Month: February 2022

It looks like the price tag of Kanye West’s album may have been too much for even his most hardcore fans to stomach. According to Digital Music News, fans are finding alternative methods of securing Donda 2 to avoid paying $200 for the stem player on which it currently exclusively available, writing an emulator program to allow fans to download the album without the device. DNN took the below screenshot of a Reddit post in which the poster says they stayed up all night to write the tool, which allows users to both download the stems and manipulate them in the same way.

Whether this affects the overall fervor for Donda 2 remains to be seen, but it was a risk Kanye was willing to take to maintain as much control over his music revenue as possible. When he announced that his new album would be exclusive to the stem player, he explained, “Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes. It’s time to free music from this oppressive system. It’s time to take control and build our own.” To that end, he also claimed to have turned down a $100 million deal with Apple Music.

After previewing the album at a Miami listening event, Kanye released first four songs, then another 16 to the stem player site. Because of the nature of being able to release his music in this way, there’s no telling whether he’s even done with it, but then, giving fans the option of remixing the tracks to their hearts’ desires largely takes the onus off of the rapper to do that part. We’ll see if his gamble pays off, but with fans finding ways to circumvent the exclusivity and novelty of his stem player, it’s possible that he loses out on at least some of that potential extra profit.

Move over, The Godfather and The Lord of the Rings. There’s a new greatest movie trilogy of all-time. Magic Mike’s Last Dance is the third film in the Magic Mike saga that began with Matthew McConaughey serenading the ladies of Tampa and continued with Joe Manganiello declaring Pepsi the winner in the Cola Wars.

Little is known about Magic Mike 3, other than it involves hunks taking their shirts off — this time in London, according to Channing Tatum. “It’s going to be set in London,” the Dog star told host Graham Norton on this week’s episode of The Graham Norton Show. “I don’t really know what to say, other than I wasn’t really planning on doing a third one, and then we went and made these live shows.”

Tatum had two goals in mind while developing Magic Mike’s Last Dance (incredible title btw): “The first goal was, I want to make the Super Bowl of stripper movies. I wanted to just leave it all out there, like I want to have ballet stripping. I want to do it all, so there doesn’t ever need to be another stripper movie ever again. And second, I wanted a really strong, equal female role.” The campaign to get Zoë Kravitz in Magic Mike 3 begins now.

You can watch Tatum’s interview on The Graham Norton Show above.

GOP Senator Lindsey Graham has never been a profile in courage. Heck, even his own party routinely dunks on him for being “weak” if not outright calling him a “traitor.” So Graham’s latest move shouldn’t come as a total surprise, but it is a pretty stunning reversal. Shortly after President Joe Biden announced that D.C. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be his nominee to full Supreme Court Justice Breyer’s seat, Graham took to Twitter on Friday morning to criticize Biden’s pick, preferred by the “radical” left.

“If media reports are accurate, and Judge Jackson has been chosen as the Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Breyer, it means the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again,” Graham tweeted. “The attacks by the Left on Judge Childs from South Carolina apparently worked.”

Naturally, Jackson is a qualified choice for the SCOTUS nomination, and her experience with Breyer is why Biden chose her (Judge J. Michelle Childs was recommended by Congressman Jim Clyburn). Via CNN:

Jackson clerked for Breyer and served as a federal public defender in Washington — an experience that her backers say is fitting, given Biden’s commitment to putting more public defenders on the federal bench. She was also a commissioner on the US Sentencing Commission and served on the federal district court in DC, as an appointee of President Barack Obama, before Biden elevated her to the DC Circuit last year.

Of course, don’t take our word for it that Jackson is a qualified and experienced judge. That’s how Graham viewed her when he confirmed her appointment to the DC Circuit court less than a year ago. Suddenly, Graham’s tune has changed now that Jackson is the SCOTUS nominee, and the Republican senator is getting dragged on social media for the blatant reversal.

You can see some of the reactions below:

The pop-punk revival into the mainstream continues with the long-awaited release of Avril Lavigne‘s exhilarating comeback record, Love Sux, today. The star spoke with Entertainment Tonight about her interaction with Olivia Rodrigo, whose smashing debut Sour was acclaimed for bringing elements of punk into commercial pop on songs like “Brutal” and “Good 4 U.”

Lavigne explained the similarities she sees between Rodrigo and herself, saying:

“I met her a [few months] ago and it’s like she’s kind of going through what I went through. I wrote my first album when I was 16 and experienced crushes and like dating or whatever for the first time and how intense that feels and then writing songs and putting that into music. […] It’s so great because you’re putting all that into your art and it’s so real and people relate to that, and she’s great. It was so lovely meeting her and she’s doing amazing stuff.”

Lavigne’s album includes collaborations with Travis Barker, Machine Gun Kelly, Blackbear, and Mark Hoppus. Meanwhile Rodrigo told Billboard last month that she already has the title of her next album and a few new songs written. Hopefully Lavigne and Rodrigo will cross paths again and end up working together on what would be one of the coolest collaborations in pop-punk.

Snoop Dogg, who was sued for sexual assault by an anonymous woman claiming to be a former employee earlier this month, has asked the court to dismiss the case, saying both that the details in the suit are false and that the alleged assault is outside of the statute of limitations for prosecution.

“Nothing remotely resembling plaintiff’s story about defendant Calvin Broadus ever happened,” his defense wrote in a filing obtained by Rolling Stone. “He vehemently denies ever engaging in any sex act with plaintiff or assaulting or battering her. She provides no allegations of any statement by defendant that he would help her career, and no allegations of any statement about how defendant might advance her career. Instead, the only allegation plaintiff makes is that [co-defendant Donald] Campbell — not defendant — said going to the studio where defendant was would be ‘a career move.”

Snoop’s lawyers characterized the lawsuit as “a thinly veiled attempt to extort defendant for money,” as it was filed just days before his Super Bowl halftime performance with Dr. Dre. The co-defendant in the lawsuit is Bishop Don Magic Juan, the personality and fashion designer who popped up in Snoop’s videos in the late 2000s.

The accuser, going by Jane Doe, said that while working for Snoop as a dancer in 2013, Snoop and Juan assaulted her after a concert at Club Heat Ultra Lounge in Anaheim, California.

Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma is the number one Super Smash Bros. Melee player in the world. The GameCube multiplayer fighting game has an active and vibrant eSports community that has managed to keep the game alive 20 years after its initial release. Before the 2020 pandemic, tournaments with hundreds of spectators cheering were common and the game managed to be a regular part of the rotation at the EVO fighting game tournament in the mid-2010s. Throughout that period, DeBiedma and his use of the character Jigglypuff rocketed him up the rankings to eventually become the most dominant player in the game.

In-person tournaments became more difficult to attend during the pandemic and a lot of players like DeBiedma were forced to move to online tournaments. This created less of an emphasis on tournaments because Melee was never meant to be an online game, but an in-person head-to-head experience. As a result, some players have felt that it just isn’t the same. However, with less of an emphasis on tournaments, DeBiedma used this opportunity to focus on other aspects of his career. He is now a regular streamer on Twitch, posts videos on his YouTube channel, and became a partial owner of his eSports sponsor, Team Liquid.

With his new role as a partial owner of Liquid, DeBiedma now gets to attend events like a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony for a partnership between the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Los Angeles and Team Liquid to use eSports as an avenue for elevating STEM education in underserved communities. After the event, we got to speak with DeBiedma over the phone about not only his own experiences with the Boys & Girls Club, but his career as a content creator and how he one day wants to host a tournament to encourage children to get into eSports themselves.

You were at an event today encouraging STEM education and eSports, is it ever wild to think about your start in eSports compared to the opportunities today?

Yeah. I mean, it’s just cool to see eSports constantly bridging more gaps, especially among this age group and demographic. I went through the public school system myself in Orlando, Florida. I went to college to study engineering, and a lot of times, things were integrated, right? Even though I went to the Boys & Girls Club while in middle school I also attended tournaments and Smash clubs in college. And I think a lot of those facets of integrating both communities, and both aspects of my life, were rooted in the Boys & Girls Club that I grew up with for sure. It’s a very important thing for me and I’m really glad that this opportunity is here and as present as they are, because both of them are really important for the kids in this area.

So you’re a partial owner for a Team Liquid. What’s that been like? I think you’ve been partial for a year now, right?

I think, give or take. It’s been very good. I’m really happy that I can work more closely alongside the heads of Liquid and help with their planning. Of course, (CEO of Team Liquid) Steve (Arhancet) has obviously been someone who’s believed in me for a very long time and picked me up to Curse Esports back before it was even Liquid. That’s to give you an idea of how long he’s sort of believed in the vision that I had in Smash Bros, and my talent as a player, and I guess through that time I’ve grown into being someone who can have really good input for this team. And so it was just an opportunity that I’m really happy to have. It’s been good and given me an opportunity to, even today at the Boys & Girls Club, to do some really cool things. I was one of the speakers there and I’m just really happy my voice gets to be heard in a lot more avenues than just the corner of Smash, I suppose.

That’s one thing that has been really interesting with your career. You’ve kind of managed to grow beyond, I don’t want to call Melee niche because I don’t think Melee is as niche as people say it is. But eSports in general is still kind of a niche thing, and there you are standing next to Aerial Powers.

And that’s the important part I feel. There are a lot of communities and a lot of people who have talent in so many variants of things. And this is just one more way that it showcases that avenue. There’s talent of all kinds that should be appreciated, and I guess Smash Bros. and just gaming was the one thing that I grew up doing and was good at. There are still just so many more opportunities, and I think that’s the thing everyone should focus on. Never get down about yourself. Always look at the big picture and what you can do from those opportunities.

You’ve had a really long and prosperous Smash Bros. career. Do you ever think about what your future may look like beyond competitions?

I’m a content creator now. I still compete, but I really love making streams and videos and just entertainment for all audiences. It’s been something that over the pandemic I really grew into, and has really risen to prominence in my life. And that’s basically my full-time day-to-day job right now, which is being a live streamer.

People around the world love Smash. It’s really easy to watch, really easy to get into, and it’s not complicated. I think I feel comfortable in front of a camera. I feel comfortable competing under pressure. So those two things got married pretty well and I can see myself doing that for at least another few years.

What has it been like getting a chance to focus more on the creator aspect of your career? You were always kind of dabbling in it, but now you’ve had the opportunity to make it your primary focus.

I mean, I never thought I could really do it. I thought I was mainly going to be known as a competitor, but we were all at home during the pandemic. It really gave me a chance to showcase my personality a bit more, and I wear my emotions on my sleeve. If I win a really close match, I’m gonna yell really loud. If I lose a really close match, I’m probably going to scream really loud also. But it’s that sort of emotive release that a lot of people gain stimulus or find entertainment from. And it’s just naturally how I’ve always been in front or not in front of a camera. I’m a competitive guy and I have the most fun possible when I’m really involved in something, be it a short little video or a very long three-hour bracket run. Either of those can be something really entertaining as long as you know how to really immerse yourself into it and be part of the narrative

I’ll get you out on this one. In terms of Melee, what else would you like to accomplish?

I’d love to be just the biggest content creator I can be. I think I have thankfully managed to, in the world of Ultimate and in Melee, be one of the biggest streamers on Twitch, where there’s the biggest platform for it. So I’m really thankful and blessed that we were able to do that, and so I want to continue growing in that. Maybe do some more variety streams and see what other avenues I can use the way I approach games and my competitive nature. Maybe speedrunning. Maybe I go into some other games that are popular. It’s a good time to experiment right now, and I’m going to see what works and what doesn’t work.

And maybe I also want to help with the initiative of helping younger kids, sort of fall in love with eSports like I did. I always had a dream of running a nationwide you tournament for Smash, or whatever game they want to play. But one that has a bracket one that can be all in good fun and, really, for the spirit of competition. I want to see who really are the most talented people out there and I think Liquid is a really, really good organization to head start that. So that’s one thing I wanted to do, we’ll see what happens in the future, but I definitely have visions on how I want to integrate myself more into that space.

Dominic Fike is in the midst of a major moment: His music career is going swimmingly and he’s a star of one of the biggest shows of the moment, Euphoria. He brought both those sides of himself to The Tonight Show yesterday, where he performed and sat down for a chat with Jimmy Fallon.

Fallon presented a few Euphoria fan theories to Fike, and the first of them is one that Fike said had him really thinking about it. Regarding the idea that Fike’s character Elliot is actually Nate’s estranged brother, Fike said, “I’m not even going to lie: I saw this one online, and I looked at it for a while and there were so many things connecting and so many people were talking about it all through these Reddit threads, and at the end of it, I was like, ‘Am I Nate’s brother?’ I almost called him up and asked him.”

He wasn’t as convinced by the idea that Elliot doesn’t actually exist and he skirted a question about whether Tom Holland, Zendaya’s Spider-Man co-star, would appear on the current Euphoria season.

Fike also spoke about working with Paul McCartney on his McCartney III Imagined album and said that he initially blocked McCartney’s phone number, telling Fallon, “Naturally, when you get a call from anything that you think is spam, you block the number, you delete it, you know what I mean?” Fallon asked, “You blocked Paul McCartney’s number,” and Fike responded, “Immediately, yeah.”

He also performed “Babydoll” on the show and smoothly found his way through a minor mishap. About a minute into the performance, he accidentally knocked down a microphone stand while turning around. When he realized what happened, he slipped a quick “Oh, that fell” into his lyrics and didn’t miss a beat as Fallon helped out by picking the stand up.

Check out the interview and performance above.

Masked Brooklyn-native rapper Leikeli47 is showing off her love for New York in the video for her new single “BITM,” which comes from her just-announced album Shape Up out this spring. It’s her third LP overall but will serve as the finale to her trilogy, following 2017’s Wash Set and 2018’s Acrylic.

The song has a daunting, pulsating beat and assertive, whisper-like vocals as she repeats the confident hook, “B*tch, I’m the man.” The eerie atmosphere is full of echoes and reverberations, and the bridge features a kind of chant about rent being due. It’s idiosyncratic and hypnotic, like her previous single “Chitty Bang,” which was released earlier this year after being on the Madden ’22 soundtrack and then mysteriously disappearing late last year. It has been confirmed as a track on this new album. Earlier in the pandemic, she also unleashed the aptly-titled “Zoom,” whose creative video borrowed its aesthetic from the 16-bit video games of yesteryear, featuring an animated version of Leikeli.

Watch the video for “BITM” above, which features footage from a recent performance of hers at a sold-out show at Elsewhere. Find the album artwork for Shape Up below.

Shape Up is out 4/14 via Hardcover/RCA Records.

Have you ever read the user agreement while signing up for a new service? I sure haven’t (I turn into the guy from Dune when I see words like “applicable” and “third parties” and “billing cycle”), but maybe I should start: TikTok user @mckenziefloyd has gone viral after her boyfriend discovered the Halloween costume-inspiring recipe for Kevin’s chili from The Office can be found in Peacock’s Terms of Use.

“My boyfriend obviously reads the terms and conditions, and I’m trying to figure out why the chili from The Office, the recipe is on here in the terms and conditions with the instructions,” she said with incredulity. It’s true — you can find the recipe here, or if the idea of scrolling through all that legal text sounds even more punishing than re-watching the Michael Scott-less final season of The Office, read it below. Don’t spill.

Ingredients

4 dried ancho chiles
2 Tbs neutral oil (vegetable, canola or grapeseed)
3 lbs ground beef (80/20 or 85/15 lean)
2 medium yellow onions, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic
1 large jalapeño, finely chopped
1 Tbs dried oregano
2 tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
2 Tbs tomato paste
2 12 oz. bottles of beer (lager or pale ale)
3 cans Pinto beans, drained and rinsed
3 cups beef stock
2 ½ cups chopped ripe tomatoes
2 Tbs kosher salt
Chopped scallions, shredded Jack cheese and sour cream for topping

Directions

– Tear ancho chiles into pieces, discarding seeds and stems. In a large heavy pot or Dutch oven, toast chiles over medium-high, stirring occasionally until very fragrant, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer toasted ancho chiles to a food processor or spice mill and process until very finely ground. Set aside.

– Add oil to pot and heat over medium-high. Add ground beef and cook, stirring occasionally to break beef into small pieces, until well browned (about 6 minutes). Using a slotted spoon, transfer beef to a plate and set aside.

– Add onion to pot and cook briefly over medium-high until barely softened, about 2 minutes. The secret is to undercook the onions.

– Using a garlic press, press garlic directly into the pot, 1 clove at a time. Then stir in jalapeños, oregano, cumin, cayenne pepper and tomato paste. Stir and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add beer and continue to cook, stirring and scraping the pan, about 7 minutes.

– Meanwhile, put beans in a large bowl and mash briefly with a potato masher until broken up but not fully mashed.

– Add mashed beans, stock, tomatoes, salt, and cooked beef to pot. Cover and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to low to maintain simmer and cook 2 hours so everything gets to know each other in the pot. Remove from heat, uncover and let stand at least 1 hour (can also be refrigerated 8 hours or overnight).

– Reheat gently, taste and add more salt if necessary, and serve with your favorite toppings. We recommend chopped scallions, shredded Jack cheese and sour cream.

(Via Today)

Just in case fans forgot they’re getting a double dose of Batman this year, Michael Keaton posted a new Instagram photo that has fans going wild in the replies. Presumably the cool as heck silhouette of Keaton’s Dark Knight is from the set of the new Batgirl movie coming to HBO Max. That film is currently filming in London, and there have been paparazzi photos of Keaton’s Batman on set.

You can check out Keaton’s Batman photo below, which has fans filling up the comments with remarks like “BEST BATMAN EVER!!!!” and “THE Batman. THE. Always” along with a whole lot of fire emoji.

After The Batman debuts in March, Keaton’s classic version of the Dark Knight will return later this year in The Flash, which will also feature the last appearance of Ben Affleck’s Batman. So maybe we should’ve said there’s a triple dose of Batman coming down the line.

As for how Keaton is handling being in both the DC Extended Universe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the actor revealed his secret to straddling the two worlds: Not knowing what the heck is happening at anytime. During a November appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Keaton revealed that he’s clueless probably 90% of the time he’s on set as either the Vulture or Batman.

“I have no f*cking clue,” Keaton jokingly admitted to Kimmel. “I have no idea who’s who or why or where I even am.”

(Via Michael Keaton on Instagram)