Month: April 2022

Harry Styles is off to a great start with his new single “As It Was.” The track is the lead single from his upcoming third album Harry’s House, which is set to arrive later this spring on May 20. Harry has shared few details about the album, but so far, we know that the project will arrive with 13 songs and feature songwriting from Kid Harpoon, Tyler Johnson, and Mitch Rowland. As for his new song “As It Was,” the song is making its mark on Spotify as it broke the single-day streaming record for a male artist’s song in its first 24 hours. However, that’s not all the records the song broke on Spotify.

“As It Was” also became the most-streamed song in the US in a single day in Spotify history with 8.3 million streams. It broke the record of 8 million streams that was previously held by Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License.” Additionally, Spotify revealed that “As It Was” also broke the record for the most-streamed song globally in a day in 2022 far with 21.6 million streams. That crushed the record that was previously held by Anitta’s “Envolver” which posted 8.6 million streams last month.

Harry’s House will be Harry’s first full-length album since 2019’s Fine Line which granted him four Grammy nominations and a win in the Best Pop Solo Performance category. Fine Line also became his second No. 1 album and gave him his first chart-topping song with “Watermelon Sugar.”

Republicans have a new enemy: The Walt Disney Company. After initially trying to stay out of the latest culture war, they’ve gone all-in, giving hell to Governor Ron DeSantis, who recently signed into law what’s been dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which critics argue marginalizes already marginalized communities. They’ve received pushback from lawmakers and Fox News pundits alike. But it turns out one prominent GOP member giving them hell has a bit of conflict of interest.

As per Insider, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been firing off vicious — and highly disturbing — bromides against the family-friendly company. There’s just one problem: She’s the owner of Disney stock.

“It’s hard to believe that Disney, Walt Disney, the Walt Disney Company, would be the very place that this is happening,” Greene recently told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. “This is supposed to be the happiest place on Earth, a place where innocence is celebrated. But it seems to be the place where innocence is actually under attack.”

And yet records show that Greene may be profiting off of the very business she publicly demonizes. Law requires that members of Congress must disclose any personal financial disclosures they’ve made. Insider procured records filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives, showing that she’s repeatedly purchased Disney stock ranging from $1,001 to $15,000. Combined, Greene’s Disney stock is worth up to $45,000.

When asked about investing in a company she’s accused of “grooming” — a callback to an old homophobic stereotype that paints gay people as predators, preying upon young children — Greene suggested she was not aware of what stocks she owned.

“I have an independent investment advisor that has full discretionary authority on my accounts,” Greene told Insider. “I do not direct any trades.”

She also doubled down on her troubling wordage, claiming that “anyone who opposes anti-grooming laws like the one in Florida is pro-child predator. Stop sexualizing children.”

Greene has joined a number prominent conservatives in trying to defend such anti-LGTBQIA+ laws by using words like “grooming.” Such rhetoric seems to echo wacko QAnon conspiracies, which have accused prominent Hollywood figures, including Tom Hanks, of being involved in a bizarre pedophilic cabal.

In other words, Greene may tell the public that Disney is destroying children, but privately she probably enjoys their money, especially since she keeps wasting her salary on self-defeating mask protests.

(Via Insider)

The men’s Final Four tips off on Saturday, with Villanova and Kansas going head-to-head in the early game before Duke and North Carolina face off for the first time in the NCAA Tournament later in the evening. All four schools produce NBA talent pretty frequently, but for one team in particular, the game is going to be a little extra intense.

The Portland Trail Blazers are the only team that have a player from each school — Josh Hart (Villanova), Ben McLemore (Kansas), Justise Winslow (Duke), and Nassir Little (UNC) — on their roster. To celebrate this, the team put out a video in which Hart and McLemore talked some junk to one another while Winslow and Little did the same, and all of them offered to make some sort of bet on the game.

If there is one thing that is extremely clear in this video it is, to the surprise of no one, that there is a lot more tension between Duke and North Carolina than there is between Kansas and Villanova. Having said that, as Hart mentioned in his clip, the Jayhawks and the Wildcats have met up in the NCAA Tournament twice in the last decade — including one game back in 2016 in which Hart played — and Villanova has come out on top both times, so we don’t exactly expect them to be cordial during Saturday’s game or anything like that.

Thirteen individuals are headed to Springfield. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2022 was announced on Saturday morning, with the NBA, WNBA, NCAA, and international basketball all represented. Among the headliners are San Antonio Spurs guard and Argentina legend Manu Ginobili, three-time WNBA champion Swin Cash, five-time All-NBA selection Tim Hardaway, and four-time WNBA champion Lindsay Whalen.

Here is the entire list of folks who will be enshrined a little later this year, including the committees that elected them to the Hall of Fame:

North American Committee
Hugh Evans
Manu Ginobili
Tim Hardaway
Bob Huggins
George Karl

Women’s Committee
Swin Cash
Marianne Stanley
Lindsay Whalen

Veterans Direct Elect Committee
Lou Hudson

Direct Elect Contributor Committee
Larry Costello
Del Harris

Women’s Veterans Direct Elect Committee
Theresa Shank-Grentz

International Direct Elect Committee
Radivoj Korac

“The Class of 2022 is ripe with individuals who have had a significant historical impact on the game we love,” John L. Doleva, the president and CEO of the Hall of Fame, said in a statement, per ESPN. “We congratulate and thank them for everything they’ve done to better the sport and look forward to honoring them during Enshrinement this fall.”

The class will be inducted on Sept. 10, 2022 in Springfield during the Hall of Fame’s annual enshrinement ceremony.

Miley Cyrus has been a busy bee as of late. She just held an area headlining show in Bogota, Colombia and that came after she performed in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile as a part of Lollapalooza’s festivals in the South American countries. Miley seemed to have a great time performing and interacting with fans, but the fun is now over for the time being as she revealed that she recently tested positive for COVID. She spoke about the diagnosis on Friday, but she was far from upset about it in her message.

“Traveling around the world, playin for a 100,000 people a night & meeting hundreds of fans a day the chances of getting Covid are pretty high,” she wrote in one tweet. “I have Covid now but it was definitely worth it.” In a second tweet, she added, “Unfortunately because of this I’m missing out on Janie’s Fund which sucks because it’s a charity that’s super important to me & my friend Steven Tyler. I am feeling fine so don’t worry about me! Sorry Steven! We’ll have to “Walk This Way” another time!”

Miley’s announcement also arrived on the same day that she released Attention, her first live album. The project delivers live renditions of songs from all over her discography including popular tracks like “Wrecking Ball,” “We Can’t Stop,” “The Climb,” and more.

You can view Miley’s posts about her positive COVID test above.

After Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on live television on Sunday, the immediate aftermath wasn’t to bad. He won an Oscar and he partied by dancing to one of his own songs. Then a fallout began. There have been condemnations, from colleagues and the public alike. He’s issued apologies and even resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Now it looks as though he may start losing some work.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, in the last week Netflix has quietly backed off of Fast and Loose, an action-thriller that was to star Smith. As it happens, the project had already lost its original director, John Wick and Deadpool 2’s David Leitch, right before the Oscars — which is to say before that slap. The streamer had been on a sudden, frantic search for a replacement, but now, THR claims, they’ve stopped all that, putting the movie on the back burner.

The film, as described by THR, would have starred Smith (and could still) as a “crime boss who loses his memory after an attack. Piecing together clues, he discovers that he has led a double identity as a wealthy kingpin and a broke CIA agent.” As of now, though, it’s unclear whether Netflix will revive the project with another director and possibly another star.

It’s not the only Smith film that may run into trouble. The actor had reportedly received 40 pages of the Bad Boys 4 script before the ceremony, but a source claims Sony has now put that production on pause. His Apple+ slave drama Emancipation, meanwhile, is already in post-production.

Meanwhile, Chris Rock has seen his stand-up ticket sales skyrocket.

(Via THR)

The Republican party and the LGBTQIA+ community aren’t exactly seeing eye-to-eye these days. A profoundly homophobic and transphobic sect has taken over the GOP. Florida’s conservative governor, Ron DeSantis, is under fire for the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, whose defenders have been defending with disturbingly QAnon-like language. So when some openly gay Trump supporters tried to get the former president’s attention recently, it didn’t go so well.

As per HuffPost, on Wednesday Trump held one of his events in the resort he now mostly lives in these days. There, he claimed that his administration “did great with the gay population, as you know.” (Naturally, that was not true. As president, he oversaw a dramatic increase in anti-gay and anti-trans legislation, which has only gotten worse since he left. Meanwhile, 73% of the LBTQIA+ community supported his successor, not him.)

Trump’s lie was well-received by some at the function. Some in the crowd chanted, “Gays for Trump!” That prompted him to ask where that group was located. When he found them, he blurted out, in typical Trump fashion, “You don’t look gay.”

Whoops! Thing is, sometimes Trump accidentally lets the truth slip, as when he inadvertently admitted back in January that he didn’t actually win the 2020 election, which he didn’t. And so the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican party in 2024 inadvertently told his queer supporters what he really thinks about them, which involves some stereotype from the Reagan era, back before his first of six bankruptcies.

(Via HuffPost)

Almost two years ago, Polo G released his second album The GOAT, and it was a project that helped boost him towards the star title he claims today. The full-length effort was highlighted by songs like “Martin & Gina,” “21,” and “33” with fellow Chicagoan Juice WRLD. However, Polo G nearly didn’t make it to the album’s spring 2020 release. According to a post he shared on Instagram, he nearly overdosed prior to shooting the music video for “Heartless” which was released with Mustard in 2019.

“Back story Fa Dat video I was Fresh out the hospital bed From almost overdosing Onnem pills,” he wrote to his followers in a post on his Instagram Story. Thankfully he was able to make a quick recovery and head back to work. “I pop right back out & Shoot Dat Video now dat Bitch Platinum w 100ms By it,” he added. This is not the first time that Polo has admitted to struggling with drugs. Back in December, he recalled a near-death experience where he almost overdosed on 17 pills.

“When I woke up, I was in the hospital,” he said according to Complex. “And my pops was just explaining to me like, ‘Yeah, man, they said you would had been here any second, even a minute later, you wouldn’t have made it. You probably could’ve passed.’” He added that he had no recollection of the incident. “They was just walking me through everything that happened that day, because I really didn’t remember at all,” he said. “I think it was like 17 pills I had took in one day, about 15 Xanax and two [Ecstasy] pills.”

You can view Polo G’s message in the post above.

This past Friday, Red Hot Chili Peppers released their 12th album Unlimited Love. The project arrives with 17 songs and it’s their first full-length release since 2016’s The Getaway. To celebrate the new project, the band delivered performances on two late-night shows on the same night. Their performances, which occurred on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, were also a part of an elaborate April Fools joke where Fallon and Kimmel swapped shows for the night.

During their set on Kimmel, Red Hot Chili Peppers performed “Black Summer” from Unlimited Love atop Los Angeles’ famed Roosevelt Hotel in what was a taped segment for the show. Their performance was apparently filmed on Tuesday which was also the day that the band accepted their stair on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. As for their set on The Tonight Show, Red Hot Chili Peppers performed “These Are The Ways,” which is also from Unlimited Love. This performance was done live from NBC Studios in New York, and in the end, the band appeared to be playing live on two different networks — ABC and NBC — at the same time.

You can watch the performances in the videos above.

Unlimited Love is out now via Warner Records. You can stream it here.

Red Hot Chili Peppers is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In the week since the 94th Academy Awards, people haven’t been talking about Best Picture winner CODA. They’ve been talking about Will Smith, who slapped presenter Chris Rock and shouted obscenities at him shortly before winning an Oscar. There have been conflicting reports about how the Academy handled Smith immediately after the incident. But one thing is clear: Denzel Washington tried his best to talk some sense into Smith after he snapped.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the two-time Oscar-winner, who was nominated that night for Macbeth, attended a religious conference on Saturday, where he discussed his career and his faith with pastor T.D. Jakes. The slap inevitably came up, prompting Washington to reveal — as Smith alluded to during his Best Actor speech not long after — that he, as well as Tyler Perry, went over to Smith and started praying with him.

“I couldn’t have sat in my seat. No way I could have sat in my seat,” Washington said. “That’s just not who I am.”

Washington also repeated some words Smith quoted during his speech. “There’s a saying: When the devil ignores you, then you know you’re doing something wrong. The devil goes, ‘Oh, no, leave him at home.’ My favorite,” Washington said with a laugh, before turning serious. “Conversely, when the devil comes at you, maybe it’s because you’re trying to do something, right. And for whatever reason, the devil got ahold of that circumstance that night.”

He also refused to condemn Smith’s actions. “There but for the grace of God, go any of us. Who are we to condemn?” Washington said. “I don’t know all the ins and outs of the situation, but I know the only solution was prayer.”

On Friday night, Smith revealed that he was resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences over what he’d done. Meanwhile, Rock’s ticket sales have skyrocketed.

(Via THR)