Month: March 2021

Although IDK had a strong showing in 2020, the PG County-bred rapper has spent the last few months laying low until very recently, when he released the single “2 Cents” to break the relative silence since October’s “King Alfred.” It seems his warm-up period is going to continue for a bit, as he shares another new video, this time for a freestyle over the hit Pooh Shiesty song, “Back In Blood.”

On the original, Pooh Shiesty and Lil Durk recount tales of revenge. As IDK is a bit further removed from the troublemaking days he recalled on his breakout mixtape IWASVERYBAD, his freestyle focuses instead on the best kind of revenge: success. “I bought a chain and a crib in a pandemic,” he boasts. “Got a AMG and not a Panamera / Got a twin turbo in the hood like I’m in the trenches with Tia and Tamera.” It’s clear he’s sharpening his knives for whatever he’s cooking up to release in 2021, building on the growing success of his last year.

IDK’s solid 2020 included the release of his compilation album IDK & Friends 2, which doubled as the soundtrack to the Kevin Durant-produced basketball documentary Basketball County: Something In The Water, as well as making his television debut with the outspoken “No Cable” on The Late Show.

Meanwhile, the “Back In Blood (Freestyle)” video was also accompanied by IDK’s cover of Brent Faiyz’s song “Gravity” which originally featured Tyler The Creator. You can listen to that below.

There was a time when John Schnatter was simply eating pizzas as penance for his lack of racial awareness and using a slur on a conference call while at the helm of Papa John’s. A few years later, though, and he’s apparently an expert witness when it comes to cancel culture.

The former CEO of the pizza chain is back to doing interviews, and on Monday he made a wave of media appearances on far-right news outlets to talk about cancel culture. The first came with OAN, where he accused the Papa John’s board of framing him for racism.

The interview was, well, very OAN. One question asked Schnatter how he reacted when headlines started coming out that “smeared your good name,” which is an interesting way to describe a situation where not only did Schnatter use racist language, but he used it while at a corporate sensitivity training. Apparently, he’s trying to figure out how he was labeled a racist, but also working really hard not to say anything racist while he does.

“We’ve had three goals these last 20 months: get rid of this N-word in my vocabulary and dictionary and everything else. Because it’s just not true,” he said. “Figure out how they did this, and get on with my life.”

The thing is, well, he did have that racial slur in his vocabulary because he said it during a conference call, which is what caused all of this. The framing or whatever happened with the board that followed was clear damage control from a large corporation, and amid the controversy it decided the best way to do that was without the John in Papa John’s. But Schnatter insisting that he’s the victim of anything but his own words is certainly a stretch here.

In another appearance, this time on Newsmax, he talked more clearly about cancel culture. There were a lot of puns, because pizza.

Despite the welcome audience he may get from far-right news outlets that love to support imaginary things like widespread voter suppression that stole the presidency from Donald Trump, the rest of the internet certainly didn’t react well to his media appearances.

Over 17 million people tuned in to watch Oprah Winfrey’s much-anticipated interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry on CBS. For perspective’s sake, that’s “more eyeballs than last September’s Primetime Emmys and last week’s Golden Globes put together,” according to Deadline. Jared Leto and his flower have nothing on Oprah. It’s a good thing for CBS that the interview was a ratings blockbuster, as the network paid Winfrey’s production company, Harpo Productions, at least $7 million for the broadcast rights.

The two-hour Oprah with Meghan and Harry: A CBS Primetime Special pulled in 2.6 rating among adults 18-49 and 17.1 million viewers for the network in early numbers. In fact, with the exception of the 20.4 million who saw the post-Super Bowl debut of Queen Latifah’s The Equalizer, Meghan and Harry has been awarded the largest non-sports audience of the 2020-2021 TV season so far.

The 17.1 million final tally is equal to the number of people who watched Diane Sawyer’s 2015 interview with Caitlyn Jenner, but it’s well behind the staggering 62 million viewers for Oprah’s chat with Michael Jackson in 1993.

For those without CBS hoping to watch Meghan and Harry on Paramount+ (the former-CBS All Access) I have bad news for you: it’s not there. Variety reports that’s because Harpo, not CBS, owned the streaming rights, so “while the special was available on Paramount Plus to stream live, and is on CBS.com for free right now, it won’t be added to the nascent streamer’s programming.”

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run is on Paramount+, though. It’s pretty good!

(Via Deadline and Variety)

For International Women’s Day, the Toronto Raptors announced that their game on March 24 against the Denver Nuggets will feature an all-women broadcast team with Meghan McPeak, Kia Nurse, Kayla Grey, Kate Beirness, and Amy Audibert handling all broadcast duties on site and in the studio for the game.

It will be a very cool moment and hopefully will continue to open doors for more women in the NBA broadcasting space beyond just the traditional roles that have been afforded to women, chiefly on sidelines. Some of the very best in the business in the NBA analyst role, both in studio and on games, are women, with the likes of Doris Burke, Sarah Kustok, and Candace Parker all proving that. As said in the video voiceover, the hope is to continue to prove that women belong “in all roles on a broadcast team” and for girls and women watching to have their “dreams ignited” by seeing the five women run a full NBA broadcast in every capacity.

As for the specific roles, McPeak, who was previously the Raptors 905 play-by-play broadcaster and currently does Washington’s Capital City Go-Go’s games, will handle the play-by-play duties with Nurse, who does analyst work for TSN during the WNBA offseason, on color commentary, Grey handling sidelines, and Beirness and Audibert, two of TSN’s on-air reporters, hosting the studio show.

As it stands now, it seems to be Olivia Rodrigo’s world: It was just revealed that “Drivers License” is the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for an eight consecutive week. Looking at the charts a different way, though, the world may actually belong to The Weeknd, as he just pulled off a spectacular feat that has never been done before.

“Blinding Lights” (which, as a reminder, was released as a single way back in November 2019), is No. 3 on the latest Hot 100, dated March 13. This is the song’s 52nd week in the top 10 of the chart, making it the first tune to ever spend a full year in the top 10. If the track can somehow remain in the top 5 spots for another 9 weeks (which doesn’t seem outlandish at this point), it’ll become the first song to spend a year in the top 5 as well. As of now, it has 43 top-5 weeks (which is a record), 52 weeks in the top 10, 58 weeks in the top 20 (which is second all-time), 61 weeks in the top 40 (tied for third all-time), and 65 weeks on the chart overall (tied for seventh-most all-time.)

Simply put, no song has ever dominated the Hot 100 quite like “Blinding Lights” has. On a bafflingly unrelated note, the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony is this weekend, where The Weeknd managed to secure exactly 0 nominations.

R&B’s resurgence as one of the foremost genres in American music continues with the latest newcomer to generate some underground buzz, New Jersey-born singer Fousheé. Her new song, “Sing About Love,” is a sultry, scintillating slow jam that shows off her emotive lyrics and velvety vocals as she sings about recovering from heartbreak. “I can finally sing about love again,” she celebrates, backed by a chewy bassline that melts like fudge under her honeyed, smoky melodizing.

Fousheé’s breakout single, “Deep End,” arrived in July of 2020, accelerated by a sample on Brooklyn rapper Sleepy Hallow’s TikTok hit “Deep End Freestyle.” Once fans figured out who the original song belonged to, they shot the song’s low-fi video to over 11,000,000 views on YouTube, prompting cosigns from hundreds of celebrity accounts who reposted the song on social media. Fousheé kicked off 2021 with the relatable “Single AF,” capitalizing on the momentum and keeping it moving into the new year. “Single AF” has since accumulated over 1.5 million views as well between its visualizer and music video.

With “Sing About Love,” Fousheé hopes to keep her buzz building with more of the bass-heavy, funk-inspired R&B/soul that has put her name on the map.

Listen to “Sing About Love” above.

Few child actors ever get to star in an award-winning film, much less win a prestigious award for their performance. That fact appeared to hit home for 8-year-old Alan Kim, as he broke down in tears accepting his Critics’ Choice Award for Best Young Actor/Actress, making for one of the sweetest moments in awards show history.

Kim showed up to the awards (virtually, of course) decked out in a tuxedo, and his parents had even laid out a red carpet in their entryway to give him a taste of the real awards show experience. When his name was announced as the Critics’ Choice winner for his role in the film “Minari,” his reaction was priceless.

Grinning from ear to ear, Kim started off his acceptance speech by thanking “the critics who voted” and his family. But as soon as he started naming his family members, he burst into tears. “Oh my goodness, I’m crying,” he said. Through sobs, he kept going with his list, naming members of the cast, the production company, and the crew that worked on the film.

“I hope I will be in other movies,” he added. Then, the cutest—he pinched his own cheeks and asked, “Is this a dream? I hope it’s not a dream.”

Finally, he said “Thank you” in Korean before pulling himself together and giving a smile and victorious arm raise.

Watch:

People loved Kim’s sweet authenticity and raw show of emotion.

The film he was in, “Minari,” also won the evening’s award for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie had also been nominated in the Best Picture category, and though it didn’t win, the nomination itself was notable after the film had been excluded from the category at the Golden Globes.

Though the film is an American story set in Arkansas, stars American actors, was directed by an American director, and was produced by an American production company, the fact that the film was more than 50% of the film’s dialogue was in Korean made it only eligible for the Foreign Language category at the Golden Globes. That exclusion prompted an outcry for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to change their film category qualifications.

“Minari” tells the story of a Korean-American immigrant family that moves from California to Arkansas, and is an example of the authentic Asian-American representation that’s long been missing from American films. Classifying it as foreign simply because the ratio of English to Korean language wasn’t English enough reflects an outdated view of what it means to be American, as telling true American stories often involves such immigrant transitions. It also reeks of Eurocentric bias when only 30% of the film “Inglorious Bastards” was in English—with the rest of the film being in German, French, and Italian—and yet it wasn’t categorized as a foreign language film like “Minari” was.

At any rate, the awards for the film are a win for authentic representation, and Alan Kim’s acceptance speech is a win for us all.

Thank you, Alan, for showing us what a pure heart and genuine gratitude look like.

This March marks one year since the start of the pandemic… and it’s been an incredibly difficult year: Over 500,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs. But the pandemic’s economic downturn has been disproportionately affecting women because they are more likely to work in hard-hit industries, such as hospitality or entertainment, and many of them have been forced to leave their jobs due to the lack of childcare.

But throughout all that hardship, women have, over and over again, found ways to help one another and solve problems.

“Around the world, women have stepped up and found ways to help where it is needed most,” says Tory Burch, an entrepreneur who started her own business in 2004.

Burch knows a thing or two about empowering women: After seeing the many obstacles that women in business face — even before the pandemic — she created the Tory Burch Foundation in 2009 to empower women entrepreneurs.

And now, for International Women’s Day, her company is launching a global campaign with Upworthy to celebrate the women around the world who give back and create real change in their communities.

“I hope the creativity and resilience of these women, and the amazing ways they have found to have real impact, will inspire and energize others as much as they have me,” Burch says.

This year’s Empowered Women certainly are inspiring:

Shalini SamtaniCourtesy of Shalini Samtani

Take, for example, Shalini Samtani. When her daughter was diagnosed with a rare immune disorder, she spent a lot of time in the hospital, which caused her to quickly realize that there wasn’t a single company in the toy industry servicing the physical or emotional needs of the 3 million hospitalized children across America every year. She was determined to change that — so she created The Spread the Joy Foundation to deliver free play kits to pediatric patients all around the country.

Varsha YajmanCourtesy of Varsha Yajman

Varsha Yajman is another one of this year’s nominees. She is just 18 years old, and yet she has been diligently fighting to build awareness and action for climate justice for the last seven years by leading school strikes, working as a paralegal with Equity Generations Lawyers, and speaking to CEOs from Siemen’s and several big Australian banks at AGMs.

Caitlin MurphyCourtesy of Caitlin Murphy

Caitlin Murphy, meanwhile, stepped up in a big way during the pandemic by pivoting her business — Global Gateway Logistics — to secure and transport over 2 million masks to hospitals and senior care facilities across the country. She also created the Gateway for Good program, which purchased and donated 10,000 KN95 masks for local small businesses, charities, cancer patients and their families, immunocompromised, and churches in the area.

Simone GordonCourtesy of Simone Gordon

Simone Gordon, a domestic violence survivor and single mom, wanted to pay it forward after she received help getting essentials and tuition assistance — so she created the Instagram account @TheBlackFairyGodMotherOfficial and nonprofit to provide direct assistance to families in need. During the pandemic alone, they have raised over $50,000 for families and they have provided emergency assistance — in the form of groceries — for numerous women and families of color.

Victoria SanusiCourtesy of Victoria Sanusi

Victoria Sanusi started Black Gals Livin’ with her friend Jas and the podcast has been an incredibly powerful way of destigmatizing mental health for numerous listeners. The podcast quickly surpassed a million listens, was featured on Michaela Coel’s “I May Destroy You,” won podcast of the year at the Brown Sugar Awards, and was named one of Elle Magazine’s best podcasts of 2020.

And Upworthy and the Tory Burch are just getting started. They are still searching the globe for more extraordinary women who are making an impact in their communities.

Do you know one? If you do, nominate her now. If she’s selected, she could receive $5,000 to give to a nonprofit of her choice through the Tory Burch Foundation. Submissions are being accepted on a rolling basis — and one Empowered woman will be selected each month starting in April.

Nominate her now at www.toryburch.com/empoweredwomen.

Thanks to Jack Dorsey, you can now own a piece of Twitter history, just don’t expect to hold it in your hand anytime soon. The microblogging company CEO has minted an NFT of the first tweet ever sent and is selling it to the highest bidder. It’s a bit of very new, very speculative memorabilia in honor of the social media network Donald Trump isn’t allowed to hang out on anymore.

If you’re just catching up here, Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, are all the rage these days. Basically, they’re a one-of-a-kind digital collectible that’s made using blockchain technology. NBA Top Shot is currently the biggest — and fastest-growing — digital collectable platform but there are others. And digital art has become a big market, though not usually because they are pictures of tweets.

As CNN explains, an NFT of the first tweet Dorsey sent out back when the company lacked vowels has gone from the blockchain to the auction block. And the cost is already in the millions on Valuable, the company that’s selling the NFT. As CNN reported, the CEO of Bridge Oracle, Sina Estavi, had a top bid of $2.5 million for the tweet as of Monday.

Here’s the tweet, if you need it.

NOW, in theory could you also mint an image of this tweet on the blockchain and have it as an NFT forever? Well, sure, if you have the tech knowledge to do that. But it won’t be the one created by Jack Dorsey, and so… will it be worth whatever price it costs at auction?

Maybe! It’s just another chapter in the weird uncharted territory we’re entering with NFTs. The one thing we do know for sure? They’ll all be extremely bad for the environment.

Julien Baker has made the rounds promoting her new album Little Oblivions lately. She guested on Late Night to perform “Hardline” last week, and this weekend, she made an appearance on CBS This Morning to perform a trio of songs from the new album: “Hardline,” “Faith Healer,” and “Heatwave.” Baker was joined by a full band, and as she often does, she delivered a powerful performance of the three Little Oblivions highlights.

Baker recently told Uproxx of the stylistic changes that pop up on her new album, “It’s actually not that extreme, it just feels extreme for me. I’m like, ‘Drum machines, wow.’ I’m slow to change, I’m slow to changing who I am as a person. It takes me a while to adjust to stuff. So, I thought of this as a weird record.”

In other Baker news from today, Little Oblivions debuted at No. 39 on the Billboard 200 chart dated March 13, which was the highest debut of the week. This week also marked the first time since 2000 that a new album hasn’t cracked the top 10 spots of that chart in three weeks.

Watch Baker perform “Hardline,” “Faith Healer,” and “Heatwave” below.

Little Oblivions is out now via Matador. Get it here.