Year: 2022

After six long years, Top Dawg Entertainment’s secret weapon Ab-Soul is finally releasing his fifth studio album, Herbert. Scheduled to drop on December 16, the album breaks the most extended hiatus between albums from one of the California label’s rappers in a catalog full of them. For comparison: The other two albums released by TDE this year, Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale And The Big Steppers and SZA’s S.O.S., came after five years each. Last year, Isaiah Rashad broke a four-year hiatus with The House Is Burning.

Like Rashad before him, it turns out Ab-Soul had a heartbreaking reason for delaying his latest album for so long. In a new feature in Rolling Stone, he admits that he survived a suicide attempt. Although the story doesn’t go into detail, Soul says that most of the album was completed before this. “Most of what you’ve heard, I wrote before … it,” he says. “I just wanna make it clear: You see me smiling, but it’s not funny. I think that’s just my way of healing from it.”

However, he intends to inspire some positive results by sharing his story. “Me sharing my testimony — if it doesn’t help, it might let you know you’re not the only one going through it,” he hopes. “That’s what ultimately gives me the courage to put it out there.”

Herbert is due on 12/16 through TDE.

Warning: Spoilers for The White Lotus season two finale ahead.

After a tumultuous week at The White Lotus filled with sex and more sex, the floating dead body from episode one was finally revealed to be a fan-favorite vacationer who was forced into an early checkout… from life. There were many theories about exactly what was going down in Italy, and it soon became pretty evident that Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya was not going to make it out of this situation alive. But not for lack of trying!

In the finale, Tanya realized that her shady husband Greg had hired his old friend Quentin to orchestrate an elaborate plan that would end in Tanya’s demise. Due to the prenup agreement, Greg would only be able to inherit Tanya’s money if she died, which is probably why he fled just a few days into his vacation. Why else would you leave a picturesque dream vacation other than securing an alibi for your wifes’ murder?

Luckily, Tanya was able to realize what was happening after finding rope, duct tape, and a gun while dining on Quentin’s boat (three things that you never want to associate together) and went on a panicked shooting spree.

Tanya was able to shoot Quentin and another of the other men on the boat, though a third friend ran away, possibly to wherever season three will take place?! It seemed like Tanya would really be able to get out of this one and reunite with Portia. Unfortunately, that’s not how it was meant to be.

While trying to escape from the boat, Tanya gives herself a little pep talk (“You’ve got this”) before tragically falling off the side of the boat and hitting her head, ultimately drowning in the water. She is found the next morning by Daphne, and her story comes to an untimely end.

Of course, this inspired a whole new set of potential questions for next season. Will Greg get away with it? What happened to the other men on the boat? And what happened to all of Portia’s “cute clothes” she left at the hotel?! Some mysteries are never meant to be solved. On the bright side, at least Ethan and Harper are having sex!

On Sunday, Mississippi State announced football coach Mike Leach was taken to University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson with a health emergency. Official details have been scarce beyond the severity of the situation, with the school announcing on Monday that Leach was in critical condition.

Ross Reilly of the Mississippi Clarion Ledger reported on Monday morning that Leach suffered a heart attack at his home and the situation was “dire,” citing multiple sources who detailed the scary situation involving the coach.

Mississippi State football coach Mike Leach had a massive heart attack on Sunday in Starkville and was transferred to University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, where he is still being cared for on Monday.

According to multiple sources, Leach, 61, collapsed at his home in Starkville, but did not receive medical attention for between 10 to 15 minutes. EMTs used a defibrillator machine and delivered multiple shocks to restore normal heart rhythm.

Per Reilly, Leach was stabilized at a local hospital and then flown to Jackson by helicopter to the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Leach just finished his third season at Mississippi State and 21st season overall, having spent 10 years at Texas Tech and eight years at Washington State prior to taking over in Starkville. Upon learning of Leach’s condition, many of the coaches in the SEC and other prominent figures in the college football world offered their thoughts and prayers to Leach and his family.

Ronaldo was beside himself after his Portugal squad was stunned 1-0 by Morocco in their the 2022 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match on Saturday, December 10. French Montana does not feel bad for him. The Moroccan-American rapper was already riding high from Morocco’s Cinderella run making it past Spain, but becoming the first-ever African country to compete in a men’s World Cup semifinals (as noted by ESPN) left French Montana in a state of pure euphoria.

French Montana began his celebration by trolling Ronaldo, partially captioning his first Instagram post, “Ronaldo u had your time g … it’s Morocco time lol.” He followed that up by photoshopping himself sitting across from Ronaldo and playing chess with the even more savage caption, “ RONALDOO AIRPORT THIS WAY ”

IRL, French Montana was fully engaged in an overwhelming Times Square celebration. “Hours later after a ig post !MASHALLAHHHHH REAL LOVE ! YOU AINT NEVER SEEN THIS MANY MORROCANS [sic] IN 42nd street NYC FEEL LIKE CASABLANCA RN,” the diamond-certified artist caption an Instagram video of cheering fans waving Moroccan flags. In another video, French Montana holds up the flag and says to the camera, “Morocco, we outside!”

French Montana was born in Casablanca, Morocco before his family relocated to the South Bronx in New York City when he was 13. “It was a culture shock at first. It was hard,” he told Esquire earlier this year, noting he only spoke Arabic and French at the time. He added, “I take all the pride in being from the Bronx. You could become a rapper anywhere in the world. Still, to do it in the mecca of hip-hop, where all the pillars come from, makes me even more proud.”

Morocco will try to make him the most proud on Wednesday, December 14, when they go up against the reigning World Cup champion and perennial favorite France in the semifinals. The match begins at 2 p.m. EST on FOX.

The White Lotus Misery Index is a weekly accounting of who and/or what is having the worst time in paradise in season two of the HBO series. The rankings are based on a number of factors, none of which can or will be quantified in any way. We are doing art here, not science.

UNRANKED: Mia and Lucia (I cared more about them than any of the other characters on this show and I am very happy for them and wish them nothing but smiles and tinkly piano music in Sicily for the rest of their days BUT the show does need a new protagonist now — we’ll get there, don’t worry — AND I bet I would enjoy a whole season about these two separating rich idiots from their money in a ski chalet in the Alps); Cameron (there’s something to be said for going through life as a handsome idiot); Matteo (my sweet mustachioed prince found his conscience just in time to save his oiwn life); Isabella at the Front Desk (good for her); Rocco (if this beautiful television program hadn’t given us Tanya’s Boat Adventure, I bet Valentina being nice to Rocco would have been my favorite moment in this whole season); Quentin and His Murderous Gays (they all did die or leap into the Ionian Sea at night but it happened pretty quick and they seemed to be enjoying themselves quite a bit before then so, like, cumulatively, not terrible?); Dominic (finally got his wife to answer the phone and all it took was a $50,000 bribe to the son who thinks he’s a sleaze to pay for the freedom of the prostitute he hired on a family vacation); Bert (got a lil aroused when Mia hugged him)

10. Valentina (Last week: 9)

I am very happy for Valentina and the hilarious bed hair she showed up to work with after her night of passion with Mia. I worried about her a lot all season. I knew she survived because we all saw her in the first episode receiving the news about the various dead bodies, but between chasing prostitutes out of the resort like Scooby-Doo chasing ghosts out of an abandoned amusement park and dealing with the heartbreak of a one-sided crush on Isabella, she did not appear to be having much fun at all, anywhere. The only time she seemed at ease was when she was feeding Sicilian street cats, which is a) sad, and b) a great name for a backing band. I would go see, like, Rex Orlando and the Sicilian Street Cate this weekend.

She does have two problems, though, that she’ll need to address between going to fun gay clubs with Mia and Lucia:

• She is the manager of a hotel where like half a dozen guests (and at least one gigolo assassin) were just found dead in the ocean, and that is, at the very least, going to require a lot of paperwork
• She could have an interesting situation with HR if someone lines up the thing where the piano player almost died from accidental ecstasy poisoning and the young prostitute who gave him the drugs took his job and was just nude in a bed with her in an unoccupied room

Could be a bad next week or two for Valentina.

9. Albie and Portia (Last week: Albie – 4; Portia – 7)

ON ONE HAND: it feels right that these two hopeless goofs would end up together, after all, and their little conversation at the end in the airport was very sweet. I hope they get married and have a dozen clueless little children.

ON THE OTHER HAND: They did both get duped by sweet-talking charlatans, one of whom scammed Albie out of $50,000 like the absolute doofus mark he was this entire season, and the other of whom basically got kidnapped by a mysterious English dude whose job was to seduce her and separate her from her boss so his boss could commit a murder at sea. Both of those things will leave scars. And, uh, I suspect people will want to talk to Portia about why she kind of fled Sicily without her boss, who washed up dead the same morning a handful of fancy men both of them had been cavorting with in broad daylight were discovered on a yacht with bullet holes in them.

Maybe she can get Albie to extort another $50k from his dad to pay for a lawyer.

8. Salvatore (Last week: Unranked)

He’s a creepy little man who needs to leave the pretty younger staff members alone but he also has an adorable little face and voice and I love him very much. I hope he is happy at the beach club. And I hope he stops harassing the women he works with. And I desperately want to hear him sing. I am very conflicted about Salvatore.

7. Greg (Last week: Unranked)

Two things are true here, both of them worth noting…

The first thing is that Greg is somehow coming out of this with exactly what he wanted: A dead wife and a big heap of money that he would not have had in the event of a divorce, for reasons relating to various prenuptial pieces of paper he signed. He’s a slimeball and a weasel and I hope the next season of this show opens with him getting struck by lightning as though God himself watched the events of this season unfold and said “Enough.”

The second thing is that we can add him to the list of characters who will have a lot of questions to answer in the aftermath of the boat debacle. Especially if the police notice that there’s a picture in a palazzo that belonged to one of the recently murdered men — who, again, had been seen cavorting around Sicily with the wife who was just found dead in the water — and that picture sure does look like a young Greg in a cowboy hat. Doesn’t exactly take Benoit Blanc to piece that sucker together, you know?

6. Daphne (Last week: Unranked)

Some notes here:

• Daphne has found a way to make her life work for her, which is nice but also sad in a very deep way
• I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the episode aired and it is my position that IF she screwed Ethan’s broken brain out of his body behind those rocks THEN it was more as revenge on Harper than Cameron, because she already knows Cameron is a dipshit but she just had that big chat with Harper about finally finding a friend and how hard that was
• I imagine there will be some lingering trauma from just like swimming into a corpse that sets off a whole-ass murder and extortion investigation
• The freaking acting on display in the scene I GIFed up there, holy crap

She fascinates me.

5. Jack the Rowdy English Boy (Last week: 3)

Good news and bad news for Jack, who really has a lot of things to evaluate going forward. The good news is that Quentin is dead and he can do whatever he wants with his life now, if he wants to make some changes and maybe stop living as a live-in sex drone and accomplice to various murders-for-hire that involve seducing poorly dressed American girls. He did not seem to be having fun in that life, which became abundantly clear between his heavy drinking and ominous cigarette smoking and the thing where it looked like he might snap and rip the steering wheel off that rental car.

The bad news is that… well, things did not seem to be going super great for him before or during and he seems like a young man who is very much in need of very much therapy that he will not have access to. Is it weird that I feel bad for this kid? He did do the right thing at the end there. Kind of. I don’t see any of this ending well for him and his sensitive nipples.

4. The Sales Staff at the White Lotus Chain of Resorts (Last week: Unranked)

“Hello, I’m calling on behalf of The White Lotus. You’ve been one of our most valued guests and we’d like to extend you a special offer for the holiday seas-…

“Well, yes, there was that unfortunate incident in Hawaii…

“Right, yes, the employee who defecated in the suitcase is no longer with the company…

“Yes, that was also our property in Sicily…

“The authorities are investigating it but it was not strictly a hotel matter…

“I’m not sure if ‘Gigolo Assassin’ is the term I would use…

“Well, yes, I would probably see a movie titled Gigolo Assassin, too…

“Probably Zac Efron…

“Well, I don’t…

“I think ‘murder hotel’ might be a little unfair…

“Sir…

“I…

“I think if you listen to the offer we have you might…

“Sir? Hello? Sir? Are you there?” Sir…

“Dammit.”

3. Ethan and Harper (Last week: Ethan – 1; Harper – 7)

What a mess these two are. Good Lord. From Ethan being a paranoid freak who insists his wife believe him without believing her to Harper making little moves with Cameron — her husband’s best friend, allegedly — and trying to play it off as a drunken nothing to Ethan punching Cameron in the ocean and maybe (probably?) having sex with Daphne in some little cove and then all four of them sitting down for one last friendly dinner like none of it ever happened. There are two takeaways here, at least as far as I can tell:

• The thing at the end where their various infidelities actually led them back toward physical intimacy kind of means they just turned into Cameron and Daphne a little joy, which is… not ideal
• Rich people are super weird

I want to see where these two are in like 10 years. Or maybe I don’t. I’m pretty sure I don’t.

2. Giuseppe the Piano Man (Last week: Unranked)

Giuseppe is a gross old man whose musical career topped out at playing background music for wealthy tourists who are so dumb that they eat dinner in the same hotel restaurant every night even though they are almost literally surrounded by delicious food and wine in Sicily. He almost died from a Molly overdose (Molly Overdose and the Sicilian Street Cats also works) and the prostitute who gave him the drugs stole his job in part by sleeping with his boss. He kind of stinks at his job, at least according to the guests who watched and heard him play. I suspect word will get out about him and make it tough for him to land a new gig, especially if his last employer starts being known as “the murder hotel,” which I choose to believe it will.

Also, just generally, it’s never good to be the guy standing in the crowded room shouting about conspiracies. You look like a crazy person. Especially if you just got out of the hospital following an overdose on party drugs. Things are not going great for Giuseppe.

1. Tanya (Last week: 10)

Lots to consider here…

ON ONE HAND: She, uh, died, which is bad.

ON THE OTHER HAND: She figured out the plan — eventually, but still — and went out in a blaze of damn glory like a hero and I was so happy for (and proud of) her that I’m still smiling about it today as I’m typing.

ON THE OTHER HAND: Freaking Greg is going to get her money after all, which does not feel right.

ON THE OTHER HAND: I do not know if there’s been a funnier death scene this entire year than Jennifer Coolidge mowing down a crew of devious gays and then whiffing on a dive into the escape boat after trying to pump herself up out loud about it.

ON THE OTHER HAND: I will miss Tanya very much and I’m already sad we won’t get to see her in the next season just bumbling around another White Lotus resort

ON THE OTHER HAND: If you gotta go out, I mean, this is certainly one way to do it. Good for her.

Yes, I’m aware I used six hands to explain all of this. I know that’s anatomically impossible. In my defense, there was… I mean, there was a lot going on. Good show. Can’t wait for it to come back. Congratulations to everyone involved, including all of us. We did it.

Although A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie‘s new album, My Vs. Myself, was only released this past Friday (December 9), he’s already followed up with a deluxe edition. However, whereas many artists’ deluxe albums lately have featured full playlists worth of material, A Boogie only added one new song to the tracklist: “Needed That,” an ode to his late friend PnB Rock.

The fact that “Needed That” is the only new song is a testament to how close it and PnB Rock both are to A Boogie’s heart. PnB Rock appears on the song as well, trading verses about heartbreak with A Boogie over a moody, piano-driven beat. A Boogie and PnB Rock previously collaborated on “Beast Mode” and “IDK” in 2017; the two East Coast rappers were formerly labelmates on Atlantic Records. PnB Rock died earlier this year when he was shot during a robbery at a restaurant in Los Angeles.

Me Vs. Myself is the follow-up to A Boogie’s 2020 album Artist 2.0, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. A Boogie is set to go on tour to promote the album, which was led by the single “B.R.O.” featuring Roddy Ricch, next spring. He’s also planning a “one night only” show at New York’s Apollo Theater later this week.

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

(SPOILERS from The White Lotus will be found below.)

Daphne and Ethan had a moment during The White Lotus season finale. How far did that moment go? Was the “walk with me” a plain-language suggestion, or was Daphne indoctrinating Ethan on her method of marriage survival?

Clearly, the answer to that question isn’t clear at all. In fact, Mike White seems to delight in making us wonder. My initial thoughts (and I wasn’t mad at this) were that Daphne (who previously referred to her husband’s colleagues as “psychopaths”) could be setting out to murder Ethan, but both parties emerged from the conversation (physically) unscathed, so speculation abounds whether they actually had some revenge sex.

The above scene began with Ethan letting Daphne know about his suspicions of Harper and Cameron having a secret tryst that he interrupted. And hoo boy, Meghann Fahy really took people on a journey as her face processed (and then dismissed) what Ethan was communicating, and Will Sharpe convincingly played along into the wild, dreamlike turn of events that was beautifully shot. We do know that Daphne has been having her own fun, probably to cope with what she deals with at home. Her perspective, as expressed to Ethan, was that a little mystery in a relationship can be hot, and and you don’t have to be 100% with your partner’s actions to stay in love.

That kind of willful blindness says a lot, and Ethan didn’t seem like a dude (he did reject the sex workers) who would cheat on Harper. But maybe he did? As Decider’s Meghan O’Keefe points out, this remains an intentionally suggested possibility from Mike White, who declared in the Unpacking aftershow, “Whatever happened, it allows him to let go of the jealousy that has been brewing with him.” He added, “[I]t kind of brings back that first kind of sexual charge that happens in the beginning of relationships and sometimes fades away over time. By the end, you’re maybe like ‘Well, maybe what Ethan and Harper need was just a small dash of what Cameron and Daphne have.’”

Oh. Well, that changes everything. At first, I thought, “No way,” and now, I’m like, “Tell me more.” Is it time for Season 3 yet?

The White Lotus season finale is streaming on HBO Max.

Over the summer, George R.R. Martin confirmed reports that a Game of Thrones spinoff series centered on Jon Snow is in development. Not only that, Martin also confirmed that Kit Harrington pitched the idea and assembled his own team of writers. Since then, talk of the aptly titled Snow has been quiet as the Thrones franchise once again proved its dominance with its wildly popular prequel series, House of the Dragon. However, Harrington recently surfaced at a fan convention where he slyly dropped some hints about Snow.

According to Entertainment Weekly, neither fans, moderators, or Harrington broached the subject of Snow, which was presumably off limits. But when Harrington started commenting on the Game of Thrones finale, the actor couldn’t help but do a little table setting for Snow.

“At the end of the show when we find him in that cell, he’s preparing to be beheaded and he wants to be. He’s done. The fact he goes to the Wall is the greatest gift and also the greatest curse,” Harrington said:

“He’s gotta go back up to the place with all this history and live out his life thinking about how he killed Dany, and live out his life thinking about Ygritte [played by Rose Leslie] dying in his arms, and live out his life thinking about how he hung Olly [Brenock O’Connor], and live out his life thinking about all of this trauma, and that…” Harington paused for a brief moment. “That’s interesting,” he coyly emphasized.

While Harrington didn’t offer much else in the way of details, he did offer one final clue to how Jon Snow is doing when the spinoff series catches up with him: “He’s not okay.”

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Either someone just saw Everything Everywhere All at Once (unlikely), or Marjorie Taylor Greene always has butt plugs on the brain. Over the weekend, America’s Most Unjustifiably Proud Chef appeared at the New York Young Republicans Club gala alongside Donald Trump Jr. After they were done being annoying about Brittney Griner, Taylor Greene gave a speech where she brought up the accessibility of sex toys.

“By the way, you can pick up a butt plug or a dildo at Target and CVS nowadays. I don’t even know how we got here. This is the state that we’re living in right now,” she said. It was part of a “transphobic rant,” which is nauseatingly on brand for the face of the GOP.

The controversial congresswoman was one of several high-profile conservative firebrands who bashed President Joe Biden, progressives and more at the annual event… Greene bragged about not supporting a “single penny” to help Ukraine battle Russia while suggesting money would be better spent on attacking drug cartels in Mexico. “They care about a country called Ukraine whose borders are far away and most of you couldn’t find it on a map,” added Greene, who received an award from the club.

Other guests at the gala included Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, and Andrew Giuliani. It was a real who’s who of people who actual New Yorkers despise. It’s also led people to wonder why the GOP hates sex toys so much.

(Via NY Post)

Missy Elliott joined Lizzo to perform their Cuz I Love You track “Tempo” at Lizzo’s Special Tour stop in Los Angeles last month, and she saw all she needed to see. The hip-hop pioneer was part of Cuz I Love You, but she can’t stop raving about Lizzo’s Special era. Last week, we had Stevie Nicks opining about Lizzo’s potential political future, and now, Elliott is dreaming of a world where the Grammy and Emmy winner fronts a musical.

“What I really appreciate about Lizzo is that she is so diverse,” Elliott wrote for Lizzo’s capsule in Entertainment Weekly‘s “2022 Entertainers Of The Year” package. “There are so many levels to her. When she’s in the studio, she knows how to go into these different characters, she knows how to be heard, she knows how to sing, dance, rap, and it’s all amazing.”