To the surprise of pretty much no one, Donald Trump‘s social media company is not doing so great. In an extremely on-brand move, Truth Social has reportedly stiffed its web hosting company to the tune of $1.6 million. In fairness, the former president’s social media platform initially made its first three payments, but then after that, it did what its boss does best and completely ghosted when it came time for the bill.
In October, RightForge announced it entered into an agreement to host Truth Social, which Trump helped create after he was banned by Twitter following the Jan. 6 riots. RightForge now contends that Truth Social has reneged on its contractually obligated monthly payments for setting up the platform’s web-servicing infrastructure, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.
RightForge is reportedly threatening legal action, but it’s going to have to get into a very long line. Truth Social is already under investigation by the Feds, and it just took another significant hit from the US Patent and Trademark Office, which shut down the social media site’s application to trademark its name.
According to Insider, the patent office found the name Truth Social to be “confusingly similar” to other platforms like Vero – True Social and the Christian radio station Truth Network. In a nutshell, there are just way too many platforms out there with the word “truth” in them, and Trump probably should’ve chosen something more original. The former president’s social media company has until February 2023 to appeal the decision, but it seems like he has much larger problems on his tiny hands.
Rey Mysterio has accomplished more than he could have ever imagined when he was growing up in Tijuana. One of the most illustrious professional wrestling careers of all time — 20 years in WWE, the first father to win WWE’s tag team titles with his son, etc. — Mysterio has done just about everything there is to do.
The latest subject in A&E Network’s “Biography: WWE Legends” series, which debuts on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, Mysterio’s career takes center stage from humble beginnings to wrestling’s biggest stage.
From a young age, Mysterio was drawn to the world of professional wrestling, where he began training with his uncle, Rey Mistero Sr., and an up-and-coming wrestler by the name of Konnan.
“My wife and I always say, ‘God first, then Konnan,’ for the illustrious career that I’ve had because I could have been a local wrestler, hometown hero if it weren’t for Konnan,” Mysterio told Uproxx Sports. “Konnan opened up many doors. Of course I did the work and proved myself, but if you don’t have that connection you’re never going to make it. He not only did it in Mexico, but the fact that he kept opening doors for me everywhere he went — at ECW and then he went to WCW and did the same thing there.”
It was Konnan who, after being impressed with Mysterio’s rapid rise, helped introduce him to the ECW audience and later to management at WCW for a tryout match.
“At the time, I just wanted to travel and have the opportunity to wrestle in different parts of the world. Konnan had always been my mentor, so him going to WCW for the first time, I remember him coming back to Mexico and we were on a tour for AAA and he said, ‘I think it’s gonna be pretty close that I’ll be able to get you in there,’” Mysterio said. “He was able to get me a tryout and told me I was gonna be wrestling Dean Malenko. I’m thinking a tryout, non-televised, maybe a dark match. And sure enough, my tryout match was the opening match for the Great American Bash.”
Mysterio would be welcomed with a standing ovation from the boys in the back after his debut. That was only the beginning of his success in the promotion, as his career would grow with and without his famous mask.
“I don’t believe I was ready to lose the mask,” Mysterio said of his unmasking in 1999. “But of course it happened, it was a decision that was made and we were all on board. Going back and thinking about that moment, I truly believe the ‘giant killer’ character wouldn’t have been (without losing the mask). The following night (after losing the mask) I had a one-on-one against [Kevin] Nash and that’s the night that Nash put me over. It was like a new beginning for Rey Mysterio and I don’t know if this had anything to do with WWE’s vision to eventually put me against bigger guys. But I want to say that possibly gave them the idea to say ‘ok, let’s try him in there with the Big Show, the Undertaker.’ I’ve had an incredible career in WWE because of that little man-big man story and I truly believe that’s because of me facing the bigger guys in WCW.”
Mysterio would go on to join WWE in 2002, years after the company’s acquisition of WCW. And it’s where he’s thrived for the last two decades, building a resume that includes numerous runs as the heavyweight champion and the ability to wrestle alongside his real-life son, Dominik.
While Mysterio was passed down the mask and Mysterio monicker from his uncle, Rey Misterio Sr., he says that he’s unlikely to do the same for his son.
“Dominik, at some point, he definitely wants to separate and create his own road and he wants the fans to know him for who he is not because he’s my son. And I think we’re getting ready to part ways and have him create his own path,” Mysterio said. “We’ve both taken advantage of the fact that he’s been wrestling by my side for the past two years. And now it’s time to cut the strings and have him go his way and have myself go my way, in different directions.
“Obviously I’m very proud of him. I’m very excited to have shared these last two years with him and have been able to see his growth and teach him the way,” Mysterio continued. “I want to say that I created only friendships throughout my 20 years of being with WWE and haven’t had any negative feedback whatsoever from any of my peers. And I think that puts my son in a good position as well. He’s a very respectful young man who knows and understands the respect that comes with this business. And I think that is gonna take him a long way. Now all he has to do is put in the work and grind it out every single day, so he can carve his own destiny.”
As for what he has left to accomplish, Mysterio isn’t setting a time frame on when it’s time to hang up his boots. While he continues to recover from years of damage to his body with stem cell treatment, he seems happy to stay active as long as he can.
“The fact that I was given an opportunity to be part of the WWE roster was special within itself,” Mysterio said. “I was able to cross all these obstacles that were presented my way from Day 1 at the age of 14. I’ve had a very Illustrious and very special career. I think that I was blessed enough to open up doors, not only for myself but for the future superstars that maybe one day thought that it wasn’t possible. I’m very thankful for all of that.
“And now the fact that I’ve been able to share the ring with my son, the fact that we’re in the WWE history books of becoming the first father and son tag team champions. I don’t think I could ask for anything else as long as God gives me a good farewell, and I’m able to retire healthy and that I’m able to continue watching my son put into work for his old man after I’m done.”
Keanu Reeves is a dream wedding guest, even when he isn’t technically invited.
While taking a break from filming a docuseries about F1 for Disney+ in Northamptonshire, England, The Matrix star ended up attending a couple’s wedding ceremony. “My husband saw him in the bar area and told him he’d just got married and invited Keanu to come over to say hello and have a drink with us if he wanted to,” Nikki Roadnight told Newsweek. “He was very friendly and said he would later on. We didn’t know if he would or not, but it was cool that my husband had spoken to him!”
It’s the first time “we saw you from across the bar…” actually worked, because an hour later, an employee at the wedding venue approached Nikki and told her that a “very special guest” was waiting for her outside. It was Keanu, being his kind, awesome self.
“It was all very exciting and I went to say hi and introduce myself, and I offered him a drink but he declined that and said he’d just had a long flight so wouldn’t stay long but he was so kind and friendly and congratulated us on our wedding,” she said. “He was kind enough to do some pictures and our wedding photographer was able to capture some too! Then he took the time to speak to some of our guests and have more photos done!”
Instead of saying “cheese” when photos were taken (which you can see here), Nikki’s mom instructed everyone to yell “Speed,” which is an endearingly corny mom-on-a-wedding-day thing to do. Keanu Reeves brings out the wholesomeness in everyone.
As improbable as it may sound, it’s impossible to overstate Jay-Z’s impact on rap music and hip-hop culture. No matter how much praise fans heap on him, it’ll never be enough to really capture how truly important he’s been to the culture’s growth over the past 20 years. Yet, every so often, he returns with a reminder, giving fans another reason to re-affirm his greatness and declare him one of rap’s Greatest Of All Time.
The latest is Jay’s four-minute verse on DJ Khaled’s new album God Did. In the title song, which also features Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, and John Legend, Jay-Z reiterates all of his accomplishments, from reaching billionaire status to launching the careers of even more billionaires (Kanye West and Rihanna) behind him to touring the world after surviving the rough-and-tumble hallways of the Marcy Projects in Brooklyn. He even boasts about his efforts in social justice, claiming his REFORM Alliance lawyers are willing to work pro bono based on his stature.
Listeners are taking his messaging to heart, taking the opportunity to praise Jay with comparisons to LeBron James, calling the verse his greatest ever, and calling him the embodiment of Black excellence, even 30 years into his career. Naturally, many are already clamoring for him to record and release a new album ASAP. Should that be the ultimate outcome, may we respectfully suggest that DJ Khaled play executive producer on it? The track record’s immaculate.
30 years into his career Jay-Z embodied Black excellence in his verse on ‘GOD DID’, over coming systematic adversities and taking his loved ones along with him. If you don’t think he the GOAT after this, then something really ain’t right #GODDIDpic.twitter.com/54frYr3UXQ
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
“Life isn’t about optimizing every part of it,” Australian songwriter Julia Jacklin says over Zoom. She’s right, but the cult of optimization and life hacking is hard to escape from. The billion-dollar self-help book industry pushes the idea that optimizing your life can lead to winning influence, friends, that big promotion, and even “mastering your mind” (whatever that means). The idea of life hacking is meant to be beneficial, but when everything is seen as a problem that needs to be fixed or improved, when do you know you’ve solved it? How can we ever enjoy something when it always feels like there’s more work to be done?
Jacklin was thinking a lot about this idea of optimizing, particularly when it came to her emotions, and how it kept her from living in the moment when working on her masterpiece of a third studio album, Pre-Pleasure. She realized she had become so concerned with figuring herself out, it was hard to actually enjoy all the hard-earned success and acclaim the past few years had brought her.
She had spent much of her late 20’s traveling the world and sharing her music, only to feel burnt out by giving away her raw emotions on stage each night and being away from her hometown for months at a time. That is, until she suddenly found herself with a lot of free time on her hands, more than she’s ever had in her life. And as someone who needs to be busy to feel creative, Jacklin began reflecting on her constant urge to move on to the next thing; whether it be the next career highlight or bit of personal growth. Finally, Jacklin realized it was time to stop feeling like she needed to work on all these aspects of her life, and simply enjoy them. This realization is weaved through her 10-track project Pre-Pleasure, an album that explores pleasure, boundaries, and the art of finally living in the moment.
The title Pre-Pleasure speaks to the difficulty of reaping the rewards of hard work. “I realized in the record I was talking a lot about my relationships — with people and with my own sexual pleasure — and this constant grappling for understanding,” Jacklin says. “I’m always thinking that I need to work on all these aspects of my life, and that one day I’ll be able to just sit around and enjoy them. I’ll have a really healthy relationship with my sexuality, family, friends, and everything will be great, but first I have to do all this work.” The term “pre-pleasure” sums up what she was feeling: always on the brink of happiness, but never actually experiencing it. “You have to just enjoy where it is at the moment, and not keep expecting it to improve all the time.”
One way Jacklin began enjoying life was reconnecting with pop greats who inspired her early love of music. “Coming into making this record, I was listening to a lot of pop music from my childhood; music that just is engineered to make people feel good,” she says. “I love my genre of music, but it’s an intense genre to listen to exclusively.”
She means, of course, the indie rock genre. More specifically, the kind of music that can controversially be labeled “sad girl music,” a category her debut LP Don’t Let The Kids Win and 2019 opus Crushing are oftentimes be lumped into. Jacklin has found her genre of music can be pretty pretentious; there’s a lot of pressure to be “cool,” “irreverent,” and “full of sarcasm.” There can be certain aversion to earnestness, something Jacklin found herself wanting to combat the best way she knew how: by listening to the likes of Celine Dion and Kylie Minogue. “I think I’ve just been trying to uncomplicate [songwriting] over the last little while and remember that it’s just music. It’s meant to be fun.”
Jacklin was able to keep making music fun for her by switching up the way she writes songs. The exuberant, ’70s folk-infused piano pop number “Love, Try Not To Let Go” was the first song Jacklin ever wrote on the keyboard. “It was like, ‘How do I reconnect with songwriting and be able to remove some of the pressure out of my own head?’” After touring her intimate and personal album Crushing, Jacklin was left emotionally drained. “Guitar brings with it a lot of baggage,” she says. “You can get stuck in the same string patterns and you just feel like it’s quite easy to write the same song over and over again.”
So she instead turned to piano, an instrument she knew next to nothing about, to relieve some of the self-imposed pressure of songwriting. “I’m not proficient in any way. I think that made me feel a bit more excited at myself, excited at things that I was doing, because it just felt new and different,” she says. “Whereas the guitar was just starting to make me feel a bit sad. We’d been through too much together, so I think playing the piano was a fresh element.” Her experimentation paid off, as “Love, Try Not To Let Go” is one of the more buoyant songs on the album. Jacklin’s voice reverberates over a delicate, swirling melody. The chorus breaks down to a frantic mix of fuzzy guitars and hurried snares before floating back to the piano-driven beat, like a wave swelling then lulling back on itself.
“I Was Neon” is another danceable number on the album. It shows how Jacklin was letting go and having fun with music. An upbeat, fuzzy riff establishes a jaunty tempo while Jacklin’s lyrics find her appreciating who she is at this current moment. “Am I gonna lose myself again? / I quite like the person that I am,” she repeats. Whereas her more sanguine songs on Crushing were still, well, crushing at times, tracks like “I Was Neon,” “Lydia Wears A Cross,” and “Be Careful With Yourself” maintain a joyful quality while not losing Jacklin’s unique ability to speak directly from her soul.
While several songs on the album reflect her current state of mind, tracks like “Lydia Wears A Cross” and “Ignore Tenderness” unpack lessons learned in her youth. Like most women, Jacklin had a lot of learning — and unlearning — to do about her sexuality as an adult, which was only magnified by her Catholic school upbringing. “Lydia Wears A Cross” lays out a realistic vision of indoctrination, with a young girl going through the motions of prayer and praise without fully grasping its meaning. The girl sees her Catholic school uniform simply as a dress to feel pretty in, and thinks listening to the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack is a pious act.
Meanwhile, “Ignore Tenderness” is a lesson on combating society’s lessons on what sexuality should be for women. “There was no [sexual education] in school or family, it was just like zero information about anything to do with sex as a young person,” Jacklin recalls. Any messaging she’d get about sex as a teenager was from an abstinence-only framework, which has time and time again been proven harmful, or disingenuous sex tips from Cosmopolitan designed to be more scandalous than insightful. “Living within rape culture and living in the early-mid 2000s, which was when I was a teenager, I thought that as I got older, I would naturally shed all of that. But it’s been a lot harder to shake all of that shame and stigma. That stuff is fused into your psyche.” “Ignore Tenderness” addresses this early messaging, with lines about watching porn and getting “conflicting advice” like “be naughty but don’t misbehave.”
While Jacklin has done a lot of work from unpacking her religious upbringing to unlearning those weird Cosmo sex tips, she still hasn’t fully figured herself out. And that’s okay. For now, she’s content in liking the person she is in this moment, and trying not to over-analyze it — especially in her music itself. “I think if songwriting was super cathartic, songwriters would be like a happier group of people,” she says. “It’s important to put your feelings down on paper or in a song, but there’s so many other things you need to do to live a fulfilling life.” For Jacklin, part of that fulfillment comes from conquering “pre-pleasure” and finally living in the moment.
Pre-Pleasure is out now via Polyvinyl. Get it here.
W.L. Weller is made by Sazerac at the famed Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky. The juice is made from their wheated bourbon mash bill — that’s a recipe that includes corn as a primary ingredient supported by red winter wheat and malted barley grains. The hot distillate then goes into a new charred oak barrel for a rest (how long depends on which expression from the brand we’re talking about). This whole process is the same as Sazerac’s other juggernaut whiskeys from the Pappy Van Winkle brand. We’re talking about the same exact mash bill and aging process for the two whiskeys, hence Weller’s rise to stardom as a Pappy adjacent whiskey.
Let’s be clear though, Weller has a unique flavor profile. So, yes, the barrels might hold the same juice, but whether they become a Pappy or Weller depends on how the profile of those barrels evolved while maturing. Weller is Weller and Pappy is Pappy — one isn’t a knockoff of the other.
The other big reason this whiskey exploded in popularity is that the juice in those bottles is actually pretty freakin’ tasty and was affordable. W.L. Weller has seven expressions and the price range for those should be $29 to $99, according to their MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price) in 2022. But because of that Pappy parallel and the quality of the product, that price now ranges from $130 to well over $2,000 per bottle depending on the expression and how many bottles make it into the wild.
That inflated retail price does create a barrier to entry. That’s why I’m here. I’m lucky enough to get to sample these bottles yearly and report back. So, below, I’ll be giving you my professional opinion and tasting notes on each bottle and ranking them according to which ones I think you should be chasing down. Ready? Let’s go!
Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of The Last Six Months
Before Weller blew up, this was part of the three core whiskeys they released along with Special Reserve and the 12 Year. This is a non-age-statement bourbon but it’s called “Old Weller Antique” (OWA) by those in the know. The ripple with this expression is the higher proof. The barrels are vatted and barely proofed down to 107 proof before bottling.
Tasting Notes:
There’s a sense of vanilla blossoms on the nose with a hint of old wood and maybe a hint of wet leather that leads back to cinnamon-spiced caramel and the slightest hint of black licorice. The palate leans into silky vanilla with a cream soda vibe next to sweet stewed apples with woody cinnamon sticks, cloves, and nutmeg followed by black cherry and a hint of sweet cedar. The end layers the cinnamon, cherry, vanilla, and cedar into a rich and chewy tobacco leaf with a hint of dryness on the very back end.
Bottom Line:
This is a great place to start and not so much “last” as “we need to start somewhere.” The only reason I rank this lower is it goes from a vanilla bomb to a cinnamon bomb with a lot of cherries. It’s not as nuanced as some of the other expressions we have coming up. Moreover, I’d argue this really feels like a great cocktail bourbon with which to build a beautiful Manhattan, Sazerac, or boulevardier more than a day-to-day sipper. And if you look at this like a standard $50 bottle, that makes a lot of sense.
The age of the barrels on this blend is also unknown. Overall, we know this is a classic wheated bourbon that’s blended, proofed, and bottled as a just-north-of-budget whiskey.
Tasting Notes:
Tannic old oak really pops on the nose with sweet cherries, soft vanilla, and a hint of wet leather. The palate is creamy with plenty of stewed apples and winter spices next to a hint of raisin and nut (kind of like a nut cluster with caramel and a touch of ginger snap). The finish arrives with a dark cherry sweetness that’s almost candy, as brown sugar counters a hint of sharp winter spice with a twinge of pipe tobacco next to a final note of old leather and dry wicker.
Bottom Line:
Again, look at this like a $30 bourbon. From that lens, this is a solid workhorse whiskey that works as well as a cocktail base as it does in a highball with good and fizzy mineral water as it does on the rocks. It’s also a decent shooter with a beer back. The point is, for a $30 bourbon, this rocks (shame you can rarely get it at the price).
Weller Single Barrel gets a lot of hype because people tend to think of it as an alt Pappy Single Barrel. It’s not. Again, Weller and Pappy are two different beasts. That aside, the juice in play here is pulled from single barrels that hit a perfect Weller profile. That whiskey is then proofed down to 86 proof for this as-is yearly drop.
Tasting Notes:
A bowl of fresh sour cherries just hit with salt and fresh mint mingles with a lush vanilla foundation and a hint of cedar and maybe some winter spice on the nose. The palate amps up those winter spices with a good hit of nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove with a creamy eggnog mouthfeel before a hint of barely bitter dark-chocolate-covered espresso beans link to a whisper of white pepper. The end layers the nutmeg and creamy eggnog into a chewy tobacco leaf and then folds that into a dry pine box.
Bottom Line:
This is where we start to get some serious nuance beyond the cherry/vanilla/cinnamon matrix of the last two. There are more sweet and soft tannic notes at play that play nicely with bright and fresh fruit and herbs and a hint of bitterness. Overall, we’re in solid sipper territory with this one, especially on a single rock which opens a creaminess to the chocolate and nutmeg with a hint of marzipan sneaking in.
A few years back, Buffalo Trace asked hardcore Weller fans to “Craft Your Perfect Bourbon.” C.Y.P.B. was born when fans chose their favorite bourbon recipe, proof, warehouse location, and age on the Buffalo Trace website. A consensus shook out with wheated bourbon aged on the highest warehouse floors for eight years that’s then bottled at 95 proof. From that, a new whiskey was born and is now released yearly.
Tasting Notes:
Expect a nose full of dried orange peels and dry tobacco leaves braided with dry cedar bark next to a creamy vanilla sauce just touched with poppy seeds and a faint hint of real and spicy root beer laced with dark cherries. The palate has a mild spicy warmth that leads to a salted caramel sweetness with an echo of tart apple skins before the dark cherry kicks in with a mix of winter spices and lush marzipan covered in creamy dark chocolate. The end leans into a lightly spiced (think cinnamon, allspice, and maybe some licorice) chewing tobacco with a layer of dark cacao or almond adding a dryness to the finish.
Bottom Line:
This is just an excellent pour of whiskey. The yearly releases do have some nuance year to year, but you can also trust that they’ll be stellar overall. The hardest part of this is that this is so hard to come by. You really have to keep your ear to the ground to know when these drop (May) and where they end up.
This expression is a marriage of some serious barrels of unknown age. That vatted juice goes into the bottle at “full proof” which is not necessarily “barrel proof.” The “full proof” this refers to is the proof of the hot juice when it goes into the barrel for aging. That whiskey will come out of the barrel somewhere around 57% but not right at it. So there may be a little proofing water involved, hence it is always 114 proof and not 114.7 one year and 113.1 the next year or 115.9 the year after that.
Tasting Notes:
Ripe and sour cherries lead the way with a thick vanilla underbelly, a hint of salted caramel, and woody cinnamon next to whole nutmeg bulbs on the nose with this slight echo of almost singed cherry bark. The palate leans into the sharpness of the cinnamon and the lushness of the vanilla as a foundation as layers of buttery caramel cake frosting with a hint of sassafras and licorice next to dry cedar bark braids with a thin line of sweet grass and a whisper of sourdough fritters. The end leans into creamy brandy butter cut with dark-chocolate-covered dried sour cherries sprinkled with salt and rolled in fresh tobacco leaves and stacked next to orange-laced marzipan in an old and slightly sweet cedar box.
Bottom Line:
This is another winner. It’s just so nuanced and deep while feeling familiar and almost comforting. Make sure to add a little water or a single rock to really let the lush creaminess of the vanilla and dark chocolate shine through with an added hint of burnt orange on that rich marzipan.
This is the main age-statement whiskey from Weller. The barrels spend at least 12 years mellowing (some say the barrels can reach into the 20-year range) before they’re vatted, proofed down, and bottled as-is.
Tasting Notes:
The nose opens with soft orchard fruits — think old peaches and bruised pears — that lead to a spun wool, vanilla-heavy pancake batter, and really good marzipan with an echo of rose water and orange oils next to soft and worn wicker canes wrapped in old leather sheets. The taste is a perfect balance of cherry wood, dried cranberry, buttery Southern biscuits, salted toffee candy, and Christmas spices (clove and nutmeg heavy). The end lets those sharp spices shine but isn’t hot by any stretch alongside moist angel food cake, apple-cider-soaked cinnamon sticks, and orange-infused marzipan with a hint of dark chocolate coating and a mild sense of old (damn near musty) cherry tobacco leaves.
Bottom Line:
This at $40 MSRP is wild. It’s crazy good, which makes it easy to see how it blew up in price. That all aside, this is solid whiskey at an extremely approachable ABV. It’s just an easy AF sipper without water or ice. Adding some, and you’ll get this silky and luxurious pour of Weller that’s damn near second to none, which leads us to…
1. William Larue Weller (Buffalo Trace Antique Collection 2021)
Distilled back in the fall of 2009, this barrel-strength bourbon skips the Minnesota rye and instead uses North Dakota wheat with NoDak barley and Kentucky corn. The juice spent 12-and-a-half years mellowing in warehouses C, D, K, L, and Q on floors one through three. While maturing, 64% of the whiskey was lost to the angels before it was small-batched and bottled as-is at barrel strength.
Tasting Notes:
This opens with a deep sense of vanilla down to the roots with rich and buttery salted caramel drizzled over freshly fried sourdough doughnuts dusted with raw sugar, cinnamon, and a little allspice. The palate leans into the sharpness of the cinnamon to point of teetering near a Red Hot before a soft apricot jam arrives with fresh butter and soft cardamon with a cherry tobacco vibe underneath it all. The end amps the spice up to a dark red chili pepper-infused dark and bitter chocolate flaked with Alder smoked salt and wrapped up in dark cherry tobacco leaves and braided with dry wicker, sweetgrass, and cedar bark threads with this fleeting hint of mint lurking somewhere in the background with some real black licorice.
Bottom Line:
This is a masterpiece. I don’t know what else to say. I guess, if you do come across a pour at your favorite whiskey bar, try it there first before committing a mortgage payment to a bottle. Otherwise, this does not disappoint, ever.
Kanye West has never shied away from this faith throughout his career, turning a plea to God to guide him into a hit back in 2004 with “Jesus Walks.” His walk with his deity reached its peak in 2019 when he released his first gospel album Jesus Is King, with songs like “Follow God,” “Everything We Need,” and “Use This Gospel.” Three years later, “Use This Gospel,” which originally featured Kenny G and Clipse, received a remixed version featuring Eminem and production by Dr. Dre on DJ Khaled’s 13th studio album God Did. For those in the know, it had actually been in the works since 2020.
In a September 2020 tweet, the Donda artist thanked Slim Shady for his contributions. “@Eminem THANK YOU FOR RAPPING ON THE DR DRE REMIX OF USE THIS GOSPEL I HAVW ALWAYS LOVED AND RESPECTED YOU AND IM HONORED TO HAVE YOU BLESS THIS SONG … ITS ALSO NORTH WEST’S FAVORITE KANYE WEST SONG OF ALL TIME.”
Eminem has never been known to profess his faith as loudly as Ye, but the “Use This Gospel” remix finds the “Rap God” artist doing just that. “Today’s the day that I put all of my trust and faith in You, Father / Please let this hate make me stronger,” the Detroit rapper proclaims.
Bartees Strange is having a good year. His new album Farm To Table took the indie world by storm, serving as the perfect follow-up to 2020’s critically-acclaimed Live Forever. Now, he’s back with a stunning reimagining of “Gang Signs” by Freddie Gibbs for Amazon Music.
“I covered ‘Gang Signs’ because Freddie Gibbs is one of my favorite artists and I thought this would be a cool format for the song,” Bartees said about the cover. “This song is so gorgeous in a way that only Freddie could do. He always walks this line of being pretty hardcore lyrically, really pulls no punches. I love that about him — something I really admire. We could all use a little dose of Freddie from time to time.”
In our 2021 interview with Bartees, he spoke about the importance of live performances in his career and the way the pandemic affected that aspect of his music making. “I love the record, but I think that we’re just heavier in person,” he said. “I like to play with the arrangements and make things special. So whenever we play live, the set becomes more expansive than I can do on an album.”
Listen to the cover below.
Freddie Gibbs is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Despite sitting on $2 billion courtesy of Saudi Arabia, Jared Kushner has been aggressively making the media rounds to promote his new book, Breaking History: A White House Memoir. Donald Trump’s son-in-law has made stops on Fox News, Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM show, and other right-wing media outlets to push a book that The New York Times equated with “watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.”
While most of Kushner’s interviews have centered around white-washing the Trump administration and/or distancing himself from the numerous scandals contained therein, things took a turn when the former White House advisor did a livestream with Richard Grenell. Apparently, Kushner believes that a combination of exercise and science could make him, and this is not a joke, live forever. Yeah…
Jared Kusher did a live stream for his book, that has an amazing 535 views, where he said he thinks he is going to live forever pic.twitter.com/lM4E8K2R5D
In Kushner’s quasi-defense, his belief isn’t entirely narcissistic. He genuinely thinks his entire generation also has the chance be immortal, so that’s neat. Via Mediaite:
From the last year, the one thing I’ve tried to put a priority on since I left the White House was, you know, getting some exercise in. I think that there is a good probability that my generation is, hopefully with the advances in science, either the first generation to live forever, or the last generation that’s going to die. So, we need to keep ourselves in pretty good shape.
Of course, if no one dies, the planet is going to fill up very quickly, but Grenell chose not to ask a single follow-up after hearing the former President of the United States’ son-in-law basically say he’s immortal. It’d be nice to know if Kushner envisions some sort of Highlander situation or how he thinks this whole thing will work if a bunch of us are about to be doomed to this existence forever.
Then again, it’s not like we won’t have time to figure it out. So, so much time.
A lot of movies are funny, but very few are funny on a cellular level. Few announce themselves as something different from the very first frames. Even most good comedies are mostly built from familiar situations and people, but Funny Pages is that rare breed; bewildering and strange before its characters even begin speaking and projecting its inherent twistedness with every aspect of its construction. Owen Kline’s directorial debut, produced by the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems, Good Times), is an esoteric masterpiece, a woolly comedy of the bizarre oozing with rewatch potential.
Daniel Zolghadri plays our main character, Robert, a sort of Holden Caulfield by way of R. Crumb, determined to live out his dream of being a romantic, reclusive, dangerous cult cartoonist, in spite, or to spite his banal, upper-middle-class parents. In the first scene, he’s being showered with praise by his eccentric art teacher, who urges Robert to go further, to get weirder, to subvert more expectations with his vulgar, perverse little drawings.
Ah, those drawings, depicted lovingly in the otherwise grimy, grainy, fluorescent-lit scene. They nearly steal the show, managing to be cute despite depicting full penetration and squinting little buttholes, and laugh out loud hilarious to a frame (the twisted brilliance of Johnny Ryan, who drew them). Mr. Katano, a large lumpy slob who demands Robert caricature him in all his misshapen glory, is played by an actor named “Stephen Adly Guirgis,” a name that, like most aspects of Funny Pages, is self-evidently and almost inexplicably hilarious.
Every actor in Funny Pages is basically the visual equivalent of the sonic qualities of “Stephen Adly Guirgis,” human sight gags, dadaist celebrations of mother nature and all the ways she can be magical and capricious and inspired. Funny Pages’ achievement in unconventional casting choices may never be equaled. My friend Matt, who I brought to the screening with me, said every person in Funny Pages sort of looks like a grown-up Garbage Pail kid. There’s some truth to that, though I suspect Kline partly achieves this effect by opening with a montage of hilarious and semi-cruel caricatures. Such that, from that point on, you begin to envision every character you encounter in Funny Pages as their own inevitable visual parody, your brain filling the gaps on its own like an acid trip. It’s a brilliant and twisted trick that makes the audience complicit in Robert’s cruelty.
Yet also, maybe this cast of characters just looks more like a collection of R. Crumb drawings come to life than any cast ever has before. But it’s also more than that; they’re not just kooky for kooky’s sake, or deliberately gross, which has been done (see: The Greasy Strangler). These characters are both odd and odd looking in a way that seems to define a place.
The same way Napoleon Dynamite could only have been made with and by Mormons from Idaho, Funny Pages is a collection of types only found in the arcades and comic book shops of the suburbs of the tri-state area. And only filmmakers as authentically from that milieu as Owen Kline and the Safdies could depict these characters in this much detail and palpable veracity. I imagine this world it will be intimate for those who know it and impossibly exotic for those who don’t. I grew up in California, whose residents mostly seem milk-fed and focus-grouped by comparison, and the first time I encountered the particular types produced in Northern New Jersey and Long Island when I was in my twenties I thought I was in a Dali painting.
Robert, who seems determined to upset his conventional parents (who are well-meaning but intense in a way that you get at least an inkling why Robert finds them intolerable — played brilliantly by veterans Maria Dizzia and Ron Rifkin) chooses to seek his imagined life of grit and artistic danger in the exotic, far off land of Trenton, New Jersey. Which is always intoned with a mixture of awe and fear by Robert’s comic book store cohorts. “Trenton?? Trenton.”
Robert rents a cheap room in a sweaty basement next to a clanking water heater, populated by a handful of other oddballs, with shades of the six-and-a-half-floor from Being John Malkovich. Funny Pages is constantly riding the line between the banal and the absurd, always with a seasoned eye for the grotesque.
He soon meets Wallace, played by Michael Maher, one of Hollywood’s great weird guys who deserves legitimate Oscar consideration here. Robert is fascinated by Wallace, because Wallace used to work for Image Comics. He’s also a tortured personality, broken by the industry and mostly prickly towards everyone. Eventually, Robert comes to be torn between Wallace, a cruel, broken genius he partly idolizes but who treats Robert like dirt, and his high school best friend Miles, a pimply outcast with a Prince Valiant haircut (played by Miles Emanuel, who Owen Kline met when Emanuel showed up to a video store where Kline worked, to rent Ingmar Bergman’s Hour Of The Wolf with his babysitter when Emanuel was 11). Robert mostly treats Miles with the same dismissive contempt with which Wallace treats Robert.
It all comes to a head eventually, if not to a conclusion. And that’s okay, because Funny Pages is less an epic story than a lovingly crafted, exquisitely detailed portrait of a particular place and people, full of scenes that are largely ludicrous and impossible to forget. It’s an 87-minute lark, the kind of movie you want to frame and hang on the wall, the ultimate conversation piece.
‘Funny Pages’ is available in select theaters and on VOD August 26th.Vince Mancini is onTwitter. You can access his archive of reviewshere.
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