Month: April 2022

Houston’s own Sally Sossa drops by UPROXX Sessions this week to perform her combative single “Just Say Dat,” joining a string of strong female performers over the past few weeks that have included Kali, Autumn Corin, and Baby Tate. Sossa’s single, which appears on her March mixtape 4ever Sossa, finds the battle-tested Southerner dismissing haters, telling them to talk about their real problems instead of her.

Sossa’s been a fixture of Uproxx’s Best New Hip-Hop This Week column since December of 2020 when she dropped her mixtape Life Of Sossa, impressing alongside other breakout female rappers like Lakeyah and Latto. She was also one of the artists who was selected to contribute an exclusive track to Madden NFL 22‘s soundtrack and megamix campaign, representing her hometown Houston Texans with the boisterous “Number One.”

Watch Sally Sossa’s UPROXX Sessions performance of “Just Say Dat” above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Sometimes, when Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker has a lot on her mind, instead of writing out her feelings, she takes to social media to share a video of herself talking through whatever topic she’s addressing. For example, in 2019, she offered a clip explaining why Big Thief doesn’t always play encores at their concerts. Now Lenker is again discussing an element of the live music experience: concertgoers talking while an opening act is performing.

Big Thief is on tour right now, and although Lenker doesn’t specifically address the band or its fans in her video (which was shared on the Big Thief Instagram account), she notes, “This has been on my mind for a few days now” and has “really come forward in the last few days.” In the video (which is captioned, “Feelings re talking during openers and attention in general”), she noted fans have a tendency to talk and catch up with friends while artists are performing.

So, she made a request, saying in part:

“There is a real magic that happens when there is a floor of actual silence when somebody is playing or performing. Sometimes I have this feeling like, if only the room were quiet, this could just be so incredible. People are missing so much, because every time there’s meant to be a silence, there’s all this sort of white noise chatter.

So I guess what I wanted to ask is that when you come into this space where music is happening, even if you’re coming just to see a specific act play, be mindful if there is somebody performing and playing, to either listen or at least be quiet so that other people can listen, or go and put yourself elsewhere. I just think that, because it’s a common space, people should be able to enjoy the full breadth of what the artist has to offer.

Speaking for myself, I feel that when there is quiet, it allows for so much more dynamics and it makes me feel like I can breathe as somebody creating sound waves. So if you can be as respectful as possible and just mindful. […] Just look around and if there is somebody who’s on stage, they’re probably pouring their heart out, and it’s hard to sort of just be talked over.”

Watch Lenker’s video above.

This may shock you, but Bill O’Reilly, of “we’ll do it live, f*ck it!” fame, had a public meltdown. It wasn’t in a news studio this time, but rather, New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, where the conservative commentator (and big ol’ creep) screamed at a JetBlue employee over a delayed flight.

In the video, taken by another passenger, O’Reilly calls the worker a “f*cking scumbag,” and instructs him to “[not] talk to me like that.” The Daily Mail reports that “O’Reilly then squints at the worker’s name tag, which the man helpfully holds up for him so he can read it more easily. He then starts cursing at the man as his face contorts into anger.” The exact words can’t be made out, but it was apparently a threat of physical violence.

The airline worker then objects to O’Reilly’s tone. “You’re threatening me with violence, man,” he says. “No I’m not,” replies O’Reilly. It’s then that O’Reilly takes another look at the man’s name tag and tells him “You’re gonna lose your job.” He then demands: “You’re going to get that information,” before storming away from the counter.

In the video, O’Reilly has his face mask pulled down below his chin. At the time Federal regulations made it mandatory for everyone in airports to wear a face mask. All others shown in the video — including the employee — are wearing masks correctly.

The passenger who took the video told the Daily Mail, “I couldn’t believe how arrogant he was. That poor JetBlue guy just works there, it’s not his fault the flight was delayed, he was just trying to do his job.”

Sounds like someone is still cheesed off about the low ticket sales for his “History Tour” with Trump.

(Via the Daily Mail)

Alex Jones is now hosting his own going out of business sale and he sounds pretty desperate for fans to hand over their hard-earned cash.

Jones, who recently lost two defamation suits related to conspiracy theories he’s been peddling about the Sandy Hook School shooting, filed for bankruptcy earlier this week. While many people believe it’s simply the Infowars host’s way of getting out of paying millions of dollars in damages to the families of victims involved in the suit, Jones is trying to convince his followers that the situation is much more dire.

“You want us to be able to stay on-air and be able to move forward in the future. I need you now to not wait and to go InfoWarsStore.com,” Jones told listeners (via Business Insider), calling out fans who have yet to make a donation or buy the many supplements, gear, and apparel he hocks on the site. This isn’t the first time Jones has begged fans to help him keep the lights on, but considering his bankruptcy filing means he’ll likely have to create new companies/channels to avoid paying what he owes to the victims’ families, he probably is sweating the fact that he needs to cash out and quick.

“This is do or die time if you want to keep us on the air,” Jones continues. “They are trying to silence you. They are trying to take down the leading voice of resistance.”

And just in case you were wondering what Jones was trying to offload on his audience, some of the items marked down on the site include water filtration systems that remove government-sponsored chemicals that turn frogs gay, a patriotic blend of coffee beans called “Wake Up America,” super male vitality pills and a t-shirt that reads, “Alex Jones Did Nothing Wrong.”

(Via Business Insider)

Game 1 of the Nets-Celtics first round series was an instant classic, featuring sensational individual performances from Kyrie Irving and Jayson Tatum, with the latter swiping a win away from Brooklyn with a buzzer-beating layup.

Irving’s 39-point effort wasn’t quite enough to get the Nets a win, but it was clear that he was embracing his villain status in the TD Garden. The former Celtic is now reviled in Boston for how he left, and he hears it from the crowd every time he touches the ball. On Sunday, he gave it right back to the fans on a few occasions, including one that the ABC broadcast highlighted where he gave fans the middle finger after drilling a long-two in the corner.

While Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson had plenty of jokes about it, the league didn’t find it as funny and hit Irving with an unsurprising $50,000 fine on Tuesday.

It’s the standard procedure at this point, but it is a situation where the league continues to punish players for responding in kind to what they are hearing from fans, who don’t face the same zero-tolerance policy on profanity. Irving certainly didn’t seem worried about the fine to come in his postgame press conference and we’ll see what more he has for Celtics fans in Game 2 on Wednesday night.

On December 31, 2001, Rudy Giuliani proudly graced the cover of TIME as the Person of the Year for his heroic unifying of New York following the 9/11 terrorist attack on the city. Here was a famed prosecutor who was already known for taking on the mob in the courtroom, and now, he was being heralded as “America’s Mayor” for his decisive action during an historic event. It was the type of momentum that could propel an ambitious politician like Giuliani into the White House, but unfortunately for Rudy, it was all downhill from there.

After stirring up political scandals of his own thanks to shady dealings with former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerick, a penchant for drinking, and a light pinch of cousin-dating, Giuliani got sucked into Donald Trump‘s vortex where he came out the other end a political pariah and the target of multi-billion dollar lawsuits for pushing election fraud conspiracy theories. And it’s exactly that descent that will be featured in a new musical documentary, Rudy! A Documusical, debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival this year.

Via Entertainment Weekly:

Directed and written by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jed Rothstein (Killing in the Name), the film — which debuts as part of the 2022 Tribeca Festival lineup — is billed as “the definitive Rudy Giuliani documentary, charting his fall from the cover of [Time] to the parking lot of Four Seasons total Landscaping.”

As of this writing, there’s been no word on whether Giuliani’s wild wine lady Mellissa Carone will be featured in the documentary, or if an entire musical number will be dedicated to that time Rudy farted during a public hearing. God willing, both will be in there. Fingers crossed.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

If there’s one thing Donald Trump is actually very good at, it’s failing miserably at business. Like a Bizarro King Midas, everything Donald touches seems to turn to sh*t—whether it’s still-laughable Tour de Trump or the lawsuit-plagued Trump University. Yet somehow, the former president persists, presumably with the belief that his next business venture will be the one that finally sticks. From the way he talked about Truth Social, the social networking site he created as revenge for being permanently banned from Twitter, Trump may have believed that this would be his unicorn. Alas, it was not to be.

Just six months after first announcing Truth Social, which was set up suspiciously quickly and utilized some shady business practices, the site hasn’t really quite launched as it has failed bigly at essentially every turn. First, they were accused of stealing code from another platform (classic Trump!), then it just turned into an outright clusterf*ck. Even Trump himself has only ever posted on it once, though that could be because the site’s technology is absolute shite, as The Daily Beast reports.

According to The Daily Beast, the problems began (or, well, worsened) on Monday morning, when the website DownDetector reported that the site was flooded with outage reports beginning around 7 a.m. and that it wasn’t until approximately 3:30 p.m.—more than eight hours later—that the issues seemed to be getting resolved. One user called the day’s experience “the worst I’ve ever seen.”

But Devin Nunes, who actually abandoned his congressional seat in order to serve as CEO of Trump Media, promises that he and his team are on the case. Which should make Trump Social users feel about zero percent better.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Gang Of Youths’ latest album, “Angel In Realtime,” is one of this year’s most powerful releases. Led by singer Dave Le’aupepe, the Australian rock band bring vibes reminiscent of U2’s arena-ready explosiveness and Arcade Fire’s stacked instrumental arrangements. It’s really Le’Aupepe’s songwriting that defines the sound enacted on the piercing new album about coping with the death of his father and learning to move forward. Last night, they played “In The Wake Of Your Leave” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and it was downright spiritual.

Performing as a six-piece, it showcases the lineup that Gang Of Youths will be bringing to their US and Canada tour dates that start later this week. The uptempo drums and a fiery violin elevate the emotions for Le’aupepe to sing lasting lyrics like, “It quakes and moves. Then breaks, then shatters over me. In shapes of all these quiet sacred things I need.” There’s both an electric guitar and Le’aupepe on an acoustic, which builds into a dense and comprehensive rock and roll strings mini-section. It’s a jolt of energy for sure.

Watch Gang Of Youths perform “In The Wake Of Your Leave” on The Tonight Show above.

Gang Of Youths is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group

Even though the marriage rate in the United States is on a steep decline, chances are that the majority of kids growing up today will get married at some point in their lives. If current trends continue, about half of those will end in divorce.

Research published in the Couple Family Psychology journal found that the top five reasons for divorce are a lack of commitment, infidelity, too much conflict, getting married young and financial problems.

Wouldn’t it be great if we were taught from a young age how to be a good spouse so we could avoid these pitfalls? But in American culture, most of us aren’t taught the specifics of how to have a happy and healthy marriage. Most of us tend to pick things up from watching the married people in our orbit, most likely our parents.

Look how well that’s going.

Artist Doug Weaver had a much different upbringing. His mother, Mickey, made a curriculum for him and his two older brothers when they were kids to help them be great husbands when they got married.

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See on Instagram

“When I was a kid, my mom did this thing for me and my two older brothers called ‘Husbands in Training,'” he explained in a TikTok video that has more than 5.9 million views. “It was a full, multiple-level curriculum on how to be a better husband.”

Weaver says the training covered topics from chivalry to eating to a rather uncomfortable discussion on “the ethics of the porn industry.” His mother also stressed the importance of listening to women and identifying when another man may be giving them trouble.

“There was a lot of really good stuff in that curriculum,” Doug said. “There were things like what to do if your spouse says something and the information they give is wrong. How to handle it if they say something wrong in public versus in private, when it is appropriate to correct them and when it isn’t.”

Weaver’s mother was also way ahead of her time because she made a big deal about teaching her sons the importance of consent. “We talked about consent, we talked about the basics of respecting and honoring women and listening to women, and all of the things that really just make you a decent human being,” Doug explained.

@dougweaverart

Husbands in training! #parenting #storytime #story

The lessons were so powerful that even Weaver’s father decided to take the course. “A lot of the things that we were learning from my mom were things that he was never taught growing up,” Weaver said. “So, he decided he also wanted to take ‘Husbands in Training.'”

The course officially ended when Weaver and his brothers got married. “My mom even made certificates of completion that she signed and gave to each of us on our wedding day,” he shared in his TikTok clip.

However, the video Weaver shared was so popular on TikTok that he’s making his mother’s course available to the general public. “After posting about ‘Husbands in Training’ on TikTok, the TT community really wants my mom to produce content about raising boys to be good men,” he wrote on a GoFundMe fundraising campaign last month.

The overwhelming response to Weaver’s TikTok has inspired a new YouTube channel to spread Mickey’s lessons far and wide. But it has also made a lot of people realize that teaching people how to be great spouses is a lifelong journey and should be a major part of child-rearing. Learning how to be a good spouse shouldn’t just be something we pick up by accident.

Lil Nas X is set to make his voice-acting debut on an upcoming episode of The Proud Family: Louder And Prouder. The episode, appropriately titled “Old Towne Road,” begins streaming tomorrow on Disney+, and viewers will see Lil Nas X as a country singer named June Bug.

In the episode, Trudy (Paula Jai Parker) tracks her mother-in-law, Suga Mama’s (Jo Marie Payton) family history, leading the Prouds on a trip to Oklahoma. During their trip, Bobby Proud (Cedric The Entertainer) joins June Bug’s country band.

When Bobby asks June Bug where he can plug in his keytar, June Bug replies, “Nah cuh, I’m the only one who plays guitar around here,” then proceeds to hand him a washboard. “Give this a try, cuh, I love that for you.”

The band proceeds to play the hit that started it all for Lil Nas X, “Old Town Road.”

Lil Nas X is one of several musicians who were announced last year as guest stars for The Proud Family revival. Normani, Jaden, Chance The Rapper and Lizzo are also set to guest star this season.

Check out a sneak peek above.

Some of the artists mentioned are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.