Month: September 2022

After months and months of waiting for some sort of good news regarding the status of Lonzo Ball’s knee, the Chicago Bulls apparently got that on Thursday afternoon. Ball, who has not played since the midpoint of last season due to a knee problem that has kept lingering, underwent a previously-announced “arthroscopic debridement of his left knee” on Wednesday.

Ball said his hope was that he would be able play this season, and on Thursday, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that there’s optimism about whether or not that will be the case, even if the expectation is that Ball is going to have to miss a few months while he works to rehabilitate the injury.

Back when the procedure was announced, the team stressed that Ball would need 4-6 weeks before he gets evaluated and decisions start being made. Ball underwent a procedure to fix a torn meniscus in January, which was the start of the issues that have kept him off the floor ever since.

Ball’s recovery from his knee problems have been defined by initial optimism followed by major setbacks, so expectations will assuredly be tempered. Regardless, Ball’s ability to initiate the team’s offense and provide much-needed perimeter defense were crucial to Chicago’s success at the start of last season. In his first season as a member of the Bulls, Ball averaged 13 points, 5.4 rebounds, 5.1 assists, and 1.8 steals in 34.6 minutes per game.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the January 6th Committee, which was forced to postpone its latest public hearing this week due to Hurricane Ian. But one big decision the group of lawmakers are currently wrestling with is whether to subpoena Donald Trump in their investigation. Seth Meyers weighed in on the debate on Wednesday night, and while he thinks it would be a terrible idea to attempt to put the former president on the stand, he’s also very much looking forward to it.

“On the one hand, it would be great to get him under oath on camera so you could make him answer questions in front of the American public under the threat of perjury,” said Meyers. “On the other hand, he’s not going to answer questions under threat of perjury.” As he explained:

Putting Trump on the stand is as good an idea as putting a chimpanzee in a school play: He’s not going to stick to the script! ‘Yeah, the beginning was fun when the monkey came out in a costume. But then it got weird and scary.’ Trump can’t even answer softball questions from his friends on Fox News without going off on deranged tangents.

Meyers shared some highlights from Trump’s recent off-the-rails interview with Sean Hannity — an interview in which he claimed that he can declassify documents with his mind, suggested that the FBI may have raided Mar-a-Lago in search of Hillary Clinton’s emails, claimed people in New York City are walking into stores and swinging axes around, and swore that protestors had planned to topple the Lincoln Memorial (which weighs 76,000,000 pounds). The Late Night host might be onto something with his theory that Trump may have started watching House of the Dragon and accidentally mistaken it for the news.

Can you imagine that guy sitting down for a televised congressional hearing? It would take days. The networks would have to preempt all their programming just so Trump could ramble about statues or axe murderers or windmills or toilets that don’t flush. Although it would be nice to get him under oath about the toilets he’s always talking about.

You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 2:20 mark.

The investor behind the controversial AI rapper project FN Meka has come under scrutiny recently for his own music as Rolling Stone has revealed that the music manager’s band “frequently used the n-word” in its lyrics.

Before getting involved with Factory New, the digital record label that pushed virtual artists such as FN Meka, Anthony Martini — who is white — co-founded a hardcore band called E.Town Concrete in the mid-90s. The band released four albums from 1997 to 2004 and won a local following in New Jersey. Martini, the band’s frontman rapped and scream-sang in the vein of similar bands of the era. However, his lyrics were often peppered with instances of the racial slur according to Rolling Stone‘s report, which listed songs such as “4 the Fame,” “End Of The Rainbow,” “Hold Up,” “Justwatchastep,” and One Life To Live” from the band’s first album as examples. The second album — and the last to use the slur — included “Dirty Jer-Z,” “First Born,” “Guaranteed,” and “Shaydee.”

However, despite releasing two more albums and an EP without using the n-word, Martini apparently continued to recite the lyrics during live performances as recently as 2018. At a more recent appearance in Long Beach, California earlier this month, he censored himself; it’s worth noting that this was after the FN Meka flameout, which brought scrutiny to the avatar’s recitation of lyrics containing the n-word. Somewhat ironically, Martini himself addressed the controversy surrounding FN Meka in a statement to The New York Times earlier this month, saying, “If you’re mad about the lyrical content because it supposedly was A.I., why not be mad about the lyrical content in general?”

Although FN Meka’s lyrics and performance were later revealed to be the work of a Black rap artist from Houston, Factory New’s marketing claiming that the lyrics were written by an algorithm sparked criticism among industry professionals who questioned that algorithm, the racially-ambiguous, inhuman-looking avatar, and the fact that seemingly no other Black people were involved in its creation. The artist who initially voiced FN Meka also claimed he was never paid after performing a handful of the character’s early songs.

The FN Meka project received increased scrutiny when Capitol Records announced it had “signed” the imaginary rapper, drawing a backlash that prompted Capitol to step away from the project. FN Meka’s accounts have since been mostly cleared or made private.

Before the promotional tour for Don’t Worry Darling turned into a white hot supernova of drama, the film’s now-embattled director, Olivia Wilde, revealed that Chris Pine’s character is based on the highly controversial right-wing guru Jordan Peterson. While talking to Interview magazine, Wilde didn’t hold back her thoughts on Peterson and the angry weirdos who hang on his every word.

“We based that character on this insane man, Jordan Peterson, who is this pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community. You know the incels?” Wilde said to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was conducting the interview. “They’re basically disenfranchised, mostly white men, who believe they are entitled to sex from women.”

Considering Peterson is a thought leader for men who are heavily invested in exerting masculinity, you’d assume he’d handle the criticism with stoic resolve. Instead, Peterson literally cried when Piers Morgan asked him Wilde’s remarks. Via Mediaite (which has also posted a Fox Nation clip):

“Is that you? Are you the intellectual hero to these people?” Morgan asked.

“Sure. Why not?” Peterson replied as his voice cracked. “You know people have been after me for a long time because I’ve been speaking to disaffected young men. You know, what a terrible thing to do that is?”

“I thought the marginalized were supposed to have a voice,” Peterson cried.

After Peterson composed himself and made a joke about hoping Pine can match his wardrobe, he started crying again when Morgan asked why he got emotional earlier.

“It’s really something to see — constantly how many people are dying for lack of an encouraging word,” Peterson said about his “lonesome” male audience who are rejected by “very picky” women. He later called himself a “net force for good.”

(Via Mediaite)

Steve-O is the working man’s Tom Cruise. The Jackass legend puts his life — and his balls — on the line for our entertainment. There was the time he snorted wasabi, and wore a jellyfish as a hat, and the “Poo Cocktail Supreme,” which hopefully speaks for itself. I would rather not describe it, thank you. It’s been “a life of terrible decisions,” Steve-O told Yahoo! Entertainment to promote his new book, A Hard Kick in the Nuts, including a 2017 stunt that led to the “most horrific five days of my life.”

“The time when I laid down in a bit of rocket engine fuel and had to have skin graft surgery on 15 percent of my body… That story was so epic that footage is so, like, I like to think iconic,” the now-sober Steve-O said. “My overdeveloped need for attention outweighs my desire for comfort. I didn’t go to the hospital for five days and it was the most horrific five days of my life.” But, he added, “I absolutely don’t regret that.”

Steve-O does have some regrets, however. “Wasting first responders time, those are gonna be the stunts I regret,” he said.

A Hard Kick in the Nuts (which has a great book cover) is available now.

(Via Yahoo! Entertainment)

The second Taylor Hawkins tribute concert, the one in Los Angeles, went down a couple days ago and among the many artists performing at the show was Miley Cyrus, who joined Def Leppard, Foo Fighters, and Patrick Wilson for a rendition of Leppard’s “Photograph.” Now Cyrus has revealed that there was actually a personal reason she performed that specific track.

Yesterday, Cyrus shared a brief recording of a voicemail message Hawkins sent her. He says, “What up, Miley? It’s Taylor. Heard you’re movin’. Wah! I’m listening to ‘Photograph’ by Def Leppard. You could kill that one.” As for the last thing he says, it sounds like, “Make Chaney learn that,” seemingly a reference to bass player Chris Chaney, who has performed with Cyrus on multiple occasions.

Cyrus wrote in her tweet, “A personal request from the legend himself. #TaylorHawkins my friend, my idol…. My neighbor. Growing up on a farm I never could see the light of another house nearby, but living by Taylor for the years that I did out in LA were some of the most fun times of my life.” She continued in another tweet, “I miss Taylor so much like everybody else. It was such an honor to celebrate him last night and perform w @DefLeppard [black heart emoji] So lucky to have known him not just as a superstar but to have spent time watching him just be a dad and a husband!”

Find the full tribute concert setlist here.

Another arrest has been made In PnB Rock’s murder as police continue the search for Freddie Lee Trone, according to HipHopDX via LAPD Online. Trone’s 32-year-old wife Shauntel Trone was arrested in Gardena on Tuesday (September 27) on suspicion of accessory to murder. Police also arrested a 17-year-old, Freddie’s son and Shauntel’s stepson, and charged him with actually firing the shots that killed the Philadelphia rapper. Police are still searching for Freddie, believed to be the getaway driver, and have warned Angelenos that he is “armed and dangerous.”

According to police, it is believed that Freddie and his son were already parked at the Roscoe’s House Of Chicken ‘N Waffles where they accosted Rock and demanded that he hand over his jewelry as he ate lunch with his girlfriend. This contradicted prior theories that the alleged killers had tracked the rapper through his social media posts. While police entertained the possibility that he’d been targeted by enemies from Philadelphia or even Atlanta, the truth turned out to be more mundane.

PnB Rock previously talked about being confronted by some local tough guys in LA, telling DJ Akademiks that robberies of rappers were becoming more common — a theory that LA OG Ice-T corroborated on Twitter a few days after Rock’s death.

Leaked phone calls from Russian soldiers (as recently compiled in a massive trove by The New York Times) have revealed what many people suspected about Putin’s Ukraine invasion. His soldiers were drop-shipped with very little preparation, and in many cases, they didn’t know that they were embarking upon what Putin calls a “special operation” until the day before it happened. Video footage also revealed that food and medical supplies essentially don’t exist, and soldiers are being told to bring tampons to treat their own bullet wounds.

It’s no wonder, then, that men of fighting age are fleeing Russia (and it’s chaotic at the airports) following Putin’s announcement to call up 300,000 reservists. Given that half of Putin’s army died by late July during this conflict, the natural fear is the draft will soon include civilians, and that’s why traffic is flowing at Russian borders. CNN reports that the Lars border crossing has seen 10,000 Russians per day following Putin’s draft announcement, and the Washington Post says that at least 180,000 Russians (and probably more) have fled to three nearby countries:

The emerging scale of the exodus — more than 180,000 Russians have fled just to three neighboring countries, with the full tally likely much higher — has raised questions about the Kremlin’s ability to sustain its war effort. As more Russians cross the border, escaping the restrictions imposed by Putin’s government, they are providing a glimpse of alienation and unease spreading back home.

This doesn’t account for the Russians who have hopped on airplanes and left the continent or those who have gone unrecorded in the chaos. In the meantime, Putin is somehow seeing success in Ukraine even though the New York Times revealed how the army won’t be able to take Kyiv, only individual villages in Ukraine. Still, Putin scheduled a “grandstand ceremony” for Friday, according to Business Insider, when he’ll formally annex four regions. Here’s the official word via Reuters:

Russian President Vladimir Putin will on Friday begin formally annexing 15% of Ukrainian territory, presiding at a ceremony in the Kremlin to declare four Ukrainian regions part of Russia.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the ceremony would take place at 3 p.m. (1200 GMT) on Friday in the St George’s (Georgievsky) Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace to sign “agreements on the accession of new territories into the Russian Federation”.

There appear to be some “Baghdad Bob” vibes going on with this announcement. There’s also no telling how Putin plans to further staff this war if able-bodied men (of fighting age) leave Russia in droves. Meanwhile, Finland has closed off its border to Russian tourists, but the Financial Times reports that Georgia and Kazakhstan are among the countries that welcome fleeing Russians with open arms.

(Via CNN, Washington Post, The New York Times, Reuters, Business Insider & Financial Times)

In April, Future unveiled his new album I Never Liked You, which instantly went No. 1 and was packed with great tracks like “Puffin On Zootiez” and “Holy Ghost.” To celebrate the LP further, he went on Jimmy Kimmel Live for a performance.

Future kicked off his appearance by walking on the stage and sitting across from the host. “So how is the future, relatively speaking?” asked Kimmel. Future answered, “I be drifting off sometimes.” The screen faded into a new scene — a daydream in which he gave a hypnotizing performance of his song “Love You Better.” He rapped thoughtfully from an armchair as the floor became covered with a thick blanket of smoke.

Future just recently sold his publishing for “high eight figures.” In a statement, he said, ” “I put everything into my music, and I wanted to make sure these were in good hands as I thought about the next chapter of these songs. I’m proud to partner up with Rene [McLean, Influence Media partner and founding advisor] and the team at Influence Media and send a signal that this music has timeless value. My music is my art, and these songs represent some of the most precious artwork of my career.”

Watch Future perform “Love You Better” above.

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.

Power pop is a genre that never seems super popular nor on the brink of extinction. Instead, it just chugs along — sadly, sweetly, melodically, and with nice bangs.

For the past 50 years, there have always been bands committed to the art of making super hooky guitar-pop songs about heartache and horniness. This kind of music might not attract a huge audience, but the listeners who are into it are committed. And, sometimes, that fidelity is rewarded with a fresh wave of greatness. Believe it or not, but it appears that 2022 might be one of those times. There has been a cadre of very good and well-received power-pop albums this year, including efforts by Mo Troper, Young Guv, and Tony Molina. This week brings my favorite record of the bunch: Easy Listening by Philadelphia band 2nd Grade.

If you know the tropes of the genre, you won’t find any surprises on Easy Listening. Are there jangly guitars? Yes. Do the vocals sound boyish in a melancholy sort of way? Of course. Are the lyrics replete with references to Beatles and Beach Boys songs? No question. Is there a generous supply of handclaps and gooey backing vocals? As if you need to ask!

The point of power pop is never originality; it’s about musical craft and hitting the listener’s pleasure centers over and over via ruthlessly efficient and svelte songwriting. And on those counts, Easy Listening is a smashing success and one of my favorite albums of the year.

2nd Grade is led by Peter Gill, a 31-year-old musician who also plays another very good band, Friendship. On past efforts like 2020’s Hit To Hit, the country-rock stylings of Friendship infiltrated 2nd Grade. (Guitarist Jon Samuels also plays in both bands.) But Easy Listening is a purely power-pop affair, in which the most recent reference — musical or lyrical — is to the Seinfeld subplot about Kramer moving to Los Angeles to become an actor. It’s like taking a vacation in a world in which Big Star and The Raspberries still have a chance at being the biggest bands in the world.

I spoke with Gill about Easy Listening, his love of oldies radio in the ’90s, and why Tom Petty should be considered power pop.

The world of 2nd Grade songs is very much a 20th-century world. And not just in terms of the musical references, but also the lyrics. You have a song about being on the cover of Rolling Stone, and there are nods to MTV and VH1. Because of the age you are, it’s not like that’s necessarily your world. So why do you find it so attractive?

I feel like my generation, we grew up at the tail end of that sort of rock media. We knew about it when we were kids. It’s almost like we absorbed these Baby Boomer kind of rock ‘n’ roll dreams. And then, by the time I was a teenager or 18 or whatever, that stuff didn’t mean what it used to mean anymore. But I’ve still come to believe that it’s the pinnacle of something culturally. Also, more broadly speaking, I think a lot of records from the ’60s and ’70s, all that stuff is very thoroughly canonized now. There’s a million really well-written and thoughtful think pieces on hundreds of really cool records. So if you’re the kind of music nerd that digs into that stuff and wants to read about everything, you’re naturally drawn to that canon. And so that canon is really important to me. I have a really strong connection to it.

Do you consider what you’re doing to be nostalgist or escapist music?

Let me think about that. No, I don’t actively consider it to be nostalgic or escapist, but I also wouldn’t say that it isn’t those things. I feel like a lot of the time co-opting older styles and aesthetics and trying to infuse them with new ideas or ideas that feel new to me. I am of the mind that there’s nothing new under the sun, at least within music. There’s very little you can do that is actually new or completely original. And so mostly I just borrow from styles of music that I love that are older. But I try not to just have it be a rehash. If I’m writing a song, I want it to be a hook that I haven’t heard before or I just want it to be new somehow. The whole tradition of power pop is connoisseurs who are trying to fine-tune whatever came before, even though it’s not remarkably different.

What in particular do you feel like is new or modern about 2nd Grade?

One, trying to completely trim the fat off of a pop song and get down to just the most exciting parts. That feels modern to me because people’s attention spans in general are so oversaturated, and it seems fitting for the times to try to make the most streamlined pop music that I can. And these songs aren’t going to get played on the radio. So they don’t need to be three and a half minutes. Another modern thing, I think, is we purposely tried to have a big mix of fidelity on the record. There are some songs that are super hi-fi and were done in a really nice studio. And then there are some that were done at home on a four-track or even on an iPhone.

We have access to streaming data now. And it’s clear when you look at the numbers that people listen to the singles and they listen to maybe the first song or two on the album. Those ones get the majority of the plays. So why would a band in 2022 spend so much money to make a whole album in a really nice studio when people maybe aren’t even going to listen to half of it? Doing it this way is exciting to me because it really mixes things up, the way it sounds. But also it feels financially prudent and I feel like more and more records are going to be that way in the future.

I read an interview you did last year where you were asked about 10 albums that influenced you. And I think eight or nine of them were Beach Boys albums. What is it about The Beach Boys that you love so much?

I think number one is just Brian Wilson’s melodies are the best around, no contest. His melodies are so innovative and always so hooky. He fits so many syllables into his melodies. It’ll be a really long breath and then jumping all over the scale. He’s almost like the Allen Ginsburg of pop music in that way, where Allen Ginsburg does these super long lines where you’ve got to hold your breath and say as many words as you can. Also with The Beach Boys, I just love how they took this metaphor of surfing as far as it could go. They wrote so many different songs where the imagery or the symbolism is surfing images. But think of where they started, those early surf songs, and then think of where they ended up, with “Surf’s Up.” They just picked the thing and did it.

Power pop generally is an interesting subculture — it’s pretty small and niche-y, but some of the groups that fit under that umbrella happen to be the most popular bands of all time.

To me, power pop is mostly a helpful framework for me to sit down and write songs. It helps me when I’m sitting there with a blank page and no idea in my head. It helps direct me.

How so?

Mostly just with a huge focus on melody, I think. And the instrumentation is instrumentation that I’m really comfortable with. I grew up in the suburbs in Maine listening to Tom Petty and listening to classic rock radio. And a lot of that Tom Petty stuff is really power pop.

Make the case that Tom Petty is power pop.

I don’t know if I have a super persuasive argument. It’s more of a feeling. It’s a gut feeling. His hits, the singles, they just do what I believe a good power-pop song can do. I can’t get into the semantics of it though because that’s where I get into trouble. If I get too specific about what power pop is, it stops being as helpful for me.

How about a specific Petty song?

“Even The Losers.” To me, power-pop music is loser music where losers become winners in their dreams. That’s almost like a thesis statement right there, that song.

There’s also the fact that Petty played bass on Dwight Twilley’s “Looking For The Magic.”

Oh really?

Yeah. That’s the best power-pop song of all time in my opinion.

Oh, cool. That’s interesting. I did not know that. I recently learned that it’s Phil Seymour who’s doing the harmonies on “American Girl.”

There’s a set of influences that it seems all power-pop bands draw from. And there are certain subject matter parameters — romantic heartache, sexual lust, going out on Saturday night, maybe a certain smart-alecky attitude. Is that what you mean by a framework?

Yeah, that sounds right. To me, I think of it as the genre that started as basically The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Beach Boys. And just wanting to write really good guitar-pop songs. If I’m going to sit down and write a power-pop song, it can’t just be a pedestrian melody or a song that three minutes from now, it isn’t memorable at all. It’s going to be bombastic in a way. It’s going to stick in the mind a little more. You’re going to write it in a way that in an alternate universe, it wouldn’t be that crazy for that song to land on the radio and be a huge hit even though that’s never going to happen.

Something I’ve noticed is that punk and hardcore musicians often end up evolving into power-pop musicians. Like, at some point they suddenly sound like Teenage Fanclub. Tony Molina and Young Guv are two obvious — and well done — examples of this. Why do you think that is?

Part of it is hardcore is a really intense kind of music to perform over a long period of time. You reach an age where it’s exhausting, probably. Compared to other places that a punk musician could go, it seems like a pretty natural pivot — early Teenage Fanclub is pretty heavy. But yeah, I’ve been noticing that and I feel like maybe 10 years ago the thing was punk musicians would go into country music. Does that still happen? I feel like I haven’t seen that as much.

I just find it interesting that Teenage Fanclub seems like such a touchstone. Not Big Star, not The Raspberries — it’s always Teenage Fanclub, and especially Bandwagonesque.

You still have noisy guitar solos in there. It’s a good, happy medium between melody and noise on that album.