look into that field and really look into the pioneers of the sounds that are there.”

FKA Twigs

Although the English multi-hyphenate’s sophomore album, Magdalene, was released in 2019, FKA Twigs’ tumultuous relationship with actor Shia Labeouf went viral after a December 2020 essay in The New York Times. Filing a lawsuit against LaBeouf for sexual battery, assault, and emotional distress, the album chronicled the singer’s metamorphosis, and her reclamation of strength and healing in the process. In a time where Black women are twice as likely to be killed by an intimate partner than white women, FKA Twigs bravely used Magdalene to unveil her trauma.

Pink Siifu

Like Sun Ra, rapper Pink Siifu was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and his latest solo effort Negro was a crash course into hardcore punk. “I treated this album like I was tapping into some Arkestra shit. I know I can never get on Sun Ra’s level, but let me tap into what he was on. I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t fuck, and just made this album,” Siifu said in a 2020 interview with MTV News. Eschewing mainstream rap expectations, the album reimagined an armed Black America, referencing 1973 blaxploitation film The Spook Who Sat By The Door and centered a future of unabashed radicalism.

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

In a new profile in Elle magazine, British singer FKA Twigs — who recently came forward to accuse former partner Shia LaBeouf of abuse — detailed the alleged abuse more fully and calling it “pure luck” that she is no longer in the abusive relationship. Among some of the more disturbing accusations, Twigs says that LaBeouf “strangled” her at a hotel, manipulated and abused her verbally, and knowingly gave her an STD.

The result of these years of manipulation and abuse was “pretty severe PTSD,” and left her wondering, “Do I jump out of the car at 80 miles an hour?” after the hotel incident. She denies that it was any strength of character or will that allowed her to survive. “I honestly wish I could say that I found some strength and I saw this light,” she says. “I wish I could say, ‘[It is] a testament to my strong character,’ or ‘It’s the way my mother raised me.’ It’s none of that. It’s pure luck that I’m not in that situation anymore.”

She also stressed that “It can happen to anyone,” and that realizing that many women may have been forced to shelter in place with their abusers prompted her to come forward. It wasn’t until after the strangling incident that she learned of the STD, after she experienced symptoms and confronted him about it. She says that he admitted he’d hidden his own symptoms with makeup and had also infected another woman.

Recently, Twigs has committed herself to recovery, saying, “I have my life back. I can work as late as I want. I can see my friends.” However, she also wonders, “At what point does Hollywood stop looking at money and start looking at people’s safety?”

Read the full profile here.

One of last year’s favorite tequilas on the awards circuit was the mysterious 818 Tequila from a company called K & Soda. Well, now we know where this much-lauded tequila comes from and who the “K” in K & Soda is. Kendall Jenner announced on her Instagram account yesterday that she’s been working for “almost 4 years … on a journey to create the best tasting tequila.”

The IG post is full of Jenner and friends testing tequilas while hanging out in Mexico alongside images of the brand’s look, a list of awards, and blurb citing the mysterious nature of the spirit from Uproxx’s Dane Rivera.

The tequila is from La Cofradia distillery in Jalisco, according to Tequila Matchmaker (a site that compiles where all tequila actually comes from). The distiller and warehouses make and age dozens and dozens of branded tequilas. It’s a pretty normal practice in tequila to do contract distilling and aging and then have a blender, or simply a distributor, come in with labels and marketing. It’s called “white labeling” and celebrities do it with weed, too.

This particular distillery is known for its brick ovens for roasting the agave pinas, a stone tahona for mashing the roasted agave hearts, several types of fermentation methods, and around nine types of barrels for aging. So the selection of a tequila from this distillery could result in endless permutations when it comes to flavor and texture.

Jenner joins a very long list of celebrities with their own tequila brands. George Clooney famously made a billion dollars on Casamigos (currently made at Diageo México Operaciones). Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is heading towards the exact same outcome with his Teremana Tequila shingle (made at the Productos Finos de Agave distillery). Even Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul have got in on the action with Dos Hombres Mezcal (made by Gregorio Velasco Luis in Oaxaca).

That’s just scratching the surface. There’s a whole wide world of spirits brands created in tandem with celebrities and another subset of companies that have big-name celebrities as the face of their hooch.

Will Jenner score a billion-dollar payday as Clooney did? It’s likely, especially given her ravenous fanbase. Will she be the last celebrity to cash in on the current spirits boom? Hell no. Is there already a “cultural appropriation” backlash on Twitter? Yup.

Finally, will the tequila live up to the award’s circuit hype? Only time will tell.

In a moment rife with symbolism, the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino was imploded Wednesday morning in Atlantic City just a few weeks after Donald Trump vacated the presidency following his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. While the two events are unrelated (the Plaza has been an eye sore that the city has been trying to get demolished for years), the timing couldn’t be more poignant. And like all things Trump, getting rid of him was an opportunity for improvement.

Case in point: no one was happier than Atlantic City mayor Marty Small, who was so excited about finally getting rid of the Trump building that he told the Press of Atlantic City that he woke up at 4:13 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. After the former president abandoned the deteriorating building in 2014, Small has been trying to get the building’s current owners to demolish it and bring in a new family-friendly attraction that doesn’t rely on gambling.

As for the rest of the country, people were definitely enjoying the symbolic moment of watching a building that once had Trump’s name on it crumble to dust.

After the pandemic significantly impacted the casino industry in Atlantic City, a major source of jobs for the local economy, the Trump Plaza implosion offered a chance to raise money for the Boys and Girls Club, which has been a much-needed haven for kids who don’t have access to remote learning tools. Unfortunately, a charity auction where you could bid to blow up the building was abandoned over safety concerns, and the hotel industry found others way to support the Boys and Girls Club by offering special room packages with a clear view of the building collapse, according to the New York Times.

The Times also spoke to people who witnessed the Trump Plaza being destroyed, and there was a recurring theme to the event. “For some people, it’s like good riddance,” a New Jersey woman said. “It’s like wiping all the memories, erasing everything with his name.”

(Via New York Times)

It’s been a while since a movie trailer took over the internet. Dune, maybe? It’s an unfortunate side effect of most of 2020’s biggest titles being pushed back until later this year, and no Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars movies to promote outside of Black Widow (the last trailer for which came out in March 2020). But Disney has heard our hungry cries for a new trailer and fed us not with Kanine Krunchies, but Cruella.

The Cruella de Vil origin story stars Emma Stone as Disney’s most famous dog-murderer, who dresses like if Harley Quinn and the Joker had a baby and says things like, “From the very beginning, I saw the world differently than everyone else” and, “The thing is, I was born brilliant. Born bad. And a little bit mad.” Twisted. If Cruella is two hours of Emma Stone hamming it up in fancy dresses and long cigars (not that Disney approves of smoking), it could be kinda fun. But the worst-case scenario, in which she’s given a tragic backstory that humanizes her, is unfortunately more likely.

Her name is literally Cruel Evil — let Cruella be Cruella.

But no matter what happens, at least we’ll have the trailer reactions.

The Harley Quinn and “Disney’s Joker” jokes are particularly good.

Cruella opens on May 28.

It was revealed yesterday that Cardi B’s new single “Up” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, behind Olivia Rodrigo’s unstoppable hit “Drivers License.” Cardi was thrilled with her second-place finish, though, since the song greatly outperformed her previous solo single, “Press.” Cardi took some time to celebrate on Twitter yesterday, revealing in the process that she really wants to fly out hundreds of fans to party with her.

Cardi tweeted, “When the world back open mark my words .I’m flying out at least 200 BARDIGANG and we finna have a party and laugh at all the times we had negative viral tweets & Everytime we proved motherf*ckers wrong .I don’t care about the cost I’m doing it .”

She also thanked her fans for helping the song get a high chart placement, writing, “I want to thank my fans with the bottom & top of my heart .Ya remind of me .The underdogs.So underestimated but show the f*ck out when it’s time .I really can’t believe this .I told a couple of yall I don’t care about a number 1 a top 5 is a big win for me.”

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.