Month: November 2021

For a little over a week, Ye has been teasing the release of a deluxe version for his tenth album, Donda. He recently spoke about it during an appearance on the Drink Champs podcast, and while exact details behind the deluxe were not revealed, but luckily for those who were excited to press play on the updated album, it’s finally here. On Sunday evening, Ye released the deluxe version of Donda complete with five new songs that extends the already-lengthy album to a total of 32 songs.

The new additions include the previously-leaked “Life Of The Party” with Andre 3000, which features a new verse from Ye. The track also features audio from a beloved video featuring the late DMX which sees him comforting his daughter while they ride a rollercoaster together. Ye also added sequels to “Remote Control,” which features Kid Cudi in addition to Young Thug, and “Keep My Spirit Alive,” which brings in KayCyy to join Conway The Machine and Westside Gunn. The last two additions to the deluxe version of Donda are “Never Abandon Your Family” and “Up From The Ashes.”

The new release comes after a number of Ye clones were spotted in New York City. The clones mimicked Ye’s Donda-era look by rocking black pants, black bomber jackets, a black baseball cap, and a beige prosthetic mask.

Donda (Deluxe) is out now via GOOD Music/Def Jam. Get it here.

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

Summer Walker has a number of accolades and record-breaking moments to her name in her short career. The singer already has a top-five chart entry on the Billboard 200 thanks to her 2019 debut album, Over It. That project also broke the record for the most-streamed album ever by a female R&B artist, surpassing a mark previously held by Beyonce’s Lemonade. This success continued through Summer’s sophomore album, Still Over It, which she released earlier this month. The project became Apple Music’s biggest album debut ever and the platform’s biggest R&B album debut ever in addition to going No. 1 in 40 markets globally. More than a week after its release, Still Over It continues to break records for Summer.

Still Over It went No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated November 20, 2021. The album accomplished this by selling 166,000 album units in its first week. This number is comprised of 153,000 streaming equivalent album units which amounts to 201.1 million on-demand streams of the album’s tracks. The project also tallied 12,000 pure album sales. With that, Summer lands the first No. 1 album by a female R&B singer in over five years, with the last being Solange’s A Seat At The Table, as well as the biggest week for a female R&B singer since Beyonce’s Lemonade.

Elsewhere, Still Over It earns the biggest first week for an R&B album released in 2021, the largest streaming week ever an R&B album released by a woman, and the fourth-biggest debut by a woman in 2021.

You can revisit our review for Still Over It here.

Still Over It is out now via LVRN/Interscope. Get it here.

The lawsuits that Travis Scott and Astroworld’s festival organizers have received are already in the triple digits with more on the way. This comes after the death of nine attendees at the showcase earlier this month. Hundreds more were injured as well during the festival. Travis Scott and Astroworld organizers announced that they will provide full refunds for everyone who purchased tickets to attend the show, but legal experts warn that accepting these refunds could come with irreversible consequences. Neama Rahmani, co-founder of the personal-injury firm West Coast Trial Lawyers spoke to Insider about this.

“Courts generally uphold those types of waivers,” Rahmani said. “The classic case is arbitration agreements. Everyone kind of scrolls through. No one reads the fine print, and guess what, you’ve waived your right to a jury trial, waived your right to file a lawsuit, to demand arbitration.” Legal analyst Carmen Roe had similar thoughts to Rahmani’s own, which she shared with Houston’s local station KHOU 11.

“What they need to look for specifically, is the word ‘Waiver,’ ‘Consent’ ‘Agreement’ of any kind,” Roe said when she was asked what attendees need to look for before accepting refunds. “And most importantly, they need to be concerned if they’re asked to sign anything.” She added, “Refunds should not come with a signature. So, in this particular case, Live Nation has suggested they’re going to refund these people, and that this is all going to be on the up and up. That shouldn’t require their signature under any circumstances.”

NFL coaches have had red challenge flags for more than a decade, and yet it is a constant issue for coaches struggling to remember which pocket they kept the dang thing in.

Like a disgruntled father at the airport trying to get all of his belongings into the bins at security, coaches are forever patting themselves down, pulling papers and pens out, desperate to find their flag in time to challenge a play. Some have resorted to keeping their flag in a sock so that they don’t have to go through the digging through pockets routine, but others haven’t learned that just yet and it can produce some hilarity on the sideline.

On Sunday, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll took this to a new level when he went digging for his flag to challenge a play and all he could come up with was his electric hand warmer that he dropped at the foot of the official in order to call for a review.

The best part is the official acknowledges it and stops play, and now I’d like coaches to just heave random objects on the field to challenge calls instead of flags. It was eventually identified as a hand warmer, but initially, everyone thought he had thrown a flip phone, which felt incredibly on brand for Carroll and jokes were flying around on social media.

Once Taylor season begins, it only ends when Taylor says it does. That’s why her latest surprise announcement isn’t all that surprising to those who know her well. The last few days of Red (Taylor’s Version) have been much more than busy, they’ve been astounding. After delivering an epic performance of the new ten-minute version of “All Too Well” on SNL, rapping alongside Pete Davidson in another sketch, debuting the short film for the new, longer version of “All Too Well,” dueting with Phoebe Bridgers, and collaborating with Chris Stapleton, did Taylor come up for air?

Nope, she decided to drop yet another brand new music video. Because when you’ve got a collaboration with Chris Stapleton on your album, that thing definitely needs a video. Not only will “I Bet You Think About Me” get the video treatment as soon as 10 AM EST tomorrow, but the video will feature a debut director, too. It’s long documented that Taylor Swift and Blake Lively are good friends — not to mention Swift’s friendship with Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds — and they’ll take that friendship to a new level with Lively directing this video. Take a look at a preview of the clip below and look out for the video coming tomorrow, preview link above if you want to bookmark it.

Chris Wallace tends to be the only Fox News personality who asks tough questions, but he usually ultimately lets them slide. He’ll grill them two or three times about a nonsense opinion they have, but ultimately they tend to duck the questions. But on Sunday he went a little further than usual. Wallace interviewed Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, who believes the state can tell people what to do about vaccine mandates. And Wallace almost got him to admit that’s not a terribly Republican position.

Wallace and Paxton were discussing an executive order Governor Greg Abbott signed last month barring any “entity,” including private businesses, from requiring their employees get vaccinated. Abbott also attempted to get mask mandates banned in schools, though that one was blocked by a federal court. Paxton is in the process of suing the Biden administration over the national vaccine mandates, and he’s accused the president of “bullying businesses,” insisting they can “take care of their own workers.”

But to Wallace, barring mandates seemed to be “bullying businesses,” too. He asked Paxton how he can “justify the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, issuing an executive order that bans any business in Texas from issuing a vaccine mandate, and how do you justify the governor issuing a ban on all school districts on mask mandates?”

Paxton tried to avoid directly answering it, asserting that the move was “justified” and that he agrees with Abbott that mandates are unnecessary. But Wallace wasn’t having it.

“I just want to drill down on this a little bit,” Wallace replied. “You said that Texas companies should take care of their own workers. Is that consistent with the governor’s executive order and your enforcement of that order, which bans companies from taking care of their own workers as they see fit?”

Paxton tried to argue that Biden simply doesn’t have the authority to enforce a federal mandate. Again, Wallace didn’t let him off the hook.

“But you said that businesses should take care of their own workers and the governor is saying that they can’t see care of their workers as they see fit. They are prohibited from deciding, if they so choose, to issue a vaccine mandate,” Wallace said. “That’s not consistent.”

When Paxton claimed they simply didn’t have any pending lawsuits from businesses opposed to the mandate ban, Wallace kept on keeping on. “You are saying they should have the authority and the ability to decide what their workers should do and the governor’s executive order prohibits them from deciding what they want to do,” Wallace pointed out. “He bans vaccine mandates.”

He added, “Isn’t a mandate, by the federal government — are you saying there is a difference from a mandate to get a vaccine from the federal government is different in terms of the ability to take care of their own from a state mandate not to have vaccine mandates?”

Paxton called Wallace’s question “confusing,” then asserted that the “governor has a different authority under state law that the legislature has given him and he’s operating under that state law.”

That’s when Wallace shot back, “So he can tell private businesses what to do? That’s okay. So they can’t take care of their own?”

Paxton seemed to realize what he’d stepped into, so he simply declared that “states have more authority over these areas” than the federal government. Wallace allowed that, at least.

You can watch the tête-à-tête in the video above.

(Via The Daily Beast)

It’s almost three months since Ye released his tenth album Donda. The project came out more than a year after the rapper first announced it, and it was also preceded by a trio of listening sessions that took place in stadiums in Chicago and Atlanta. A deluxe reissue of the album is on the way, which he revealed during an appearance on the podcast Drink Champs earlier this week. That led to quite the odd occurrence in New York City over the weekend.

Clones of Ye were seen walking around New York City, dressed in black pants, black bomber jackets, and black baseball caps — a look that Ye has been wearing publicly throughout the album’s rollout. The clones were also seen wearing a beige prosthetic mask, just like the one he wore last month during a meeting with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. The mob of clones seems to tie in with the promotion of Donda as someone spotted a billboard that reads “Kanye West Presents Donda Deluxe.”

This all comes after J. Prince somehow convinced Ye to set aside his longstanding beef with Drake. If Drake accepts the olive branch, the two rappers will collaborate for a benefit concert that advocates for the release of Chicago gang founder Larry Hoover.

The Detroit Lions came into Sunday at 0-8, the last winless team in the NFL, but were headed to Pittsburgh to face the Steelers with Mason Rudolph getting the start after Ben Roethlisberger went on the COVID list earlier this weekend. If there were ever a spot for Detroit to get on the board with a win this season, this presented a great opportunity and, on a few occasions, it looked as though they would pull it off.

However, the game ultimately ended up going to overtime and in that overtime period, we bore witness to 10 of the worst minutes of football two teams could possibly play, providing us with a fitting, sloppy 16-16 tie that somehow managed to see the Lions avoid losing but also fail to win.

After the Lions punted on their first possession, all the Steelers needed was a field goal to win. They looked to be in business on a pass to Diontae Johnson, who got free and across the 40, but had the ball punched out by Detroit to suddenly put the Lions on a short field, needing just a field goal themselves for a win.

Detroit was able to get well within the field goal range line, which only exists to provide false hope for fans, but Ryan Santoso, who had missed an extra point earlier in the contest, seemingly stubbed the kick and left a 48-yard attempt short.

The Steelers would go backwards on the ensuing drive and Rudolph tried desperately to give Detroit the ball back in plus territory, but the Lions refused to be such rude guests and kindly dropped an interception near midfield.

After two more punts, the Steelers were backed up deep with 90 seconds to play and one timeout and seemed fairly content playing for a tie, throwing short underneath routes over the middle of the field and not exactly rushing to the line of scrimmage. However, Detroit rather shockingly called two timeouts after Steelers completions, presumingly to give them a chance for a win if they got a stop but also giving Pittsburgh, down to one timeout, the ability to march down the field by going over the middle.

The Steelers would get on the edge of field goal range in the closing seconds, but trying to squeeze a few more yards out to give Chris Boswell room proved disastrous with Pat Freiermuth caught a pass on the edge and, instead of just running out of bounds with Pittsburgh out of timeouts, turned up field in bounds and, compounding that error, fumbled to give Detroit the ball.

It is as poor of a decision as you’ll see in an NFL game from a player, because whether he fumbles or not, there’s a good chance Pittsburgh would’ve seen the clock roll off without getting a kick at the win because he didn’t go out of bounds. Detroit tried some hook and lateral magic, but came up well short of a touchdown on their final play and the game ended, fittingly, in a tie. That means the Lions can’t be the first team to go 0-17, but 0-16-1 is firmly in play and that might be funnier (with my apologies to Detroit fans).

Recently Rico Nasty hasn’t had the best time at shows. The musician is currently serving as an opening act on Playboi Carti’s Narcissist Tour, but concertgoers haven’t been treating her well. The most recent example occurred at a Portland, Oregon show, after someone allegedly threw a bottle at Rico. She quickly paused the show and said, “Who, b*tch?” while looking into the crowd for the culprit. “Be specific […] who was it? Who the f*ck was it? Who the f*ck was it? Where they going? Somebody come get this.”

Rico then jumped off the stage and attempted to climb into the crowd before she was pulled away by a member of her team.

This latest incident comes after Rico expressed her displeasure after she was booed during her performance in Los Angeles earlier this month. “This is what the f*ck we gon’ do for you disrespectful muthaf*ckers out there,” she said to concertgoers at the show. “B*tch, we gon’ sit in muthaf*ckin silence! Don’t you f*cking play! What you think this is, b*tch? It’s not that.”

Rico later expressed her grievances on Twitter. “Y’all mothers should have swallowed you little pissy frogs,” she wrote. “Anti black ass crowd. Weak ass little boys wit blonde pubes. Ugh. Get me out of here.” As for the Portland incident, Rico and Playboi Carti have yet to issue a response.

You can watch the incident in the video above.

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

SNL has three new “featured players” this season, one of whom, James Austin Johnson, does a top shelf Donald Trump. Then there’s Sarah Sherman. Nicknamed “Sarah Squirm,” the Chicago comic is best known for her absurdist, sometimes disgusting body humor, which she’s had to tone down on her first season so far. But if she can’t do graphic bits about fluids, she can roast the everloving hell out of Colin Jost.

Sherman swung by Weekend Update on Saturday’s Jonathan Majors-Taylor Swift episode, and she wasted little time in targeting one of the co-hosts, as well as the show itself. “First of all, why is it live?” Sherman said. “Don’t you think that’s a little scary, Colin? I could say something right now that could ruin my life and yours!” When Jost asked her not to do that, she said: “I kind of want to! I’m crazy! Anything could happen, I could have a nip-slip right now!”

When Jost made a joke about nipple slipping, Sherman returned with a fake headline. “This just in: local pervert Colin Jost claims he’s seen most people’s nipples,” she replied. When he tried to dig him out of the hole, Sherman kept kicking him back down, accusing him of mansplaining and of being overly concerned that she’s one of the few Jewish cast members on the show.

Sherman raked Jost over the coals so much that after she belittled his suit jacket, his co-anchor, Michael Che, joined in. “She got you, man, you suck,” he joked.

You can watch Sherman’s Weekend Update appearance above.