Month: March 2022

After more than 65,000 people donated, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher have reached their goal of $30 million to help Ukrainians in need. But the fundraising effort isn’t over.

“We are overwhelmed with gratitude for the support,” the Black Swan actress, who was born in Ukraine, said in an Instagram video. “And while this is far from a solve of the problem, our collective effort will provide a softer landing for so many people as they forge ahead into their future of uncertainty.” Kutcher added, “Our work is not done. We’re going to do everything we can to ensure the outpouring of love that came from you all as a part of this campaign finds a maximum impact for those in need.”

The money will be “delivered to Flexport.org and Airbnb.org so they can act now,” Kutcher wrote on Instagram. Flexport is bringing relief supplies to those in need, while Airbnb is providing short-term housing for refugees fleeing Ukraine. He continued, “We will treat every dollar as if it were being donated from our pocket, with respect and honor for the work that went into earning it, the intent of love through which it was given, and the desire for it so be maximized for positive outcomes for others.”

You can donate to the cause here.

(Via People)

In January, Irish post-punk group Fontaines DC announced Skinty Fia, the follow-up to 2020’s A Hero’s Death that competed with Taylor Swift on the UK charts. They’ve been touring all over the place and building up anticipation by performing on The Tonight Show and releasing ominous music videos.

The band played Dublin last night, and covered The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” It sounds lighter and more colorful than any of their actual songs, which are often dystopian and bleak like Joy Division’s.

Their latest single “I Love You” was a five-minute detached love ballad that focused more on self-loathing than romance: “And if there was sunshine, it was never on me / So close, the rain, so pronounced is the pain.” In the video, he walks through a candlelit church while reckoning with politics: “It’s standing in the center of our beloved home country as a multitude of things are brought to tragic ends in an apocalyptic state of affairs. That’s how it feels to me, and what I felt when I wrote it,” vocalist Grian Chatten said about that song. Their rendition of the classic Cure track about intense infatuation is far away from those heavy topics, and instead bounces with hope and sweetness.

Watch the performance of “Just Like Heaven” above.

After teasing his new album Melt My Eyez, See Your Future with a Spaghetti Western-themed trailer, the space Western-styled video for “Walkin,” and the samurai flick homage “Zatoichi,” Denzel Curry has finally revealed the album’s anticipated release date. Set for release March 25, Melt My Eyez, See Your Future will feature appearances from 454, 6lack, Bridget Perez, Jasiah, JID, Rico Nasty, Robert Glasper, Saul Williams, Slowthai, and T-Pain. The album’s production team includes Cardo, DJ Khalil, Dot Da Genius, Jpegmafia, Kal Banx, Karriem Riggins, Kenny Beats, and Thundercat.

In a press release announcing the album’s release date, Curry detailed the album’s production process and aesthetics. “I like traditional hip hop, I like drum and bass, I like trap, I like poetry, so a lot of that is going to be interwoven in this album including jazz and a lot of genres that I came up on as a kid and just being in my parents’ house,” he said. “This album is made up of everything that I couldn’t give you on TA13OO or Imperial because I was going through depression anger issues.”

To promote the album, Curry is set to launch a world tour beginning in Denver, Colorado on April 1 and ending the month in Glasgow, United Kingdom. After a month-long swing through Europe, he’ll return to the US just in time for Governor’s Ball in New York, then complete the second leg of his US tour, wrapping up July 1 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Melt My Eyez, See Your Future is due 3/25 on Loma Vista Recordings. You can pre-save it here.

Gang Of Youths was recently named one of the most Indiecast bands, but what other musicians fit nicely in with the Indiecast brand? Since the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame was in the news this week thanks to Dolly Parton, Indiecast hosts Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen decide to induct four albums into the Indiecast Hall Of Fame.

Steven and Ian also discuss some of the biggest news in indie music this week, which this time had to do with a somewhat imaginary feud between Japanese Breakfast and Machine Gun Kelly. After MGK shared his upcoming album cover, many Japanese Breakfast fans pointed out its similarities to Jubilee‘s artwork. But that begs the questions: Does MGK even know what a persimmon is? And, more importantly, has he ever heard a Japanese Breakfast song?

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian talks Oso Oso surprise-releasing their fourth studio album. Steven discusses his recent Uproxx interview with Destroyer’s Dan Bejar ahead of next week’s new album.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 81 on Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Although Richmond, Virginia-based rapper Fly Anakin has been around for a while, my first introduction to him was on 2020’s FlySiifu, his collaborative album with Alabama genre-bender Pink Siifu. At the time, my impression was of a rapper enamored with the murky trappings of the backpack rap I had grown up on in high school, but since grown out of. The experimental, lo-fi sampling and abstract, stream-of-consciousness raps reminded me of longtime favorites like Madlib and MF DOOM; Anakin, who would have entered high school five years after I graduated, would likely have gravitated to this freewheeling sound as it first gained exposure beyond indie record shops and underground rap forums via Adult Swim bumpers.

That sound has become the staple of his aesthetic, a tradition he continues on the recently released Frank, his self-proclaimed debut album. The fact that he calls it this despite having seven years of commercial releases under his belt helps to highlight his status as a child of the inventive digital era of hip-hop, where nearly anything goes as long as it sounds cool and you can get away with it. For what it’s worth, this is an album that does sound cool and gets away with a lot. It’s packed with eerie, unearthly samples and laid-back, dismissive raps, an iconoclastic survey of the modern rap landscape that chooses to go left, swimming upstream of the more accessible 808-driven approach of Anakin’s peers.

In a profile for Bandcamp, Anakin explains his reasoning for calling Frank his debut, and for giving it his own government name, Frank Walton. “The album is me standing up to my shit and owning up to who I am instead of hiding behind a rap name,” he said. “I always thought my name was kinda stupid for who I am and I never really felt my name matched me — so this is me wearing my name and owning my name.” In doing so, though, he throws into clearer focus the fact that he’s always been this person and always held these philosophies. That is to say, he’s never much cared to live up to anyone else’s standards but his own.

Consider this couplet from the Evidence-produced “Sean Price,” named for the bellicose Brooklyn rapper who passed away in 2015 and shared Anakin’s disdain for fitting in. “The sacrifices set my price to the heights of the holy lights / At first, I did the shit to get mics, now it’s keeping on the lights.” The Richmond rapper at times comes across disillusioned by his experiences in the rap game, much like many of his heroes, but then, like those heroes, his love for the craft shines through in the polish with which he spits his laconic yet lithe, lathe-like verses. He’s versatile and not without a sense of humor; he just doesn’t have time for gimmicks and games.

Meanwhile, the production falls somewhere just left of the en vogue, sample-first, beats-never aesthetic, full of muted drums and soul interpolations awash in dreamy filters. It’s interesting to see what he does with the “beats to study to” playlist staple style; his voice cuts across these muddy soundscapes with confidence and charisma. So do his guests’ vocals, with features ranging from Anakin’s fellow Mutant Academy crew stalwarts Big Kahuna OG (on “Telepathic”) and Henny L.O. (on “Dontbeafraid”), as well as Richmond veteran and former Drake collaborator Nickelus F, who contributes an absolutely bonkers verse to “Ghost” that I still can’t decide if I hate or love.

Despite the album’s title and expressed theme, Anakin never deigns to indulge in autobiography or introspection on Frank, choosing to instead direct his energy toward impressively constructed blocks of text expressing his own unique take on standard hip-hop topics. It’d be cool to see him tackle some more personal subject matter in the future, but for now, it’s enough that he’s doing something different — not just for the sake of being different but because this is genuinely who he is. Enough rappers follow trends and far too many fall short trying to run counter to them just to prove a point. Fly Anakin finds the balance, making the sort of hip-hop music he loved growing up and updating it to create something refreshing and classic at the same time.

‘Frank’ is out now on Lex Records. You can stream it here.

Pete Davidson‘s love life has been out of this world, and for a minute there, the same was going to be true for his whole body as the Saturday Night Live cast member was set to be a passenger on the next Blue Origin flight into space. Unfortunately, Davidson is going to have to settle for a night of romance with Kim Kardashian. A last minute schedule change for the Blue Origin flight has “Skete” sitting this one out.

“Blue Origin’s 20th flight of New Shepard has shifted to Tuesday, March 29. Pete Davidson is no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission,” the official Blue Origin Twitter account said. “We will announce the sixth crew member in the coming days.”

Like William Shatner, Davidson would’ve been the only celebrity on his flight, which mostly included space industry veterans and college professors, according to NBC News:

Davidson, 28, had been slated to travel to space with Party America CEO Marty Allen; philanthropist and real estate mogul Marc Hagle and his wife, Sharon Hagle, the founder of the nonprofit SpaceKids Global; explorer and University of North Carolina professor Jim Kitchen; and Dr. George Nield, the president of Commercial Space Technologies and former manager of the Flight Integration Office for NASA’s space shuttle program.

Davidson missing the Blue Origin flight will no doubt be a bummer to late night comedians like Jimmy Kimmel, who initially joked earlier in the week, “Did Kanye really cyber bully Pete Davidson off the Earth?” before quipping that Davidson was actually visiting “Kanye’s home planet” to understand him better.

(Via Blue Origin on Twitter)

Charli XCX and Lady Gaga started their journeys in the pop world at about the same time; They both released their first singles — “!Franchesckaar!” for Charli and “Just Dance” for Gaga — in 2008. In the years since then, they’ve both earned mass acclaim for themselves in different ways. Back in ’08, Charli, like many of us, was paying attention to Gaga, and now she says when it comes to the pop music realm, Gaga “played the game” in a way that she couldn’t manage to.

In a new Apple Music interview, Charli told Zane Lowe:

“I actually always remember when Lady Gaga first came out with ‘Just Dance.’ I remember. And she’s amazing but I always remember thinking, ‘This girl is playing the game. This is smart.’ I remember when ‘Just Dance’ came out I was like, ‘This is a really cool pop song and the video’s really weird.’ But I was like, ‘This is just the beginning. I know this girl is trying to do something more.’ And she did. She mad ‘Bad Romance.’ She made ‘Telephone,’ ‘Alejandro.’ She played the game to give herself the platform to be able to do whatever the f*ck she wanted on this insane, crazy level. And I always really respected that because I think it’s genius. It’s genius. She had the vision to play that game and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it because I think I was so scared of rejection and so scared of failure.”

Elsewhere during the conversation, Charli revealed “Constant Repeat” is her favorite song from her new album Crash, saying, “I think it’s my favorite. I think this was the last song that we wrote for the record. It was one of those where the album was done. I was sort of done with doing sessions. I was feeling quite creatively spent. And then there was the flare of emotion where I was like, ‘Oh, I have to write this song,”‘and it kind of came out and just felt like something that had been missing from the album and it felt really important for this song to go on the album.”

Watch the full interview above.

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

Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was one of only eight Republicans to vote against a bipartisan bill that would suspend normal trade relations with Russia. She’s also been called a “useful idiot” for pushing Vladimir Putin’s propaganda during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (she doesn’t deny it), and the Democratic National Committee came out against her “abhorrent” comments that “both sides,” Russia and Ukraine, are at fault. “It unfortunately comes as no surprise that many Republicans are choosing to stand on the wrong side,” the DNC’s statement reads.

Hacking group Anonymous has been closely following Taylor Greene’s pro-Russia comments, and issued a warning to the anti-vaxxer and white nationalist event-attender. “Russian asset Marjorie Taylor Greene will go down in history as one of the dumbest politicians ever. History will not be kind to you, nor will we,” the group’s account tweeted.

The threat comes a day after Greene released a nearly 10-minute video in which she stated that Ukrainians are fighting “a war [against Russia] they cannot win.” Her video — posted on Facebook Live hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to the U.S. Congress — also criticized President Joe Biden for “saber-rattling” and “dragging America into World War III” by offering financial and military support to Ukraine.

In a follow-up tweet, Anonymous accused Taylor Greene of being a “Russian asset.”

(Via Newsweek)

In 2018, indie-pop duo Tegan And Sara announced that they were publishing a memoir titled High School. “‘How did you start your band? When did you know that you were gay? What were you like before Tegan And Sara?’ We have spent twenty years answering those complicated questions with simple answers,” they said at the time. In 2020, about a year after the release of the book, the sisters announced it would be adapted into a TV series.

Now, the cast was revealed today. Playing the roles of Tegan and Sara will be Railey Gilliland and Seazynn Gilliland, respectively; both can be recognized from TikTok. Cobie Smulders will play the role of their mother Simone and Kyle Bornheimer will play the role of Patrick, Simone’s boyfriend.

“It felt kismet when I saw Railey and Seazynn for the first time on TikTok,” Tegan said. “There was something undeniably intriguing about them: They were sweet and original, impossible not to watch. I felt compelled to send Sara the video. ‘Too bad they don’t act,’ I texted her. Sara wasn’t deterred. They were performers, musical and dynamic. ‘You can’t teach charisma,’ Sara said, which they had in spades. Sara was relentless — these were the twins that had to play us. We were overjoyed when they were cast, and we couldn’t be more thrilled that it all worked out.”

Tegan And Sara is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music.

Fake German heiress Anna Delvey (born Anna Sorokin), subject of Netflix’s Inventing Anna, hasn’t been having the greatest time of things lately. She served four years in prison(s) for defrauding New York City’s elite party people, went straight into ICE custody (for overstaying her visa), and caught Covid somewhere during that timeline. She ended up being deported to Frankfurt this weekend, but she squeezed in another podcast appearance being escorted across the pond, perhaps for good.

Anna previously revealed herself to be a fan of Julia Garner’s indelible, almost indescribable accent work (“She did a little too much… She really dove into the accent”), but it sure sounds like she did not enjoy how the show portrayed her as a whole. CNN reports that Delvey appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, where she told host Alex Cooper that, sure, maybe Anna Delvey lied, but not to that extent. There’s no word on how many claims of wire transfers actually transpired, but the show did take creative license, according to the mega-grifter herself. Did she lie, though?

“I guess I did,” Sorokin/Delvey admitted to Cooper. “I mean, I cannot tell an exact instance, but I’m sure.” Still, Sorokin insisted that she certainly never “told any senseless lies.” This distinction is a wild one, but she held onto it. “I was from Germany, which was true, but nobody ever asked me about my job,” Sorokin added. “Nobody asks who are your parents and how much money do they make. It’s just outrageous.”

From there, Anna didn’t acknowledge that she was about to be deported, but she did “joke” that she’d wed Kanye West in order to secure a green card. Well, I hear that he’s single, so it could happen.

(Via CNN)