Month: June 2022

The Miami Heat had a tremendous regular season, earning the top seed in the East, and looked dominant through the first two rounds before getting bounced from the playoffs in a hard fought seven-game series against the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Health played a role in their pre-Finals exit, as some of their top players were banged up, but there are also real questions about whether this roster has enough offensive firepower to beat the best teams in the league. Finding ways to get more out of their offense without sacrificing too much on the defensive end where they were incredible is among the biggest tasks for Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra this offseason. One of their best offensive players, Sixth Man of the Year winner Tyler Herro — who was limited with a groin injury in the Boston series — has one idea for how to inject some more life into the offense: start him.

At his exit interview, Herro was asked if it was a priority this offseason to become a starter (3:36 of the above video) and offered this response.

“Yeah, for sure. In some way, I would like to start. I think it’s my fourth year, so I think I’ve earned it, and we’ll see what happens.”

It’s an interesting situation for the Heat, and one Spoelstra and his staff will have to work out. The Heat preferred Herro coming off the bench this season to ensure both units had some kind of creation when Jimmy Butler rested, and when Kyle Lowry’s at full strength it makes sense to have the shooting of Max Strus (or Duncan Robinson, before he got benched) between them. However, Herro clearly sees his fourth year as an opportunity to make the leap into being a starter and that role matters, particularly in terms of how much he’ll get paid next offseason when he becomes a restricted free agent.

The Heat can mitigate that by working out an extension that pays him like a starter and possibly keep him in a bench role where it wouldn’t matter as much to him if it benefits the team, but if an extension can’t be reached before the season, Herro likely won’t be quite as willing to hop back into that sixth man role. On Herro’s end, he’ll need to prove he can hold up defensively, as he is always the opposition’s target on that end — albeit the Celtics took the same approach against Strus — and also to be a consistent three-point threat in spot-up situations as that is clearly the thing Spoelstra wants out of that role when Butler and Lowry are out there together.

Less than two years after releasing his chart-topping album El Último Tour Del Mundo, Bad Bunny returned with his fourth album Un Verano Sin Ti last month. The full-length album checks in with 23 songs and guest appearances from Chencho Corleone, Jhay Cortez, Tony Dize, Rauw Alejandro, Bomba Estéreo, The Marías, and Buscabulla. Less than a month after Un Verano Sin Ti arrived, Bad Bunny looks to keep the album’s spirit alive with a video for “Titi Me Pregunto.”

The visual kicks off with Bad Bunny stopping by a bodega in New York to purchase a few items. When he walks out, the song’s spirited Dembow beat drops, and a few moments later, Bad Bunny is partying with New York residents in the middle of the city’s streets. A short time later, Bad Bunny is kidnapped and brought to his own wedding where his girlfriend Gabriela Berlingeri eventually meets him.

Bad Bunny is having quite a successful year thanks to Un Verano Sin Ti. The project had Spotify’s biggest-ever streaming day after it was released and it later became his second consecutive No. 1 album.

You can watch the video for “Titi Me Pregunto” above.

Un Verano Sin Ti is out now via Rimas Entertainment LLC. You can stream it here.

Susan Sarandon is a brilliant actress who arguably won her Oscar for the wrong movie. No offense to Dead Man Walking, in which she’s great, but what’s better than her forward, funny, fiercely independent yet thirsty turn in Bull Durham? Her politics are another matter. Sarandon is a longtime progressive, and she isn’t afraid to hold Democratic politicians’ feet to the fire — one could say to a fault. She’s been especially hard on them in the Trump era, which we’re debatably still in, infamously throwing her support behind Jill Stein in 2016. That’s made her something of a pariah in the party, who attacks those on her side. Now, comments she made last month earned the ire of another Trump.

As per Insider, Mary Trump took a break from trashing her uncle, the former president, to trash one of the stars of Stepmom. Trump specifically took umbrage with a tweet Sarandon posted after it was revealed the Supreme Court were almost certainly overturning Roe v. Wade. With an emoji, she rolled her eyes at congressman Eric Swalwell saying the only way to protect abortion rights is to vote for Democrats — again.

“Dems are going to use this to fundraise and get you to vote for them again despite sitting on their hands for the last two years,” Sarandon tweeted. “Instead of actually standing for anything, their only strategy is scaring you into voting blue.”

Trump didn’t like that. “She’s a complete idiot,” the psychologist-turned-bestselling-author railed while on the MeidasTouch Podcast. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and if anybody can say with a straight face that the Democrats are the problem, I don’t know what to tell them.” She added, “She was pretty decent in a couple of movies a couple of decades ago, but politically she’s a moron.”

Trump continued, saying that “she thinks she’s some wise shaman or something” but was actually a victim of the “Dunning-Kruger effect” — a cognitive bias where people with a low ability at doing something overestimate their worth. She then threw down her cards. “If we can just make it as simple as possible — a vote for Republicans is a vote for fascism.”

Sarandon is often blamed, sometimes unfairly, for how America has fared after electing Mary Trump’s uncle, as if the mom from the 1994 Little Women movie had enough power to sway an election (or to overturn Roe v. Wade). You could also say she has a point: Democrats haven’t accomplished much since assuming the three main bodies of government almost a year-and-a-half ago, and they probably should do more than simply asking people to vote for them again. At the same time, implying that both parties are the same isn’t helping matters either — thus Mary Trump going after her bigly.

(Via Insider)

The BET Award nominations for 2022 were revealed today and fans had plenty of thoughts about who was selected for the upcoming show. Noticeably missing from the nominees was Lil Nas X, who had two Billboard chart-topping hits last year with “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and “Industry Baby,” which featured Jack Harlow. He also had another top-10 hit with “That’s What I Want.”

Fans noticed that Harlow, who received his first No. 1 single with “Industry Baby,” received a nomination for Best Male Hip-Hop Artist, and they immediately called out BET. “Jack Harlow got a BET award nom and Lil Nas X didn’t? During pride month? During Black Music History month? Is that what I’m seeing?,” said Twitter user @Tendurag.

Lil Nas X responded to the nominations in the most Lil Nas X way possible. “Thank you bet awards,” he said in a now-deleted tweet. “An outstanding zero nominations again. black excellence!”

He later clarified that it wasn’t the lack of nominations that peeved him, but rather the lack of representation of Black and queer artists.

“I just feel like black gay ppl have to fight to be seen in this world,” he said in another deleted tweet, “and even when we make it to the top mfs try to pretend we are invisible.”

The 2022 BET Awards will air Sunday, June 26 at 8 p.m. EST / 7 p.m. CST on BET.

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music Artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ever since the Uvalde gun massacre, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, Republicans have blamed everything except the guns. Their targets have been very creative. Some have blamed doors. Don Jr. blamed teachers. Tucker Carlson blamed…COVID lockdowns? And then there’s Laura Ingraham. The Fox News host was dragged en masse after she pinned the blame on what she called “pot psychosis.” But on Wednesday’s The View, Whoopi Goldberg didn’t think it was funny.

After playing the clip, in which Ingraham came for the drug that turns people into giggling couch potatoes convinced the greatest musical genre is prog rock, the show’s hosts made some customary ““What is she on?” jokes. (That one came from Joy Behar.) Not Whoopi.

“Listen, I know you’re gonna think I’m crazy. But none of those things are the issue,” Goldberg said, calmly yet sternly. “The issue is that there is an assault weapon out there that people can put their hands on. They can put their hands on it easier than they can get a glass of beer in a bar. Kids can get an assault weapon. That’s the issue. It’s not if people are smoking too much weed. You know that, Laura!”

Goldberg continued:

“You can put it through a B.S. lens if you want to and keep pretending like you don’t know that we have an issue with assault weapons. And this will be the last I have to say on it. This weapon, you cannot hunt with it. You cannot go bird hunting with it. It is made to kill and destroy bodies. That’s what it does!”

Lots of people treat wacko Republican responses to serious issues with mockery, especially if they come from Marjorie Taylor Greene or the comparatively more respectable Ted Cruz. But Goldberg’s measured outburst is a reminder that these lawmakers continue to legislate in a manner that can put people’s lives in danger, as it has with the epidemic of mass shootings that has no end in sight. So laugh at someone like Ingraham when she unconvincingly blames psychotic behavior on the chilliest drug on the market. But don’t forget to get angry as Whoopi does in the video you can watch above.

Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers set some records after its release last month. For what it’s worth, that shouldn’t be surprising as his loyal fan base spent five years waiting on a new body of work from him. For example, Kendrick broke Apple Music’s record for the most first-day streams by an album that was released in 2022. Shortly after its release, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers also had the biggest debut on the Billboard 200 chart in 2022. A few weeks later, Kendrick had a rare occurrence with one of his songs on the Billboard chart, and it’s not one we might have expected from him.

XXL notes that Kendrick’s “We Cry Together,” which features contributions from actress Taylour Paige, fell down a total of 81 spots — from No. 16 to No. 97 — between the May 24 and May 31 updates of the Billboard Hot 100. This makes for one of the biggest single-week drops ever on the song chart. However, it’s not the biggest that we’ve seen from a song in the past couple of years.

Back in 2020, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” went from topping the singles chart one week to completely falling off the Hot 100 the following week. Despite this, the track would go on to become the first song to be No. 1 in four separate years after it originally topped the charts in 2019 and did so again in 2021 and 2022.

On the bright side for Kendrick, his 2012 album Good Kid M.A.A.D. City recently became the only hip-hop studio album to spend 500 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.

Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers set some records after its release last month. For what it’s worth, that shouldn’t be surprising as his loyal fan base spent five years waiting on a new body of work from him. For example, Kendrick broke Apple Music’s record for the most first-day streams by an album that was released in 2022. At the time of its release, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers had the biggest debut on the Billboard 200 chart in 2022. A few weeks later, Kendrick set a new record on the Billboard chart, but it’s not one we might have expected from him.

According to the publication, Kendrick’s “We Cry Together,” which features contributions from actress Taylour Paige, recorded the biggest single-week drop on the most recent edition of the Billboard 200 chart. The record dropped down a total of 81 spots — from No. 16 to No. 97 — between the May 24 and May 31 updates of the singles chart.

This big drop shouldn’t be surprising for a couple of reasons. First, B-side records on an album typically experience a big drop on the charts once the hype behind the album that they’re on dies out. Other songs from Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers have also experienced this. They include “Silent Hill” with Kodak Black which dropped from No. 7 to No. 49 in the past couple of weeks. Secondly, “We Cry Together” is a lengthy skit on Kendrick’s new album and it features the rapper in an extremely heated argument with his girlfriend, something that most listeners found uncomfortable to listen to. As a result, they most likely steered away from the record during future listens of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers thus launching the song down the singles chart.

On the bright side, Kendrick’s Good Kid M.A.A.D. City recently became the only hip-hop studio album to spend 500 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.

Top Gun: Maverick is currently making all the money, and depending on who you ask, that means good times at the movies are back or, if you’re a far-right radio host, that the Democrats are going to lose bigly in November. One of the stand-out moments has little to do with its next-level aerial photography. It’s the scene where Tom Cruise’s aging (but still kicking) super-pilot meets in person with nemesis-turned-texting buddy Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, played by Val Kilmer — a scene that, despite its semi-autobiographical bona fides, had to lean on some cutting-edge tech to pull off.

The scene nods to Kilmer’s real life ordeals: In 2014, the actor was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent a tracheotomy. He’s been cancer-free for four years, but the fight cost him his voice. In the Top Gun sequel, Iceman is dying from some mystery illness that has also left him unable to speak. Instead he communicates via a computer, but at one point you briefly hear his voice. But it’s not exactly Kilmer you hear speaking.

As per Fortune, Kilmer teamed up with London-based tech startup Sonantic to create a digital version of his voice, using hours of archival footage featuring his speaking voice before his illness. The company then fed those sounds into the their algorithms, which they then used for a model.

As Fortune elaborates:

“After cleaning up old audio recordings of Kilmer, [Sonantic] used a ‘voice engine’ to teach the voice model how to speak like Kilmer. The engine had around 10 times less data than it would have been given in a typical project, Sonantic said, and it wasn’t enough. The company then decided to come up with new algorithms that could produce a higher-quality voice model using the available data.”

It’s not far from what techies did to Mark Hamill’s voice in the Book of Boba Fett episode featuring the younger (and less gravelly) Luke Skywalker. You can listen to a sample of the AI version of Kilmer’s voice below.

Now, before you think this is a priceless form of technology that can only do good, it’s best to consider its disturbing ramifications. A Radiolab episode from 2019 delved into the creation of AI-created voices, such as the one used for Kilmer.It pointed out that this tech, not unlike equally dangerous deepfakes, doesn’t only allow malefactors to create soundalikes that could be used for nefarious purposes. It also allows people to deny that audio of them, say, saying something damning is real. Imagine if Donald Trump would have been able to call the Access Hollywood tape “fake news”? Something to keep in mind when you’re listening to the ersatz Kilmer voice in Top Gun: Maverick.

(Via Fortune)

The weirdest story in baseball this season played out over the weekend when Tommy Pham and Joc Pederson got into it prior to a game between the Cincinnati Reds and the San Francisco Giants because of some long-simmering beef between the two in their fantasy football league. Pham approached Pederson before a game and slapped him, which led to Pham sitting out Friday’s game.

Pederson explained what happened — basically, it stems from a meme making fun of Pham’s old team, the Padres, that Pham did not enjoy. Seven months later, after Pham dropped out of the league, he slapped Pederson, and somehow, this story is still going on. Pham called out the league’s commissioner, Mike Trout, who he deemed is the worst commissioner in all of fantasy sports.

Now, as someone who was a really terrible commissioner for a fantasy sports league not all that long ago, I think I hold this distinction, but regardless, Pham believes the title goes to Trout. And on Wednesday, before the Los Angeles Angels’ game against the New York Yankees, Trout had the chance to respond and decided to crack a few jokes over the whole thing.

In fairness to Trout, the commissioner in his league is Rob Manfred, so I get why he would say that.

On Wednesday, after six weeks of testimony and two days of deliberation, Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard came to an end. The jury decided in Depp’s favor, unanimously agreeing that he and his legal team had proven that Heard defamed him in a Washington Post op-ed. Both sides released statements. Depp said the jury “gave me my life back.” Heard, meanwhile, said she was “heartbroken” but “even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women.

The trial was a fog of bizarre and disturbing accusations from both sides. Depp re-aired claims that Heard had left poop in his bed while Heard admitted she hit Depp while on Ambien. Chilling texts Depp had sent about wishing her dead surfaced and Heard claimed that his “smear campaign” had cost her work. She also spoke about receiving “hundreds” of death threats since the trial began.

But when the verdict was announced, the House Judiciary GOP’s oft-raucous Twitter account cheerfully took a side, tweeting a gif of Depp in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, standing on the nest of a ship, wind blowing his long locks, looking triumphant.

People were more than a little alarmed that a corner of government, one with a terrible track record with women’s rights, was siding with a powerful man who was just awarded millions from a woman who had alleged abuse.

Some tried to point out to Depp who was on his side.

Some joked about Republicans using a movie clip from Disney, who they’d recently made Enemy Number One.

Some speculated that the tweet might have come from House Judiciary ranking member Jim Jordan, an infamously bad tweeter.

And some called out this GOP account as particularly toxic.