Month: April 2022

Lawsuits over samples in music seem to be filed all the time. Usually, though, the reason for them tends to be related to the sampled work not being properly credited. However, that’s not the case with the latest lawsuit Kanye West faces, from Declan Colgan Music Ltd (DCM). The suit is regarding West’s sample of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” on his 2010 song “Power.”

Variety reports DCM (which owns the mechanical rights to the King Crimson song, is suing Universal Music Group (UMG) due to payment issues with West’s “Power.” The suit claims the label has been underpaying on streaming royalties. DCM is seeking all sums due along with interest.

After Ye sampled the song without a license, DCM and UMG came to an agreement, allowing West to sample the song in exchange for a 5.33-percent royalty on each copy of “Power” that was sold or “otherwise exploited.” Per the agreement, UMG had to pay a royalty on the same terms West receives royalties from the track.

The lawsuit claims UMG “has failed, and continues to fail, to comply with its royalty accounting obligations in respect of one mode of exploitation, namely the making available of the Power [r]ecording to consumers through so-called ‘streaming’ services.”

So, DCM argues UMG should be paying streaming royalties based on what the sums would be if those streams had instead been physical CD sales, per the royalty agreement. Instead, DCM alleges UMG has been paying a lower amount, being the percentage of what they actually receive per stream.

In the most recent episode of Better Call Saul, “Rock and Hard Place,” fan favorite Huell asks Saul a question viewers have also been wondering: Why? Saul makes good money, Kim makes good money, and they’re both good lawyers. So, why are they devising elaborate schemes involve duplicate keys and shady vans to make Howard’s life miserable? “You’re not seeing the bigger picture,” Saul responds. “A couple of months from now, there are people whose lives are going to be way better because of this. We’re making a real difference. Trust me. We’re doing the Lord’s work here.”

Huell is not convinced, and frankly, neither is Saul. He knows he’s full of sh*t, so again: Why? It’s a question that was posed by the Hollywood Reporter to “Rock and Hard Place” director and writer (and former-Breaking Bad production assistant) Gordon Smith.

“They feel like they’re invested in the scams, and the scams become almost synonymous for their relationship. So the trap that they’ve laid is that they have fun playing around with other people,” he said before bringing up a line from Arrested Development, the Fox sitcom that ran for three glorious seasons. (Wait, there are two more seasons? Never heard of them.)

There’s a line in Arrested Development where the character of Gob gets married after “a series of escalating dares.” Neither one of them wanted to get married; it’s just that they kept one-upping each other and the one-ups got out of control. So I feel like Kim and Jimmy are living with some of their one-upsmanship in the scam arena. And Jimmy, even more than Kim, goes, “What do I have to offer her if not this? If I’m not the fun guy that she can come to and do this thing that gives us both juice, what could she see in me?”

Why am I suddenly worried that Saul and Kim’s goldfish is going to end up in a bag in the fridge with a “DEAD FISH DO NOT EAT” note on it? Anyway, here’s that scene between Will Arnett’s Gob and Amy Poehler’s unnamed wife of Gob:

Arrested Development: good show.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

New Justin Bieber music is coming “very very very soon,” according to a teaser video shared by director Cole Bennett on his Lyrical Lemonade YouTube channel. The clip, which contains a one-minute and 26-second song called “I Feel Funny,” sees Bieber behind the scenes of an upcoming music video, as he tries on costumes, ski masks, and chains.

Also in the video, he thrusts his hips as he steams a set of shirts and dances next to production assistants on the set of the video. He is also seen sitting on a ski bike in front of a blue screen before the background switches to icy ski slopes.

According to Bennett, the videos were taken on his phone in between takes of the actual video they were scheduled to shoot that day. The aforementioned video is presumably the video for an upcoming Don Toliver collaboration called “Honest,” as Toliver can briefly be seen in the clips.

The existence of the “Honest” collaboration was confirmed at the end of the “I Feel Funny” video, as the screen fades to black, with white text reading “Justin Bieber featuring Don Toliver, Honest, coming very very very soon.”

Check out “I Feel Funny” above.

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

Wherever Matt Gaetz goes, bad things follow. Call it Gaetz’s Law. But based on new audio recordings that were made in the days following the Capitol Riots, and obtained by The New York Times, even Gaetz’s fellow Republicans seem to have had enough of the controversial Florida congressman’s “crazy” rhetoric, which they feared was endangering people.

In a series of phone calls to other Republican leaders, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy claimed the atmosphere in America was “too crazy” for people to have to put up with the vitriol being spewed by a handful of his fellow GOP members, including the always-zany Lauren Boebert. But McCarthy saved the bulk of his criticism for Gaetz and Alabama congressman Mo Brooks. As The New York Times wrote:

Mr. Brooks and Mr. Gaetz were the prime offenders in the eyes of G.O.P. leaders. Mr. Brooks addressed the Jan. 6 rally on the National Mall, which preceded the Capitol riot, using incendiary language. After Jan. 6, Mr. Gaetz went on television to attack multiple Republicans who had criticized Mr. Trump, including Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the leadership team.

Those comments by Mr. Gaetz alarmed Mr. McCarthy and his colleagues in leadership — particularly the reference to Ms. Cheney, who was already the target of threats and public abuse from Mr. Trump’s faction in the party because of her criticism of the defeated president.

McCarthy expressed his concerns that Gaetz was “putting people in jeopardy, and he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.”

In a conversation with Steve Scalise, the House Republican Whip even suggested that Gaetz’s verbal attacks in the wake of the January 6th insurrection might be “potentially illegal.”

Gaetz—never one to keep his mouth shut, even in situations where it’s probably the best thing to do—has already fired back at his fellow Republicans, stating that “Rep McCarthy and Rep. Scalise held views about President Trump and me that they shared on sniveling calls with Liz Cheney, not us. This is the behavior of weak men, not leaders.”

You can hear the full audio of their calls here.

(Via The New York Times)

Oasis rhythm guitarist Paul Arthurs, also known as Bonehead, has been diagnosed with tonsil cancer. He announced this on Twitter yesterday, writing, “Just to let you all know I’m going to be taking a break from playing for a while. I have been diagnosed with tonsil cancer. But the good news is it’s treatable and I will be starting a course of treatment soon. I will keep you posted how it is going.”

Now, he will not be playing the shows with Liam Gallagher which were scheduled for this summer. Gallagher responded with support on Twitter, writing: “Sending BIG love to the 1 n only Bonehead and his family wishing you a speedy recovery we’re all thinking of you rasta you’ll be back on stage bfore you can say r we doing Colombia LG x.” Other support erupted on Twitter from Arthurs’ bandmates; drummer Tony McCarroll wrote, “Big love Bone,” and bassist Andy Bell wrote, “Get well soon Bone.”

In October of 2020, the band’s classic hit “Wonderwall” become the first song from the ’90s to crack 1 billion plays on Spotify. It was also only the second song from before the year 2000 to surpass a billion streams. The other is Queen’s 1975 classic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which has over 1.3 billion streams.

Donald Trump swears he won’t be back on Twitter. While he’s been permanently banned from the bird site since the events of January 6th, pretty much everyone believes that, if Elon Musk does indeed buy Twitter, he’ll unban the former president from the platform. But Trump told CNBC that he was “disappointed by the way I was treated by Twitter” and that he “won’t be going back on.” Especially since he’s got his own thing going on with TRUTH Social, which he swears will be up and running “within the week. It’s on schedule. We have a lot of people signed up.” All of this makes Jimmy Kimmel laugh—with very good reason.

Ever since October 2021, when Trump announced that he was making good on his promise to create his own social media platform in the form of TRUTH Social, the entire endeavor has been—to quote Seth Meyers—a total “clusterf*ck.” On Tuesday night, Kimmel could hardly contain his laughter as he described the “very Trumpy situation” the former president finds himself in right now with regards to his social media shenanigans:

“[Trump] raised more than $1 billion to start this promising new right-wing media platform that looks exactly like Twitter. But now that he probably won’t be banned from Twitter anymore, because Elon owns it, he’s kind of stuck.

Trump has this TRUTH Social, which is such a disaster, he himself hasn’t even posted on it for 11 weeks… He claims he won’t go back on Twitter, but he 100 percent will go back on Twitter. And then this dumb new company he conned out of their money for will become like I guess the social media equivalent of a Radio Shack.”

Even worse, however, is that it’ll be “a Radio Shack run by Devin Nunes.”

Kimmel shared a clip of a seemingly very nervous Nunes being interviewed on Fox News, where he actually stated that Trump’s crappy site that no one can even log onto is “already getting more engagement, not only than Twitter, but also even Instagram.”

According to Kimmel’s math, that means “the four people who are on it have been liking each other’s posts.”

You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 2:10 mark.

Elon Musk’s $44 billion new toy (a little social media joint called Twitter) is making all the right-wingers happy because, apparently, anything will go in terms of “free speech.” Presumably, Lauren Boebert hasn’t had a better day than when someone gifted her a gun for the first time, and Tucker Carlson’s already making sh*t up about what this all means for him. Still, all is not far-right fun and roses. Even though the deal will almost certainly go through without a regulatory snag in the U.S., the EU sent Musk a warning about not letting moderation rules be too loose. And generally speaking, Tesla’s shareholders also aren’t too excited by the “deal” news.

Jack Dorsey might be fine with all of this, but NPR reports that, as it turns out, no one’s entirely sure where Musk will get that $44 billion, and that’s drastically affected Tesla’s market share. This week, shares of Tesla fell 12.2%, which adds up to $125 billion in lost market value (although the stock did begin to creep back up early Wednesday). Here’s how NPR sums up the money-related fears:

When Musk announced he had secured the money to finance the transaction, he said he would cover $21 billion himself, with banks helping finance the other half.

What remains unclear is how he will come up with that money — whether he will sell some of the Tesla shares he owns, borrow against them, bring in additional investors, or all three.

Beyond that wildness (buying something with astronomical ticket value and no idea how to finance it), shareholders apparently fear that Musk will grow “distracted” by Twitter (that’s fair because, already, the dude does tweet a lot). And there’s the chance that his “free speech” crusade will ruffle Chinese government feathers and affect operations at Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, where workers apparently had to sleep on the floor amid the ongoing Covid lockdowns, which have already hampered production by about 50%.

The sleeping-on-the-floor thing has nothing to do with the stock prices, but boy, Musk has made some weird sleep-related headlines lately. Even though the context is completely different, I can’t stop thinking about how Grimes recently revealed that Musk declined to replace a mattress with a giant hole. Hmm.

(Via NPR)

For her solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig was nominated for two Oscars. For her follow-up, Little Women, she was nominated for another Oscar. So, naturally, for her next film, the three-time Academy Award nominee is making a movie about Barbie.

But this is no ordinary movie about the Mattel doll that lives a fantastic life in plastic. This is a Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, Will Ferrell, Issa Rae, Michael Cera, and Margot Robbie look-alike Emma Mackey, with a script from Gerwig and Noah Baumbach (of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted fame). Let’s go party.

Warner Bros. released the first image from Barbie this week during CinemaCon. It shows Robbie in a 1960s-style outfit, complete with matching dress and polka dot headband, sitting in a pink Corvette. But where’s Gosling’s Ken? My guess: he’s stuffed in the trunk. Robbie did describe her goal with the movie as being “whatever you’re thinking, we’re going to give you something totally different — the thing you didn’t know you wanted,” and Barbie pulling a Goodfellas on her long-time boyfriend would count as “something totally different.” Honestly, I’ll be disappointed if this doesn’t happen now.

The reactions to the image are overwhelmingly positive:

Barbie opens on July 21, 2023.

Fame has its perks, but one drawback is that sometimes, people will go ahead and just make things up about you. For example, in recent days, a supposed Billie Eilish quote has been making the rounds online, crediting her with saying, “When I got rich, I started balling my eyes out. I wanted to be poor so I can relate to most of my fans. I still want to be broke and poor, it looks really fun and cute.”

Given that Eilish doesn’t typically say insensitive things like that, it would seem the quote is fake. Indeed, it is, as Eilish fans may remember it actually circulated, and was quickly debunked, last summer.

When the quote initially made the rounds last year, multiple publications (like Snopes, Reuters, and USA Today) fact-checked and confirmed it was not something Eilish ever said. Rather, it originated from a parody Twitter account posting fake news about Eilish. Finneas also confirmed the quote wasn’t real, tweeting at the time, “Fake obviously. Honestly I just wish they’d label this account satire like the onion or something. I have no problem with a joke as long as people know it’s a joke.”

As far as things that Eilish has actually said, she recently declared she wasn’t surprised when she didn’t win any of the seven 2022 Grammys for which she was nominated.

Last month, The Black Keys announced that their 11th studio album, Dropout Boogie, would be released on May 13th. The duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recorded Dropout Boogie at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound Studios in Nashville with a host of collaborators. While the album’s lead single, “Wild Child,” was released concurrently with the album announcement, the Akron, Ohio natives have wasted little time in introducing the world to the album’s next offering, “It Ain’t Over.”

A spirited tune with boom clap drums, a sweet guitar line, and distinct keys, “It Ain’t Over” is actually inspired by a special kind of organ. Carney mentioned in a tweet how his Uncle Ralph Carney (a decorated multi-instrumentalist himself, who played with Tom Waits, co-wrote the Bojack Horseman theme with his nephew, and passed away in 2017) helped inspire the sonic direction that The Black Keys took on the track.

“We built this song around an Optigan,” Carney said in his tweet. “Ralph Carney showed me way back in 1996 if you flipped the discs over they played in reverse. After the first two bars of this I flip it into reverse. Thanks uncle Ralph. Miss you.”

The Optigan (later known as an Orchestron) is an electronic keyboard that operates with sounds that are pre-programed on an optical disc. It’s a pretty cool machine and you can hear it all throughout the new track.

Listen to “It Ain’t Over” above.

Dropout Boogie is out 5/13 via Nonesuch Records. Pre-order it here.

The Black Keys is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.