Month: January 2022

It’s been a while since Rich Brian released a project, and for those who have been patiently waiting for a new release from the 88Rising rapper, that moment is finally here. Brian returns with his new EP, Brightside and it marks his first release since his 2020 album, 1999. Complete with four songs, Brian describes the project as an ode for his deep love of rap. “While doing melodies are fun, I wanted to remind people that I still love to rap,” he said about the EP. “It’s short, it’s not an album but I see it like a mental note of how the past year has accelerated my growing-up process as an artist & a person.”

Along with the new project comes a new video for “Getcho Mans” with 88Rising labelmate Warren Hue. The visual is a fast-paced effort directed by The Reggies that captures the rappers trading bars in their most heightened states. The track arrives after Brian and the rest of his 88Rising crew hosted their Head In The Clouds Festival back in November. The showcase featured performances from Saweetie, Guapdad 4000, Japanese Breakfast, Umi, Beabadoobee, and more.

As for what’s next, Rich Brian is set to perform at this year’s Coachella festival on day 2 of the showcase’s respective weekends, a day that’s headlined by Billie Eilish.

You can watch the video for “Getcho Mans” above.

Brightside is out now via 88Rising / Warner. Stream it here.

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

For months, Donald Trump has been predictably Trumpian with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot. They’ve been asking to see hundreds of documents from the Trump-era White House, which are stored in the National Archives. He’s responded by doing what he’s always done when confronted with something that could land him in legal trouble: Delay with sleazy tactics until the matter blows over. (He’s currently trying it again with the New York State Attorney General.) But this time, at least, it seems not even the three (3) Supreme Court justices he appointed to the bench can save him.

As per The New York Times, on Wednesday, six out of the seven Supremes rejected the former president’s attempt to use “executive privilege” — used by sitting presidents, which he is not, having lost re-election by over seven million votes — to block the committee from seeming possibly damning intel. They issued a single paragraph order, though they didn’t disclose who dissented. Indeed, only Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed circa the George H.W. Bush era, publicly noted a dissent.

Within hours of the decision, the National Archives officially released hundreds of Trump-era documents to the committee.

It’s not the first time the Supreme Court, which was radically changed during Trump’s single term, have ruled against him and his allies. In early December, a month into his crusade to lodge baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, they unanimously threw him under the bus. That included Amy Coney Barrett, whose appointment was rushed after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, despite the fact that the country was already voting for his successor.

(Via NYT)

While Tool released their long-awaited fifth album, Fear Inoculum in 2019, the enigmatic post-metal band is only now getting a chance to do a tour for it, for obvious reasons. Interestingly enough, the title Fear Inoculum refers to an injection of fear. But rest assured, Tool aren’t making music about being anti-vaxxers or anything. In fact, singer Maynard James Kennan was hospitalized in 2021 when he got COVID-19 a second time shortly. He’s now vaccinated, healthy and back on stage where he belongs.

This past weekend at a tour stop at Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center, Tool did something live they’d never done. Well, two things actually. First, the band played the symphonic track, “Culling Voices,” live for the first time ever. They’d gone their first four tour stops without playing the tune.

On stop number five, the second thing the band had never done before happened. Drummer Danny Carey started the song on guitar as he sat on the front of the stage with guitarist Adam Jones, bassist Justin Chancellor, and Keenan on the mic. The legendary Carey had never played anything besides the drums before. They played in this meditative formation for about four minutes, before Carey went back to the drums and Keenan took his perch high above the stage. The band finished off the the nine-minute performance and the rest as they say, is history.

You can watch a fan-recorded video of the first “Culling Voices” performance above, and check out Tool’s remaining tour dates below — including their headlining performance at Bonnaroo — below.

01/21/2022 — Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center
01/22/2022 — Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
01/25/2022 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Maverik Center
01/27/2022 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
01/30/2022 — Tulsa, OK @ BOK Center
01/31/2022 — Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
02/02/2022 — San Antonio, TX @ AT&T Center
02/04/2022 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
02/05/2022 — New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center
02/08/2022 — Orlando, FL @ Amway Center
02/09/2022 — Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena
02/10/2022 — Miami, FL @ FTX Arena
02/19/2022 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
02/20/2022 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
02/22/2022 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
02/23/2022 — Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena
02/26/2022 — Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
02/27/2022 — Buffalo, NY @ KeyBank Center
02/01/2022 — Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints Arena
03/03/2022 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
03/04/2022 — Louisville, KY @ KFC Yum! Center
03/06/2022 — Columbus, OH @ Nationwide Arena
03/08/2022 — Grand Rapids, MI @ Van Andel Arena
03/10/2022 — Chicago, IL @ United Center
03/12/2022 — Omaha, NE @ CHI Health Center Arena
03/13/2022 — Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center
03/15/2022 — Kansas City, MO @ T-Mobile Center
03/17/2022 — Moline, IL @ TaxSlayer Center
03/18/2022 — St. Louis, MO @ Enterprise Center
03/20/2022 — Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse
04/23/2022 — Copenhagen, DK @ Royal Arena
04/25/2022 — Oslo, NO @ Spektrum
04/26/2022 — Stockholm, SE @ Avicii Arena
04/28/2022 — Hamburg, DE @ Barclaycard Arena
04/29/2022 — Frankfurt, DE @ Festhalle
05/02/2022 — Manchester, UK AO @ Arena Manchester
05/04/2022 — Birmingham, UK @ Resorts World Arena
05/06/2022 — Dublin, IE @ 3Arena
05/09/2022 — London, UK @ The O2 Arena
05/12/2022 — Paris, FR @ AccorHotels Arena
05/13/2022 — Antwerp, BE @ Sportpaleis
05/15/2022 — Berlin, DE @ Mercedes-Benz Arena
05/17/2022 — Cologne, DE @ Lanxess Arena
05/19/2022 — Amsterdam, NL @ Ziggo Dome
05/ 21/2022 — Krakow, PL @ Tauron Arena
05/23/2022 — Prague, CZ @ O2 Arena
05/24/2022 — Budapest, HU @ SportAréna
06/18/2022 — Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo

For the last year and change, Jordan Klepper has been doing the lord’s work, throwing himself into massive pro-Trump gatherings, bravely asking the unhinged damning questions. He was even there on Jan. 6! (For balance’s sake, he’s been able to find some nutty SoCal progressives who happen to be anti-vaxxers.) Earlier this month he found himself back at the nation’s capital for the Jan. 6 anniversary march by…well, the people who helped foment the deadly Capitol riot. He even pelted Matt Gaetz with some admittedly “childish” questions.

On Wednesday, Klepper was back with more. The Daily Show correspondent attended a vigil for jailed Jan. 6 insurrectionists, where he found maybe the most deeply confused person he’s ever happened upon on his show.

The person, a middle-aged man, opened up to Klepper, seeming to be atoning for his past self, which happened to be someone who believed Trump’s lies about massive voter fraud, for which he’s found no proof.

“I had never been to a protest event before the 2020 presidential election,” the man told Klepper. “I had become completely consumed. It took over my life. For three months, I slept in my car. I traveled from rally to rally, from #StopTheSteal event to #StopTheSteal event, for three months, sleeping in my car, going to see the evidence. And then I had to recover. I had PTSD. So, it took me a long time to find myself again. I feel like I just got out of a cult.”

But then the man kept answering Klepper’s questions, one of which was whether or not he still believed the election was stolen, which it wasn’t. His response was…well, baffling is too light a word. And yet even after he said, after all that, “I don’t think the election was stolen, I know the election was stolen,” he still had another twist. He added, “This is how someone that is, was in a cult often responds.”

So to sum it up: A man who was brainwashed to believe nonsense acquired a level of self-awareness, and yet still believes the lies that destroyed his brain, but knows that…he’s still in a cult? Psychologists will be studying people like this for ages to come.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Thundercat ended 2021 by releasing “Satellite” with Genevieve Artadi and Louis Cole, which appeared on the season five soundtrack for Issa Rae’s show Insecure. The year also saw him win a Grammy for his fourth album, It Is What It Is. Now he’s extending his reach to the small screen: He recently made an appearance on the Disney+ Star Wars spinoff The Book Of Boba Fett, playing a body-modification artist with a robot hand.

The singer’s appearance on the show, his official acting debut, was rather quick, with just a few lines of dialogue as his character spent the scene operating on an injured individual.

Thundercat’s The Book Of Boba Fett appearance comes after he appeared on Kaytranada’s “Be Careful,” from his late 2021 EP Intimidated. He and Bootsy Collins also joined Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars, aka Silk Sonic, on their album An Evening With Silk Sonic album.

You can see a sped-up clip of Thundercat’s appearance in The Book Of Boba Fett in the video above. Later this year, Thundercat will serve as one of the opening acts for The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2022 Global Stadium Tour.

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

Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid is having a monster season, perhaps his best to date, and on Wednesday night against the Orlando Magic, Embiid put forth perhaps his most dominant performance of the year.

In just 27 minutes, Embiid tied a career-high with 50 points in a 123-110 win for the 76ers. Embiid was incredibly efficient, shooting 17-23 from the field and 15-17 from the line. Whatever kind of shot he wanted, he got and he got to the line essentially at will. In addition to his 50 points, Embiid had 12 rebounds, 3 blocks and 2 assists too.

He certainly could have scored more too had he stayed in the game, as he had 47 points through three quarters and only played three minutes in the fourth. He was so dominant that the 76ers didn’t need him in the fourth quarter.

Just look at how Embiid was scoring too. This wasn’t just him battering Magic big men inside and getting to the line. He was hitting fadeaways off a quick post-up and dunking by taking one dribble from the three-point line and just about every other move in his bag. This was a complete scoring performance, with the Magic just having nothing for him.

To take it a step further, the Magic as a team only outscored Embiid 52-20 in the 27 minutes Embiid was on the floor. This game was absolutely peak, MVP-level Embiid. The way he’s playing, and with performances like this, he is absolutely one of the best players in the entire league right now and if the Sixers continue climbing the East standings, he’ll have a tremendous case for the league’s top individual honor by the end of the season.

The Washington Wizards nearly erased an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter against the Brooklyn Nets, coming up one point shy in a 119-118 loss, which naturally means that any lost possession in the fourth quarter was incredibly costly.

For a lot of Wizards fans, one particularly play will stand out as the reason they lost when they had a possession stolen from them by Nets assistant coach David Vanterpool, who lost his mind and reached out to deflect a pass from Spencer Dinwiddie to Kyle Kuzma, leading to a Kessler Edwards steal with 5:42 to play and the Nets up 109-103, and somehow Brooklyn got away with it.

It is really incredible, especially considering how close one of the referees is to the play and misses Vanterpool stick his hand out onto the court and deflect the ball away from Kuzma, who can’t believe it just happened and that no one else apparently saw it. Edwards retrieves the ball and the Wizards had to retreat on defense despite it, at minimum, needing to be their ball side out and, quite possibly, that earning the Nets bench a technical foul and the Wizards getting a free throw out of it. Kuzma commits a foul to stop play and yell at the ref, understandably furious about what just happened.

While it’s impossible to pin a loss on one play, this happening in the fourth quarter of a one-point loss is truly stunning and Washington fans are rightfully furious. It’ll be interesting to see how the league handles this because one would think a fine has to be on the way for Vanterpool, who immediately knew he’d done something very wrong as he spun away to the bench.

On Monday, New York magazine published a profile of Joss Whedon, the fallen TV and movie maven, who has been accused of all manner of abuse from several former colleagues. Among them was Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show that made Whedon’s name, and its spinoff Angel. She alleged that he “created hostile and toxic work environments,” and often singled her out. In the profile, Whedon vaguely admitted to some accusations and denied others. And Carpenter, like others, isn’t having it.

Early last year, Carpenter opened up about her history with Whedon, claiming that he started emotionally manipulating her after she became pregnant during Angel’s run, at one point called her “fat,” and fired her the season after she gave birth. Whedon addressed the allegations, saying only that he was “not mannerly” but denying that he’d called her “fat.”

The profile — in which he sharply pushed back against Ray Fisher, the Justice League actor who accused him of different forms of abuse and who dramatically cut down his role as Cyborg for the initial finished product — did not sit well with Carpenter.

In an Instagram post that began with the hashtag “#IStandWithRayFisher,” Carpenter called Whedon a ““tyrannical narcissistic boss who is still unable to be accountable and just apologize.”

Fisher was also displeased with what Whedon said in the piece, including calling him a “bad actors in both senses.” In a Twitter post that began with him showing solidarity with Carpenter, Fisher slammed both “the influence of a White male shadow puppeteer,” as well as the New York reporter who printed a wild conspiracy from Whedon defenders in which original Justice League director Zack Snyder “tricked” Fisher into thinking Whedon was racist. Fisher called that “nonsense.”

Early in the New York profile, Whedon admits that he’s “terrified” of “every word that comes out of my mouth.” But clearly he should have been even more scared of what was on his mind.

(Via Deadline)

The Batman himself Robert Pattinson has been cast in new film from director Bong Joon-Ho. This will be the director’s first film since his mega hit Parasite, which won numerous accolades after its release in 2019. Based on the upcoming novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, the currently untitled movie will be a sci-fi thriller set on a frozen ice world called Nifheim, which is becoming unsuitable for humans.

The novel, which will be released on February 15th, focuses on Mickey7, a clone known as an “expendable,” which is basically a disposable human, who refuses to let another clone work in his place after he is presumed dead. It’s unclear if Pattinson will play the titular clone character, but one can only hope that audience will see several clones of Pattinson roaming around an ice planet. St. Martin Press, who is publishing the novel, describes the story as The Martian meets Dark Matter.

This will be Bong Joon-Ho’s eighth feature film and his first to be distributed by Warner Bros. The director took home numerous awards for Parasite in 2020, including Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay, in addition to other prestigious accolades. Similarly, Pattinson has eleven MTV Movie Awards for his portrayal of Edward Cullen in the Twilight series.

The Miami Heat entered Wednesday night with a chance to swipe the No. 1 spot in the East all by themselves with a win over a scuffling Portland team and a loss by the Bulls against Cleveland.

While mid-January standings aren’t exactly the most important thing in the world, it would be an impressive feat for a Heat team that spent much of December weathering some significant injury absences, along the COVID ins and outs the entire league was dealing with. Now with Bam Adebayo back, the Heat are nearing full strength as they enter the second half of the season — although Kyle Lowry missed the Blazers game for personal reasons.

Already without Lowry, Miami saw its second backcourt star leave the game early when Jimmy Butler got tossed for two technical fouls in succession by two different referees in about 3 seconds of real time.

The first one is absolutely earned, but it certainly looks as though Butler was turning away from the refs and getting the last of his frustration out when the second official stepped in and hit him with a second. It almost looked like the first ref gave the second a look like “don’t do that I just gave him one,” but at that point the second T had been given and Butler was tossed, making Miami’s task all the more difficult for the remainder of the night.