Month: November 2021

After openly bragging about her participation in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building, it’s no surprise that Texas real estate agent and social media influencer Jenna Ryan was one of the first batch rioters to be arrested. Ryan’s social media posts provided ample evidence that she participated in Donald Trump‘s insurrectionist “Stop the Steal” rally, but one particular post is coming back to haunt her.

In March, Ryan tweeted at one of her “haters” that there’s no way she’s going to prison. “Definitely not going to jail. Sorry I have blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I’m not going to jail.” Unfortunately for Ryan, that tweet not only proved to be incorrect, but also sealed her fate as she was sentenced to 60 days in prison on Thursday morning. Via WUSA9:

In part because of the attention her own media appearances drew to the case, [U.S. District Judge Christopher] Cooper said people would be looking to her sentence to see what the penalty was for attacking democratic institutions.

“I think that sentence should show them we take it seriously,” he said.

Following the sentencing, Ryan told reporters outside of the courtroom that she was being “persecuted” by the media. Although, she did admit that her social media activity wasn’t the best idea. “Yes, I regret ever tweeting,” Ryan said, and frankly, who doesn’t? There’s a real lesson here besides not overthrowing the government. Definitely try and avoid that.

(Via WUSA9, Jordan Fischer on Twitter)

Family is important, but for rising rapper Ausar (who you might remember from Netflix’s hip-hop competition series Rhythm + Flow), it represents the key to him becoming the budding star that he is today.

After laying down his musical foundation with the gospel sounds he learned in church with his mother, his brother got him into hip-hop.

“We would write and listen to instrumentals,” he says. “It went from me being competitive with my older brother over having to have the best verse to me really having a love for hip-hop.”

Ausar grew up in Chicago, a proud city known for its many beloved hip-hop icons. For him, the city was pivotal in his development.

“It [Chicago] has influenced my style. Chicago has influenced me on all levels,” he adds, giving a nod toward his music and his efforts to show up for the community as an advocate and example.

Besides hip-hop, Ausar has learned a lot of lessons from the game of basketball. Most importantly, discipline. “More than anything, knowing that it requires a regiment to get to where you’d like to go,” he says. “The results come directly from the work you’re willing to put in. On the other side is knowing your role within the team. Knowing when to step up and be a leader. Knowing when to fall back and rely on the people around you. You have a team for a reason: you can’t do everything on your own.”

That drive and positive mindset haven’t made Ausar immune to challenges in his career, though.

“Every step on the road, I’ve faced some form of rejection to get to the yeses,” he says. “I’ve had instances where I entered competitions and I felt like I was good enough, but didn’t end up winning. It killed my confidence. Then I came back around, did the work, was right back in those same positions, and succeeded in them.”

His experience on Rhythm + Flow ended in disappointment, but he knows how rare an opportunity it was and he’s using it as a building block.

“I was knocked out in the first round, but years later, we’re getting the results we were looking for,” he says. Ausar’s absolutely right on that. His recent single, “Homies,” has been gaining traction on streaming platforms and is racking up tens of thousands of plays.

As Ausar continues his journey, he hopes that other up-and-comers like himself can observe and take something away from it.

“I’m continuing to be myself and be a resource and an outlet for anybody who needs one,” he says. “I think a lot of people feel like you have to fit into a very particular box in order to be successful, but that’s not the case at all. As long as you stay true to you, you’ll find it.”

The Los Angeles Lakers won’t have LeBron James for Thursday night’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, and his absence looks like it will extend beyond just this one game. James is dealing with an abdominal strain, and according to Dave McMenamin of ESPN, the plan is to take a slow and stead approach to getting him back onto the floor.

While no timeline for his return has been provided by the Lakers, a source familiar with the injury told ESPN that the team’s medical staff “wants to take their time” with James’ recovery.

A clear-cut timeline still is not available for when James can take the floor, but Shams Charania of The Athletic reports that the expectation is the Lakers star will miss at least a week due to the injury.

James has missed two games this season, although both of those were due to a lingering ankle issue. This injury, per McMenamin, was aggravated on Tuesday night against the Houston Rockets. The Lakers sit at 5-3 at this early point in the season — they went 1-1 in James’ previous absence — while the team’s former league MVP has struggled by his lofty standards. On the year, James is averaging 24.8 points, seven assists, and 5.5 rebounds in 37 minutes per game.

Rhea Seehorn plays a lawyer on TV, but she’s an expert in confidentiality in real life, too. She’s probably been asked dozens, if not hundreds of times about the final season of Better Call Saul and whether her character, Kim Wexler, will survive, but she hasn’t slipped once. For instance, in a Variety interview to promote her short-form digital series Cooper’s Bar, Seehorn kept her lips sealed about Saul‘s “deep dark secrets.”

But she did reveal that Bob Odenkirk, who suffered a heart attack in July, is “doing amazing. And like I said, whether I’m in scripts or not, I get to read them and I can tell you that this season is insane. It’s going to blow people’s minds. I can’t wait for it to come out.”

In the season five finale, Saul and Kim are jokingly pitching ways to ruin Howard’s career in order to get the Sandpiper case to settle — until Saul realizes that Kim isn’t joking with her talk of misconduct and bribery. “You would not be OK with it. Not in the cold light of day,” Saul warns. Kim takes a pause. “Wouldn’t I?” she says before getting up and flashing him the same finger guns that he gave her in the season four finale. The first half of 2022, when Better Call Saul is expected to return, can’t get here soon enough.

(Via Variety)

Ava Max isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The Uproxx cover star has been going strong since her 2020 debut album, Heaven & Hell, was released last summer. Lately, she’s been opening up stadium shows for the likes of Maroon 5, and planning a headlining tour of her own coming very soon. But despite a packed schedule full of live shows, she’s still made time to get back in the studio, too.

Gifting fans a brand new anthem full of resilience in “Everytime I Cry” back in June, today she’s dropped a massive collaboration with dance music scion Tiësto. “Ava is such an exciting young talent and her beautiful voice adds such depth to the song,” the producer said of their collaboration. “I cannot wait for the world to hear our collaboration. ‘The Motto’ is the party anthem keeping us dancing into 2022 as we close out a crazy year!” For her part, Max said she related to the song’s empowering, carefree message. “When Tiesto shared this record with me, I fell in love and couldn’t stop playing it,” she said. “‘The Motto’ is empowering — it’s about not caring, doing you, having a good time, and letting the world know!” Check out the dark and rebellious new collab up above, and keep an eye out for a lot more coming from Ava very soon.

Dorian Electra was just confirmed to headline Noise Pop’s 2022 lineup, but that’s not all the hyperpop singer has in the works. This week, they’re releasing a deluxe edition of their 2020 album My Agenda, which features 12 new remixes. To celebrate, Electra shared an eye-catching video to their album’s title track, which, true to the boundary-pushing artist’s brand, is an eclectic mix of internet memes and subculture references.

Like any good hyperpop video, Electra’s “My Agenda” video kicks off with a strobe light warning, which also lets viewers know they are in for a wild ride. In the visual, Electra acts as a dystopian city’s commander, urging citizens to “drink the water” to stay subjugated. But an alternate version of Electra, decked out in pride flags and backed by an army of furries, comes to the rescue.

In a 2020 interview with Uproxx ahead of their album’s release, Electra spoke about their influences on the track “My Agenda” and how it was meant to flip the script on the idea of the “gay agenda”:

“With the track ‘My Agenda,’ before we even considered having those people on it, it was always this military-sounding song. I always imagined it as a military boy band vibes. I thought it was kind of like ‘NSYNC with the orchestra hits and the lyrics. We have actual marching sounds in the song and it’s a parody of how the conservatives can sometimes portray the ‘gay agenda’ like it’s a gay militia or something. I run with that in a self-aware, sort of self-mocking but also critical way. Yes, we are the ‘gay agenda.’”

Watch Electra’s “My Agenda” video above.

My Agenda (Deluxe) is out 11/5 via Dorian Electra. Pre-order it here.

Draymond Green’s name popped up in a report on Thursday morning about Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver. In the aftermath of a Golden State Warriors win over the Suns, Sarver reportedly used the n-word on multiple occasions in a conversation with then-head coach Earl Watson, asking why Green was allowed to say it but he is not.

Sarver denied the incident — which Watson said, on the record, happened — in a statement through his lawyers to ESPN, mentioning that a player on the Suns got a technical foul for using the n-word during a game:

In the case of the Oct. 30, 2016, game versus the Warriors, Sarver and his lawyers wrote that Sarver did not have that conversation with Watson but had one with a Suns player who had received a technical foul for what they said was using the N-word during the game. Sarver said he encouraged the player to appeal the technical foul because Green had used the word in the game — the technical foul was later rescinded by the league.

In response to this story hitting the internet, Green took to Twitter and shared his thoughts on the situation in Phoenix.

This incident didn’t lead to Green getting any sort of reprimand from the league, but in 2020, he drew the NBA’s ire for comments he made about Devin Booker. Green was hit with a $50,000 fine for tampering after saying on Inside the NBA that “They gotta get Book out of Phoenix. I need my man to go somewhere where he can play great basketball all the time and win, because he’s that type of player.”

While the winning has come for Booker and the Suns, it appears Green still believes that there are major issues in Phoenix that were put on display by ESPN.

Lo-fi rapper Steven Moses doesn’t look how he sounds, but his somber UPROXX Sessions performance of the tortured, downtempo singles “Reaper” and “Post Post Mort” instantly eases the cognitive dissonance as he smoothly delivers his sinuous, tightly-wound rhymes. On “Reaper,” he details his struggles with addiction and depression, while on “Post Post Mort” he unreels his nihilistic worldview, somehow both bragging about and lamenting his hedonistic lifestyle with a swaggering, almost off-the-dome style delivery.

Hailing from Hollidaysburg in central Pennsylvania, Moses fell in love with hip-hop through Nas’ seminal debut Illmatic and it shows in his own wordy, borderline cerebral flows and beat choices. He’s also become something of a fashion plate thanks to his decisively left-of-center style, highlighted by dashes of designer offset by his grungy, post-punk posture. His Def Jam debut, 99, dropped in the summer of 2020, and he hasn’t slowed down yet.

Watch Steven Moses perform “Reaper/Post Post Mort” for UPROXX Sessions above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Christmas gifts for the pop fan in your life are officially sorted — thanks to Dua Lipa. Earlier this week, the rising pop icon announced her special edition Christmas merchandise, and it’s pretty freaking adorable. After the success of both her debut self-titled album in 2017, and the lasting power of last year’s never-ending dancefloor shimmer on Future Nostalgia, in just four years Lipa has gone from relative unknown to massive pop star. So, it’s not surprising that her fans would need some holiday cheer to express their love for her.

“Santaaa babyyyy my first xmas merch collection is here !!!,” the singer wrote on Instagram on Tuesday. “Get everything you need for the cosiest holiday yet! Whether it’s for yourself or a loved one, from beanies and hoodies to wrapping paper, I GOT YOU! it’s never too early! #DuaXmasCollection.”

The illustrations on the merch sets are all original works by Seoul-based illustrator and animator Seoyoung, and the items are also very affordable with price points between $15 and $85. Along with sweatsuits — the ultimate Christmas break uniform — the set also includes beanies, a special Dua stocking, wrapping paper, ornaments, and even a Christmas-y Dua Lipa-y mug. There’s something for everyone in the collection, and it supports a rising female Korean designer to boot! Check out some high res images of the options below, all the items are available for purchase right here. It seems like the drop is very limited though, so get the special Dua merch while you can.

Like a SXSW-style city takeover of the San Francisco Bay Area (minus the panels), Noise Pop Festival is back for its 29th annual edition. The festival has long been a champion of independent culture in San Francisco and has expanded in recent years to be a fixture at venues in Oakland as well.

The 2022 edition will take place from February 21st through the 27th and the Phase One Lineup announcement is eclectic to say the least. While Alex G and Dorian Electra are currently at the top, it’s bookings like The Drums playing Portamento, Titus Andronicus performing The Monitor, South African singer-songwriter Alice Phoebe Lou, drummer Makaya McCraven, and ambient producer William Basinski that offer a different experience.

Given that bands like Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips, and The White Stripes all played small rooms in the early days of the festival, it’s always been a place for discovery of acts that will stand the test of time. It’s also a dedicated showcase for local Bay Area acts who provide the support slots at just about every show, and others like rapper Guapdad 4000 and the doom rock of King Woman that headline their own sets. Showcasing venues include the likes of Bay Area fixtures like Great American Music Hall, Bottom Of The Hill, SF Jazz, Rickshaw Stop, Swedish American Hall, August Hall, The New Parish, 1015 Folsom, and others.

Festival badges are on sale now and tickets to individual concerts go on sale tomorrow at noisepopfest.com. Check out the full Phase One lineup below, the festival poster with artwork by SF-based artist Megan Badilla, and look out for phase two in the coming weeks.

• Alex G
• The Drums performing Portamento
• Dorian Electra
• King Woman
• The Microphones
• Guapdad 4000
• VTSS
• Vegyn
• Quasi
• Titus Andronicus performing The Monitor
• VanJess
• LSDXOXO
• Arooj Aftab
• William Basinski
• Hand Habits
• Moor Mother
• MIKE
• Alice Phoebe Lou
• Makaya McCraven
• Nate Smith + KINFOLK
• Irreversible Entanglements
• Tomberlin
• HUNNY
• India Jordan
• Ian Sweet
• Topaz Jones
• Smerz
• The Greeting Committee
• MAN ON MAN
• Naked Giants
• Papercuts
• Exes
• John-Robert
• Tipling Rock
• Hello Yello
• Spiritual Cramp
• Ragana
• Bnny
• Faten Kanaan
• Enumclaw

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