Month: June 2021

21 Savage and Metro Boomin are certainly one of the better rapper-producer duos in today’s industry. The latter helped create the landscape for the rapper’s 2016 breakout mixtape, Savage Mode, which received an excellent sequel last year. The two have also worked on countless other songs together, their latest being a contribution to the soundtrack for the new film Gully.

Their new song, entitled “Betrayed,” is one of ten that comprise the movie’s soundtrack, and it was released with a music video that looks like a video game. 21 Savage raps as sparks of fire rain in front of him, all while Metro Boomin stands in support of his frequent collaborator’s rhymes.

Gully is the second movie this year in which 21 Savage had a hand. Last month he released the soundtrack to Spiral: From The Book Of Saw — a short effort with just four songs, featuring appearances from Gunna, Young Thug, Young Nudy, and more. As for Gully, the film is led by music video director Nabil Elderkin, who is credited mononymously as Nabil in his videos. His résumé includes video direction for Kanye West’s “Welcome To Heartbreak,” Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA.,” SZA’s “Love Galore,” and many more. Gully‘s soundtrack is also features contributions from 2 Chainz, 21 Savage, Don Toliver, Dua Lipa, Miguel, Snoh Aalegra, and Ty Dolla Sign.

You can watch the video for 21 Savage’s “Betrayed” above.

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

The Orlando Magic are the latest team to enter the NBA’s head coaching carousel. According to a report by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the Magic and head coach Steve Clifford came to an agreement to part ways, marking the end of Clifford’s three-year tenure at the helm of the franchise.

The report was confirmed by Josh Robbins of The Athletic, and eventually, the team announced the news on its official Twitter account.

As Wojnarowski noted, the decision to move on basically stems from the Magic wanting to embrace a rebuild while Clifford, who is 59 and about to enter the final year of his contract, is on a different timeline. During his three years as the team’s head coach, Clifford accrued a 96-131 record with back-to-back playoff berths in 2019 and 2020.

The decision to part ways means Orlando will hop into the new coach market alongside the Boston Celtics and Portland Trail Blazers. Speaking of the Blazers, Marc Stein of the New York Times brings word that Terry Stotts, who was formerly in charge in Portland, is among those considered for this position.

It is unclear if the Magic’s list of candidates will feature the names usually linked to these sorts of vacant positions or if they will go a more unconventional route with an eye on player development. Orlando went 21-51 last season.

Back in 2019, ASAP Rocky spent more than a month in a Swedish jail following a brawl involving him and his entourage and which left one Mustafa Jafari with a number of injuries. The incident saw heavy news coverage, as the rapper’s fans, fellow artists, and then-President Donald Trump called for his freedom. In the end, Rocky was charged and convicted of assault, given a suspended prison sentence, and hit with a fine of $1,270 in damages to the victim. The conviction did not, however, require any additional prison time, nor did it bar him from returning to the country. Now, nearly two years later, Rocky will recap the incident in its entirety in a new documentary.

According to Rap-Up, the film, entitled Stockholm Syndrome, is set to premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, as a part of the showcase’s Juneteenth programming on Sunday, June 13, at 8 p.m. The 105-minute film is directed by The Architects and will cover the rapper’s stay at the Swedish jail through interviews, archival footage, live concert footage, and more. It will also feature apperances from Kim Kardashian, Naomi Campbell, Tyler, the Creator, Michèle Lamy, and A$AP Ferg.

“Stockholm Syndrome chronicles the meteoric rise of this contemporary trendsetter,” a press release for the film reads. “Capturing the exuberance of youth and urgency of hip-hop in equal parts, before taking a detour into darkness.”

Conservatives and comedians have been the two groups most opposed to what has been dubbed “cancel culture,” in which people perceived to have done wrong are ostracized, even fired for their beliefs that are unpopular or far worse than that. But not every comic thinks it’s a problem. Last week Seth Rogen came out against those who’ve been decrying it, telling comics, “If you’ve made a joke that’s aged terribly, accept it.” Now Katt Williams is going even further, saying it’s ultimately a good thing.

The comic went on The Joe Budden Podcast, and at one point they discussed new sensitivity in stand-up, which has found some performers complaining that they can’t say everything they want to say for fear of blowback. But Williams isn’t one of them. He compared comics facing repercussions for offensive things they say to rules and laws.

“Nobody likes the out of bounds, but the out of bounds gotta be there or you’ll run up in the stands,” Williams said. “Some of these things are for the benefit of everything. Nobody likes the speed limit but it’s necessary. Nobody likes the shoulder of the road but it’s there for a reason. My point is, people weren’t all that extremely funny when they could say whatever they wanted to say.”

He went even further, saying “cancel culture” isn’t even a real thing. “Cancellation doesn’t have its own culture,” he said. “That was people of color. That was us policing our own culture. That was people without a voice being trashed by people just because they had a bigger name than them and more money than them and a better office than them, they could sweep them up under the rug like they didn’t matter. I don’t know what people we think got canceled that we wish we had back.”

But whatever’s happening, he argued, it’s ultimately a good thing. “If all that’s gonna happen is we have to be more sensitive in the way that we talk, isn’t that what we want anyway? I’m saying, your job as a comedian is to please the most amount of people with your art,” said Williams. “If you want to offend somebody, nobody took those words away from you. ‘Dirty bitch’ ain’t been taken away, you can say that. But don’t call somebody this word when you know this effects all of these people.”

Williams wasn’t himself “cancelled” for going after “cancel culture.” Quite the opposite.

Others, though, singled out his amazing cowboy hat.

You can watch Williams’ appearance in the video above. The discussion of “cancel culture” begis around the 9:01 mark.

(Via Complex)

Naomi Wolf was once one of the guiding lights of third wave feminism. She was a close advisor to the Clinton administration. She’s written about the rise of fascism, warning that the U.S. could be next in 2008’s The End of America. But in recent years she’s gone over to the dark side. During the pandemic she pivoted into a peddler of conspiracy theories and misinformation; recently she’s been floating bizarre nonsense about vaccines. So on Friday night, when people noticed she’d joined Donald Trump by having her Twitter account suddenly and finally suspended, there was much rejoicing.

The news arrived soon before a big piece about her was published by Insider, detailing how she went from a respected author of numerous best sellers to a fringe wacko. The turning point, it argues, was her 2019 book Outrages: Sex, Censorship & The Criminalization of Love, which was based on her 2015 doctoral thesis concerning the purported link between social repression of homosexuality and the censorship of books. The scholarship, experts said, was so deeply flawed that the book was pulped by its publisher. Insider claims that at some universities, “the book has become a case study in how not to do historical research.”

The next year she was doing public appearances with Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon. She was against pandemic lockdowns and masks and vaccines, and would regularly parrot surreal claims about them. One commentator summed up her intellectual flip-flop like so:

“I find her transition horrifying,” says [Rosie] Boycott, a founding editor of ground-breaking feminist magazine Spare Rib and former editor of British Esquire and several national newspapers. “The moment she lost her grip on the intelligentsia because of a lazy error she had to find a new world to fit into where facts don’t matter and that’s the world she has gone to. Of course, she would become a superstar within it.”

It hasn’t been revealed what, exactly, caused Twitter to finally shut down her account. But people had ideas. Some thought it was just them finally getting sick of her spreading lies.

Or maybe she was just banned for being “stupid.”

Some jokingly poured one out for her loss.

Others were absolutely not sad she was gone.

Some reflected on the tragedy of how far she’s fallen.

But at least she went out in a blaze of glory.

One of the highlights of 2020 was the arrival of Pop Smoke’s debut album, Shoot for The Stars, Aim for The Moon. The project arrived five months after Pop was shot and killed during a home invasion in a Hollywood mansion he was renting. The album became one of the most streamed of 2020 and has remained a mainstay in the top-10 of the Billboard album charts. For those who wanted more, the late rapper’s manager, Steven Victor, has some good news.

In a post to Twitter on Friday, Victor hinted at more music, writing, “POP SMOKE ALBUM,” with a slew of fire emojis. He also teased an upcoming album from Pusha T. The announcement comes after Rico Beats, who also worked with Pop Smoke, spoke about an upcoming project from the late rapper. “I see and hear everything,” he wrote under an Instagram post. “Kept it cool tho no worries. Pay back around the corner. Pop Smoke new album loading…”

As we wait for updates about the album, fans can expect to hear Pop Smoke on a pair of upcoming projects. He’s set to appear on “Lane Switcha” with Skepta, ASAP Rocky, Juicy J, and Project Pat, from the upcoming soundtrack for Fast & Furious 9. He will also make an appearance on Polo G’s upcoming album, Hall Of Fame, out on June 11.

Projection is the psychological process of denying one’s own faults by attributing them to others. It’s also one of the favorite tactics of today’s Republicans. Case in point: Earlier this year, Josh Hawley earned scorn, even from his home state, for his role in promoting the events that led to the failed insurrection of Jan. 6. Many demanded he resign. He didn’t. But now he’s demanding Dr. Anthony Fauci do what he himself should have done months ago.

Last week, thousands of pages of emails written by the nation’s top doctor during the early days of the pandemic were made public. Were they awful? Not really. BuzzFeed pored over all of them and concluded that the worst he did was try to keep the nation calm by protecting them from certain information. But conservatives predictably tried to gin up controversy anyway, claiming they were proof that the person who saved untold lives during a public health crisis — while gingerly handling a boss with no interest in stopping it — should lose the job he’s held for decades.

One of them was Hawley, who seized upon the brouhaha to offer some psychological projection. He took to Twitter, calling the emails “shocking,” saying that the “time has come for Fauci to resign and for a full congressional investigation into the origins of #COVID19 – and into any and all efforts to prevent a full accounting.”

But people caught Hawley’s projection. And they went back to what they’ve been saying since early January: that the Missouri senator, who was seen pumping a fist at the people who would soon storm the Capitol, should be the one who quits in disgrace.

People also imagined a world in which we trust someone like Senator Hawley more than someone like Dr. Fauci.

Not many people liked any of Donald J. Trump’s four presidential press secretaries, but many agreed he saved the worst for last. Kayleigh McEnany went next level on all her predecessors’ many faults. She was rude, she was condescending, she was evasive, she was dishonest. And she did it all while the nation wrestled with a poorly handled, once-in-a-century public health crisis. Naturally she got a job at Fox News. And on Friday, that’s where she had a meltdown over the relatively great press her polite and competent successor has received.

Jen Psaki took McEnany’s job after Biden was sworn in, and she immediately received glowing reviews. Journalists appreciated someone who was (mostly) nice and professional and not simply trying to spin her boss’ many faults. McEnany has mostly kept quiet about the matter, but on Friday she was asked to comment on news that Psaki was getting a splashy photoshoot with legendary portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz.

McEnany didn’t hold back. She complained about the “dearth of even profiles, not to mention Annie Leibovitz shoots” of White House officials. She then went off:

“Instead of the glowing profiles, there were hit pieces, repeatedly, time and time again. It’s just so sad that you have a fawning press corps like this, a fawning media sycophantically covering members of the Biden administration. They asked Jen Psaki yesterday about Joe Biden’s cat. I mean, it’s incredible the kinds of questions that they ask. We need investigative journalism. We don’t need fawning coverage. It doesn’t do the American people any justice.”

McEnany’s whines did not go over well on social media.

Some enjoyed her pain

Or reminded people about her one racist tweet.

Others thought maybe Psaki simply deserved to be photographed by one of the best of the best.

Disney loves to do live-action remakes of their animated classics, but they also like something else: renegade origin stories for once-feared villains. It worked with Maleficent, sprung from Sleeping Beauty, and last weekend it worked for Cruella, which delved into the backstory of the baddie from 101 Dalmatians while giving Emma Stone a proper vehicle. So naturally it’s now getting a sequel.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the super company is already in early talks for a Cruella follow-up, with director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Tony McNamara likely to return. What they’ll do next is anyone’s guess. Cruella was a highly unusual Disney product, jettisoning almost everything from 101 Dalmatians except for Cruella de Vil herself, who was reworked as a young, aspiring fashionista driven mad by a tyrannical mentor-turned-competitor (Emma Thompson). It was also set in the 1970s, making the most of its English punk milieu.

Will the sequel get to the part of Cruella’s life that made her feared and famous: that she likes to skin dogs and wear their skin? Perhaps not. It’s a Disney film after all, and Cruella is not a hero but also not exactly hissable either. But the first film did already get to the part that explains why she hates that breed of dogs in the first place.

(Via THR)

Perhaps the most highly anticipated conference semifinal matchup of the 2021 postseason begins on Saturday evening. The No. 2 seed Brooklyn Nets will continue their quest to bring a ring to their little corner of New York City after dispatching of the Boston Celtics in five games.

Opposing them are the No. 3 seed Milwaukee Bucks, which looked sensational in their sweep of the Miami Heat. The matchup is truly a fascinating head-to-head of the league’s most lethal offense and a defense that, when it’s cooking, is not going to give up anything easy. If any team has the guys to be able to slow down the Nets’ trio of All-NBA scorers, it might be the Bucks, although let’s face it: they might be tasked with trying to do the impossible.

Both teams are rolling, both teams are extremely good, and with the health concerns surrounding Joel Embiid’s meniscus, whomever wins here will end up feeling pretty good about representing the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. But first, they have to get through one another.

Game 1 TV Info

Tip Time: Saturday, June 5; 7:30 p.m. ET
TV Network: TNT

Game 6 Betting Lines (via DraftKings Sportsbook)

Series Prices: Nets (-167), Clippers (+135)
Spread: Nets -4.5 (-109), Bucks +4.5 (-113)
Total: Over 229.5 (-112), Under 229.5 (-109)
Money Line: Nets (-200), Bucks (+160)