Month: July 2021

The “industry rule” Q-Tip revealed back in 1991’s “Check The Rhime” appears to hold as true as ever. For proof, look no further than the recent sale of A Tribe Called Quest’s catalog royalties as an NFT, which the band now says they never actually authorized. Group DJ and co-founder Ali Shaheed Muhammad responded to Billboard‘s report of the sale on Facebook, revealing just how Royalty Exchange came to offering 1.5% of the band’s first five album royalties as a non-fungible token at auction.

“No member of A Tribe Called Quest has entered into any partnership with Royalty Exchange,” he wrote, as he launched into a lengthy explanation of just how labyrinthine and convoluted record contracts can truly be.

In 1989 a dream unfolds. Two teenagers sign a 5 album recording contract with Jive Records. Q-Tip and I were represented by Ron Skoler and Ed Chalpin. Ed owned PPX Enterprises, google that ish. We had absolutely no affiliation with either of these gentlemen other than them representing us as our lawyer/“agent” in negotiating the deal with Jive.

PPX aka Ed Chalpin added a clause to our agreement stating they get paid a percentage of our recording fund EVERY time we commenced to record a new album. We did not discover this hidden clause until we commenced to record The Low End Theory. We disputed this clause. Neither Ed or Ron ever told us about this bullsh*t language in the agreement. It was unwarranted and where I come from “crooked.” Ed sued us and he lost. He appealed the case. He was rich and had deep pockets to litigate. We however were not rich. We were kids with a dream, an album slowly selling and deeply in debt to our record company.

We were determined to not to be taken advantage of by PPX Enterprises. We wanted to fight on. Jive offered to help us with our lack of capital to litigate the appeal however they required us to sign a sixth album with them. Without any other means to get this (do not use slanderous adjectives) entity out of our lives, we signed for the 6th album, added Phife to the contract and Jive made the PPX issue disappear or so we thought.

It wasn’t until reading this incomplete article by Billboard on June 29, 2021 that I learned PPX Enterprises wasn’t entirely out of our business. Apparently PPX sold their share of a settlement they made with Jive Records to an individual whom entered into a partnership with Royalty Exchange. Be clear that is the NFT that was created and auctioned.

Had we known this percentage of our art was out there we would have bought it directly from PPX Enterprises as it should have never been sold by Jive Records.

So, there you have it. The group never wanted to sell their royalties but now, bidder Stephen F, who paid 40.191 in Ethereum ($84,765), will be receiving semi-annual checks from every stream, sample, or media appearance of songs from the first five Tribe albums (you know, the ones that have appeared EVERYWHERE since the ’90s revival boom in television and film over the past decade) until the copyright expires. Yikes.

In the wake of his recent altercation with fellow musician Saint Jhn, Lil Uzi Vert has been accused of physical and mental abuse by his ex-girlfriend Brittany Byrd, whose manager told The Shade Room that the rapper caused the confrontation after “stalking” Byrd. Byrd, a Los Angeles-based visual artist, dated Lil Uzi Vert briefly between 2014 and 2016, during which Byrd’s manager — referred to only as “Brianna” in the story — was “toxic and mentally and physically abusive.”

Brianna also claims that the rapper “has been stalking Brittany since they broke up,” and says that Byrd was hospitalized after the attack. The manager alleges that when Uzi arrived to the Dialogue Cafe in West Hollywood where Byrd was having a lunch meeting with Jhn, Uzi punched Byrd in the face multiple times and pointed a gun at her.

This contradicts the previous reports from TMZ that Uzi tried to punch Jhn and revealed a gun during their altercation. The report was updated after the fact to reflect new sources that said Uzi’s gun fell after his initial punch missed, Byrd approached him, and he pointed the gun at her and struck her. Byrd filed a police report at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s station.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Gorillaz leader Damon Albarn has a solo album, The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows, coming out later this year. After sharing the title track last month, he returns today with another cut, “Polaris,” which is more upbeat than its predecessor and is carried by a bossa nova rhythm.

In addition to the song, he also shared a live performance of it from that concert film he teased yesterday.

Albarn previously said of the album, “I organized musicians, string players, three bass trombones, some percussion, and keyboards into an interesting arrangement. […] I took some of these real-time, extreme elemental experiences [of Iceland] and then tried to develop more formal pop songs with that as my source. I wanted to see where that would take me. Sometimes it took me down to Uruguay and Montevideo. Other times I went to Iran, Iceland, or Devon. With travel being curtailed, it was kind of nice to be able to make a record that put me strangely in those places for a moment or two.”

Check out both the studio and live versions of “Polaris” above. Albarn also guests on a new episode of Mark Ronson’s Fader Uncovered podcast, so check that out below.

The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows is out 11/12 via Transgressive Records. Pre-order it here.

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

Paddington is a very good movie. Paddington 2 is one of the best movies of the 2010s (or if Rotten Tomatoes scores carry weight, of all-time). By this logic, Paddington 3 will transcend our understanding of what a “cinematic masterpiece” can be. It will unite Democrats and Republicans, it will bring peace to the Middle East, it will make marmalade as omnipresent in the United States as ketchup. You might say I’m excited.

Variety reports that Paddington 3 is “among a host of slate titles revealed by Studiocanal” at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday. “Studiocanal CEO Anna Marsh said that principal photography on the keenly anticipated project would commence in the second quarter of 2022.” If we’re kind and polite, the Paddington trilogy will see daylight.

Paddington 2 was a hit for StudioCanal, earning $228 million at the international box office on a $40 million budget (not to mention the near-unanimously positive reviews), so a trilogy-capper should have been a sure thing. But there was some concern when Paul King said he wasn’t going to return to direct. “At some point, you just have to stop. It might be time for somebody else to do a twist on it. I’m trying not to do a third bear movie, which is a huge, huge mistake,” he told Empire. King will, however, receive an executive producer and story by credit for Paddington 3, along with Simon Farnaby and Mark Burton, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jon Foster and James Lamont.

The director and cast are “currently under wraps,” but we have some ideas on who could play the villain (make it Tom Hardy, you cowards).

(Via Variety)

As Matthew McConaughey continues to test the waters of making a gubernatorial run in Texas, the actor released a bizarre video on July 4th where he drops one of his growing list of McConaughey-isms by saying America is “going through puberty.” It was an odd line in an odd video, but that’s been par for the course as the actor continues to ride the the fence on whether or not he’ll run for governor, and where he stands politically.

Coming off the holiday weekend, CNN’s New Day batted around the new McConaughey video as host Michael Smerconish laughingly dismissed the actor’s thesis. “Puberty? Nah. I think it’s midlife crisis and let’s all buy the Porsche and move on.”

Via The Wrap:

He dispensed more advice for the possible Texan politician while on CNN’s “New Day,” too: “You’re popular up until the point when you formally decide to get in the race and then all of a sudden your numbers change so be careful, Matthew McConaughey. Love your work, but those numbers don’t remain where they are today.”

Despite the video having that signature McConaughey blend of Texas ruggedness with a dash of new age guru, the actor did a fairly decent job backing up his puberty metaphor.

“This is not an excuse, this is just the reality, and this is good, because we gotta keep learning, we gotta keep maturing, we gotta keep striving, we gotta keep climbing, we gotta keep building,” he said. “And we gotta make sure we maintain hope along the way, as we continue to evolve.”

(Via New Day on Twitter)

It turns out that world-class success runs in the Springsteen family. There’s Bruce, the New Jersey artist who has made generation-defining music. His wife, Patti Scialfa, is, like her husband, a member of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, for her work with the E Street Band. Then there’s their daughter, Jessica, who is getting ready to do something that neither of her uber-prosperous parents are likely to ever pull off (unless they develop a dedication to figure skating): compete in the Olympics.

It was announced yesterday that Jessica, an accomplished equestrian, will represent the United States at the 2020 Summer Olympics (which are still named that despite their postponement to 2021) in Tokyo this summer, as part of the show jumping team. Jessica and her 12-year-old horse, the wonderfully named Don Juan van de Donkhoeve, will be part of a team that also includes McLain Ward, Kent Farrington, and Laura Kraut.

Jessica shared a reaction to the news today, writing on Instagram, “Been dreaming of this since I can remember! Endless gratitude for my team, friends and family for helping me make this a reality. We are Tokyo bound!! Honored to be a part of this team with [Kraut, Farrington, and Ward]. There’s no horse in the world I’d rather be on this journey with, thank you Don! You’re my horse of a lifetime. Let’s go USA!”

As for Bruce, he has plans this year, too, as he’s set to bring his Springsteen On Broadway show back for a limited run this summer.

For months, pillow overlord Mike Lindell has promised his “dozens of us” followers that Donald Trump would be reinstated as president in August. “Donald Trump, I believe, will be back in by the end of August,” he said on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in May before taking credit for planting the idea in the former-president’s mushy mind.

“If Trump is saying August, that is probably because he heard me say it publicly,” he told the Daily Beast, adding, “It is my hope that Donald Trump is reinstated, after all the proof comes out, by the end of August, but I don’t know if it’ll be that month, specifically… I spoke about it with my lawyers who said that they should have something ready for us to bring before the U.S. Supreme Court by July. So, in my mind, I hope that means that we could have Donald Trump back in the White House by August. That’s how I landed on August, and I’m hopeful that that is correct.” Lindell has now landed on a specific date.

“The morning of August 13, it will be the talk of the world, going, hurry up, let’s get this election pulled down,” he said on the conservative Worldview Weekend Broadcast Network. “Let’s right the right. Let’s get these communists out, you know that have taken over.” You’ll have to forgive Lindell. What he meant to say is “let’s alt-right the right.”

According to media watchdog Patriot Takes, which flagged the clip on Twitter, Lindell also claimed, “There will be many down-ticket senators that will have different election results… You’ll see when I say that, and they’ll say what’s going to happen to all the people that were involved. I don’t know, right now the biggest concern is getting this election pulled on,” Lindell added. “Donald Trump won. It’s pretty simple, OK?”

Unfortunately, Trump believes him.

When August 13 comes and goes and the talk of the world is Free Guy finally coming out, Lindell will blame the communists or the mainstream media or Jimmy Kimmel for why Trump isn’t president again. My money’s on it being Jordan Klepper’s fault.

(Via Mediaite)

There have been a number of talking points to keep track of during the Britney Spears conservatorship saga, and perhaps the biggest one of note in a musical sense is that Spears reportedly doesn’t plan to perform again as long as her father Jamie Spears is involved in her conservatorship. Now, it appears that has progressed to Spears deciding she’s done with performing altogether, regardless of who’s part of her conservatorship.

TMZ reports that Spears’ longtime manager, Larry Rudolph, submitted his resignation to Spears conservators, Jodi Montgomery and Jamie, saying:

“It has been over 2 1/2 years since Britney and I last communicated, at which time she informed me she wanted to take an indefinite work hiatus. Earlier today, I became aware that Britney had been voicing her intention to officially retire. […] I was originally hired at Britney’s request to help manage and assist her with her career. And as her manager, I believe it is in Britney’s best interest for me to resign from her team as my professional services are no longer needed. […] I will always be incredibly proud of what we accomplished over our 25 years together. I wish Britney all the health and happiness in the world, and I’ll be there for her if she ever needs me again, just as I always have been.”

Speaking of performing, Spears’ conservators recently denied that they forced her to do a European tour in 2018, despite her contradicting claims.

The 2021 NBA Finals get underway on Tuesday evening, with the Phoenix Suns hosting the Milwaukee Bucks. Both teams needed six games to prevail in the Conference Finals, though the Suns finished off the Los Angeles Clippers three days prior to Milwaukee’s series-clinching victory over the Atlanta Hawks. Phoenix also enters with fewer question marks, as Milwaukee was missing two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo at the end of the Eastern Conference Finals, who is listed as doubtful for Game 1.

Though Milwaukee has been relatively optimistic in its public sentiment, there is a healthy dose of uncertainty with regard to Antetokounmpo’s status for the series. The talented big man suffered a knee injury against the Hawks and, while there is no structural damage according to multiple reports, he was listed as doubtful (and quickly ruled out) in the final two games against Atlanta. In Antetokounmpo’s stead, the Bucks received considerable contributions from Brook Lopez and Bobby Portis against the Hawks, and the perimeter duo of Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday rose to the challenge.

All told, the Bucks are the No. 1 defensive team in the playoffs, giving up only 105.0 points per 100 possessions. That raises Milwaukee’s floor considerably, though they will need to convert more than 31 percent of their three-point attempts against the Suns, even if the Bucks have gotten by with that mark through the first three rounds. Ironically, the Suns are the No. 2 defensive team to this point in the postseason, and they have done their damage against a strong group of offenses. Phoenix leads the NBA Playoffs in effective field goal percentage allowed (49.8 percent), and the presence of Deandre Ayton and the physicality of players like Chris Paul and Jae Crowder provide reason for optimism against Milwaukee.

Offensively, the Suns are also firing on all cylinders. Paul enjoyed a dominant, 41-point explosion in Game 6 against the Clippers, and Devin Booker is fully capable of a similar eruption at any moment. The Suns are also one of the most efficient shooting teams in the NBA, both in the regular season and during the playoffs, and Phoenix’s proficiency at the free throw line (more than 86 percent in the postseason) could be key in a tight game.

Game 1 TV Info

Tip Time: Tuesday, June 6; 9 p.m. ET
TV Network: ABC

Game 1 Betting Lines (via DraftKings Sportsbook)

Series Prices: Suns (-200), Bucks (+165)
Spread: Suns -5.5 (-114), Bucks +5.5 (-107)
Total: Over 218.5 (-112), Under 218.5 (-109)
Money Line: Suns (-250), Bucks (+195)

Game 1 Player Scoring Props (via DraftKings Sportsbook)

Jae Crowder O/U 9.5 Points (Over -129/Under +101)
Brook Lopez O/U 14.5 (-113/-113)
Chris Paul O/U 20.5 (-113/-113)
Deandre Ayton O/U 15.5 (-127/+100)
Jrue Holiday O/U 22.5 (-105/-122)
Devin Booker O/U 27.5 (-117/-109)
Mikal Bridges O/U 11.5 (+105/-134)
Khris Middleton O/U 25.5 (-117/-109)

Nick Castellanos has become a really good baseball player, earning an All-Star nod as a starter this season as he is sporting a league-leading .339 average with 16 home runs and 53 RBI for the Reds. He also is best known by many, particularly on the internet, as the guy who hit a drive into deep left field in the middle of Thom Brennaman’s on air apology for making homophobic comments on a hot mic before he was pulled from the Reds broadcast.

Castellanos will likely never shake free of that moment in the minds of many, something he had nothing to do with but created a lasting meme anyways. It’s been almost exactly a year since that moment back in August 2020, a once in a million moment — or so we thought. On Monday, Castellanos and the Reds were back in Kansas City, and this time it was the Royals broadcast trying to have a serious moment when Castellanos stepped up to the plate in the top of the 7th inning.

The Royals were paying tribute to the father of a member of the Royals organization who passed away over the weekend, offering a eulogy to a veteran of World War II, when, somehow, by some stroke of strange fate, Castellanos again sent a drive deep to left center field, making for an eerily similar moment of broadcast awkwardness.

As the Royals announcer notes, there is never a good time during a broadcast to eulogize someone because the action on the field doesn’t stop. Still, for this to have been another Castellanos home run to the same part of the ballpark, creating the same awkward call is staggering. The lesson at this point has to be, if you’re going to do something serious on the broadcast when the Reds are in town — particularly in Kansas City — save it for after a Castellanos at bat.