Month: October 2022

The new episode of Fresh Pair is here. This week, trap rap godfather T.I. receives a custom pair of sneakers from Katty Customs, details his top five most influential Atlanta rap albums, and recounted tales of his time spent in the trap — as well as how he got out of it.

Near the end of the interview, host Just Blaze asks T.I., “Was there a point or a situation — what made you say, ‘Okay, I can put this part of my life behind me now.’?” Tip says, “Man, that’s a long story.” He details how he was put on seven years of probation and “only selling weed” as his concession to trying to do the right thing.

He was able to get a job cleaning planes at the airport but found out that his girlfriend at the time was pregnant. Along with DJ Toomp and T.I’s future longtime manager Jason Jeter, T.I. decided to record a demo tape, pooling their resources to put together four songs. However, his partners came together to warn him to stop selling weed before he ruined his future.

Challenging them to find him an occupation as lucrative or connect him with someone in the music industry who could accelerate his career, he found out Jeter was an intern at Patchwerk Studios, where such local stars as Outkast and Goodie Mob had recorded. He went with him to the studio and his life was never the same. There’s more to the story, of course, but you can check that out for yourself above.

Mila Kunis stars in The Luckiest Girl Alive, a Netflix film that adapts a novel by Jessica Knoll. If one hasn’t read the book (which is quite graphic at times) and only viewed the trailer, one could be forgiven for assuming that this could be a hybrid of a romantic drama with Gone Girl-esque tones. (That’s not the case.) The trailer stays very vague and only alludes to “an incident” experienced in high school by Mila’s character, TifAni FaNelli (her given name is not the source of the drama, although it arguably could be part of it). She restyles herself as a New York-based writer (Ani) with a glossy exterior appearance and a wealthy fiancé (Finn Whitrock).

The trailer seems to promise a punchy protagonist who will light the world on fire by making something of herself by acquiring a dream life that, presumably, no one would have expected that she could achieve. Here’s that trailer because it really does appear to promise something different than what the movie delivers.

No trigger warning exists for Luckiest Girl Alive before it streams on Netflix. And let’s just say that Mila’s character is a survivor. She not only lived through a mass shooting as a teenager (Scoot McNairy plays her teacher, a genuinely good dude) but also multiple rapes by fellow classmates. Ani’s nursing an eating disorder as well, but man, the sexual assault scenes are disturbing, as well as her PTSD from everything that Ani endured as a teen.

Many social media users do seem to overall enjoy the movie, but they also have a real issue with the film’s surprise triggers, and they’re calling Netflix out for failing to be more forthright about the movie’s subject matter.

Trigger Warning: Luckiest Girl Alive is currently streaming on Netflix.

The daily line-ups for the new LA3C Festival were revealed today (October 12). Colombian superstar Maluma will be headlining the festival the day after Megan Thee Stallion.

The LA3C Festival is coming to Los Angeles State Historic Park on December 10th and 11th. The event is being touted as the first “culture & creativity” festival put on by Penske Media, which owns publications like Rolling Stone and Variety. Earlier this month, Maluma, K-pop group Seventeen, Free Nationals, Mustard, and more artists from diverse genres were added to the line-up.

With the daily line-ups now revealed, Maluma will be closing out the festival’s Latin music-filled Sunday night. The commitment to diversity is strong that day with Latin acts from different countries and genres. Regional Mexican music star Gerardo Ortiz and tropical Colombian singer Fonseca are slated to perform.

Among the emerging Latin acts performing on Sunday are Mexican-American singer Monogem, who competed on American Idol in 2012, and Panamanian-American artist Chicocurlyhead, who sings with a bilingual flow. Spanish pop star Marc Seguí rounds out that day’s line-up. Last year, he broke through with the remix of his hit “Tiroteo” alongside Pol Granch and Rauw Alejandro.

Saturday night will be headlined by Megan Thee Stallion. Snoop Dogg and Seventeen will also be performing that day.

Tickets for LA3C Festival are on sale now at LA3C.com.

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

It’s been a little under three months since Beyonce released her seventh studio album Renaissance and in that time, the dance-centric album has only become more popular and influential. Maybe that’s why fans are so disappointed that the singer has yet to release a single music video for it — not even its standout lead single “Break My Soul,” which shot to No. 1 on the Hot 100 and revitalized interest in the house music styles that inspired it.

The Hive has certainly gotten restless, sharing its collective impatience with Queen Bey on Twitter.

For anyone who is baffled by this phenomenon, the only explanation I can give is that Beyonce sort of brought this on herself. When her fifth, self-titled album dropped in the middle of the night in 2013, it was accompanied by a full slate of high-quality music videos filmed in secret over the course of the months leading up to the album’s release. Then, in 2020, Beyoncé released Black Is King, described as a “visual album” set to songs from her 2019 album, The Lion King: The Gift. Released on Disney+, the musical film paired the songs with vivid imagery that won the singer Grammy Awards for Best Music Video for “Brown Skin Girl” and Best R&B Performance for “Black Parade.”

Basically, she’s set a standard for herself — one that fans very much want to hold her to. Who knows? Maybe she’s got something planned for the future — or maybe she wants fans to experience the music in isolation, in the same context as the house classics that inspired Renaissance.

Today, Lizzo is one of music’s brightest stars. Even though that hasn’t been true for very long — with her commercial breakthrough being 2019’s “Juice” — she’s been a professional in the music industry for over a decade now. All of that is to say that she has quite the story to tell and now, she’s going to: Today, she announced a new documentary: Love, Lizzo.

The film is set to premiere on HBO Max on November 24. Beyond that, not much else is known about the documentary. Lizzo shared a poster for the film and it features the aforementioned information, a photo of her smiling with her eyes closed, and the tagline “Truth Heals,” a nod to her No. 1 single “Truth Hurts.” Lizzo also captioned her post, “Finally telling my story, MY WAY.”

Lizzo has added a number of documentary-worthy happenings to her life story recently. Last month, she got to play a 200-year-old flute once owned by former US president James Madison in concert. She also performed an emotional hometown concert in Detroit not long ago, a special moment that left her with a feeling she said was “indescribable.”

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

The only things anyone remembers about 2017’s The Mummy are the sound effects-free trailer and how it destroyed the Dark Universe. R.I.P. the Dark Universe. That’s not a great legacy. It was hubristic of star Tom Cruise and director Alex Kurtzman to think that they could top 1999’s The Mummy, a perfect movie (it says so right here).

In an interview with Variety, Brendan Fraser, who starred in the good The Mummy, offered his explanation for why the bad The Mummy was a critical and commercial failure. “It is hard to make that movie,” he said. “The ingredient that we had going for our Mummy, which I didn’t see in that film, was fun. That was what was lacking in that incarnation. It was too much of a straight-ahead horror movie. The Mummy should be a thrill ride, but not terrifying and scary.” Fraser’s The Mummy is a theme park attraction (that’s a compliment, not a derogatory term); Cruise’s The Mummy was a chore.

As for whether Fraser would return for a fourth Mummy movie, The Whale star said, “I don’t know how it would work. But I’d be open to it if someone came up with the right conceit.” The Rock might be interested.

(Via Variety)

Move over, NCT 127. It’s not “2 Baddies, 2 Baddies, 1 Posche” anymore. It’s one baddie, one Porsche.

And that baddie is Blackpink‘s Jennie. First teased last night, Porsche Korea reveals the custom made Taycan 4S Cross Turismo specially made for the “Solo” singer. According to a report from Hypebeast, the custom ride is Porsche Korea’s first project from its Sonderwunsch program — meaning, Jennie’s new whip was a “special request” that incorporated her creative input.

The sportscar dons a black exterior with Meissenblue rims and design accents throughout. While a custom logo with typography created by Jennie reading “Jenny Ruby Jane” and her nickname “NiNi” are sprinkled on the doors, front door entries, side panels and interior. The car also includes a custom indoor car cover and black box for Jennie’s furry friend Kuma.

“Being able to collaborate so intensively on my own very personal Porsche was an amazing experience,” says Jennie. “I’m especially proud of having designed the visualization of the clouds. I spend a lot of time traveling around the world – the sky and the clouds are my traveling companions and a beautiful symbol of these unique experiences. This is why I feel a special connection to them and am so passionate about photographing these nature motifs.”

Jennie’s Porsche Taycan 4S Cross Turismo is currently on public display in Seoul’s Sonderwunsch Haus in Gangnam, starting October 13 to October 26.

A lot of people are demanding to hear Herschel Walker directly address the claims that he persuaded a woman to have abortions and sent her a $700 check in get-well card to reimburse her for the procedure. But that might very well be a case of “Be careful what you wish for.” Because if you’ve listened to Herschel try to explain, well, anything—including how many U.S. states there are (he says 52)—things are bound to only get more confusing.

On Tuesday, the senatorial candidate and former pro football player concluded a campaign speech in Georgia with what Mediaite’s Michael Luciano described as “a janky parable about how the United States is the best country in the world — using a randy bull to get there.” Here’s what Walker said:

As they’ve been saying, “Something is better somewhere else.” And I’m here to tell you it’s not. So, I’ve been telling this little story about this bull out in the field with six cows, and three of them are pregnant. So you know he got something goin’ on. But all he cared about, is keep his nose against the fence looking at three other cows that didn’t belong to him. Now all he had to do is eat grass. But no, no, no. He thought something was better somewhere else.

So he decided, “I want to get over there.” So one day he measured that fence up, and he said, “I think I can jump this.” So that day came where he got back. And as he got back and as he took off running, he dove over that fence and his belly got cut up onto the bottom. But as he made it onto the other side, he shook it off and got so excited about it. And he ran to the top of that hill, but when he got up there he realized they were bulls, too.

So what I’m telling you: Don’t think something is better somewhere else. This is the greatest country in the world today.

Could Walker just have thrown in a trite-but-effective (and much less long-winded) “the grass is always greener”? Sure. But that’s not Herschel’s style.

Of course, it didn’t help the negative headlines swirling around Walker that the way he chose to share that he is a patriot who loves America, and wants you to love it, too, is by talking about a horny bull. At the same time, we wouldn’t expect any less from the Georgia candidate.

The general public recently discovered that, on top of being a TV wellness/weight loss quack and a man who drinks red wine at tailgate parties, Dr. Mehmet Oz is apparently also a puppy killer. And sure, exposés by Jezebel and whistleblower testimony detailing how Oz’s team left dead puppies in garbage bags with their living littermates are horrifying to read, but sometimes seeing is believing.

That’s what a Democratic super PAC known as Senate Majority PAC is counting on after running ads that detail Oz’s many counts of animal abuse while putting a face to the poor creatures he is accused of having taken part in killing. And look, “murder” is a heavy word but when you’re talking about testing on animals and allowing them to suffer in pain for days before euthanizing them, it fits.

The ad features footage of incredibly sad-looking dogs in barren cages while Oz walks around in a white lab coat and a narrator details the many experiments he oversaw on animals during his time at the Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine. One particularly heartbreaking ad follows a day in the life of a Beagle puppy with no name and only an assigned number.

“She wasn’t given a name, only a number: 6313,” the voiceover begins. “For 29 days she suffered in Mehmet Oz’s lab. Leaking blood. Not eating. Struggling to breathe. Until Oz took her for the last experiment.”

This dog is just one of 300 reportedly killed in Oz’s lab — along with hundreds more rabbits, mice, pigs, and calves — and the ads the PAC is running make the case that these violations of Animal Welfare laws make the New Jersey resident running for a Pennsylvania Senate seat unfit to hold office.

The 1975 are just days away from the release of their anticipated fifth studio album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language. Throughout the past month of their early promotional cycle for the album, there’s been everything from live videos, tour dates, upcoming interviews, and potential (but probably not serious) threats on journalists who don’t give the record five stars. In fact, there’s been so much, with even more planned from the band on the way, that we’re using this piece to provide a how-to guide on everything to know about BFIAFL before (and after, depending) it drops.

While early singles “All I Need To Hear” and “I’m In Love With You” provide a romantic side to the band, they still plan on keeping a bit of that edge for the remaining songs.

“There are so many good dick jokes on the record,” lead singer Matty Healy told Pitchfork in August. “It’s all about my dick. I’m obsessed with my dick for some reason. I’m trying to figure out what that represents. I think it’s because there’s such potency to the idea of the dick, and so much fragility in modern masculinity, and my masculinity. I’m obsessed with that duality, of just, like, having a dick.”

Healy also claimed he played both Taylor Swift and comedian Bo Burnham the entire album. “It’s so funny,” Swift told the publication. Although this sparked potential collaboration rumors between the two, no such thing is in the works — according to Healy’s BBC Radio 1 appearance.

Throughout this winter, The 1975 will tour North America in support of BFIAFL. Find the band’s upcoming tour dates here.

Being Funny In A Foreign Language is out 10/14 via Dirty Hit. Pre-order it here.