Month: December 2021

After the year she’s had, it’s not that surprising that Olivia Rodrigo would feel like giving fans a little gift in return. Seriously, since her massive rise off of her debut single “Drivers License” and all the follow-ups that made Sour one of the top picks in our critics poll, it’s been a whirlwind of a year for Rodrigo. But, keep in mind, she’s been on her grind since way before any of us heard her latest material. In fact, apparently Olivia wasn’t just writing songs as young as the age of five, she was writing holiday songs way back then, too.

Today on Instagram, the young pop star shared a snippet of “my very first Christmas song,” along with a couple of old photos of herself as a kid. “In honor of Christmas Eve may I present to you my very first Christmas song “the bels” written by 5 year old me lol. happy holidays!!!!” she wrote in the caption. Check out her adorable old photos in the post below, and considering Olivia’s idol Taylor Swift has been slowly but surely giving us a few Christmas songs here and there, perhaps they can team up on a holiday classic for all the pop heads? For now, we have “The Bels” to tide us over, listen below.

In the age of Covid-19, attending a massive concert — even outdoors — is a risky prospect. But it’s even more so for the performers themselves, who are repeatedly exposed to thousands of fans. So it’s not that surprising that one of the members of BTS, Suga, tested positive for Covid-19 following the group’s recent string of performances in Los Angeles. Suga, real name Min Yoon-gi, was already self-quarantined in Korea when his PCR test returned a positive result today. Luckily, he is asymptomatic and seems to be fine so far.

A statement from BigHit Music let fans know that Suga is vaccinated and received his positive result while under quarantine, so none of the other members have been in contact with him. Check out the full statement below.

“Hello. This is BIGHIT Music. BTS member Suga was confirmed with Covid-19 on Friday, December 24 during his self-quarantine after taking the PCR test immediately upon his return to Korean on Thursday, December 23.

Sugar completed his second round of the Covid-19 vaccination in late August and is not presenting any symptoms as of today. He is currently administering self-care at home per the guidelines of the healthcare authorities.

Suga, who has had a number of personal engagements in the US during BTS’ official time off, had tested negative for the PCR test taken before traveling to the US, and began his self-quarantine after taking the PCR test upon his return to Korea. He received positive results during quarantine, and there was no contact with other members.”

Get well soon Suga!

The Golden State Warriors will head to Phoenix to take on the Suns in a potential Western Conference Finals preview on Christmas Day. It is one of the most highly-anticipated games of the season and the centerpiece of the NBA’s loaded slate on its biggest regular season day of the year.

While it is a big deal to get one of the league’s Christmas games, there is a pretty obvious downside: you have to work on Christmas. Not only that, but if you’re the road team, you don’t get to spend Christmas at home. If you’re lucky, you’ll get home late at night after a win and spend a little bit of time with your loved ones.

Following the team’s win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Thursday night, Draymond Green expressed some frustrations about this year’s arrangement for the Warriors. Basically, the team was on the road last year for Christmas, and Green isn’t a fan of having to do it for the second year in a row.

“I have a 7-year-old, a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old,” Green said, per ESPN. “I want to spend some time at home with my kids, too. We’re not playing against a defending champion. If we’re playing against a defending champion, you understand, but we’re not. And it’s a bit frustrating to have to go on the road a second year in a row. So now I miss my daughter’s first Christmas, and I’ll miss her second one. It’s kind of f*cked up. But it’s the reality. That’s what we’re faced with.

“You have to go do your job, but we’re human beings, too,” he continued. “So like I said, I missed her first one and I’ll miss her second one. I can’t explain that to her. So it sucks. We’re not robots, we’re not machines. We’re actual human beings with actual feelings, with actual families.”

It’s a tough situation for any player, but like Green said, it’s especially tough when players aren’t able to be with their families for several years in a row. The NBA is usually pretty good at responding to these sorts of things, so we have a hunch we won’t see Golden State playing anywhere other than Chase Center if they play a game on Christmas next year.

For the third time in sixteen months, Nas and Hit-Boy joined forces to deliver a new project to the world. Their latest effort is titled Magic and it comes four months after the duo came together for King’s Disease II. Magic presents nine songs with features from ASAP Rocky and DJ Premier. A highlight moment on the project comes on “Ugly” when Nas uses the Hit-Boy produced beat to share some news. “I’m on offense every day until I see the love,” he raps on the song’s first verse. “KD3 on the way, this just to feed the buzz.”

KD3 is of course an abbreviation for King’s Disease III, which would be the third installment in Nas and Hit-Boy’s album series that they began in August 2020. The first installment gave Nas his long-awaited Grammy award as the project won in the Best Rap Album category earlier this year. It’s not the first time that Nas has spoken about the possibility of a King’s Disease III. He previously did so during an interview with Apple Music’s Ebro Darden earlier this year.

“He’s like my Quincy [Jones], you know what I mean?” Nas said. “So I feel like the next thing I do, if I was to work with Hit-Boy on the next thing I do, I think that we might do something that is going to be magical.”

You can listen to “Ugly” in the video above.

Magic is out now via Mass Appeal. Get it here.

It’s been a tough year for the hip-hop community when it comes to sudden losses, as a legend like Young Dolph was suddenly taken around Thanksgiving, and the impact of tragic deaths at Astroworld is still lingering. But for Los Angeles, the loss of rising rapper Drakeo The Ruler is one of the hardest to swallow. After being stabbed backstage at the Snoop Dogg-helmed Once Upon A Time In LA festival, Drakeo — real name Darrell Caldwell — later succumbed to his injuries and died.

Considering he was killed backstage at a festival where he was slated to perform, his mother, Darrylene Corniel, has already made it known that she plans to sue the event. “You had more people come in than you were supposed to. And you allowed them to jump my son. You didn’t protect my son,” she said in an interview with Rolling Stone. Drakeo’s brother, Devonte Caldwell, aka Ralfy The Plug, was with his brother when he was attacked and is equally devastated by the loss.

He shared a post of tribute to his brother on Instagram, naming his brother as a self-made boss and his idol. “Name gone forever live on,” the caption began. “Literally was a king that got it out the mud and I watched it all from the start from recording all yo lil freestyle and post ‘‘em on YouTube watching smoking on the porch waking everybody up to spit this hard ass shit you be coming up with in 10 minutes effortlessly to going to camp back to back every time I get out you go back every time you get out I went back to beating indictments starting yo own label and even getting a song with drake biggest artist in game and you did it by yo self you was a self made boss and a leader you was my idol and big brother and I learned a lot from you and I’m definitely gone make sure they still know the truth.”

Rest in peace to a west coast legend.

Everyone who celebrates Christmas has their own unique traditions as part of the holiday. There are big meals, watching holiday-themed movies with family, presents, all the stuff everyone knows and loves. For some folks, Christmas Eve can only end one way: The entire family coming together while someone reads “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore.

The Christmas spirit has made its way over to the Worldwide Leader in Sports, which isn’t a surprise, since ESPN airs the NBA’s Christmas Day slate. But instead of having Stephen A. Smith rank the reindeer on Santa’s sleigh — actually, you know what, scratch that because this is absolutely happening at some point in the future — ESPN had Kendrick Perkins go onto First Take as Santa Perk and read his own version of the beloved Christmas story.

Pretty good! I especially liked “LeBron, if AD can’t play, we know life is hard / your Lakers teammates have their AARP cards” and the nod to Smith that came from calling Aaron Rodgers a “bad, bad man.” Everyone seemed like they had a pretty good time with it, even if Ryan Clark put his head in his hands a few times from the jokes Perk fired off during this. Anyway, a very Merry Christmas to Kendrick Perkins.

New York rapper Kay Flock was arrested on murder charges on Thursday. The 18-year-old, born Kevin Perez, is accused of allegedly murdering 24-year-old Oscar Hernandez outside of a barbershop in Harlem earlier this month. In the incident, according to the New York Daily News, Hernandez was in the barbershop waiting to get a haircut when Perez walked by, opened the shop’s door, and asked Hernandez what he was looking at. The two eventually met outside where an argument ensued. It was here that Perez pulled out a gun and shot Hernandez in the neck and back.

Investigators believe that the shooting is gang-related as Perez is said to be involved with the Bronx-based Thirdside Gang. Despite this, the rapper’s family insists that Perez’s arrest is a case of mistaken identity as they claim he and Hernandez did not know each other.

Kay Flock recently signed a deal to Columbia Records where he released his debut project, The D.O.A Tape. The project arrives with eight songs and features from G Herbo, Dougie B, B Lovee, and more. Kay Flock and G Herbo’s collaboration, a remix of “Being Honest,” was paired with a music video that currently sits at 7.1 million views on YouTube. Elsewhere, Kay Flock stood alongside Lil Tjay and Fivio Foreign for their “Not In The Mood” collaboration.

A year after impressing music lovers with his second album The GOAT last year, Polo G returned in 2021 with the goal of reaching new heights for his third project. That body of work would be Hall Of Fame and it became his first No. 1 album while giving him his first No. 1 song as well with “Rapstar.” Months after that project arrived, Polo G breathed new life into it with a deluxe reissue titled Hall Of Fame 2.0. It presented 14 additional songs including “Unapologetic” with NLE Choppa which he just released a new video for.

In the new visual, the two rappers flaunt their harsh and unforgiving demeanors backed by hard-hitting raps which they deliver in dark alleyways followed by scenes of cars burning rubber under the night sky. Polo G shared the new video just a couple of weeks after he delivered visuals for “Fortnight” and “Young N Dumb.” The track also marks Polo G and NLE Choppa’s second collaboration this year as they previously joined forces for “Jumpin’.”

As for NLE Choppa, he’s gearing up to drop his next body of work, Me Vs. Me, at the top of the year. It’ll mark his first project since his 2020 debut Top Shotta.

You can watch the video for “Unapologetic” with NLE Choppa above.

Hall Of Fame 2.0 is out now via Columbia Records. Get it here.

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

Baby, it’s cold outside. And that means it’s time to head indoors, sink into our comfy couches, and stream our way to entertainment bliss. As per usual, the entertainment elves have seen fit to stuff our TVs full of new content. But between gift wrapping, meal planning, and decorating, it’s hard to find the time to pick through oodles of offerings and land on something that the whole gang will enjoy. So we’ve done it for you. Consider it a holiday gift.

One size does not fit all when it comes to binging though. You’ve got your daredevils, your romantics, and your nostalgia buffs. Maybe you have a great aunt who’s obsessed with true crime podcasts? Or perhaps a nephew who loves his apocalyptic book club? There’s something for everyone on this list. We’ve got you covered.

The Yule Log

Okay, so this isn’t actually a type of person. It’s more of a concept. Personally, I adore those cheeseball Yule log videos on YouTube — my very favorite one features Ron Swanson. But TV Yule logs can also do quite nicely during a period of family downtime. These shows are engaging enough to pull people in for a brief period of time but chill enough that the major plot points can be followed even with big lapses in attention.

Even though the Beatles documentary Get Back (Disney+) deserves 100% of your attention (it’s really quite good), I also highly recommend using it as a Yule log conversation starter. Your mom and dad can squabble over whether or not Yoko ruined the band, the kids can tromp around to all the classic songs, and you get to avoid talking about politics. Who doesn’t love the Beatles? It’s a win-win.

Stocking Stuffers: Other options include all of the holiday munchie content out now, such as Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi: Holiday Edition (Hulu, November 4th) and The Great British Holiday Baking Show (Netflix, December 3rd). For those who enjoy competition-based shows, Blown Away: Christmas (Netflix, now) and The Great Christmas Light Fight (ABC, streaming on Hulu) may fit the bill.

The Nostalgia Buffs

You’re likely to have people of all ages plopped down in your living room ready to zone out into a new narrative at some point. Thankfully, nostalgia is king right now, so you’ll have your share of options when trying to engage multiple generations all at once.
Did any of your family members come of age in the ’90s? Did they also love LOST? Then the new time-hopping horror series Yellowjackets on Showtime should be your go-to. The show toggles between the ’90s and the present, focusing on a group of soccer stars who had to survive in the wilderness after a gnarly plane crash in 1996. The mysterious and engaging series is still in the middle of its first season, so you and your binge buddies can say you watched it before it was cool. (Come to think of it, that’s a very ’90s thing to do.)

If the Karate Kid era of the ’80s is a more unifying time period for your gang, then the Netflix series Cobra Kai is a fun choice.

If you strike soon, you can be all caught up before the season 4 premiere on December 31st.

Stocking Stuffers: Romantic millennials will dig And Just Like That… (HBO Max, December 9th), a new chapter in the Sex in the City story. Sadly, no Samantha Jones means that you’ll have to shout your own clever double entendres at the screen though. And here are two more reboot gems for the ’90s set: Animaniacs (Hulu), and Saved by the Bell (Peacock).

The Movie Mavens

For better or worse, more movies are going straight to streaming in the weeks after theatrical release, which means that you can now shamelessly watch while snuggled up in your fave threadbare robe. No judgment here.

Don’t Look Up (Netflix, December 25th) is one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year. With a star-studded cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and the queen of acting herself, Meryl Streep, the film is said to be a biting comedy that may just see some gold come Oscar night. Clocking in at two hours and twenty-five minutes, the film does have a slightly longer run time than the average movie, but that just means you’ve got more time to sneak out to heat up that leftover apple pie in the kitchen.

Stocking Stuffers: Streaming platforms are positively bursting with fantastic movie releases that may have passed you by. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut tick, tick… Boom! is an earnest and joyful look at a musical mastermind that you can stream on Netflix right now. Jane Campion’s heart-wrenching epic The Power of the Dog can also currently be found on Netflix.

The Movie Mavens: Family Edition

There are three things that are sure in this world: death, taxes, and the suffocating awkwardness when accidentally watching a sex scene with your parents in the room. I don’t care if you’re 14 or 64, this maxim always holds true. So, for our purposes here, “family” means that there’s a refreshing lack of sex scenes, but also that you can watch these flicks with a whole range of ages in the room without worrying about having to fumble for the remote when things get a little more mature.

King Richard is a lead contender for family fun. It’s the story of Richard Williams and Oracene Price, aka Serena and Venus’s parents. The film follows the family through the early days of the girls’ training, and it is inspiring and uplifting. If you missed seeing it when it was streaming on HBO Max, it’s definitely worth it to pony up the cash for a streaming rental.

Encanto, the newest animated musical from Disney, comes complete with songs from the one and only Lin-Manuel Miranda. It will be available for streaming on Disney+ on December 24th, just in time to charm your long-term holiday guests.

Stocking Stuffers: For the very small kiddos, Clifford the Big Red Dog is available for streaming on Paramount+. The kids can have a fun time while adults can knock back a few drinks and marvel over how big that crazy dog is. He’s so big!

Even though it’s not exactly a movie, all six episodes of Hawkeye will be available on Disney + before Christmas Day for all the Marvel mavens.

The Adaptation Addicts

Adapting books and podcasts into TV miniseries is all the rage these days, and HBO Max is serving up a fantastic page-to-screen narrative in Station Eleven. Based on the novel of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel, the series is a wistful and engaging narrative that follows survivors in the wake of a very deadly pandemic. The series hops through time, chronicling the direct aftermath of the chaos and following the survivors twenty-plus years into the future as they cobble together a new society.

Having seen the episodes, I can confidently say that Station Eleven is an adaptation that lives up to the original. The series has even added a few welcome twists from the novel, keeping viewers who already know the story on their toes. The ten-episode series premiered on December 16th on HBO Max with the first three episodes, and two episodes will debut every week until the finale on January 13th.

Stocking Stuffers: Starring comedy legends Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd in dramatic roles as a patient and the psychiatrist who manipulated him for almost three decades, The Shrink Next Door is an adaptation of the Wondery/Bloomberg podcast of the same name. It’s a true story, folks! Viewers who are not primed to Ferrell and Rudd tackling serious roles may not be ready to ride this ride, but those who take it will be surprised to witness the impressive range that both men have for the dramatic.

Also, for fantasy fans, season 2 of The Witcher is live, and Amazon Prime is currently rolling out new episodes of The Wheel of Time on a weekly basis, with the season premiere debuting today.

So, ready to hunker down with some holiday cookies and watch some great stuff on TV? The most wonderful time of the year is upon us, my friends. Just promise us that you won’t get stuck watching Tiger King 2.

Prior to The Long Kiss Goodnight, director Renny Harlin had crafted the multimillion-dollar pirate epic Cutthroat Island, which starred his then-wife, Geena Davis, and Matthew Modine. And though it has grown a cult following in the years since its release, the response that it got from both critics and audiences in 1995 was downright brutal. So when Cutthroat Island failed to make a dent at the box office, both Harlin and Davis decided to go with something completely different: an unapologetically R-rated action film set around Christmas (which, also failed to light the box office on fire, winning the consolation prize of a cult following… but that’s not the point).

In the movie, Davis plays Samantha Caine, a kind-hearted schoolteacher who lives with her boyfriend, Hal (Tom Amandes), and her 8-year-old daughter, Caitlin (Yvonne Zima). She suffers from focal retrograde amnesia, making her unable to remember anything about her life prior to the last eight thoroughly suburban years. When she gets into a horrible car accident, though, it unlocks all of those lost memories, slowly transforming her into the person she was before; something that saves her life when a gun-toting hitman arrives on her doorstep with every intention of killing her.

From there, Samantha and Mitch Hennessey (Samuel L. Jackson), a PI she’d hired to unravel the mystery, go on a road trip to dive deeper into the puzzle of who she used to be, and the answer is rather frightening: Charly Baltimore, a highly-trained assassin who worked for a black- ops division of the CIA, and who is now being hunted by her former employers, and by a terrorist-for-hire named Timothy (Craig Bierko). Timothy will stop at nothing to keep Charly and Mitch from uncovering a planned mass-casualty terrorist attack, balancing the need with his past relationship with Baltimore.

So, to recap, we’ve got Geena Davis kicking massive amounts of ass, Sam Jackson still fresh off the accolades from his performance in Pulp Fiction, and a plot with tons of action and intrigue. Oh, and Harlin’s high adrenaline bonafides as the director of big-budget action films like Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger paired with a script from Lethal Weapon (and later, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) writer Shane Black. Add in the twinkle of Christmas lights and fresh snowfall and The Long Kiss Goodnight was perfectly engineered as a holiday feast for fans in search of something less saccharine, family-friendly, and moralistic than favorites like It’s A Wonderful Life, The Holiday, or A Charlie Brown Christmas. But it’s about more than punches and explosions.

Much like dramedies, which touch upon crucial social issues while making audiences laugh so that the drama is easier to watch and absorb, Christmas-themed action films from the ’80s and ’90s accomplish a similar purpose. The Long Kiss Goodnight, at its heart, is about Charly learning to love her daughter and embrace their life together, instead of focusing on the anger and regret she feels over losing eight years of her life and her independence. Die Hard is about John McClane realizing that he has failed to give his wife the support that she needs and deserves, and wants nothing more than to survive his encounter with these terrorists (or as Hans Gruber prefers to describe them all, exceptional thieves), so he can tell her that he’s sorry. Lethal Weapon shows us Riggs learning to bond with and care about Murtaugh and his family, and learning that suicide isn’t the answer to his grief. Even Batman Returns has Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle, and Oswald Cobblepot creating their own separate personas as Batman, Catwoman, and The Penguin, which is a blessing in helping them embrace who they really are, but is a curse with how said personas prevent them from creating the lives for themselves that they need and want.

These films ground the spectacle of their action and endless quips in something that isn’t hard to link to the holidays. Namely, they let us learn about the importance of family (both biological and found), kindness towards others, and kindness towards ourselves while enjoying a beautifully choreographed action sequence that has Batman fighting the Red Triangle Circus Gang, or John McClane leaping off the roof of Nakatomi Plaza to avoid being blown up. Or Charly Baltimore going toe-to-toe with a knife-wielding Timothy, and teasing him about his dick size while doing so. So expand the argument on whether these films function merely as “alt” holiday options and remove the asterisk, because they can bring just as much comfort and joy as egg nog, ugly Christmas sweaters, and fully vaccinated kisses under the mistletoe.

‘The Long Kiss Goodnight’ is now streaming on Tubi.