Month: April 2022

In February of last year, the news broke that thieves shot Lady Gaga‘s dog walker Ryan Fischer and stole two of her dogs, Koji and Gustav. He was out with the dogs just before 10 p.m. in Los Angeles when a gunman shot him and made off with two of the three dogs that were being walked together.

The accused suspect is 19-year-old James Howard Jackson, and he was released Wednesday “due to a clerical error.” The police are now searching for him. “The investigation is continuing and the LASD Major Crimes Bureau is actively working to get Mr. Jackson back in custody,” the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.

Shortly after the shooting last year, Gaga offered a $500,000 reward for the return of her dogs “no questions asked.” At the same time, Fischers’ family issued a statement that Fischer was recovering. It also included an appreciation for Gaga’s support: “Of course, we also want to thank Lady Gaga who has shown nothing but non-stop love and concern for Ryan and our family right from the outset,” they said. “Ryan loves Gustavo and Koji as much as Lady Gaga does; so we join in her plea for their safe return.”

We’ve all been rooting for former child stars to make their triumphant return into the spotlight, and it seems that Lindsay Lohan is on the right track. She’s reached the point in her career where she can look back on her questionable fashion choices and laugh, which is a huge step!

For Vogue’s Life In Looks segment, Lohan was able to look back at her famous outfits and give context to them. She showed off her Parent Trap premiere dress from 1998, which she still has, and a Juicy Couture sweatsuit from her Freaky Friday era, which she wore with flip flops, of course, since that was the style in 2002.

She even gave us some behind-the-scenes stories from the infamous 2003 Vanity Fair Young Hollywood shoot, “If you think about getting all of these actresses in a room today, just hanging out, it would be so different,” Lohan laughed.

When Lohan got to the Mean Girls era of her looks, she opened up about how she really wanted to be the Queen Bee Regina George instead of the homeschooled Cady. “The story behind me playing Cady in Mean Girls is really unknown by a lot of people. I wanted to play Regina,” Lohan said. “Because I had just come off of Freaky Friday, and I really wanted to play like a pretty, normal girl now and I wanted to have a different kind of role than just the damaged teenager again.” Perhaps she hadn’t finished reading the script by then, as Regina was far from “normal.” The role went to Rachel McAdams instead.

The actress added that it was Tina Fey and director Mark Waters who insisted she should play the quiet transfer student Cady instead. “They were like, ‘No, no, no you’re the lovable one, you have to play Cady.’ So I was so eager to get into the transitional part of, ‘OK, let’s get to the pretty part of Cady.’” The rest is history.

Lohan has been quietly making her way back into the spotlight over the last few years and is gearing up to release not one but three new Netflix movies this year. If anyone can make Juicy Couture sweatsuits have a comeback, it’s her. You can watch the full video above.

LeBron James will not play basketball again this season. The Los Angeles Lakers star suffered an ankle sprain last month, and while he has tried to play in the games since, the team announced on Friday afternoon that James will be shut down for the final two games of the 2021-22 campaign.

“LeBron James’ left ankle was recently reevaluated by Lakers medical staff, and it was determined that due to the ankle sprain James suffered in a game on March 27th, he will miss the remainder of the 2021–22 NBA season to allow for continued healing and an expected full recovery,” the team said in a statement.

With the Lakers eliminated from any sort of postseason contention, all the drama surrounding a potential James returned was tied to whether or not he would play in two more games and become eligible for the league’s scoring title. James is averaging 30.3 points per game for Los Angeles, but has only appeared in 56 games on the year — James would need to play in 58, or 70 percent of the Lakers’ games, to be eligible for the award.

The team does have two more games this year, as they play host to the Thunder on Friday night before traveling to Denver on Sunday. James previously ruled himself out for the rest of the year in an April Fools’ Day tweet, only to play that evening. That will end up being the final game in which he appeared during the Lakers’ disappointing season.

If you ask fans of Rick Ross to list their favorite verses from the Maybach Music Group leader, most of them will mention his guest appearance on Kanye West’s “Devil In A New Dress.” The track, which appears on West’s 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, was a standout on the album and it’s one that arrived months after Ross dropped one of his best albums, Teflon Don. During a recent appearance on LeBron James and Uninterrupted’s The Shop, which also featured Gunna, Las Vegas Aces player A’ja Wilson, and United Master CEO Steve Stoute, Ross was asked about that verse and how it came together, and his answer is one you might not expect.

“Soon as I heard to beat, I wrote a verse right there,” Ross said. “The verse you heard ain’t what it was [in the end]. I wrote two to three verses right then just to let Kanye hear the vibe and I was like ‘This my verse right here. This the verse I want.’ He listened to it, walked off, came back an hour later like, ‘Rozay I know you…’”

Ross continued, “This the first time somebody ever said Rozay, ‘I know you, you could go harder.’ Woah… Rozay ain’t used to that. This feeling like confusion.” Ross added that it was a shock to essentially hear that his verse wasn’t good enough for the song. “He comes back like, ‘Rozay, you know I know you. This verse right here you could –‘ and I looked at him [like] what? I could what?” The comment seemed to light a fire under Ross. “Don’t even finish that,” he says he told Kanye. “Just chill, come back and holla at me. He closed the room, I said this n**** crazy, and I went back in immediately.”

Ross says the moment is proof that Kanye is a great producer. “Without a doubt, he’s most definitely gonna challenge you,” he said. “To me, to be great and make sure that everybody that’s in the room with you [is] great, you have to make sure that you challenge and not just accept.”

You can watch the full episode of The Shop in the video above.

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

It only took Gunna a week to take over 2022 at the top of the year. The Atlanta native released his third album DS4EVER and it arguably became his biggest release to date. DS4EVER debuted at No. 1 on the albums chart, beating out The Weeknd’s Dawn FM, and while the project was statistically impactful, but was equally so on a cultural level. The project produced the term “Pushin P,” thanks to Gunna’s song with Young Thug and Future, and it took the world by storm. Fellow rappers and celebrities started using it and big-time corporations joined in on the fun. Through it all, Gunna’s definition of the term wasn’t the clearest, but at long last, we’ve received a more straightforward explanation.

During a recent episode of LeBron James and Uninterrupted’s The Shop — which also featured Rick Ross, Las Vegas Aces player A’ja Wilson, and United Master CEO Steve Stoute — Gunna took his time to explain the phrase.

“Pushin P really started at first as me just pulling up on some player, might got me a vibe with me,” he said. “My homies are like ‘Okay!’ You might come back around [later] and I’m doing the same one with a different type of vibe [and it’s like], ‘You’re still going? You Pushin P, now you pushing it! You pushin this player sh*t.’ Now I’m tryna make sure that I’m capitalizing on the P like, y’all Pushin P or what?”

Gunna then explained what inspired his player mentality. “Really all the dope boys,” he said. “Like our OG dope boys, man they was P, they was pulling up. When Boosie and them was riding DUBs, floaters, and Chargers, we had some OGs in our hood riding them too, telling us like, ‘This how you pull up.’ I looked up to them, got my game, and ran with it. Kept it P.”

Stoute chimed in with his point of view on “Pushin P,” and recalled that many people from Oakland accused Gunna of stealing their lingo. “Come to find out,” Gunna said in response, “they just come from player sh*t, too. That’s all that means. That’s what I took from it like bro, everybody been player. Your uncles, your aunties? They was player.”

You can watch the full episode of The Shop in the video above.

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

It was well over two decades ago that Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey (then known as Mos Def) declared, “Black Star keep shinin’.” However, in the intervening years, it seemed that Black Star had long since burned out. The two respected rappers would offer glimmers of hope, but for most, their reunion seemed like a lost cause. After announcing they were working on a new album in 2018, it almost felt like they were stringing rap fans along — I mean, even Kweli was shocked by Bey’s insistence that he was coming out of retirement.

But wonder of wonders, it looks like the thing actually exists — and even better, it has a release date. Today, Black Star announced that their comeback album, No Fear of Time, will drop on May 3 via the Luminary podcast network, which also hosts their show The Midnight Miracle with Dave Chappelle and the Uproxx-produced People’s Party With Talib Kweli. The album is entirely produced by the duo’s longtime collaborator Madlib, who dropped his album Sound Ancestors in 2021 after teaming up with Freddie Gibbs in 2019 for Bandana.

In a press release, Kweli explained how the album came together:

“About 3-4 years ago I was visiting Yasiin in Europe and we started to talk about songs to do on an album, so I flew an engineer out just to see what that would be. Once I realized this conversation is starting to organically become a creative conversation, I started making sure to have the engineer around at all times. There was one day we were just in a hotel listening to Madlib beats, and he’s like ‘Play that Madlib tape again.’ I’m playing the beats and he starts doing rhymes to the beats. And that’s how we did the first song.

This is very similar to how we did the first album. But the first album, there were no mobile studios. This entire album, we have not set foot in one recording studio. It’s all been done in hotel rooms and backstage at Dave Chappelle shows.”

To get into character as doctor-vampire Michael Morbius, Jared Leto went full Jared Leto on the set of Morbius, even when he had to pee. Was it worth it to hold up the production of a poorly-reviewed movie so you can limp to the bathroom with crutches because that’s what Morbius would do? Mads Mikkelsen (and most everyone else) would agree: no.

The Hannibal star, who replaced Johnny Depp in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, was asked about method acting in an interview with British GQ. “It’s bullsh*t,” he said. “What if it’s a sh*t film. What do you think you achieved? Am I impressed that you didn’t drop character? You should have dropped it from the beginning! How do you prepare for a serial killer? You gonna spend two years checking it out?” (“Checking it out” is the funniest possible way to describe becoming a serial killer — especially coming from a guy who literally played Hannibal Lecter.)

Mikkelsen believes someone like three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day Lewis, arguably the most famous living method actor, is a “great” talent. That being said, if they ever starred in a movie together, he would be an agent of chaos. “I would have the time of my life, just breaking down the character constantly. ‘I’m having a cigarette? This is from 2020, it’s not from 1870 – can you live with it?’ It’s just pretentious,” he added.

Someone needs to make a movie starring Leto, DDL, and Mikkelsen — and then Werner Herzog needs to make a movie about the making of the movie starring Leto, DDL, and Mikkelsen. It would be an even better documentary than Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.

(Via British GQ)

Bill Burr offered up some rare “praise” of Donald Trump on the latest episode of his Monday Morning Podcast. Granted, the compliment was completely back-handed in every way, but when you manage to make a veteran comic like Burr laugh, well, that’s not an easy feat. It all went down as Burr revealed that someone had been sending him clips of Trump, and that’s when Burr couldn’t help but notice that the former president knows how to riff even if none of it makes a lick of sense. Case in point: The time he accused people of wielding “heavy bags of soup” to attack police officers.

“Somebody was sending me clips of Donald Trump and I have to tell you, he is one of my favorite accidental stand-up comedians or comedic actors of all f*cking time,” Burr said before blasting anyone who actually believed anything Trump was saying. “I cannot take anybody seriously that voted for that guy. I can’t! I just — like how many times can you look the other way with this guy.”

Despite being baffled that people fell for Trump’s “dumb sh*t,” Burr admits he wouldn’t mind seeing the former president do a comedy special. Via Mediaite:

“Let’s not get into politics but it’s just like, there’s nobody in the world that I love listening try to convey an idea as much as — Donald Trump should have a f*cking Netflix special. Like when that guy isn’t president he is one of the funniest human beings I’ve ever heard in my life. He’s like such a character.”

To keep things bipartisan, Burr also thinks Joe Biden is “f*cking hilarious” even though he feels like there’s a Weekend at Bernie’s situation going on there. “They just wheel the guys out with f*cking sunglasses on,” Burr quipped.

(Via Mediaite)

When you think about Tyga, you mainly remember upbeat, party-ready anthems like “Freak Deaky” with Doja Cat, the hilarious “Mrs. Bubblegum,” or his guest appearance on Blxst’s “Chosen” alongside Ty Dolla Sign. However, on his new song “Lifetime,” he makes a surprising left turn, delving into a more contemplative sort of song that examines his “0 for 10” record with relationships. “Can I be with one soul for a lifetime?” he wonders, before concluding, “Maybe in another lifetime.”

What could be responsible for this departure? Well, for one thing, at 32 years old, Tyga could be aging out of his playboy persona. Plus, many of his relationships have been embarrassingly public — just a week ago, his ex Blac Chyna dragged his name through the mud on social media, claiming he doesn’t pay child support. This artistic evolution could be his way of wrangling control of his public image.

Or, he could just be taking stock of which way the game seems to be heading. After all, the emo thing has been going on in hip-hop for a while without burning out and if anything, seems to be getting more popular than ever. If he continues to sail in this direction, it’ll be interesting to see if his fans, long accustomed to Tyga turn-ups, will be willing to ride along with him as he turns down.

Watch Tyga’s “Lifetime” video above.