Month: March 2022

Rumors of a toxic working environment on the set Euphoria have been swirling even before Season 2 began, and now, background extras are coming forward with detailed accusations of a “hellish” shoot thanks to creator Sam Levinson‘s “off the cuff” shooting style. According to a new report, Levinson would often arrive at work with no shot list, which would result in extras being left sitting for hours, often in the cold, as he constantly reset the cameras and rearranged scenes. Making matters worse is that the extras would allegedly not be allowed to use the restroom and they began “dropping like flies” as the production continued to rack up SAG-AFTRA violations like not providing them meals on time or having 18 hour workdays.

Via The Daily Beast:

“I understand that I’m doing background work,” one background actor told The Daily Beast. “I’m not the most important person there, I know where I am on the totem pole. But it got to a point where I was like, I’m still a person, I’m still human. Please let me go to the restroom, don’t tell me I can’t go for 30 minutes or tell me I can’t get a snack when you’re not going to feed me and it’s 4 a.m. It just very much felt like we didn’t exist as people.”

As Euphoria continues to be the most-watched show on HBO, the network defended the on-set conditions and cited COVID protocols as a potential cause of things not going smoothly. Otherwise, HBO said the production was in full compliance with union mandates.

“The well-being of cast and crew on our productions is always a top priority,” HBO said in a statement. “The production was in full compliance with all safety guidelines and guild protocols. It’s not uncommon for drama series to have complex shoots, and COVID protocols add an additional layer. We maintain an open line of communication with all the guilds, including SAG-AFTRA. There were never any formal inquiries raised.”

(Via The Daily Beast)

Madi Diaz has released Same History, New Feelings, her new EP to follow up last year’s History Of A Feeling. This EP is made up of newer versions of songs from that record, and she recruited Waxahatchee, Natalie Hemby, Courtney Marie Andrews, and Angel Olsen, the latter of whom is on the poignant new “Forever (New Feelings Version).” The pair take turns singing each line, the emotion building up with every cutting word: “Now that the war is over / How can you still make love?”

“I fell in love with this song when Madi first shared the demo with me a long time ago, and I feel so honored she let me share it with her this time around,” Olsen said of the song. Diaz added, “I’ve been listening as a fan to these four women for quite awhile now. I’m honored to call them my friends and to have their voices singing these songs with me is something that I still can’t quite fathom. I’m so thankful for their artistry and their stories giving these songs a whole new world and a whole new life. To share this earth and make music with them in this lifetime is a treasure and a gift from beyond the beyond.”

Listen to “Forever (New Feelings Version)” above.

Sometimes the best new R&B can be hard to find, but there are plenty of great rhythm-and-blues tunes to get into if you have the time to sift through the hundreds of newly released songs every week. So that R&B heads can focus on listening to what they really love in its true form, we’ll be offering a digest of the best new R&B songs that fans of the genre should hear every Friday.

This week features Kehlani’s new single, “Little Story,” which serves as the latest offering from her upcoming album Blue Water Road. Robert Glasper returns with Black Radio III his first full-length project since 2019’s F*ck Yo Feelings while British singer Tiana Major9 prepares to release her upcoming EP with “2 Seater” featuring Smino.

Kehlani — “Little Story”

At the end of last year, Kehlani announced that her third album Blue Water Road was on the way. With its lead single “Altar” still in rotation, you can now enjoy “Little Story” her second offering from the album that aims to add more context to what’s to come on Blue Water Road.

Robert Glasper — Black Radio III

Just shy of ten years after he released his fifth album Black Radio, a project that granted him the award for Best R&B Album at the 2013 Grammys, Robert Glasper returned with the third installment in the series. Black Radio III arrives with 13 songs and contributions from Killer Mike, BJ The Chicago Kid, Ant Clemons, HER, PJ Morton, India.Arie, and many more.

Tiana Major9 — “2 Seater” Feat. Smino

Later this month, British singer Tiana Major9 will release her second project Fool Me Once. It’s her first release since 2021’s At Sixes And Sevens Remixed which brought new voices to songs from her 2020 project At Sixes And Sevens. To prepare for the release of Fool Me Once, Tiana calls on Smino for its romantic lead single “2 Seater.”

Dylan Sinclair — “Suppress”

Toronto singer Dylan Sinclair is ready to take things to a new level as he prepares to release a new EP to the world. The JUNO Award-nominee returns with “Suppress,” a moody single that finds him having empathy towards his girlfriend’s struggle to cope with his growing fame. The song arrives after he released “Regrets” last fall.

Taylor Belle — Out Of Body

Following a consistent stretch of singles that dates back to 2019, Los Angeles-based singer Taylor Belle has finally arrived with her debut project. She returns with Out Of Body which offers eight songs and a lone feature from Tank God for a body of work that she describes as captivating, unique, and ethereal.

Thuy — “Figured U Out”

Last fall, singer Thuy released her debut project I Hope U See This which dropped off eight songs focused on heartbreak, love, empowerment, and self-confidence. In her continued effort to promote the project, she returns with a new video for “Figured U Out” which watches her discover the deceitful ways of her partner.

Maeta — “Frank For You”

Indianapolis singer Maeta is less than a year removed from her debut project Habits which she delivered after landing a deal with Roc Nation. With the hope of new music on the way, she returns with “Frank For You” which finds her admitting to her ability to make the pains of a relationship go away with her sweet vocals.

Che Ecru — Pain Pack 5

If there’s one thing that Boston native Che Ecru will do, it’s release more than enough music to keep his fans happy. In 2020, he dropped three projects, Still Single, Projection, and Til Death (which he gave a deluxe for last year). This year, he gets the ball rolling with Pain Pack 5 which grants eight new songs for listeners to enjoy.

Starrah — “222”

Last year, Starrah, who has earned plenty of success as a songwriter penning hits for Rihanna, Normani, Drake, Nicki Minaj, and more, arrived with her lastest project The Longest Interlude. It was her first project since 2017’s Starrah X Diplo with producer Diplo. It looks like they’ll be more from Starrah on the way as she kicks off her 2022 year with her laid-back single “222.”

OHenry — “Belong With Me”

Nigerian-American and Oakland native OHenry will surely catch your ear with his recent single, “Racin,” a sultry anthem that saw him sprinting at the speed of light to reconnect with his lover. If that isn’t enough his latest single might do the job for you. OHenry arrives with “Belong With Me” is a heartfelt number that sees him deep in regret for the pain he caused towards his lover.

Reminisce — “Hustle” Feat. Buju & D Smoke

After kicking off the year with “Alaye Toh Se Gogo,” Nigerian rapper keeps his momentum alive with his new single “Hustle” alongside D Smoke and Nigerian singer Buju. The track is dedicated to putting in your all to reach your goals and be the very best you can be.

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

Pusha T’s newest single “Diet Coke” has some legs, and he’s using them to go the distance. Last night, the Virginia rapper stopped by the set of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to deliver a snow-capped performance of his latest track. Decked out in all-black from his puffer coat to his climbing boots, Pusha delivered his performance in front of a screen depicting a wind-blown, snow-covered landscape as faux flakes fell from the ceiling of the studio. To add to the effect, the camera begins with a tight shot on Pusha’s face, only revealing the full tableau toward the end of the song.

“Diet Coke” is Pusha’s first new solo single since 2018, when he released his Grammy-nominated collaborative album with Kanye West, Daytona. The song appears to be the first from Pusha’s upcoming fourth studio album, which he says is due sometime this year. While details remain sparse, he has revealed that the new album will contain a collaboration with Jay-Z. Also, last night, he released another new single with Nigo, “Hear Me Clearly.” Whenever the new album actually does drop, it appears there’s a strong possibility it’ll live up to his promise to top Daytona.

Watch Pusha T’s snow-capped “Diet Coke” performance from The Late Show above.

(Spoilers for Netflix’s Bad Vegan will be found below.)

Bad Vegan tells the story of Sarma Melngailis, the celebrity restauranteur who fell from grace and became a fugitive of the law. Sarma got sucked into a cult-like mentality by Anthony Strangis (who used the pseudonym of “Shane Fox”), who she eventually married and who apparently persuaded her to drain her business accounts for, well, reasons. He had promised to make her dog immortal, among other things, and the smart and successful Sarma — the founder of the wildly popular One Lucky Duck and Pure Food and Wine eateries in NYC — ended up in a bad situation. She served four months in Rikers after pleading guilty to grand larceny. Investors got the shaft, her staff had long since walked out after not being paid, and the eateries shuttered forever.

It’s a sensational true story, for sure, to became known as “the vegan Bernie Madoff.” But there’s a strange Alec Baldwin connection here, so let’s dig into that gossipy tidbit.

Alec and Sarma were friends, and he may have wanted to be more than friends, and one doesn’t even have to watch Bad Vegan to see that suggestion. Alec was a huge fan of Pure Food and Wine, and on July 26, 2011, he tweeted, “… when in NY, folks, go to Pure Food and Wine on Irving Place. Even if just to stare at @Sarma.”

Well, Sarma and Alec never actually got together (for reasons disclosed in Bad Vegan), and Alec actually met the woman who would become his wife (Hilaria) while dining at Pure. In 2019, Alec posted an Instagram tribute to how he met Hilaria: “8 years ago, I wandered into Pure Food and Wine on Irving Place, on an unseasonably warm February evening… I turned to my left I saw a woman who would change my life. Entirely.”

Sarma had continued to exchange banter on Twitter with Alec, and she soon noticed a man joking around with Alec and asking him for advice. In 2020, The Daily Beast characterized this man, who was Anthony Strangis, as a hustler, and yep, that’s about right. There’s no real sense that Alec actually knew the guy beyond exchanging tweets, and Sarma began talking with Strangis online. Soon enough, she fell under his spell, and she was giving him money and generally falling under Anthony’s spell. Bad Vegan details what came next and how, eventually, the law came for both of them.

Bad Vegan (from executive producer Chris Smith of Tiger King and Fyre: The Greatest Party) will stream on March 16.

Charli XCX has collaborated with many artists over the course of her career, but one she hasn’t yet been able to add to the list (at least in terms of having released music with them) is Britney Spears. She actually came close on more than one occasion, though, as she noted on a recent Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen appearance.

During the show, a couple of fans asked Charli if she was the first choice to be on Spears’ remix of the 2016 Glory single “Slumber Party” (the remix ended up featuring Tinashe), as well as what it was like to write songs for Spears’ 2013 album Britney Jean (no songs penned by Charli ended up on the album).

Charli was impressed with the questions, as her initial response was, “Whoa, that is some knowledge right there.” She continued:

“I don’t know if I was the first choice, but I did get asked to feature on the ‘Slumber Party’ remix. Unfortunately, it just couldn’t work out with the timings and everything, but I’m really impressed that you know that. That’s like very deep Nardwuar vibes. Very deep cuts. And working on the album was, you know, amazing. Nothing ended up on there, but I’m honored any time Britney calls, obviously. What a queen.”

Cohen noted he’d be interested in seeing Charli and Britney collaborate now and Charli replied, “Me too. I mean, I would love that.”

Elsewhere during the show, Charli was asked for her favorite Spears song and she couldn’t pick just one, saying, “So hard, like really, really impossible, but I really love ‘Gimme More’ slash ‘Toxic,’ sorry. Or ‘Everytime!’” Cohen also asked who Charli would like to work with and she answered, “I mean, I feel like every songwriter’s dream is to get a Rihanna cut. That’s, like, the one because she’s just the best.”

Check out clips from the interview above and below.

Charli XCX is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Bubble is no Cliff Beasts 6: The Battle For Everest, but it still looks fun. The Judd Apatow-directed comedy follows a group of actors and actresses who are stuck inside a pandemic bubble at a hotel while they attempt to complete the sixth film in the dinosaurs franchise. There’s drinking, hookups, bad green screen, helicopter escapades, dancing dinosaur TikToks, and David Duchovny snorting drugs off Keegan-Michael Key’s bald head and telling a British man, “Stop being Benedict Cumberbatch.” Best of all, unlike much of Apatow’s recent work, The Bubble is under two hours.

The Bubble was supposedly inspired by Jurassic World Dominion, “which faced numerous pandemic-related delays that forced the cast to remain in the U.K. for months,” according to Variety, including production stopping and restarting several times due to positive COVID-19 tests. Hopefully Karen Gillan got the inside scoop from Jurassic star Chris Pratt while they were filming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 together.

The Bubble, which was written by Apatow and Pam Brady (South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut and Team America: World Police writer, Lady Dynamite creator) and also stars Pedro Pascal, Leslie Mann, Rob Delaney, Iris Apatow, Peter Serafinowicz, and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm breakout Maria Bakalova, hits Netflix on April 1.

What do Band Of Horses have in common with The Strokes and Interpol? Their first album was mostly considered to be an instant classic, though their second album was arguably better. Band Of Horses may have dominated much of indie music discourse in the mid-aughts, but they’re now making a triumphant return with their first album in six years, Things Are Great. Hosts Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen share their thoughts about the band’s comeback on this week’s Indiecast episode.

Along with reviewing new music, Steven and Ian talked about this biggest news in music this week: Bandcamp was purchased by Epic Games, a tech game company which owns popular video games like Fortnite. Twitter, of course, lit up with jokes about the acquisition while others wondered if it will fundamentally change how Bandcamp compensates artists more than any other music service. On top of the Bandcamp news, this week saw some artists beefing with their stans. Mitski denounced concertgoers who film her entire performance while Charli XCX came at a fan who accused her of going through a “midlife crisis.”

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian gives a shout out to Boston hardcore punk band Vein.fm, whose new album This World Is Going To Ruin You drops this week. Meanwhile, Steven reminds Indiecast listeners that Sonic Youth’s In/Out/In compilation comes out next week, which features a mix of low-key and noisy tracks.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 79 on Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

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

Cryptic mail seems to be a productive way of promoting new music these days. Last week, Florence And The Machine fans received a pink envelope with a playing card that had the word “KING” spelled out on it, which ended up being the title of their new single. Arcade Fire fans are the lucky ones this time; they shared on both Reddit and Twitter that they received postcards from the band with musical notation, the words “we missed you,” and the Arcade Fire logo. At least this is less cryptic and more of a promise of new music.

The Canadian sextet’s last album was 2017’s Everything Now. It was also marketed in a creative way, which they ended up apologizing for: they sold Kendall and Kylie Jenner tour shirts and $109 fidget spinners, instituted a formal dress code for one of their shows, and made a strange joke about “removable jihadi beards.” They also got Stephen Colbert into the action, having the Late Show host’s Twitter account “leak” a series of obviously phony demands made by the band. Hopefully they learned their lesson from over-the-top marketing campaigns and will stick to sending postcards to fans, which is much more sensical and pleasant.

If you want to understand the Russia Ukraine War on a deeper, geopolitical level, there are two ways to do it: read and watch everything you can about the years-long tension between the two countries and what finally brought them to the violent conflict they’re currently engaged in. Or watch Fox News spin some serious pro-Putin propaganda and emerge with a totally distorted view of what sort of dude Vladimir Putin is.

In a desperate attempt to understand why, exactly, Putin invaded Ukraine, The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic decided to spend “648 straight hours” watching Fox News in order to get a stronger grasp on the situation—at least as the network that has brought us Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham sees it—and was able to “Foxsplain” it all in just under three minutes.

The biggest question, of course, is: Why did Putin invade Ukraine? The answer, Lydic says, is complex:

“Burisma. Critical race genders. Minnie Mouse in a pantsuit. Don’t believe me? Take a look inside the gender neutral bathroom in Hunter Biden’s laptop. This is happening because ‘President’ Biden is weak. When Donald Trump was president, Putin didn’t meddle in Ukraine—he meddled in America! Putin is strong and Biden is weak. America needs a strong leader. By the way: Why are we supposed to think that Vladimir Putin is evil? He’s not the one poisoning our children with critical race theory!”

As anyone who has ever tried to follow the illogical trajectory of Fox News’ thinking knows, there is no logic to it. And flip-flopping ideologies are part of the network’s trademark, though you’ll never hear one of their talking heads admit it—despite the fact that hours of video and countless transcripts of their previous comments exist, as Lydic demonstrated.

After stating that “Vladimir Putin is evil, I’ve always said that” then reiterating that she has “never said that Vladimir Putin is a handsome genius with a hottie’s body,” a clip from a week before featured her saying exactly that.

And like any true Fox devotee, Lydic has some pretty bold ideas about how we can put an end to the current situation between Russia and Ukraine: “We need to be sending cruise missiles! Chevy Cruzes, Penélope Cruzs, Norwegian Cruise Lines… Tom Cruises, Terry Crewses, booze cruises, Booz Allen, Tim Allen… Allen Iverson?”

You can watch the full clip, which is sadly not too off-base, above.