Month: May 2022

Elden Ring is not only a game of the year contender for 2022, but it’s also a surprise success. Anyone who paid attention to the lead-up will argue that a game involving Hidetaka Miyazaki, From Software, and George R.R. Martin was going to be a smash hit, but even the game’s biggest optimists likely didn’t expect Elden Ring to become one of the biggest games we’ve seen in years. Despite the name, this was in every way just an open world Souls game. The Souls series, while popular, have always held something of a niche status: Extremely popular among its fans, but not always approachable to newcomers.

While you could argue that Elden Ring still isn’t the most approachable game ever made, that didn’t seem to matter much when it came to sales numbers. People went out and bought Elden Ring in droves, and soon, the internet was filled with comments, memes, and videos about the game. It was an obvious hit, and after a recent sales call from Bandai Namco, we now know just how large the game ended up being.

What is it that made Elden Ring so successful? There are plenty of things you can point to, like the open world format, the few but very necessary quality of life changes, or just how beautiful this game can look sometimes. It’s likely a mix of all three, plus some more details we haven’t even mentioned or thought of.

At the end of the day, it’s just a really fun video game. Despite how challenging it can be sometimes, there is enough in there to keep the player pushing forward for sometimes hundreds of hours. We can spend all day thinking about why it is that Elden Ring sold 13 million copies in a month, and is still being played by many players today, but sometimes the simple solution is the best one.

Action Bronson wears many hats — rapper, chef, television personality, and actor. For the lattermost of the four, he’s auditioned and even been offered several roles that may have been different from how we know them had he accepted the offer to play these characters.

Upon the release of his most recent album, Cocodrillo Turbo, Bronson spoke with Complex about his acting prospects, one of which included HBO’s hit teen drama, Euphoria. Bronson auditioned and was even offered a role on the show, however, he ultimately turned it down.

“They wanted me to play a drug dealer that was getting with the high school girls,” Bronson said. “Action Bronson ain’t doing that, bro.”

The role in question mostly matches the description of Fezco, who is played by Angus Cloud.

Additionally, Bronson revealed he auditioned for Uncut Gems, but admitted he didn’t feel confident about his audition.

“They wanted me to be the guy next to the main goon, the Russian,” Bronson said. “But I bombed at the audition, bro.”

Bronson has appeared in films like The King Of Staten Island and The Irishman, however, has not yet played a lead role in any film project. He is, however, accustomed to the cameras by way of his restaurant exploration show, F*ck, That’s Delicious.

Piers Morgan was so freaking happy after Trump lost his mind over their recently disastrous interview. This was, to be certain, a celebration in Piers’ head, and he ended up delivering blow-by-blows in the days leading up to the talk where Trump huffily stormed out of their combative on-camera meeting. Unfortunately for Piers, however, reports indicate that followup installments of his new talkTV show (Piers Morgan Uncensored) have tanked in the ratings, so it was time to drum up more controversy.

That effort’s looking a bit desperate since Piers decided to interview Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen, and Mediaite reports that the general perception in the British press has been to label this a “disgusting” stunt. An undaunted Piers merrily posted a clip of himself attempting to take a hard line with his subject.

It’s really something to give a platform to a Taliban talking head, and this display led a Twitter user to ask Ricky Gervais what he thought of the “disgusting” decision to do so.

Gervais didn’t miss a beat. He swung hard while feigning a belief that it was the Taliban, not Piers, who stooped too low in agreeing to the talk: “I’ve lost all respect for them.”

Asked and answered! Gervais couldn’t help himself, and Piers will be so mad when he gets a whiff of this.

With their explosive 2020 debut album Who Are The Girls?, Nova Twins quickly emerged as refreshing and unapologetic voices in punk rock music. Named “the best band you’ve never heard of” by Tom Morello, Nova Twins make in-your-face metal packed with ripping electric guitar and distorted bass. After a successful tour run, Nova Twins are bringing the same energy to their upcoming sophomore album Supernova, which they’ve already previewed with a handful of frenetic tracks.

Consisting of vocalist/guitarist Amy Love and bassist Georgia South, the UK duo have been close friends since childhood and played in bands that circulated the same scene. They both grew up listening to R&B greats like Toni Braxton and now inject the same defiant sensuality to their music, pairing it with propulsive guitars rather than laid-back beats.

To celebrate the release of their new single “Puzzles” and upcoming LP Supernova, which is due out in June, Nova Twins sat down with Uproxx to talk amazing fan artwork, fluffy cats, and their love of R&B in the latest Indie Mixtape Q&A.

What are four words you would use to describe your music?

Amy: Metal in neon blender.. haha

Georgia: Fuzzy, NOVA, beastly, spiky

It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

Georgia: I’d love it if the music we made now sounds like it could still be released in 2050! All the artists we love from the 90s stand the test of time and those songs could be released today and still sound fresh! Hopefully we’ll still be around to find out.

Amy: By then maybe people will put mp3 chips into their minds and songs would just remain there forever on your brain’s playlist.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?

Amy: Toronto, Glasgow, Birmingham, Paris, London, LA and New York… the list goes on and it depends day by day but we had a few stand out moments there recently.

Georgia: Agreed, these cities were amazing on tour!

Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?

Amy: The women in our families for sure, they are so strong and wise and shaped the women we are today.

Georgia: 100 percent, they’ve given us so many unforgettable life lessons and the confidence to be our true selves!

Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

Amy: Omg, my favorite sort of question! I had the most amazing tuna steak in Thessaloniki in Greece, and also had the best Thai food in LA, think it’s called Night Market WeHo, both were mouth watering, mind/mouth blowing, it lives on in my memories and hands down some of the best food I have ever had.

Georgia: That Thai restaurant in LA was something special! Also we went to a great vegan restaurant in LA. I had carbonara for the first time and it was tastyyy. My brother’s banoffee pies are next to none as well, so good!

What album do you know every word to?

Amy: There are a few, but Toni Braxton’s Secrets was on repeat in my household from morning till night, when I was growing up. My mom loved her, so it’s forever ingrained in my mind. She would blare it so loud in the morning and wake me up!

Georgia: I love so many albums, as I love to listen to a whole body of work but these come to mind — Bruno Mars’ Unorthodox Jukebox, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, The Internet’s Ego Death, N*E*R*D’s Seeing Sounds, Mariah Carey’s MTV Unplugged Live Album 1996, Kanye West’s Late Registration.

What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?

Amy: Beyoncé’s show is spectacular. No one can say anything, she is a wonder woman.

Georgia: Hands down Beyoncé! When I’m feeling low, I put her live shows on YouTube and feel like a bad b*tch within minutes! Once me and Amy went to her show but I had food poisoning and passed out in the standing area, so we got upgraded to £400 seats.

What is the best outfit for performing and why?

Amy: We make all our stage outfits, simply because we wanted something that sounded like our music and nothing out there quite felt right. Anything that we liked was extortionate, so we made our own. We use materials and design things that are comfortable for shows, we get away with more designs for music videos but it needs to be breathable, light and flexible for our gigs.

Georgia: Yeah, we love making all our stage and video outfits! My favorite at the moment for performing is probably our tie dye bleached Reading & Leeds look, as it’s so comfortable and robust! I like clothes that don’t get in the way, or are too hot or distracting when we’re performing.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?

Georgia: I’ve been spending a lot of time on Pinterest lately. It calms me down looking at lots of beautiful aesthetics from fashion to house decor to scenic views!

Amy: I love looking at fluffy cats being all cute and mysterious.

What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?

Amy: At the moment, Ariana Grande’s “God Is A Woman” and Limp Bizkit’s “Dad Vibes”

Georgia: Yeah, we often have songs we’ll sesh for a very long time and these are the new additions at the moment! Ho99o9’s “Mega City Nines” is still in there too!

What’s the last thing you Googled?

Amy: Zendaya, she is so awesome!

Georgia: What 1111 Angel number means.. I kept seeing it everywhere!

What album makes for the perfect gift?

Amy: Supernova… hehe.

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?

Amy: In a creepy cottage in France where there were old style paintings of children crying and looking sad. It gave off super haunted vibes, Georgia and I were scared to fall to sleep.

Georgia: That was hilarious! We recently stayed in another AirBnB in France that had haunted, spider-infested vibes but turned out to have the comfiest bed and silkiest sheets of the whole tour!

What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?

Amy: I was 16, got a tramp stamp… not the best tattoo in the world but I keep it for the mems.

Georgia: I don’t have any tattoos, as I’m so indecisive but I’ve been drawing and planning some…

What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?

Amy: Any old school R&B playlist keeps G and I buzzing, Timbo/Missy era.

Georgia: All the artists that are on our Voices For The Unheard Playlist!

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Amy: I have a lot of amazing supportive people in my life that I wouldn’t be without, everyday I feel lucky to have them.

Georgia: Our Supernovas always go above and beyond to make us and our community feel special, from incredible artwork, to making jewelry, chatting to us and helping each other online or coming to every show on our tour! They make us so happy and we’re so grateful to have them as our Nova family.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

Amy: Drink less, more focus.

Georgia: All through my teens I was super focused on music and felt like I’m missing out on things my friends would do. So I’d say don’t worry about things so much, you’re doing the right thing and hard work always pays off in the end! 18 was one of my favorite years.

What’s the last show you went to?

Amy: Our headline New York show.

What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?

Amy: Harry Potter

Georgia: Just Go With It

What’s one of your hidden talents?

Amy: My intuition is scarily accurate, I always feel things before they happen.

Georgia: I have a double jointed knuckle I can move around.

Supernova is out 6/17 via Marshall Records. Pre-order it here.

As the release nears for Blonde, the Marilyn Monroe biopic starring Ana de Armas that has secured the first NC-17 rating in Netflix’s history, director Andrew Dominik is promising that the unflinching film will have something in it to offend everyone. Dominik made the remarks in a new interview with Vulture, where he reflected on how the movie still fits into the larger #MeToo discussion even though it arrived almost half a decade later.

It’s an interesting time for Blonde to come out. If it had come out a few years ago, it would have come out right when Me Too hit and it would have been an expression of all that stuff. We’re in a time now, I think, where people are really uncertain about where any lines are. It’s a film that definitely has a morality about it. But it swims in very ambiguous waters because I don’t think it will be as cut-and-dried as people want to see it. There’s something in it to offend everyone.

Dominik also opened up about Blonde‘s headline-making NC-17 rating. “I thought we’d colored inside the lines,” the director said. “But I think if you’ve got a bunch of men and women in a boardroom talking about sexual behavior, maybe the men are going to be worried about what the women think. It’s just a weird time. It’s not like depictions of happy sexuality. It’s depictions of situations that are ambiguous.”

Dominik then said Americans are “strange” when it comes to sex even though the country makes “more porn than anyone else in the world,” which is certainly a take. Not necessarily an incorrect take, but certainly… a take.

(Via Vulture)

Every now and then, the fine folks behind Inside the NBA decide to do something really silly that has nothing to do with the great game of basketball, all for our entertainment. We got an example of that on Tuesday night, when Chuck, Shaq, Kenny, and Ernie got to chow down on some ice cream.

The catch: Some of the flavors were a little bit weird. Two of them were pretty normal, as the second ice cream was dark chocolate and the fourth one was chocolate peanut butter. But the first flavor that everyone tried (other than Kenny Smith, because he dove right into a separate flavor) really did not sit well with Shaquille O’Neal, as he was visibly disgusted by the Kraft mac and cheese flavored dessert.

Now, in fairness to Shaq, while I am willing to try anything once, I can see why this might not taste especially great. There was also a pizza flavored ice cream, which appeared to catch everyone off guard — Kenny thought it was cookie dough or cookies and cream, Shaq agreed on cookie dough, and Charles Barkley went with cherry vanilla. They were all extremely wrong.

Anyway, between this and Chuck saying “fool, coffee is chocolate,” which Kenny quickly swatted away as Shaq stood up from his chair and laughed, we have our latest example that Inside the NBA consistently gives us some of its best content when the focus shifts away from basketball.

Rosalía is taking over the world with Motomami, one of the biggest albums of this year so far. She built up the hype of the album with catchy singles and spicy music videos, and she’s still not done. She’s back today with a video for the track “Delirio De Grandeza.”

Instead of killing The Weeknd like she did in “La Fama” or doing a dance choreography like in “Chicken Teriyaki,” the singer is hanging out in the woods, building fires, chopping down trees, running around, walking in the water, and collecting stones. The big campfire at the end feels symbolic as the camera focuses on the glowing embers.

Motomami is not only being praised by critics and fans, but also by fellow musicians, from Cardi B to the Solar Power star Lorde. “I’ve listened to the Rosalía album every day since it came out,” the “Royals” singer wrote in her newsletter. “F*ck, it’s so good, I gagged when I heard that interpolation of “Archangel,” “Hentai” is genius, “Sakura”… projects like this remind me why I live for pop music — at its best, there’s nothing better.” She recently even did a cover of “Hentai” on one of her tour stops.

Watch the video for “Delirio De Grandeza” above.

How do you do, fellow kids? Madonna has entered the NFT chat.

In a new series of NFTs with the artist Beeple, Madonna’s Mother of Creation NFT series is an “NFT Triptych,” that “represents a different form of birth in our contemporary world,” according to the project’s website. Composed of three separate NFTs, each is an immaculate 3D rendering of Madonna and her anatomically correct private parts giving birth to butterflies, insects, and trees. They’re called Mother Of Nature, Mother Of Evolution, And Mother Of Technology.

The NFTs leave nothing to the imagination, as they depict an actual tree growing out of her vagina, or caterpillars emerging from within, before a butterfly flutters from between her legs and into the world. “I wanted to investigate the concept of creation, not only the way a child enters the world through a woman’s vagina but also the way an artist gives birth to creativity,” Madonna is quoted as saying on the website.

All of the proceeds from the sale of these NFTs will benefit nonprofits focused on helping women and children around the world. “Most importantly we wanted to use this opportunity to benefit mothers and children who are most in need right now,” Madonna added on the website. The three organizations that the sale of this art benefits, include The City of Joy, The Voices of Children Foundation, and Black Mama’s Bail Out.

You can view all of the fairly-NSFW digital renderings of these NFTs on the website here. The auctions begin on 05/11 at 3 pm PST on Superrare.

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

Let’s take a look at the total viewership for the 10 most popular scripted broadcast shows from the 2021-2022 season, which began in September of last year and ended this May.

1. NCIS, CBS — 10.97 million
2. FBI, CBS — 10.35 million
3. Chicago Fire, NBC — 9.92 million
4. Blue Bloods, CBS — 9.60 million
5. The Equalizer, CBS — 9.30 million
6. Chicago PD, NBC — 9.25 million
7. Young Sheldon, CBS — 9.22 million
8. Chicago Med, NBC — 9.20 million
9. FBI: Most Wanted, CBS — 8.85 million
10. Ghosts, CBS — 8.41 million

What pops out immediately, besides the days of Seinfeld-level ratings being gone? It could be a few things: that CBS still reigns supreme among the Big Four networks; that none of these shows are what you would call “social media popular” (unless you only follow your grandparents); that everyone needs to cool it on acronyms, etc.

For me, it’s that, with the exception of Ghosts and Young Sheldon, every show is about firefighters (Chicago Fire), doctors (Chicago Med), or cops / special agents (NCIS, FBI, Blue Bloods, Chicago PD, FBI: Most Wanted, The Equalizer — Queen Latifah’s character is a former CIA operative, so it counts). If you extend the top 10 into a top 20, it’s more of the same, with FBI: International at #11, NCIS: Hawai’i at #12, NCIS: Los Angeles at #16 (don’t worry, there are more NCIS spinoffs in the works), Magnum P.I. at #17, 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star at #18 and #19, and The Good Doctor at #20.

That’s 15 out of 20 shows about firefighters, doctors, or cops/agents! If CBS makes a show about a CIA agent who is also a doctor with the name of a city or state in the title, it will be the most popular show of all-time. If the main character’s first name is Sheldon and he has a mustache, even better.

In case you were wondering, the lowest-rated show of the season based on Variety looking at Nielsen data is Welcome to Flatch (1.07 million), followed by The Great North, Bob’s Burgers, and Grand Crew. In other words, good shows.

(Via Variety)

While drill rap is primarily known for its rugged tales of late-night shootouts and nods to New York’s apparently flourishing gang culture, occasionally it can be a little more down-to-earth. In Fivio Foreign’s video for “Hello,” from his debut album, B.I.B.L.E., he turns the drill sound downright romantic, requesting a little attention from a romantic interest alongside rising singers Chloe and KayCyy.

Naturally, each of the singers gets some screen time of their own as well, but the overall narrative remains fixed on FIvie and his pursuit of an attractive woman at a party. Meanwhile, Chloe’s verse traipses the line between deft rapping and mellifluous singing, and KayCyy ties things up with a bow at the end with a lilting, melodic rap.

B.I.B.L.E. debuted at No. 9 on the US Billboard 200 chart in April behind 29,000 album-equivalent units. Its release was fueled by lead single, “City of Gods,” which was produced by Kanye West and featured Alicia Keys, and peaked at No. 46 on the Hot 100. The album also included appearances from ASAP Rocky, Coi Leray, DJ Khaled, Lil Yachty, Lil Tjay, Polo G, Quavo, and more.

Watch Fivio Foreign’s “Hello” video featuring Chloe and KayCyy above.

B.I.B.L.E. is out now via Columbia Records and RichFish. Get it here.