Month: December 2021

More than two years after releasing his last body of work, Rick Ross returned this past weekend with his eleventh album Richer Than I Ever Been. It’s a rather short project, with just 12 songs and guest appearances from Wale, Future, Benny The Butcher, and more. To celebrate, Ross returns with a video for the album’s lead single, “Outlawz” with 21 Savage and Jazmine Sullivan. It finds Ross driving around town, with appearances from his two collaborators.

The video comes after Ross responded to rumors that he and Meek Mill, who is signed to his Maybach Music Group label, were not on good terms. “I feel like we’re both hustlers,” he said during an interview at the Grammy Museum. “That’s one thing about life, you either grow together or grow apart. As a boss, you make that decision, because whatever it is you want to do, Ricky Rozay wants to see you do it. There’s a lot of people that didn’t last or was still down with me the way Meek is — so I want to see the homie shine regardless.”

You can watch the video for “Outlawz” in the video above.

Richer Than I Ever Been is out now via Maybach Music Group/Epic Records. Get it here.

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

They say he’s still the de facto leader of the Republican Party, but perhaps Trump’s influence is on the wane. That’s one takeaway from the maiden voyage of his “History Tour,” the nationwide jaunt he’s embarking upon with disgraced former Bill O’Reilly. Back in June, the pair announced they were going on the road. It sounded like a sure-fire money-maker. But sales were slow, and seats to the first show on Saturday were still very much available mere days before kick-off. And from the sound of it, they were still free when the former president and the disgraced Fox News host took the stage.

As per The Sun Sentinel (as caught by The Daily Beast), Trump and O’Reilly kicked things off at the FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, Florida, home to the Florida Panthers. But they couldn’t get football-level crowds. “Many seats remained empty in the cavernous arena,” the paper reported. “The top-level was closed, and ticket buyers were ‘upgraded’ to the lower bowl.”

Tickets for the show went for at least $138, after fees. Some VIP attendees paid far more than that.

The premise of the tour was ostensibly about history, but Trump famously can’t keep to script. Indeed, he even shocked the crowd by calling his presidential predecessor, Barack Obama, “smart and sharp” — a 180 from the constant criticism and “birther” lies he pelted him with during his tenure.

When tickets went on sale over the summer, sales were slow, prompting O’Reilly to threaten a Politico reporter who reported on it. “You put one word in there that’s not true, I’ll sue your ass off and you can quote me on that,” O’Reilly said. “You’re just a hatchet man and that’s what you are.”

But now it appears if you want to watch a guy whose forthcoming social media service is already in legal trouble flap his gums, there should be plenty of seats available.

(Via The Daily Beast and The Sun Sentinel)

Last night, for the second time in her career, Billie Eilish brought her talents to Saturday Night Live. The last time she appeared, back in 2019, she defied gravity with a performance of “Bad Guy.” This time around, the singer signed on as both musical guest and host. In one sketch, the singer and cast member Heidi Gardner joined forces to update the story of Jesus’ birth.

The sketch was entitled “Hip-Hop Nativity,” and it found the two recruiting a group of actors to play many of the characters from the biblical story. They taught them how to twerk, strut, and pole dance. The actors initially raises issues over the biblical update, but they eventually went along with it. The closing bit also jokingly revealed that Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda will direct a full-length film version of Billie and Gardner’s updated nativity story.

In addition to the “Hip-Hop Nativity” skit, Billie also performed “Happier Than Ever” and “Male Fantasy” on SNL. The former made for an epic performance while the latter was a bit darker and relaxed.

In non-Eilish SNL news, the episode also featured Kate McKinnon returning as Dr. Fauci while Weekend Update skewered Jussie Smollett and the torching of the Fox News Christmas tree.

You can watch Billie’s Hip-Hop Nativity sketch in the video above.

Anne Rice, best known for Gothic novels about bloodsuckers, such as Interview with the Vampire, has passed away, as per The New York Times. She was 80 years old.

The news was revealed on Facebook by her son, Christopher Rice, who said his mother died from “complications resulting from a stroke.” He added, “She left us almost nineteen years to the day my father, her husband Stan, died.”

Born in New Orleans, Rice burst onto the literary scene in 1976, when she published Interview with the Vampire, which introduced her most famous creation, Lestat, an antiheroic bloodsucker whose exploits she chronicled over several books in what became known as “The Vampire Chronicles.”

Her debut book was turned into a blockbuster movie in 1994, starring Tom Cruise as Lestat, Brad Pitt as the man he turns, and Kirsten Dunst as a vampiric little girl. A follow-up, The Queen of the Damned, which featured pop star Aaliyah, followed in 2001. She has been credited with helping re-popularize vampire fiction, and more of her work is slated to be adapted for the screen.

But Rice was interested in far more than vampires. She wrote historical novels, including 1979’s The Feast of All Saints, about the black community in New Orleans before the Civil War. She wrote Christian fiction, including speculative accounts of the early life of Jesus Christ (which, too, have been turned into movies). She wrote erotic fiction, including Exit to Eden, which was improbably turned into a comedy starring Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell.

“In her final hours, I sat beside her hospital bed in awe of her accomplishments and her courage, awash in memories of a life that took us from the fog laced hills of the San Francisco Bay Area to the magical streets of New Orleans to the twinkling vistas of Southern California,” Christopher wrote in his post.

After news broke of Rice’s passing, people on social media were quick to pay tribute to the legendary novelist.

(Via NYT)

As the 2021-22 NBA season enters its third month, any hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic would be less impactful this season than last have been dashed. Many of the games top stars have found themselves in the league’s health and safety protocols early this season, including some who have had difficult battles with the virus that have kept them out longer than just the 10 days required by league rules.

Currently, the Chicago Bulls are dealing with a number of absences due to protocols, as seven players missed Saturday night’s blowout loss to the Heat due to health and safety protocols, including star DeMar DeRozan, and now the Bulls will be without their other star scorer as Zach LaVine entered protocols on Sunday following his 33-point effort in Miami.

Troy Brown will also enter protocols, bringing the team’s total to nine players currently out.

The Bulls situation is the worst of any team in the league in terms of absences and it’s reasonable to wonder if the league, which has been loathe to postpone any games this season due to COVID absences, should consider whether nine players absent is worthy of rescheduling Tuesday’s game against Detroit if some of Chicago’s players don’t test out of protocols in time to play. The current roster, including those added via hardship waivers, features nine players, which is technically enough to play Tuesday.

He’s challenged Donald Trump and other Republicans. He’s dismantled loony pandemic misinformation conspiracy theories, including those made by coworkers. He’s filed complaints about Tucker Carlson. And now he’s leaving. As per CNN, Chris Wallace — who for nearly two decades has been one of the controversial network’s few independent thinkers — announced on Sunday that his latest show would be his last.

“After 18 years — this is my final ‘Fox News Sunday.’ It is the last time, and I say this with real sadness, we will meet like this,” Wallace said on this weekend’s Fox News Sunday.

Wallace didn’t go into specifics about the shocking move, saying only that he was “ready for a new adventure” and that he wanted “to try something new to go beyond politics to all the things I’m interested in.”

The show will feature rotating hosts until a permanent replacement is found.

Back in 2017, Wallace signed what was described as a “long-term contract” with Fox News, which comes to an end this year. A source told CNN that Wallace simply decided not to renew.

This is arguably the biggest Fox News loss since Shepard Smith departed in 2019. Both he and Wallace were known for not towing the party line, for challenging, not supplicating, Republican lawmakers, and for arguably making bigger headlines than anyone at other, non-conservative-oriented news networks, like CNN and MSNBC. They also tended to outrage Republicans, who took umbrage with someone who calls BS.

(Via CNN)

A lot happened this week, as it always does in our wackadoodle world. Jussie Smollett was found guilty of staging a hate crime. Multiple Trump allies refused to play ball with the committee investigating the lead-up to the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. Someone set the Fox News Christmas tree ablaze. And SNL made sure to cover it all on Weekend Update.

“A jury declared Jussie Smollett really bad at acting,” co-host Colin Jost cracked about one of a number of recent high profile trials. “Smollett was found guilty of charges of staging a hate crime; it was the worst staged hate crime since my all-Christian production of Fiddler on the Roof.”

Jost also joked about another case that almost certainly won’t end with guilty parties being punished. “And in legal news where someone won’t definitely get convicted, Donald Trump is being investigated for fraud by New York Attorney General who wants to dispose Trump on Jan. 7,” he said. He then made sure to note the significance of that date, saying, “C’mon, Jan. 7? That’s the day after his big anniversary!”

Co-host Michael Che made sure to cover the week’s strangest news. “After a tree outside Fox News Channel was set on fire by a homeless man, Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt said ‘This scrooge is not going to get a way with it!’” Che said. “And nothing has ever explained Fox News Channel better than a rich white lady calling a homeless man ‘scrooge’!”

You can watch Weekend Update in the video above.

On Saturday, all corners of the music world applauded Megan Thee Stallion after she graduated from college. The Houston rapper earned her Bachelor’s degree in Health Administration from Texas Southern University and she was all smiles about her new accomplishment. On Instagram, she shared some pictures from the day and thanked everyone for their support. “Meg Thee Graduate [female graduate emoji] I know my parents are looking down on me so proud,” she wrote. “Thank you everyone for all the love today.”

One notable congratulation that Megan Thee Stallion received came from Cardi B, who showed a lot of love to her “WAP” collaborator on Twitter. “Congrats @theestallion all of your hard work paid of!!!” Cardi wrote in her message. “I know your Parents are super proud of you.” Megan replied to Cardi’s message, writing, “Thank you bardi” with three heart eyes emoji.

Megan previously spoke about the importance of finishing school during a 2018 interview with People. “I want to get my degree because I really want my mom to be proud,” she said. “I want my big mama to be proud. She saw me going to school before she passed. My grandmother that’s still alive used to be a teacher, so she’s on my butt about finishing school.” She added, “I’m doing it for me, but I’m also doing it for the women in my family who made me who I am today.”

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

There’s a new COVID variant out in the wild (and already some misinformation about it), and while it appears it’s not as dangerous as the last one, it’s still yet another thing to worry about. For the cold open of one of its last episodes of 2021, SNL took on this latest anxiety. Kate McKinnon returned as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s ever-patient, ever-beleaguered top immunologist, to allay some fears and welcome some guests.

“Do people still think I’m sexy? People see me on TV, and they think, ‘Oh, this can’t be good. That Elf on the Shelf got old,’” McKinnon’s Dr. Fauci said. “Most recent data suggests that if you had a vaccine and a booster, you should be pretty well protected. So, if that’s you, I’d like to officially say: Unclench.’”

He was there to answer some questions: “Is it safe to travel?” “Can I still use this as an excuse to get out of of stuff?”

There were some friends, too, among them two disgraced brothers, Andrew and Chris Cuomo, who claimed that they “both lost our jobs because of COVID.”

There were also Cecily Strong as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Chloe Fineman as Lauren Boebert. “The government has been using this fake disease to strip us of our freedom. Do they think we’re dumb?” Strong’s MTG asked.

“Please. Would they give a dumb person a gun?” Fineman’s Boebert added.

“They said the shutdowns were until they found a vaccine. Then, they found a vaccine and said it worked. Then, they said everyone should get it,” Strong said. “Then, people got it, and it saved their lives. If that’s not Communism, then, honey, I might not know what Communism is.”

Eventually Aidy Bryant swung by as Ted Cruz, telling people, “If you’re sick of seeing me, imagine how sick I am of being me.”

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

Pulling off the rare feat of both hosting Saturday Night Live and appearing as the show’s musical guest, Billie Eilish has had quite the weekend so far. Kicking of fher musical appearances with an incredible rendition of “Happier Than Ever’ that transitions from moody living room performance into epic headbanger, she’s got yet another pivot up her sleeve for her second performance of the night. Given the moody, jazzy vibe of Happier Than Ever — a pretty big shift from When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go and its goth-pop attitude — it’s not surprising Billie would want to showcase that sound for her second song selection.

After dropping the self-directed video for “Male Fantasy” earlier this week, she followed up “Happier Than Ever” with a live performance of the song that returns to a well-worn format for Billie and Finneas — sitting on a bed, quietly singing and playing together. After the theatrics of her first song, this subdued moment feels like the perfect cap on a massive night. With the moody lighting from drawn blinds and a solitary plant, the stage is a pretty good ringer for what a creative’s bedroom might look like. Check out the performance above.