Month: May 2021

Based on their work last year, Bino Rideaux and Blxst seemed primed to come out of the West Coast and reach the masses this year. The duo’s popularity increased after they joined forces for their 2019 joint EP, Sixtape. Nearly two years later, Blxst and Rideaux are getting ready to run it back for a second time with the impending release of Sixtape 2. Before fans of both rappers can get their hands on the new effort, the pair kicks off the rollout for Sixtape 2 with their new track, “Movie.” The single sees the artists showing love to their respective partners and promising for a good time if they stick by their sides.

Sixtape 2 was originally teased on Blxst’s “Forever Humble,” which appeared on the deluxe reissue of his 2020 project, No Love Lost. “Bino my brudda, won’t forget what you told me / 6tape, mixtape but classic facts only,” he raps. “They want us to double back / Wouldn’t be surprised if part two got a f*ckin’ plaque.”

As for Bino Rideaux, he saw a breakout year of his own in 2020 thanks to his Outside album. Its fifteen songs gave fans a better look at who he was as an artist and even earned a co-sign from Young Thug, who later joined him for a remix of “Mismatch.”

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

At this point in his career, many of Eminem’s releases come as surprises to his fan base. This trend dates back to his 2018 album, Kamikaze, which arrived with no announcement. He did the same in 2020 with his eleventh album, Music To Be Murdered By, a project he later shared a deluxe reissue for with no promotion. Once again, Eminem is back to his surprising ways as he recruited a pair of names some may not have expected him to work with for a new remix. The Detroit rapper called up Jack Harlow and Cordae to collaborate with him on an updated take of “Killer.”

The original track can be found on the deluxe version of Music To Be Murdered By. The track’s production fits the young rappers like Harlow and Cordae more so than one would imagine it does Eminem, but the trio combats the D.A. Got That Dope-produced beat with ease for what proves to be a solid cross-generational collaboration. Harlow and Cordae lead the way with brief verses of their own before Eminem steps in to rap for nearly two straight minutes. In that time he delivers his trademark tongue-twisting bars and also confirms he and Snoop Dogg are on good terms following their past beef.

The remix comes after some decent activity from Harlow and Cordae. The latter launched his own label, Hi-Level Productions, and dropped his Just Until… EP while the former appeared on Saturday Night Live and a trailer for the third season of Call Of Duty: Warzone.

Hit play on the remix in the video above.

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

The Los Angeles Lakers are the reigning NBA champions and, as such, they demand respect, even as the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference Playoffs. Part of the reason the Lakers needed to emerge from the Play-in Tournament was a lack of regular season cohesion, however, as the team battled considerable injury issues, most notably to LeBron James and Anthony Davis. In the postseason, those problems haven’t bit Los Angeles but, on Thursday, the Lakers suffered a personnel loss when starting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope suffered what was eventually diagnosed as a left quad contusion in the third quarter.

The good news is that for the initial concern that it might be a knee injury given where he was grabbing at seems to be alleviated by the quad contusion diagnosis.

Caldwell-Pope appeared for 26 minutes before exiting in Game 3 and, while he isn’t known for enormous box-score impact, the 28-year-old is a key piece for Los Angeles. He was arguably the Lakers’ third-best player at times during the run to the 2020 NBA title, converting more than 40 percent of his threes in each of the first three playoff series for Los Angeles. Beyond that, Caldwell-Pope is a capable, versatile defender, and he has proven to be effective enough to remain on the floor in crunch time at the highest levels of the sport.

With Caldwell-Pope out, perimeter players like Dennis Schröder, Alex Caruso, and Wesley Matthews became more important, with Los Angeles also deploying sharpshooting reserve Ben McLemore for a handful of minutes in Game 3. Caldwell-Pope’s injury doesn’t seem to be too serious, but it wouldn’t be surprising if they look to keep him off the floor so long as they continue to hold a healthy lead after going into the fourth quarter up 13.

UPDATE: After going up 18 early in the fourth, the Lakers announced Caldwell-Pope was done for the night.

Gwen Stefani has dealt with her fair share of cultural appropriation accusations in her career, some that date back to the early 2000s. A portion of these claims came as a result of her use of Harajuku Girls backup dancers and Japanese street fashion over the years. The singer has often denied these accusations and it’s something she did once again when the topic arose during a recent interview with Paper Magazine.

“I had this idea that I would have a posse of girls — because I never got to hang with girls — and they would be Japanese, Harajuku girls, because those are the girls that I love. Those are my homies,” Stefani explained. “That’s where I would be if I had my dream come true, I could go live there and I could go hang out in Harajuku.” She added, “If we didn’t buy and sell and trade our cultures in, we wouldn’t have so much beauty, you know? We learn from each other, we share from each other, we grow from each other. And all these rules are just dividing us more and more.”

Stefani also seemingly threw some indirect criticism at cancel culture by comparing today’s times to that of the past.

“I think that we grew up in a time where we didn’t have so many rules,” she said. “We didn’t have to follow a narrative that was being edited for us through social media, we just had so much more freedom.”

You can read Stefani’s full interview with Paper here.

Embattled Florida representative Matt Gaetz continues to tour the country with Marjorie Taylor Green and deny any acknowledgement of the failed MAGA coup in Washington on January 6. He’s a busy guy, and apparently that may also include a run for president if Donald Trump doesn’t get in the way.
According to the New York Post, Gaetz remains undeterred by the probe into his sexual misconduct with a minor, saying that he himself will run for president on the Republican ticket as long as Trump does not.

“I support Donald Trump for president. I’ve directly encouraged him to run and he gives me every indication he will,” the Florida Republican texted The Post Wednesday. “If Trump doesn’t run, I’m sure I could defeat whatever remains of Joe Biden by 2024.”

Gaetz, who said he hasn’t formally launched an exploratory committee, is facing a federal investigation into allegations of sex trafficking of a minor, a sexual relationship with a minor and potential public corruption in addition to a Congressional Ethics investigation. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Despite that denial, there are new developments in that probe that’s reportedly included payments for sex with a minor, potential trafficking and drug use. There’s also the reported confession letter his former partner in alleged crimes may have written out as part of an attempt to get a pardon from Trump. That man, Joel Greenberg, pled guilty to charges last week and there’s speculation about what he told authorities to get that plea deal in the first place.

There’s also a local news report about yacht money that Gaetz claimed money to buy a boat named Thirsty “went missing” before a deal could go through, news that broke on Thursday as well.

According to a spokesperson for Gaetz, he and his fiancé, Ginger Luckey, were “targeted by malicious actors” during the purchase process of a St. Petersburg yacht. Follow-up questions about the transaction and clarification of the statement have not been answered.

In other words there seems to be a lot happening for Gaetz these days, so maybe talking publicly about a run for president is a bit premature for him. Who knows where he will be in 2024.

First, a disclaimer: the Top Chef editors must’ve been under a deadline crunch this week, because I didn’t get my normally-the-day-before advanced screener until about six hours before air time. Hopefully, these rankings won’t seem more rushed, the jokes even less thought out than usual — because normally this collection of half-assed nicknames and “your mom” jokes is the result of hours of painstaking research. But if they do, you know why.

This week’s episode began with a short montage package of the cheftestants expressing their shock that Sara went home last week. Us too, guys, us too. That led to some kind of picture-in-picture transition appearing to depict daily life in Portland, with one frame appearing to show guy juggling in the park. Who was that juggler? Was this meant to be a contestant? A depiction of “average Portland man?”

It all became clear when Padma introduced Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein from Portlandia and announced that this challenge would celebrate Portland’s reputation as a mecca for hipsters. This led into another package of each contestant naming their favorite hipster stereotype from 2009 (mustaches, fixed gear bikes, veganism, etc). I guess you could say “the stereotypes of the aughts are alive on Top Chef.” (Notably absent from their description of a hipster: a chef with food-related forearm tattoos)

The chefs were tasked with creating a dish from “hipster” ingredients, like hemp seed oil and alternative milks (“Alternative Milk Hotel” is my indie band name). As an additional twist, they’d have to prepare their dishes on “hipster” equipment, which is to say vintage, electric (gasp!) stoves. Based on their reactions, you’d think cooking on electric stoves was tantamount to giving birth in a teepee to these spoiled fuckers.

Padma, meanwhile, seemed to have forgotten her sleeves:

“Give me Larry The Cable Guy, but make it fashion.”

After that, Padma introduced the Elimination Challenge, testing the cheftestants’ skills as potential cookbook authors. The challenge was to “Create a recipe that will take only 90 minutes to prepare. Write the recipe like someone who is not a chef will be following it.”

Solid challenge, in my opinion! Then halfway through preparation, Tom Colicchio showed up to tease a twist: “Be really precise with your recipes, we may have a twist for you tomorrow.”

Oh, you may have a twist? On Top Chef? No way. It would’ve been the biggest twist of all if there was no twist, but the contestants immediately began trying to predict what it might be: maybe they’d be swapping recipes? Maybe the all-star panel of guest judges would be preparing the dishes?

It turned out to be the second one, which wasn’t much of a twist, or at least not a very surprising one. Also, wasn’t the challenge meant to test “how well someone who is not a chef” could follow the recipe? Doesn’t having other professional chefs preparing the dishes sort of take away from that objective? Probably, but hey, there are just things you can’t do during a COVID quarantine Top Chef season. Still, maybe they could’ve had Fred and Carrie hang around for a while to prepare the dishes? Why have experts play dumb when you can get actual dumb people? You guys had my number, I’m pretty dumb.

In any case, some of the chefs excelled and some of them stumbled, and if you’ve watched even one episode of Top Chef this season you could probably guess which chefs did which. It was certainly an episode of solidifying opinions.

Results:

Quickfire Top: Gabe, Maria, Dawn*.

Quickfire Bottom: Jamie, Chris

Elimination Top: Dawn, Gabe*, Shota, Maria.

Elimination Bottom: Chris, Byron, Jamie.

*Winner

THE RANKINGS:

7. (even) ((Eliminated)) Chris Viaud

AKA: Stretch. Butter. Kelso. Kelpso. Homer.

Thank God, Chris finally got eliminated. I don’t say this to be cruel to Chris, it’s just that he’s seemed so much like the obvious choice to go home for past three episodes that it felt like watching a cat taking the limbs off a lizard instead of just eating the damn thing. Christ, how many more times are you guys going to make this poor bastard walk of shame out to the judges’ table just so Tom Colicchio can tell him he sucks at pasta?

Not only did it make me feel bad for Chef Chris, it made me wonder how many things I’m convinced I’m good at only because my friends and family and acquaintances are too polite to tell me I suck. I’m much less tall and handsome than Chris, so hopefully it’s not that many.

Yes, Chris once again tried to tilt at the pasta windmill, preparing a sorghum gnocchi. Which, once again, seemed like a failure of concept as much as execution. How many home cooks do you know that are desperate to master a sorghum gnocchi? “Gosh, I just have all this sorghum lying around, if only I knew what to do with it!”

Notable Critiques:

“I love the braised dandelion greens, I think the gnocchi itself is just dense.” “The amount of cheese in there, it’s no longer a gnocchi, it’s more like a cheese dumpling.” (I’ve said it before, Top Chef judges are as rigid as Hitler in their devotion to semantics.)

As my final act of writing about Chef Chris, I’m nicknaming him “Homer,” because he turns “dough” into “D’oh!” (don’t judge me, I’m on a tight deadline over here)

6. (even) Byron Gomez

AKA: Manolo. Burger King. Goldblum.

Chef Byron handed his recipe tester Kwame a three-page recipe with 17 different ingredients for striped bass with seafood broth and beans dish that the judges just thought tasted bland. Probably the only thing that saved him from going home was the judges rightly realizing that they needed to put Chris out of his misery to avoid being outright cruel.

Notable Critiques:

“This is the Neverending Story of recipes.” “It’s way too complicated for what it delivers.” (This is also how my exes would describe me.)

5. (-1) Jamie Tran

Aka: Splat. Police Academy. Womp Womp.

One of the most shocking twists of the entire episode was that Jamie, who uses sound effects rather than words to describe most things, actually turned out to be a decent recipe writer. Unfortunately for her, her decently-written recipe was for a brioche French toast with berry compote and foie gras dish — which sounds weirder than absolute shit. I imagine French toast becomes too French right around the time you start adding goose livers. That dish is Frencher than Gerard Depardieu and Pepe Le Pew wrapped inside a tiny cigarette.

Based on the judges’ reactions, it did not taste much better than it sounded.

Notable Critiques:

“There is a lack of texture here.” “I think it’s too sweet.”

4. (+1) Maria Mazon

AKA: Gas Can. Backdraft. James Brown. Mole Maria.

Notable Quotes:

“I suck at writing recipes, I have ADHD.” (Why did you make so much food?) “Because I’m Mexican.”

Maria tried to get out in front of any potential criticisms this week by blaming her ADHD and Mexicanity for her inability to write coherent, normal-sized recipes. She ended up writing a recipe that prescribed cooking eight pounds of meat to serve six people. Sheesh, no one is swallowing that much meat at dinner, not unless Steve’s mom is invited (Right guys? Right?).

Maria had a decent performance this episode, but she’s still so far behind the three obvious favorites that I’m not even sure she qualifies as a dark horse. I would still buy that cookbook though.

Notable Critiques:

“The whole thing just seemed too much.” “It had tons of flavor, all the meats were nicely cooked.” “So what you have leftovers for the week.” “Or the month.”

3. (-1) Shota Nakajima

AKA: Beavis. Big Gulps.

There haven’t been much in the way of human interest stories this season (and honestly I’ve barely missed them), so Shota discussing his son who lives in Japan that he only gets to see about twice a year felt like a pretty big reveal. I like to make jokes about food as away of avoiding discussing these kinds of things, so, moving on… Shota’s soy-braised pork belly with turnip puree sounded good as hell.

Shota may not have won the last couple challenges, but I have to think Shota, Gabe, and Dawn are running pretty neck and neck right now. Neck and neck and neck.

Notable Critiques:

“I do think Shota’s dish is delicious, it’s so focused.”

2. (+1) Gabe Erales

AKA: Good Gabe. Canelo. Fozzy. The Foz. The Masa Father. Jamón.

It looked like Gabe was going to win the quickfire this week, stealing Jamie’s sound-effect shtick to describe his Hasselback-cut yams served in the form of sausages. Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein made a big joke out of no one knowing what a Hasselback potato is, so I suppose it falls to me to explain that Hasselback Potatoes are named for David Hasselback, who famously ate them off the floor while drunk one night on his secret tour of East Germany. Or they’re just named for the Swedish restaurant where they were first served. Whatever you choose to believe.

Big Fozzy ended up losing that challenge to Dawn but achieved revenge in the elimination challenge thanks to his deliciously sauced fish. Which had judge Richard Blaise raving “a wise man once said that if chefs are a symphony, sauciers are the soloists,” whatever the hell that means.

Cool fact, Cliff Clavin, don’t you have a haircut appointment to get to?

Notable Critiques:

“It’s delicious!” “It’s dynamic, there’s a depth of flavor, it’s fresh.”

1. (even) Dawn Burrell

AKA: Hothead. ‘Sheed. Legs. Breaking Dawn. Milk Carton. The Sphynx. Zeus.

Dawn is starting to run away with it now. At the very least, it’s Dawn and Gabe’s competition to lose. In the quickfire, Dawn made a cornbread-style fonio bread that everyone loved. I’d never heard of fonio before, but I feel like it should be a superior version of “fugazi,” not as in the band but as in Italian-American slang for fake. “You calla thees-a the diamond? Basta, skifozo, theesa no-a diamond, she’s a fonio! Dona you bring-a no more a-fonio inna my store!”

It feels like something you say while chasing someone with a rolling pin. Phew, I’ve gone off the rails again.

Anyway, after last episode, a lot of people blamed Dawn for her team losing, because she sandbagged them by not telling them her dish until the last minute. I don’t know if any of that was deliberate (I tend to think she just has a typical perfectionist’s personality, and she didn’t tell them what she was making simply because she was still trying to work it out for herself). But even if it is I feel the same way about it as I do when people say Barry Bonds shouldn’t be in the hall of fame because he was a cheater. Guess what, a lot of people cheat, Barry Bonds was just the best at it.

Whether or not you think Dawn played dirty pool last week, she keeps proving that she doesn’t need to.

Is anyone else terrified that Sara is going to rejoin the competition? She’s looking like a lock to win Last Chance Kitchen and she’s nervously laughing at her own jokes more than ever.

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

More than a year after he shared his celebrated album, After Hours, with the world, The Weeknd teamed up with Ariana Grande to deliver a new remix of “Save Your Tears.” The collaboration marked the third time the duo worked on a song together following 2014’s “Love Me Harder” and last year’s “Off The Table” each from Grande’s My Everything and Positions albums, respectively. The “Save Your Tears” remix arrived at the height of the singers’ stardom but they had yet to perform the song together in what fans hoped would be an epic moment. That changed on Thursday when The Weeknd and Grande brought their talents to the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Awards.

The Weeknd walked onto the award stage to begin his portion of the song. Clearing through his verse as blue and purple neon lighting shined above him, viewers were greeted by the surprise arrival of Ariana Grande who emerged from backstage to begin her own verse. The performance as a whole was solid and it showed the well-established chemistry the two singers held between each other.

The performance comes after The Weeknd took home a whopping ten awards at this year’s Billboard Music Awards. His wins came in categories that included Top Artist, Top Hot 100 Artist, Top R&B Artist, Top Hot 100 Song, and Top R&B Album. He also teased new music from a new era during the award show. As for Grande, she recently got married to her fiance Dalton Gomez in what was a small yet intimate ceremony.

You can watch the performance in the video above.

The Milwaukee Bucks throttled the Miami Heat in Game 2 on Monday, converting 22 three-pointers and winning by a 34-point margin. With that win, Milwaukee claimed control of the series with a 2-0 lead, but the Heat did have the solace provided by homecourt advantage in Game 3 and Game 4. On Thursday, Miami had the opportunity to land a blow against Milwaukee but, in short, no such advance materialized, with the Bucks suffocating the Heat with tremendous defense and taking a commanding 3-0 series lead with a 113-84 victory on the road.

Picking up where they left off in Game 2, the Bucks came flying out of the gate, taking a 12-4 lead. Khris Middleton contributed a four-point play along the way, and Milwaukee held Miami to just four points on 2-of-10 shooting in the first five minutes.

The Bucks took a 26-14 lead at the end of the first quarter, which wasn’t a surprise considering their strong start. Milwaukee was able to put distance between themselves and Miami without hot shooting, though, as the visitors converted just 9-of-26 shots in the opening period. The Bucks generated six offensive rebounds and, perhaps more importantly, held the Heat to just 6-of-23 shooting in their own right.

Milwaukee continued their strong play in the second quarter, extending their lead to as many as 19 points with the help of 12 early points from Jrue Holiday.

The Heat did finish on a (moderately) more encouraging note, but Miami still faced a 13-point halftime deficit after shooting just 31 percent in the first half. Milwaukee did encounter a speed bump with the injury-related exit of Donte DiVincenzo, but the Bucks played at a high level, even without top-flight shooting efficiency.

In the early portion of the third quarter, Miami kept things in a manageable range, seemingly preparing to make a timely run. The opposite occurred, however, with Milwaukee breaking the game open in full with a 16-3 run to take an 80-53 lead with 2:09 remaining in the period.

The Bucks scored first in the fourth quarter, taking a 28-point lead, but Miami did throw a small counterpunch. The Heat used an 8-0 run to climb within a 88-68 margin with 9:54 remaining.

Miami could not parlay that momentum into a real closing kick, as the Bucks quickly restored order. Milwaukee put the game away entirely with a 17-5 run, taking a 32-point lead and eliminating any doubt about the result.

Milwaukee did not finish the night with a gaudy offensive mark in the same vein as the team’s three-point barrage in Game 2. Thursday’s performance was still brilliant, though, with highly efficient offense and defense that did not allow Miami to find any juice throughout the evening.

The Bucks shot 48 percent from the floor and 36 percent from three-point range in the game, with six players reaching double figures in scoring. Giannis Antetokounmpo led the victors with 17 points and 17 rebounds in only 32 minutes, with Middleton (22 points, eight rebounds, five assists) and Holiday (19 points, 12 assists) playing quite well in support. On the other end, Miami struggled mightily to create efficient looks, finishing the night with 38 percent shooting and only 28 percent from long distance.

The two teams meet again on Saturday afternoon in Miami. Though nothing is impossible, it would take a Herculean effort for the Heat to climb back into the series, and the Heat must win Game 4 or they will be heading home earlier than most projected.

Three Jazz fans have been banned indefinitely from Utah’s arena after making racist comments towards the family of Ja Morant. Tee Morant, Ja’s father, said he and his family were enjoying “good natured trash talk” with some fans during the game, but a group of three crossed the line in awful fashion, as he detailed the horrific comments that were directed at him and his family during Wednesday’s Game 2 in Utah to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon on Thursday.

“I know heckling,” Morant said. “We were doing that the whole game. But that’s different than heckling. That’s straight up disrespectful. That was too far out of line. You don’t say nothing like that heckling. That’s beyond heckling.”

Per the elder Morant, one fan made a sexually explicit comment towards his wife, Jamie. Another, he said, told him, “I’ll put a nickel in your back and watch you dance, boy.” A third fan told Jamie Morant “Shut the f*ck up, b*tch.”

The Jazz issued a statement that did not specify who was involved exactly, but stated that “The Utah Jazz have zero tolerance for offensive or disruptive behavior. An incident occurred last night involving a verbal altercation during Game 2. Arena security staff intervened, and the investigation resulted in the removal and banning of three Jazz fans indefinitely.”

Ja Morant sent out a few tweets about the incident Thursday night and had tweeted “#protectourplayers” after Game 2.

This is the third incident involving fans being ejected for harassing players during the playoffs, as a fan spit on Trae Young in New York and Russell Westbrook had popcorn dumped on him in Philadelphia as he left Game 2 with an ankle injury. This is also the second incident like this in recent memory to occur in Utah after a fan made a racial comment to Russell Westbrook in 2019 — with that fan’s lawsuit against Westbrook being thrown out on Thursday. This week, Nets guard Kyrie Irving also expressed concern about being targeted by fans in Boston as he makes his first return to play his former team.

It seems reasonable to wonder if the NBA will make some kind of changes in an effort to prevent this in the future. There’s nothing acceptable about this incident or any of the other’s that have happened. Banning the fans for life is the appropriate response, but it’s clear that as arenas return to full capacity fans have to show more respect for players and their families.

Nicki Minaj has reassumed her role as one of hip-hop’s most talked-about artists after she made her return to the music world with the re-release of her 2009 mixtape, Beam Me Up Scotty. The project, which also featured three new songs including “Seeing Green” with Lil Wayne and Drake, would go on to debut at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 which made it the highest-charting re-released mixtape by a rapper and the highest-debuting female rap mixtape in history. It isn’t only new music that has kept Minaj in headlines recently, she’s also been a bit more active on social media, which has resulted in her sometimes sharing a piece of her mind with fans.

The rapper threw some shade at those who post private conversations, writing, “Y’all don’t feel corny when you post a private dm or text someone sent you?” For what it’s worth, Minaj definitely has a point. Sharing these back-and-forth messages that were intended to be kept behind closed doors violates that sense of privacy and confidentiality that existed when the conversation occurred. This is of course with the understanding that nothing offensive or obscene was shared during the exchange.

This isn’t the first it of shade Minaj has thrown, though. Recently, while celebrating the success of Beam Me Up Scotty, she took a shot at those who use TikTok challenges, merch bundles, and similar tricks to boost their sales.

“Beam Me Up Scotty no singles ‘Seeing Green’ is over 5 mins with no hook,” she wrote on Instagram. “No videos (which is always the biggest push for females, myself included). No RADIO, very little play listing due to a surprise release (artists get over 100 playlists for big launches). No TikTok challenges (which has become EXTREMELY helpful to all artists) love the app, btw. No merch to tie into sales AND NO PRE-EXISTING singles out to ADD to my FIRST WEEK SALES.”