Month: September 2021

This article originally appeared on 03.10.15

With the population growing and most of it happening in cities, these Canadian journalists wanted to take a closer look at whether our sprawling modern villages are up to the task of housing more humans.

Over half of the world lives in urban areas. That includes over 80% of people in the United States and 81% of folks in Canada, where this report was produced. Therein lies the problem.

---

A lot of modern cities are being described as obesogenic environments.

Dr. Karen Lee can tell you what that means:

Lee says our living environment has shaped public health for the worse:

“The ways in which we’ve been designing our cities have been making us sick. … We’ve inadvertently designed physical activity out of our lives.”

A healthy diet and regular physical activity are some of the most important things we can do for our health as individuals, but flawed city design has restricted opportunities for people to make those choices, which has contributed greatly to what are essentially public health epidemics — ones that require public health solutions.

Most cities have been designed for cars, not for people.

Look out your window and see for yourself. Brent Toderian, former chief city planner for Vancouver, says it’s a big problem:

Toderian says city design that makes it easier for people to get around instead of cars is one way to make physical activity a more natural part of our lives. And a lot of major cities are beginning to look to Latin America for ideas about how to achieve that.

In the 1990s, Medellín, Colombia, was one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

The constant threat of drug-related violence made it a place people wanted to escape.

But today, Medellín stands as a model of creative urban design.

The city was desperate for change. And they may not have had the resources of the world’s richest city, but with a few smart infrastructure investments, like outdoor escalators, suspended gondolas, and public gathering spaces, Medellín has been transformed into a place where people are proud to live.

Medellín’s escalators cost only $6 million to build — “peanuts in the scheme of modern infrastructure projects.”

Architect Carlos Escobar sees these developments as much more than just infrastructure upgrades:

“The new transportation system in Medellín … is not only a physical solution. It is not only transportation. It is also a social instrument that involves the community, that integrates the community in all the city.”

Medellín is more connected than it’s ever been, which makes it easier for workers to get to their jobs, and it brings more action to the local economy, strengthens the community, AND encourages people to be physically active.

If you’d rather spend more time in your community than in your car, give this post a share and help spark more people’s imaginations. The solutions are out there. And they’re not as costly or far-fetched as a lot of us might think.

This was a fantastic news report by CBC News (great job, Canada!). Here’s just a snippet, but check out the whole video if you wanna nerd out a little more like I did:

This article originally appeared on 02.26.15

I’ve written tons of things about minimum wage, backed up by fact-checkers and economists and scholarly studies. All of them point to raising the minimum wage as a solution to lifting people out of poverty and getting folks off of public assistance. It’s slowly happening, and there’s much more to be done.

But when it comes right down to it, where the rubber meets the road is what it means for everyday workers who have to live with those wages. I honestly don’t know how they do it.

---

Ask yourself: Could I live on this small of a full-time paycheck? I know what my answer is.

(And note that the minimum wage in many parts of the county is STILL $7.25, so it would be even less than this).

On Lil Nas X’s new album Montero, he recruited a handful of collaborators, including Jack Harlow, Doja Cat, Elton John, Megan Thee Stallion, and Miley Cyrus (but not Drake and Nicki Minaj). Now he’s apparently fielding requests for featured guests on his next album, because he responded to a collaboration-seeking message from a legendary four-piece: the Teletubbies.

The twitter account for Teletubbies shared mock-ups of the Montero cover art but with Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po replacing Lil Nas X. Along with the images, the characters put in a request to link up with Lil Nas X, asking, “.@LilNasX can we get a feature on the next album?”

Lil Nas X is totally on board, as he responded with an idea of how he thinks their collaboration could work out: “alright bet! me and tinky winky on the hook, dipsy & po on the verses and we’ll let laa laa do the outro.”

While a potential collaboration with the Teletubbies is a fun and silly thing, it wouldn’t be the most surprising thing if Nas, who is always up for a good time, actually got together with the beloved children’s characters and made it happen. He did once visit Elmo’s talk show to cover “Elmo’s Song,” after all.

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

Davante Adams is entering his eighth season in the NFL where he has fully established himself as one of the league’s best wideouts. Over the past five seasons, Adams has averaged 92 catches, 1,127 yards, and 12 touchdowns per year in Green Bay, forming a tremendous partnership with Aaron Rodgers.

The two have not so subtly hinted that this might be their Last Dance together, as Rodgers has made clear his desire to leave the Packers and Adams’ contract is up at the end of this season. For now, though, their focus is on righting the ship in Green Bay for this season after a 38-3 loss to the Saints in Week 1 gave them plenty to look at going into a Monday night showdown with Detroit in Week 2.

Adams spoke with Uproxx this week over the phone on behalf of Courtyard by Marriott about the focus of the team after that loss to New Orleans, learning how to not get too low or too high during the regular season, how he became one of the league’s most consistent receivers, his favorite young wideouts in the NFL, and more.

Obviously Week 1 didn’t go as y’all planned, but you got Detroit coming up and what’s been the focus as y’all look to bounce back and get back to .500 here?

Well, that’s a helluva way to put it. I mean, the focus is just getting back to playing Packer football, man. We know we got to do. It was just a weird game kind of started off weird and got away from us early. So, gotta come out swinging earlier on in that game, and, you know, take care of business, it’s pretty simple. We got the personnel, it’s just about playing better situationally and getting a good rhythm going early. So, looking forward to doing that.

Absolutely. What have you learned in your career about dealing with the mental grind the season and the ups and downs and trying to stay level? Because I know that’s something a lot guys talk about as important is being able to not overreact to big wins or big losses and understand that it’s a long season.

Yeah, it’s a really, really long season, even longer this year with the added game. So really it’s just about — I mean everybody understands that it’s tough to win a game in this league. So if you don’t come out firing and have your hard hat on early in the game and taking care of business, things can get out of hand and get away from you quick. I mean, the Saints are a really good football team. So, to bounce back for this week it’s just having that mentality of everybody doing everything that they can and giving it all that they have while they’re out there on the field and not letting any moment slip by. Because you can’t get plays back, so you always want to make sure you put your best film out there every opportunity you get. So that’s basically the consensus of the team right now everybody understands what they got to do. You know, I feel like certain people did play well, too. There’s a lot of things that we can take that we did well out there. Just the overall execution wasn’t there and it reflected in the score.

When you look back at the player you were when you came into the league to the player you are now, where do you feel like you have improved the most as a receiver as you’ve become one of the league’s premier guys at that position?

I mean this position, man, is so much about confidence. So the more you do in a row, the more confidence you build, and it’s about being consistent. So that’s what I pride myself on is being the most consistent wideout in the NFL. And I just want to get out there and show my fans, my coaches, my teammates, everybody that I can continue to go out there, week in and week out and do it. The more you do that and establish it to yourself, the easier it becomes and the more you’re able to sustain that. At least that’s my mentality, just continue to do it more and more times and it builds that within you to where you don’t feel like you can be stopped. And, if you do get stopped, it was just by chance or, you know it was the coverage dictated the ball go elsewhere or whatever the case may be. But I just always try to put my best foot forward and make sure my film always looks as good as possible.

There’s so much talent at that position now. Who are some of the young receivers around the league that you’ve been most impressed with in the last few years that have come in?

Obviously Justin Jefferson looked really, really good last year. Calvin Ridley has shown the world that he’s a baller. I mean, I don’t know if he counts as young, I don’t know, maybe like four or five years or something like that — I don’t know, the years are going by too fast, I can’t even keep up anymore. But there’s a lot of good young wideouts out there, man. Honestly, there’s dudes that are emerging — Scary Terry [McLaurin] out there, he’s doing his thing. A lot, a lot of good young wideouts man. It’s almost too many to count, to be honest. Excited to see Courtland Sutton get back out there this year. He’s another really good young talent, so it’ll be fun, man. A lot, a lot of good talent around the league.

You’ve got this partnership with Courtyard. How did that come about for you and how can fans get in on experiences like the the Super Bowl Sleepover?

Well, basically, what it what it is is, you know, the official NFL hotel, Courtyard by Marriott, they have a huge thing that the fans have been loving for years called the Courtyard Super Bowl Sleepover contest. That’s where a lucky winner will have opportunity to stay the night in a suite that they turn into a hotel room, and basically have the whole night to experience sleeping inside the Super Bowl stadium, while waking up there and being the first one to experience the Super Bowl morning and kick off their day in there. They’ve jazzed the rooms up and made them look really nice, so the whole experience is really cool. And, you know it’s just a thing that we, myself and Courtyard, both believe in, you know. The fans hitting the road and getting back in the stadium and packing the houses out just for that ultimate football experience. Fans can enter by submitting their story on social with the hashtag #CourtyardSuperBowlContest. So they want to get out there, whether they’re traveling far or it’s a close game or whatever, share your experience and then from there Courtyard and be able to assess who’s most fitting to be the lucky winner to experience that.

You get to travel around the country and kind of visits in different places around the league. What’s your favorite NFL city that you you’ve gotten the chance to go to in your career — maybe it’s somewhere that you get to go to kind of regularly or just a couple of times?

Well I got different spots for different reasons. Chicago has nice shopping, cool city to just walk around, go eat. New Orleans has the best food, for sure. Dallas, great stadium great vibe and energy in there. It’s always really electric in that building. So a few different spots, different reasons why I like them, but I’d say the food probably leads over everything, just because, I mean, I love me some Southern cooking. So getting down in New Orleans that’d probably be my favorite one, and being in that dome is always pretty cool too.

I was gonna ask about the food. I do a lot of NBA stuff and I know guys — cause they’re traveling, day after day — so a lot of guys have a go to restaurant, that way if it’s in that city, they are going to go there. Do you have that, where like if you’re on the road and you know you need a meal, is there a spot that you know that you’re going to go if it’s in that city?

I think is is not necessarily the exact same spot but we typically, whether we go as a widout group or, you know, just a few random teammates, I love to hit a steakhouse — you know Ruth’s Chris, Mastro’s, Fleming’s. You know, just because we don’t really have in Green Bay, believe it or not, there isn’t the most options out here to go and just eat at a really nice steakhouse. We got a couple of different spots, but you know some of the bigger chain steakhouses out there or some of the bigger cities that we get to travel to, so I take advantage and try to hit those up when we get on the road.

And what is your New Orleans spot. Is there a spot that you really like there because you mentioned that one specifically as your favorite for Southern food?

I’ll try different stuff, man. Pappadeaux’s, I mean, there’s a few different spots. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to — last year, we couldn’t even go — so I forgot a few of the names of the spots that I would hit, but that’s nothin that old Google doesn’t figure out for me when I pull up, always pointing me in the right direction.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

“Let’s break the rules.”

These are the words singer Kyle Dion blares out on the opening track to his third album Sassy. This idea of negating the world’s expectations isn’t a newly-discovered concept for the Los Angeles-based singer, he’s been doing that from the very start. From his 2016 debut Painting Sounds through his 2019 sophomore effort Suga, Kyle Dion has made his uniqueness very clear. He possesses the energy of a rockstar, has one of the more impressive voices in the R&B world, carries an impenetrable confidence like most rappers do, and he does all of this while traversing the world like an indie act. It’s these qualities that helped the singer craft his last album, Suga, one of the most impressive R&B albums in 2019. The album’s 13 tracks detailed the rise and fall of love filled with equally climatic and crushing moments. Each was accentuated by the singer’s ability to excellently portray the raw passion needed for whatever emotion was at hand.

With that being said, his invitation to break the rules is more so for we as listeners, and maybe even his contemporaries, to join him in moving against the expected flow of the world. It comes with the hope that we’ll find an exhilarating freedom in doing so. But how does a rule-breaker continue to break the rules in a way that’s still attention-grabbing rather than recycled, repetitive, and even exhausting? Well, for Kyle Dion, he does it by simply having fun. His third album Sassy taps into a different side of his personality, one he describes as “an exaggerated version of myself.” However, even Dion has set boundaries for his anti ways. “I’ll never make the same song or album twice,” he says over a Zoom call. “That just doesn’t stimulate me at all and I don’t want to hear that, so I wouldn’t make it.”

It’s a line of thought that Dion said multiple times to me during our conversation. Even without him saying it, one might have guessed it as his mantra after listening to Sassy. The 17-track album is lively in ways that even the most energetic moments of his previous two projects hadn’t reached. “Parmesan” welcomes your best dance moves while Dion sings of his saucy ways and “Drip” with Duckwrth picks up the pace for an infectious number that commends a woman’s spotlight moment during a night out. “Money” is a cut-throat record that happily accepts the idea that cash ruling everything around him while “Fix Vision” with Channel Tres praises a woman’s beauty on the beautifully constructed track.

Kyle Dion’s change of emphasis on Sassy came after he discovered a falling point with his 2019 album. “I remember going to my friend’s house and they couldn’t play a song of mine on Suga at a kickback or something because it was not the wave,” he says. “I want to be played at a kickback, I want girls to be twerking and sh*t. I want to be played at different things.” So after touring the United States and Europe, all while having a blast with friends as he created moments like partying and “peeing in a lake and sh*t” in Amsterdam as well as the “lit as hell” experiences of Chicago, Dion set his mind on making a more outdoor-friendly album. While some may have not caught on to his versatility yet, the singer is very aware of his Rolodex of talents. “I can do many things and I’m not scared to show people that I can do many things, I don’t want people to expect things.”

And there it began. Sassy and all its beauty slowly came together, and as Dion worked to put the pieces together, there was one thing he was sure of. “One thing that I’m always gonna be able to do is sing my ass off,” he proclaims. “I’m always going to incorporate that into everything that I do, but there are no rules in what I’m able to do. I can do whatever I want as an artist.” It’s this refusal to conform that also welcomes a surprising, unexpected, but pleasant guest appearance from Ja Rule on “Placebo.” The New York rapper’s appearance came after Dion jokingly mentioned him after Ja Rule and Jennifer Lopez’s “I’m Real” came to mind while recording “Placebo.” “We just felt like it was funny and kind of a stretch, but we put it out there to my team,” he says. “A member of my team knew Ja Rule’s camp, and we sent it out to them.” Well, it turned out to be a great move as they received more than was asked for. “We were so excited when he sent a verse back instead of adlibs and I was like, ‘Yeah, man, this shi*t’s crazy.”

Furthermore, Dion loved that I labeled Ja Rule’s guest appearance as unexpected because it plays into the random and freeform artist he strives to be. “Like you said, You didn’t expect the pairing and that’s what I love,” he boasts. “I don’t want anyone to expect anything from me because I’m ever-changing, I’m ever-growing, and evolving. That’s what it is.” For some, change is dangerous as it promises an equal chance of rejection as it does praise. It’s something Stormzy alluded to during an interview with Billie Eilish. “Your spirit sometimes wants to stick to what you know,” the British rapper said while speaking about the pains of a sophomore album. “But then you want to venture out and like you’re just trying to figure out… the world really loved me for everything I did the first time around, so how do I approach the second one?”

So in a world where many, understandably, cringe or shudder at the idea of sharing something completely different than what they’ve found great success in and have been typecasted to, Dion practically begs his peers to throw caution into the wind and show their full palette of colors. “People are scared bro, people are so scared to show the range [and] do different sh*t,” he says with a bit of frustration in his tone and later adds, “Do what you want in the moment [and] be unapologetically yourself.” It’s sound advice from the singer who’s spent half a decade doing this. Being a musician is founded on constant leaps of faith as you repeatedly subject yourself to criticism or acclaim with every release. However, there’s a reason the saying “you miss every shot you don’t take” exists.

One of my favorite aspects of Sassy comes right after Dion’s collaboration with Ja Rule. Following “Placebo,” the flashing lights and pyrotechnics that come with the show that Dion puts on throughout the album are replaced with a single dim light as the singer’s tender touch returns to the forefront. “Comfortable” provides a warm blanket to a lover in hopes that the gesture will provoke them into opening up and showing him their true self. “Kiss Me Back” uses an endearing collection of guitar chords to beg for reciprocation and his “Good Bye, Good Luck” interlude lets go of a love he so desperately hoped would last forever. This versatility, and mastery in controlling it all, is truly impressive. It’s sequenced perfectly into the album making it a smooth transition into this relaxed moment as well as one out of it as the singer laughs off his sad-boy moment to return to the fun and bring the album to a close.

Sassy is filled with color from top to bottom and Kyle Dion is aware of it. The album isn’t painted within some imaginary lines that were set for it. That would quite literally go against the boundary-breaking agenda that the singer set for it. Instead, it contains splatters of vibrant coloring all over the canvas, and even if it doesn’t amount to a beautiful work of art in society’s eyes, it’s elegant enough for Dion and he’s happy that he did it that way. “I just threw up on this album and [it’s] like, “What do I do now? What’s next?” he ponders as our conversation nears an end. “Just as a young man growing into myself, I’m so curious as to where I’m gonna be next and where I’m gonna go next, but I’m happy that I let that out.”

Being a rule-breaker requires you to put up blinders to how people may respond to you. Going against the grain is rarely applauded, and it’s something the singer understands with his third album. “I did this one unapologetically, this is how I’m feeling, take it, love it, or don’t,” he says to me. However, even this rebel can’t help but hope for one thing from the world that consumes Sassy. “Do what you want and f*cking respect people that just put their sh*t out there and be f*cking free, unapologetic, and exactly who they are,” he declares. “If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but you got to respect it. That’s what I want, people should do whatever they want. That’s it.”

I think we can all agree with that.

Sassy is out now via Kyle Dion/AWAL Recordings. Get it here.

Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga are getting ready to release a final collaborative album, Love For Sale, in just a couple weeks. Today, the duo offers another preview of it with the title track. The song, which originally debuted in the 1930 musical The New Yorkers, shows that Bennett hasn’t lost his vocal chops even at 95 years old and that Gaga remains an excellent accompaniment for the legend.

In a 2018 interview, Bennett said of working with Gaga, “I like a contrast when you sing a duet with someone. It’s what makes it most interesting. If the voices sound too much alike, then it becomes more of a chorus than a duet. We hand-picked everyone on the Duets projects so that it would be a good fit and I think each and every one of the tracks on those albums had their own style and feel to it, which was what we intended. Of course, I just love Lady Gaga and we so enjoyed singing ‘Lady Is A Tramp’ on Duets II that we decided to make a full album together and then tour as well. She just gets better and better and I think will have a fantastic movie career ahead of her as well.”

Listen to “Love For Sale” above.

Love For Sale is out 10/1 via Columbia Records. Pre-order it here.

On Thursday night, Conan O’Brien dropped an impromptu episode of his podcast to honor the passing of his good friend Norm Macdonald. As regular watchers of the late night host know, Macdonald was easily one of Conan’s best guests, which is why Macdonald’s famous “moth joke” has been bouncing around regularly since the comedian’s passing on Tuesday.

However, Conan revealed during the podcast that comedy fans were almost deprived of Macdonald’s appearances due to the fallout of him leaving Saturday Night Live. As the story goes, top NBC exec Don Ohlmeyer repeatedly tried to stop Macdonald from making O.J. Simpson jokes while hosting “Weekend Update,” which Macdonald refused to comply with, possibly costing him his job. According to Conan, Ohlmeyer tried to take things a step further by blackballing Macdonald from Late Night. Via The Daily Beast:

“One of his bosses was friends with a murderer,” Richter explained on the podcast, as O’Brien joked, “Alleged! I’ve seen no proof, Andy!”

Macdonald famously refused to stop making jokes about the O.J. Simpson trial, which ultimately “cost him his job” at Saturday Night Live, as O’Brien put it. After that happened, he said, “The word came down, ‘You can’t book Norm Macdonald anymore.’ And it came from the top, from Don Ohlmeyer.”

As O’Brien tells it, Ohlmeyer helped him score the Late Night gig, so he felt some loyatly to the NBC exec, but ultimately, he knew the right decision and told Ohlmeyer as much in an email. “I got this directive. You’ve hired me to do the best show I can and this is my best guest,” Conan wrote. “So I need to do my job, which is the best show I can do.”

According to O’Brien, Ohlmeyer wrote back, “I expected better from you,” but Macdonald was allowed back on the show resulting in the now classic “moth joke” appearance.

(Via Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend)

Comeuppance is a bitch. In July, pillow magnate/MAGA wackadoo Mike Lindell made a big show about pulling his MyPillow ads from Fox News after the network refused to run ads for his Cyber Symposium. Word on the street was that Fox didn’t want to promote what they feared would be days of conspiracy theories, rigged election talk, and other batsh*ttery (spoiler alert: it was). Now Lindell, previously one of Fox’s biggest advertisers, is reportedly going back to the network with his tail between his legs.

Daily Beast reports that as early as August, just a month after taking his pillow-shaped ball home, Lindell was trying to cozy back up to the Fox News ad sales team. But they apparently weren’t having it. “[T]he overture towards a Fox-Lindell detente only went so far,” Daily Beast wrote, “with Fox rejecting his new ads multiple times, including as recently as this past Monday and Wednesday.”

Though Lindell has since declared that “MyPillow is done!” with Fox News, the same apparently cannot be said for FrankSpeech, Lindell’s social media site… which is full of MyPillow promos and rife with more conspiracy theories. At this point, Lindell has apparently attempted to get not one, not two, but three, ads for FrankSpeech onto Fox, and has been rejected each time.

Lindell understands that the reason the first two ads were rejected were because they included information about his various conspiracy theories. So when he created the third ad, Lindell says he removed “everything about the machines and the symposium or the election… They denied that one anyway! We got a message from them on Monday, Sept. 13, that they did not like the content of FrankSpeech dot com… They went from not liking the content of the ad to not liking the content of the website!”

Lindell is a persistent man, and he’s not ready to give up yet. So he submitted a fourth ad, which also got rejected—in record time. “It was the fastest reply we’ve gotten,” Lindell said. “But if I removed the words ‘FrankSpeech’ it might have cleared, but it would have just been a MyPillow ad, which I said I’m not doing! Outrageous! I told them to tell Fox, ‘Shame on you!’”

Could the fifth time be the charm? Honestly, who knows—or cares. I’m exhausted.

(Via Daily Beast)

Between The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, BoJack Horseman, and beyond, adult cartoons are hardly lacking in A-list voice talent. But Ten Year Old Tom, HBO Max’s new animated series for grown-ups, will be giving those shows a run for their crudely drawn money when it premieres on September 30.

The dark comedy is the brainchild of Steve Dildarian, who is best known as the creator of The Life & Times of Tim (2008-2012), which featured Nick Kroll. The new series, which will run for 10 episodes, has already attracted a seriously impressive lineup of voice talent, including Gillian Jacobs, Natasha Lyonne, Mark Proksch (a.k.a. What We Do in the Shadows’ Colin Robinson), Tim Robinson (no relation to Colin), David Duchovny, Jennifer Coolidge, and John Malkovich.

According to the official synopsis:

Ten Year Old Tom follows the misadventures of an average kid as he contends with questionable guidance from the well-meaning grownups around him. Being a kid is hard enough for Tom, but when bad influences seem to lurk around every corner—from litigious parents and drug dealing bus drivers to school administrators who want to sleep with his mom—it’s downright impossible. While the adults in Tom’s life certainly mean well, they just can’t manage to lead by example.

“I wanted to write a show about a kid who’s trying to make sense of the world around him, but to do it in a way that doesn’t pull punches,” Dildarian said in a press release, adding that, “HBO Max is the perfect home for a show like that, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity.”

You can watch the trailer above.

This week, YSL Records rapper Gunna became the latest entertainer from the hip-hop world to be honored with a hometown holiday as South Fulton, Georgia declared September 16 Gunna Day to honor the rapper’s philanthropic efforts in the area. Gunna hails from neighboring College Park and has focused his community outreach in the area through projects like Gunna’s Drip Closet and Goodr Grocery Store. In addition, his Gunna Great Giveaway Foundation has hosted free grocery stores in the community and helped families in Houston, Texas survive this year’s winter storms after the intense cold disrupted the city’s infrastructure.

South Fulton Mayor William “Bill” Edwards announced the honor at a special event on Thursday, saying, “I hereby proclaim Sept. 16 as Sergio Giavanni ‘Gunna’ Kitchens Day in the City of South Fulton.” He also presented the rapper with a proclamation noting his efforts which read, “Gunna is committed to giving back to the community that raised him, buffered him, sheltered him and supported him by creating Gunna’s Drip Closet and Goodr Grocery Store, which is set to provide students of McNair Middle School with access to free meals, clothing, and toiletries for years to come.”

Earlier this year, Gunna and his YSL labelmates also hosted dinner for 30 Fulton County Jail inmates and their families after paying their bail, celebrating with the video for “Paid The Fine.” Previously, Houston’s Travis Scott was honored with his own “Astroworld Day” in 2018.

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