Greene registered her complaints with noted and very, very loud conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of all people, who—subplot alert!—has been pushing Greene to run for president. She appeared on his InfoWars on Sunday—which might just have been the perfect audience to normalize her very much not-normal behaviors. But MTG seemed downright serious when she carped about the way she is treated by not just Democrats, but by the media at large.
“It bothers me so much,” Greene said. “They treat me as if I’m some kind of crazy person, or like I have three horns coming out of my head.”
Wait, she doesn’t?
Marge Greene says she is misunderstood: “It just bothers me so much. They treat me as if I’m some kind of crazy person – like I have 3 horns coming out of my head. But what they don’t understand is, they’re the ones that are crazy.” pic.twitter.com/u8XEdZEtdw
Ms Greene, who was stripped of her congressional committee assignments last year after video surfaced of her harassing a school shooting survivor, added that “they” do not understand that “they’re the ones that are crazy and they’re the ones that are so disconnected.”
Spoken like every 5-year-old who’s ever tried that “I know you are, but what am I?” bit.
Debates about who the best rapper is never seem to end, and now Vince Staples has shared his thoughts on one aspect of the discussion: When it comes to the “biggest” rapper, he thinks Snoop Dogg occupies that throne.
Speaking with Ebro Darden for a Black History Month episode of Apple Music 1’s The Message, Staples said of Snoop, “Snoop Dogg has always been the biggest rapper as far as brand, and namesake, to me at least. You can argue, people are equal, but you can’t argue nobody’s bigger than Snoop Dogg… He got the Martha Stewart show cracking right now, and nobody’s saying, ‘Who is that,’ when they watching the show, you know what I mean?”
He also explained why this year’s hip-hop-focused Super Bowl Halftime Show didn’t feel like a big deal to him, because it’s something that was supposed to happen:
“To me, [the halftime show]’s not even something to be super-duper excited about. It’s like, finally, because you can’t lie about it no more. It’s been so many times that they’ve pretended that this wasn’t a phenomenon, you know what I’m saying? They were playing songs from decades ago. That just goes to show you how long it’s been a thing, how long it’s been the pinnacle, but it’s good that they finally stop being stubborn and start coming around because it’s unavoidable at this point. […]
It’s just good to have that moment and just see how it comes full circle from Eminem taking his knee stance, to bringing it full circle with the Kaepernick situation, and the work that Jay-Z’s done in the messaging, and the lyrics, and all that… My pops used to always tell me… You come home like, ‘Oh, yeah. I got good grades.’ He’s like, ‘What you expect? You happy? You supposed to do that.’ I’m not giving people pats on the back for doing what they supposed to do. That’s just not how I’m built. I’m not proud of them, I’m not happy that they did it: they should have did it, you know what I’m saying? What else you going to do? What you going to put on there that’s more popping in LA for the LA Super Bowl? What’s your options? They had no other options except for the biggest hip-hop producer in the history of hip-hop arguably, the biggest rapper in hip-hop history arguably, and the biggest rapper out right now arguably. What other choice did you have? They didn’t do us no favor. They did what they was supposed to do.”
In his songs, Adam Granduciel presents himself as a man adrift — he’s out on the road, or standing in the rain, or floating in between the waves, or perhaps just lost in a dream. But on stage last week in St. Paul with his band, The War On Drugs, he cut an entirely different figure: He looked happy.
“It’s my birthday and I’m going to play a fucking Bob Seger song!” he goofily exclaimed at the first of two packed mid-week concerts at the Palace Theater. Granduciel then proceeded to tease “Night Moves,” the most heartland rock-y tune in the legendary heartland rocker’s catalog, before finally landing on a song that The War On Drugs had never played live before, the stately ballad “Against The Wind.”
It was a sentimental choice for the 43-year-old Granduciel, who mentioned that “Against The Wind” is a song he’s played frequently for his young son, Bruce. But it also had a perhaps subliminal thematic importance for a band dealing with the usual headaches (and a few unusual headaches) of playing live in the “sort of but not really” post-Covid era. Two weeks before the tour began in mid-January, they were forced to cancel two shows in Toronto due to Canadian indoor capacity restrictions. They also decided to send their support acts packing, in order to keep the tour party bubble as small as possible. But then a member of the party got sick anyway a few days into the tour, which required postponing gigs in Nashville and Atlanta.
And then there was the tour’s would-be crowning moment, a headlining show in late January at Madison Square Garden in New York City, a “we made it!” achievement for any band. But for The War On Drugs, it was accompanied by a fierce Nor’easter that swamped the East Coast in a blizzard the day of the concert.
As bassist Dave Hartley mused to me in a recent interview. “Going into that show I was like, is this tour snakebitten?”
By the time The War On Drugs reached the Midwest a few weeks later, any worries about being stuck on a cursed journey had seemingly abated. Having seen the band more than a half-dozen times over the course of a decade — and after digging deep into their bootlegs — I am confident in declaring that they have never played better than they are right now. The shows in St. Paul found them in an enviable sweet spot — the performances were focused and powerful, and the camaraderie between the band and the audience was funny and celebratory. Along with the “Against The Wind” bust out, the birthday show was distinguished by a pizza being delivered to Adam on stage, which he then gifted to the band’s lighting director. That was after an epic balloon drop during the set’s cathartic high point, “Under The Pressure.” It all felt simultaneously tight and loose.
In the band’s press photos, Granduciel typically is seen brooding by himself, a signifier of the solitary manner in which he has assembled most War On Drugs albums. But for their latest LP, 2021’s I Don’t Live Here Anymore, they projected more of a group identity as Granduciel behind the scenes also sought to make the writing and recording process more collaborative. And that has translated big time to the communal vibe of the current tour. Like The E Street Band, each member of The War On Drugs now has a recognizable persona — Hartley is the stoic consigliere situated to Granduciel’s immediate right, drummer Charlie Hall is the kimono-clad showman, keyboardist Robbie Bennett is the swaying creator of synth-y moods, multi-instrumentalists Anthony LaMarca and Charlie Natchez are the invaluable utility fielders, and new touring musician Eliza Hardy Jones is the Patti Scialfa figure.
“There’s something about seeing us where it’s like, ‘Oh, this stuff gets a little bit more fully realized in the live environment,’” Granduciel told me. “It was like one day all of a sudden we were a good live band.”
If Granduciel sounds somewhat surprised by this development — I would call them a great live band, by the way — it’s only because he’s aware of the band’s history before their 2014 breakthrough, Lost In The Dream. For many fans, the history of The War On Drugs starts with their third album, which is also when the current lineup first came together as a live unit. But the story of how they got there is long and rife with dramatic twists and turns that for years seemed to portend all but certain failure.
“I don’t think people realize how strange our trajectory is, where each record has been incrementally a little bit better and a little bit bigger than the last one,” said Hartley, the band’s only other charter member. “Most people think that all of a sudden we came out of nowhere. That’s not really how it went at all.”
Formed in 2005 a few years after Granduciel moved to Philadelphia, The War On Drugs didn’t start out making heart-tugging, widescreen anthems that evoke the surging emotionalism of stadium rock. Initially, it was “a purely freaked out art show” featuring Granduciel and his good friend Kurt Vile doing a noisy and deconstructionist take on AOR, Hartley said. “We were playing basements, and it was just very experimental in the early days.”
Granduciel and Hartley have been reflecting lately on those early days in light of how dramatically their fortunes have changed in the past decade. Yes, mounting a tour during a lingering pandemic is a challenge. But it’s nothing compared with one of their first tours in the late aughts, when they were invited to open some dates in the upper Midwest for a noise-punk band from Brooklyn who subsequently broke up the day before the tour was supposed to start. The clubs said The War On Drugs could play, but they wouldn’t get paid.
“We still fucking went!” Hartley said. “It was me and Kurt and Adam. We piled in Adam’s Volvo. And as we’re driving pieces of the Volvo started falling off.”
The tour only got worse from there. They had to pick up a drummer in every city; one night, they couldn’t find anyone so Hartley played drums. “The whole tour was a trainwreck,” he said. “Really fucked up shows, nobody came, we lost money. The Volvo was spewing out fumes. The catalytic converter literally fell off as we were pulling back into Philly.”
“We had no real concept,” Granduciel admits. “I didn’t have any confidence. I was kind of driving a ship with my eyes closed.”
In those years, a semi-stable lineup of Granduciel, Vile, and Hartley was augmented by a revolving cast of support musicians. One of those people was the affable Hall, who didn’t become the permanent drummer until the Lost In The Dream era.
“Sometimes there were four of us. Sometimes there were eight of us,” he said of the early days. “You weren’t entirely sure who was going to be at the gig when you showed up.”
The band’s career path was so haphazard in the late aughts and early 2010s that it’s probably overly generous to call it a “career path.” And yet amid the chaos, there was an important evolution taking place. What started as a dirty, lo-fi revisionist take on classic rock was slowly moving toward an extension of that tradition. Hartley noticed it initially with Granduciel’s guitar playing, which would ultimately become one of the band’s sonic signatures. “In the very beginning he played acoustic through an amp generally,” he recalled. “At some point he started playing electric. I remember literally being like, ‘Whoa, he’s soloing all the time now. When did this happen?’”
Another turning point occurred in 2008 at the La Route du Rock festival in France, around the time of The War On Drugs’ debut album, Wagonwheel Blues. The band was under-rehearsed and barely recognized. But something magic happened when they were suddenly thrust into a wide open space in front of a large audience. The music could finally swell to proper size.
“Even before we knew how to present live music, it didn’t feel like it was a house or basement-type show,” Granduciel said. “It always felt like we needed space.”
If there is a specific moment when the modern version of The War On Drugs was born, it was a six-week trek across the United States in support of Destroyer in the spring of 2011. Dan Bejar invited them to open in spite of their second album, Slave Ambient, not being scheduled for release until that August. But that’s not the only reason why playing these shows might have seemed at the time like a bad idea. There was also the matter of the tour starting in Bejar’s hometown of Vancouver, a city located about 4,800 miles from Philadelphia.
“If we would have had proper management, somebody would’ve said, ‘No, you’re not going to do that tour,’” Granduciel said. “But we didn’t. So, I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”
Destroyer had just released one of their most acclaimed and popular albums, Kaputt. To pull off that album’s lush, 1980s-inspired sound, the lineup swelled to eight musicians. I never made the connection until Granduciel mentioned this tour, but the current lineup of The War On Drugs has a lot in common with Kaputt-era Destroyer, down to the prominent use of atmospheric saxophone wails to complement romantic, synth-driven soundscapes.
Not that The War On Drugs sounded at all like that in 2011. I saw them for the first time on this tour at a bar in Madison, Wis., with about 20 other people who arrived about an hour before Destroyer was set to perform. (I had been a War On Drugs fan ever since hearing “Arms Like A Boulders” a few years earlier on a local college radio station.) Touring as a four-piece that now included Bennett on keyboards and guitar, they were in the midst of their “primal” era, in which they played harder and louder and with more improvisations.
“There would be a lot of long jams,” Bennett said. “Holding a groove for a really long time. I think doing that helps you gel as a band.”
For Granduciel, the challenge was “how can we make these albums that were done with loops and sampling and resampling sound like a band?” Every gig was a process of trial and error with the goal of reinventing The War On Drugs in real time. There was also the aspirational aspect of seeing a more successful and organized band like Destroyer function on the road.
“Opening for Destroyer every night, they have this big band, and this big sound,” he said. “And they were in a bus, which to us seemed like, ‘Oh, man, I doubt we’ll ever be in a bus. But what if we are?’”
When it came time to tour behind Lost In The Dream, Granduciel insisted on making his own kind of “big sound,” even if he was reasonably sure it would break him financially. This is when Hall, LaMarca, and Natchez entered the picture. “It was just like, ‘If this is my last tour with this band, before it starts hemorrhaging money, I really want to have a six-piece band.”
And the rest, as they say, is history. Though The War On Drugs continue to grow in significant ways. The lack of confidence that Granduciel copped to early on has been replaced by the bravado of road-tested veterans. I was sad to miss the MSG show — the weather conspired against taking a flight to New York — but reports from friends and colleagues suggest that it was a triumph under trying circumstances. In St. Paul, the grandness of the performances — which on both nights extended to more than two and a half hours — evidenced a band hitting a new peak. If you can, see them now.
Of the new songs, the MVP is “Harmonia’s Dream,” which has been stretched to about 12 minutes thanks to an extended, Kraftwerk-like prologue that sets up a crowd-pleasing explosion of sound. I also loved hearing “Slow Ghost,” a great mid-tempo number reminiscent of Tom Petty’s Hard Promises period that was inexplicably left off of I Don’t Live Here Anymore. Hartley singled out the “Darkness On The Edge Of Town energy” of “Wasted” as a personal highlight, as well as the “fucking sick” funk of “Victim” and the undeniable title track. (“I see a lot of cellphones pop out when we play that song,” he said.) There’s also room for improvement — the instrumental fade-out on “Change” seems ripe for greater musical exploration down the road. (“I don’t feel like we’ve totally cracked that one yet,” Hartley admitted.)
On the second night in St. Paul, Granduciel solicited requests from the crowd and responded by leading the band into “Coming Through,” a rarity from 2010’s Future Weather EP. The last time I heard them play it was at that show in Madison, Wis. with Destroyer. Both the times and the band have changed so much since then.
For all of the many valleys The War On Drugs have traversed, Granduciel seemed to enjoy riding their current peak. After playfully teasing the riff from “Night Moves” throughout the night — some city is bound to get the whole song on this tour — he called back to a line from the previous night’s “Against The Wind”
“Let the cowboys ride!” he exclaimed with an infectious smirk. And with that, The War On Drugs walked off stage and headed off to the next city.
The War On Drugs is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
As usual, a new release from Kanye means a new slew of drama. Some fans will likely be impacted by his decision to bring out both accused rapist Marilyn Manson and embattled rapper DaBaby at yet another listening. Then, there’s the fact that he sampled his own estranged ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, praising his skills in one of the Donda 2 tracks. But Ye has also included words from another pretty famous woman on his new album. Getting back into his political lane, Ye included none other than Vice President Kamala Harris on one of Donda 2‘s tracks.
In case you missed the moment during last year’s tumultuous election, it’s the recorded phone call between Kamala and President Joe Biden when she calls him with the confirmed results that their ticket did, in fact, win the White House. Though the Democratic party is currently in power, and still seeming incapable of getting any real change pushed through congress, perhaps Kanye quoting Kamala’s heartfelt “we did it!” chant was a little early on. But Kanye is never one to shy away from political games,especially since he ran for president himself in the race Joe eventually won. Still, his inclusion of Kamala’s take on the situation is notable,and might even lead to more.
And tonight, at the Florida listening party for the record, Manson was front and center with Ye, along with the still-embattled rapper DaBaby, whose recent comments about HIV rubbed plenty of fans — and his own fellow collaborators — as extremely homophobic and backwards. But in Kanye’s world, being chastised by the public is part of an artist’s appeal. Tonight’s listening party took place at LoanDepot Park Stadium in Miami, Florida, and marked the second time Ye brought out both artists for a listening — they also joined him at the original Donda listening in Chicago.
Though Coldplay are fresh off the release of their own new album, Music Of The Spheres, the well-established Brit pop-rock band took a moment to celebrate some music by another artist. In a new set of songs for their Spotify Singles session, the band released an acoustic version of their own new song, “Let Somebody Go” — which features Selena Gomez herself on the studio version — and a cover of a pretty classic Kid Cudi song that’s apparently made an impression on Chris Martin.
“‘Day ‘N’ Nite’ I loved when it came out, and I still love love love it,” Coldplay frontman Chris Martin said in a statement. “This is the first time I think that we’ve really taken proper time to record a cover, because in my head I could hear a version of it quite different from the original, that hopefully just reinforces what a brilliant song it is. One way or another I hope that anyone listening will just think, ‘Wow, Kid Cudi is amazing.’”
Since Kid Cudi has once again been having a hard time with his mental health lately, and beefing with Kanye, this uplifting cover of one of his best songs couldn’t come at a better time. Check out the cover along with an acoustic “Let Somebody Go” below.
While Kanye West’s eleventh album Donda 2 did not arrive as promised on February 22, Kanye did hold a live performance of songs from the album during a live event at Miami’s LoanDepot Park Stadium. The event faced a near three-hour delay, but things finally got underway just before 11 pm EST. Altogether, the night was filled with new music from Kanye and appearances from Jack Harlow, Migos, Playboi Carti, Fivio Foreign, Alicia Keys, Pusha T, and more. While the new songs were certainly a highlight of the night, another notable moment came when Kanye sampled his ex-wife Kim Kardashian on a track from Donda 2.
During the livestream, soft music plays in the background when Kim Kardashian’s voice blares from the speakers. “I married the best rapper of all time,” she can be heard saying. “Not only that, he’s the richest black man in America. A talented, legit genius who gave me four incredible kids.” It then transitions into the vocals of another artist. The Kim Kardashian quote is from a monologue that she delivered during an October 2021 episode of Saturday Night Live that she hosted. Kim used her monologue to joke about her divorce from Kanye, and during the episode, she added, “So when I divorced him, you have to know it came down to just one thing: his personality.”
As for Donda 2, there’s still no sign of the album, which Kanye said would only be available on his Stem Player. Orders for those devices, which retail at $214.50, have yet to be shipped out so we’ll just have to wait and see how this all goes.
You can hear the Kim Kardashian sample above.
Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
When Spider-Man: No Way Home dropped late last year, it did more than clean up at the box office. It also united the last three live-action actors to play Peter Parker on the big screen. Tom Holland got to hobnob with Tobey Maguire, who assumed him the role 2002 through 2007, and with Andrew Garfield, who played him in 2012 and 2014.
It was a big deal for Holland, and it was clearly a big deal for Garfield, as he recently revealed on an episode of The Graham Norton Show. Garfield recounted his drama school days, when he no doubt did plenty of classic theater — but also some of the Maguire-era Spider-Man films.
“He’s my Spider-Man,” Garfield said of Maguire. “I would practice his lines in the mirror when I was in drama school.” He added, “I was very high at the time.”
Garfield said one of his friends used to “crack up” at his Maguire-Spidey takes. ”[He] would look at me like, ‘Yeah, you’ll never play Spider-Man, Andy.’ And then here we are.”
It’s been a big last few months for the actor. He co-starred in The Eyes of Tammy Faye with Jessica Chastain, who received and Oscar nomination for her work. Garfield, meanwhile, got one for Tick, Tick…BOOM! Indeed, No Way Home aside, he’s moved on from playing Queens’ favorite web-slinging superhero.
“I’m far too old to be playing Spider-Man now,” Garfield said before discussing his super-secret return to the role. “But they asked me back and it’s the sweetest thing ever because I’d put that to bed. I was like, ‘I’m good, I’m done, that’s lovely.’ And Tom Holland is just the best, so I just kind of became a fan again.”
You can watch Garfield’s appearance on The Graham Norton Show below.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden unveiled a “first tranche” of US sanctions against Russia, who is on the verge of an invasion of neighboring Ukraine. This came after a flurry of military vehicles were seen heading into the nation from Russia early Tuesday morning. The rest of the world awaits what will happen next in the conflict. In the meantime, one person decided to reach out to Cardi B for her opinion on everything, as she’s been very open in the past on political matters.
Wish these world leaders stop tripping about power and really think about whose really getting affected (citizens) besides the whole world is in a crisis.War,sanctions,invasions should be the last thing these leaders should worry about. https://t.co/25qemEtzF9
“Wish these world leaders stop tripping about power and really think about whose really getting affected (citizens) besides the whole world is in a crisis,” she tweeted in response. Another person didn’t believe that Cardi was behind the tweet, so she replied with a video of herself speaking further on the matter.
“This phone is not hacked, it’s really me,” she said. “I actually want to say a lot of things, but I’m just gonna mind my business because sometimes, I feel like I have such a big platform that if I don’t say the right things, I might get killed.” She continued:
I’m really not on NATO’s side, I’m really not on Russian side, I’m actually [on] the citizens’ side, because at the end of the day, the world is having a crisis right now. This inflation not only in America, but everywhere in the world! It’s really hard to get the economy back up. There is so much shipments and embarkments backed up, China’s not really messing with us, so a lot of things are behind, a lot of goods are behind, and this shit just made it a lot more complicated, so I’m just really annoyed by this.
Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
The original Halloween, from 1978, turned Jamie Lee Curtis from daughter of Hollywood royalty (and a Columbo bit player) into a big name, someone who became as famous as her parents, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis. She’s returned to the role of Final Girl Laurie Stode many times. She even got killed off once, before being resurrected in 2018’s reboot/sequel. But on Tuesday, she officially bid farewell to the series that made her a star.
The actress announced that she’d wrapped filming of Halloween Ends, the third entry in the wing of the series helmed by David Gordon Green (who can also be found cranking out The Righteous Gemstones along with his co-writer Danny McBride — that’s range).
“A bittersweet END for me on the Halloween movies,” Curtis wrote. “I’ve made great friends and have collaborated with wonderful artists on these three movies and today my part in the film has been completed and with it the END for me of this trilogy.” She thanked the fans, her co-stars, the production companies, and her character herself for giving her what’s arguably her signature role.
Curtis played Laurie in the first two Halloween movies, then returned for 1998’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. She bid adieu to the character in 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, getting offed in the opening sequence. Another near two decades later, Laurie was brought back to life with the 2018 revival, which was a direct sequel to the original, ignoring all other entries, and which found Laurie struggling with PTSD, all while baddie Michael Myers starts to kill anew. With Ends and last year’s Kills, it’s one of the longest runs anyone’s had of playing the same character, so hats off to a scream queen.
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