Year: 2022

After receiving the TDE co-sign on Isiah Rashad’s The House Is Burning standout “Wat U Sed” and months of speculation, TikTok-favorite Tampa rapper Doechii finally announced her official signing to the LA-based label and shared her first song under the imprint, the house-inspired “Persuasive.”

The new song, which follows Doechii’s breakout hit “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake,” sees the versatile rapper putting some slick raps over a lounge-y, Kal Banx-produced beat that wouldn’t be out of place at a party at The Standard Hotel’s rooftop pool parties (think Azealia Banks, Bree Runway, or Leikeli47). Lyrically, the song celebrates nights out under the influence and the reckless decisions that come from them.

In a statement to Complex, Doechii celebrated her newfound label home, saying, “I’m excited to run with Top Dawg – to work, to have a home for my overflowing ideas. I want to create a new vision, a new lane, and so much music. Everyone is invited to the Doechii dominance.”

Her output so far suggests that she isn’t far off from those goals. Songs like “Fruitcake,” “What’s Your Name?” “Spookie Coochie,” and “Persuasive” certainly showcase a lot of versatility and eclectic musical influences. Doechii is certainly an accomplished, polished rapper, but her musical sensibilities reach beyond the confines of the genre to encompass dance, jazz, R&B, and more. With TDE, one of the more supportive labels around, behind her, everything she wants is within reach and it’ll be exciting to see what she comes up with next.

Watch Doechii’s “Persuasive” video above.

After news broke that US drugmaker AbbVie would “temporarily suspend operations for all aesthetic products” including Botox in Russia, many were left wondering how Vladimir Putin would get his signature waxy look. Late-night comedians, of course, took this as an opportunity to poke fun at the Russian leader, including Jimmy Kimmel, who had a field day imagining what Putin would look like without his botox on his talk show.

“Even pharmaceutical companies have stopped shipping non-essential drugs to Russia – including Abbvie, the company that makes Botox,” the comedian said. “Which is interesting, because Vladimir Putin is widely rumored to use Botox. Without it, the fear is that he may wither and turn into this,” Kimmel said before showing an animation of Putin’s skin deflating into nothingness, looking a bit like Emperor Palpatine without the cape.

Kimmel continued to blast the Russian leader, showing recent photos of Putin, who tends to have a look that is very unrealistic for his age. “While we don’t know for sure that Putin takes Botox shots, this photograph indicates that he absolutely, one hundred percent does. Look at that face! Smooth as a baby’s gruel, isn’t it? Like a Real Housewife of Saint Petersburg.”

“What a weird time for Russians,” Kimmel added, “Their assets are frozen, but their foreheads are not.” Check out the clip above.

Despite the Kremlin literally ordering Russian state TV to air Tucker Carlson clips, the Fox News host lost it this week after Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican from deep in the heart of Texas, accused Carlson of being an “organ of Russian misinformation.” Carlson has pushed several anti-Ukraine talking points on his show, including the recent Putin talking point that the country is sitting on “bioweapons.” However, during his Thursday night broadcast, Carlson lashed out at McCaul and accused the GOP representative of “slander.”

Via Raw Story:

He complained about being viewed as a “disloyal American” who is “doing the bidding of a foreign power.”

“That is not fine. That is slander,” Carlson said, implying that the accusation is false.

“We don’t care what the Russian government does,” Carlson claimed and went on to pronounce “Russian disinformation” in a high-pitched voice.

Never one to miss out on a good conspiracy theory, Carlson began accusing Republicans of secretly being in cahoots with Joe Biden because they… both want to stop the Russian invasion without starting a nuclear war? Wild stuff.

“So you have to ask yourself, why are so many Republicans suddenly talking like Joe Biden?” Carlson asked his viewers. “And the answer is, because the big questions, the questions that matter, they agree with each other and you should know that.”

Just to put a point on how blatant Carlson’s pro-Putin rants have been, even Newsmax “strongly criticized” the Fox News host for supporting the Russian invasion. We’re talking about an extremely right-wing network that went big on Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” and even they’re saying, “Whoa, Tucker, easy fella.” That should say something.

(Via Raw Story)

There are many reasons to not take the Emmy Awards seriously, but here’s one: Edi Patterson, who plays Judy Gemstone on The Righteous Gemstones, wasn’t nominated for this titanically funny monologue she gave in season one. If “he did a restraining order on me, so I bought him a Jeep Grand Cherokee to prove I loved him” isn’t Emmy worthy, I don’t know what is. It’s (unfortunately) likely that Patterson will again be snubbed for her performance in season two, but at least Danny McBride recognizes her brilliance.

“There’s nothing I love more than showing the world somebody who’s funny that they haven’t seen before,” the Gemstones co-creator and star told Esquire about Patterson, who also played Ms. Abbott on Vice Principals. “From day one, when she came onto set, I just couldn’t get through takes with her. There’s just something special and f*cking unique and funny about her.” The feeling is mutual. “I felt like there were fireworks going off in my soul,” Patterson said about the first time she met McBride. “I felt a creative permission from him to let it rip and to kind of run down the field as fast as I could.”

Let’s take a moment to watch Patterson letting it rip:

Who cares about a stinking lead actress Emmy? Give her a lifetime achievement award.

(Via Esquire)

“Check on your mans, I heard he got hit in his head,” raps Lil Durk on his 7220 song, “Computer Murders.” “But he almost died so I can say his name ’cause he ain’t dead.”

Yeah, that’s how it goes.

You know what you’re getting from a Lil Durk video these days. The veteran Chicago drill rapper isn’t wasting money or time shooting these things. He and his crew find a spot, grab a few stacks of cash, point the camera, and get the footage before cutting everything together into a frenetic glimpse at their hectic lifestyle. “Computer Murders” is no different.

Likewise, the song follows a well-established Durk formula, as seen on prior releases like “Ahhh Ha” and “Petty Too“: Threats, boasts, and taunts directed at enemies whose lives have been endangered by the Chicago streets. Durk also name-checks the rappers and street personalities he’s been affiliated with through the years. However, he’s also cagey about his own involvement, rhyming, “I don’t mention dead opps / If you really did it, you ain’t gon’ say it ’cause the feds hot.” He’ll damn sure make thinly veiled references to them, though.

Watch Lil Durk’s defiant “Computer Murders” video above.

7220 is out now on Alamo/Only The Family. Get it here.

Chicago rapper Saba continues the rollout for his introspective new album Few Good Things with the video for the previously released single “Come My Way” featuring Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. The video is fairly straightforward, mostly featuring Saba rapping into the camera outdoors broken up by interior scenes of Saba rapping alongside the members of his Chicago-based crew, Pivot Gang. No stranger to the group dynamic, Krayzie Bone joins them like an unofficial sixth member as he raps his contribution to the reflective song.

The video for “Come My Way” follows the release of Saba’s short film, also titled Few Good Things, which echoed the theme expressed across the album and songs like “Come My Way”: Acknowledging the good things that make life worth living, even when horrible things are happening to make it seem like it’s not. That message has special resonance in light of the past year for Pivot Gang, who suffered the second death of a member when Squeak, the group’s DJ and producer, was shot to death in Chicago in August. The group previously lost member John Walt, Saba and Joseph Chilliams’ cousin, to a stabbing in 2017 and has commemorated him with their annual John Walt Day concert ever since.

Watch Saba’s “Come My Way” video above.

Few Good Things is out now via Pivot Gang LLC.

Did anyone else mix their G.I. Joes with their siblings’ Barbies as a kid? For the longest time, I thought I was alone in this, but judging from Coi Leray‘s video for her new collaboration with Nicki Minaj, “Blick Blick,” she never saw a problem making the beauty dolls run around with the soldier toys’ guns, either. The colorful video is heavy on Nicki’s well-established Pinkprint aesthetic, but rather than getting pampered, the two rappers get armed to the teeth like Neo and Trinity from The Matrix to take on their foes. Of course, the guns are also on-theme.

“Blick Blick” is the latest sign that Coi’s star is rising after some skeptical fans wrote her off in the wake of her breakout with “No More Parties” toward the end of 2020. Thanks to her goofy, Playboi Carti-esque delivery, some thought she was just a gimmick, especially after her baffling performance during the XXL Freshman Cypher. However, since then, she’s kept up a steady stream of solid singles such as “Twinnem” and “Anxiety,” building her credibility and showcasing her versatility. Securing a feature from Queen Minaj herself — especially after her dad Benzino nearly ruined the chance for her — only solidifies her ascent, proving she has belonged at the top all along, just as she (and Uproxx) predicted.

Watch Coi Leray’s video for “Blick Blick” featuring Nicki Minaj above.

What is it about those kiss cams at sports games that somehow manage to capture hysterical, bizarre and utterly embarrassing life moments? To think about how all the planets have to align for that to happen can be mind-boggling. Is it simply bad luck? Or is the kiss cam an instrument of karma itself? It’s a mystery yet to be solved…

But when that camera captures something truly heartwarming, it can connect us all to joy, even if that moment isn’t truly “ours.” They say both watching and playing a sport feels the same way in our brain, after all. Maybe that extends to everything that happens at the game.

One particularly epic story might be the MVP of kiss-cam history, as the crowd got to witness an Orlando Magic fan getting the surprise of a lifetime.

James Bailey didn’t yet know he was a father-to-be. His wife, Taylor Bailey, revealed to a local news outlet that she kept it secret, wanting to deliver the good news in a style.

“My husband has always dreamed of me telling him in a really cool way. So I thought it would be neat to get on the kiss cam,” she told WESH 2 News.

At first it’s all laughs and smiles, but when James finally reads the message, “Congrats James! You are going to be a dad!,” his jaw drops.

Eyes tearing up, he nuzzles his wife before shooting his hands up in a victory pose. It seems Taylor’s plan worked—it was indeed a very cool way to make her husband’s dreams come true.

The Orlando Magic tweeted the video along with the caption, “huge W”.

huge W pic.twitter.com/lDFCfT1SCn

— Orlando Magic (@OrlandoMagic) November 25, 2021

A VERY huge W. Congrats to the Bailey family, and thanks for sharing your happiness with the world.

Fingers crossed they name the baby Magic.

(Bad Vegan spoilers will be found below, obviously.)

Bad Vegan is Netflix’s latest in a line of scammer-focused documentaries, and it might be the most WTF-Is-Going-On selection of them all. Yup, it’s hard to believe that a Wharton-economics-educated, wildly successful restauranteur decided to funnel over a million dollars into a fugitive life full of casinos and promises of dog immortality. Sarma Melngailis completely fell from grace when she decided to get involved with someone that seemed completely sketchy, but she was somehow wooed by his Alec Baldwin “Twitter” connection, which also made zero sense. Nonetheless, the story is a “true” one, even if Sarma may have known more than she indicated on camera.

One thing that did stick with viewers, though, is that Sarma never apologized to her Pure Wine and Food and One Lucky Duck employees. They went without pay for weeks while she lied about transferring banks and all those grifting things that grifters do. Well, Sarma wants everyone to know that, in addition to paying her debt to society (4 months on Rikers Island), she also paid her employees back. PEOPLE reports that Sarma insisted upon being paid for Bad Vegan, but she didn’t keep that money for herself. Rather, she says that the money went to her jilted employees:

“It’s standard practice – to say nothing of journalistic integrity — that subjects do not get paid for participation in documentaries, at least not the reputable ones. In my case, however, and at my insistence, the producers made an exception so that I could pay the total amount my former employees were owed — amounts that accrued after my disappearance in 2015.”

Sarma says that this issue “weighed heaviest” among the rest of her “many debts resulting from my downfall.” And perhaps that will soften some of the blow that Sarma says she has experienced on Twitter. She’s detailing those thoughts over on Instagram, which she says has shown her more kindness. And she’s posting photos of her beloved (but not immortal) pit bull there, too.

After collaborating with Elton John for “After All” and then teasing a new single on TikTok, pop star Charlie Puth unveiled “Light Switch” in January. It was his first material of 2022 and gave fans hope that his long-awaited follow-up to 2018’s Voicenotes would arrive soon. It still hasn’t, unfortunately, but Puth brought “Light Switch” to Kimmel last night. The vibrant performance captured the longing that flows through the buoyant song: “Why you always wanna act like lovers? / But you never wanna be each other’s,” he sings.

Last June, Puth shared an explanation for why he’s been taking a while working on his new LP: “I am so grateful for all of these songs and their accolades. But I’ve never had a completed body of work to present to you at one time. At this point of my career, I owe it to myself and you most importantly, to not just give you ONE SINGLE, but the whole vision. I’m making the best album I’ve ever made and I don’t want to rush it. I just need a little more time to mix and perfect these songs. I think you’ll really like them. Until then….”

Watch Charlie’s upbeat Kimmel Live performance of “Light Switch” above.

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