Month: April 2023

(WARNING: Spoilers for Succession Season 4 Episode 2 “The Rehearsal” below.)

As Logan Roy‘s assistant, Kerry Castellabate (Zoë Winters) has significantly climbed the ranks on Succession to the point where she’s now dating the family patriarch/perpetual battle axe. In the latest episode, “The Rehearsal,” Kerry made her most ambitious move yet: Trying to land a spot as an ATN anchor.

Unfortunately for Kerry, she’s not very good. Her audition tape is an awkward and comical disaster, which results in some back door scheming by Logan and Tom (Matthew Macfayden), who inevitably sticks poor Greg (Nicholas Braun) with the task of telling Kerri she’s not ready for primetime. It does not go well for Cousin Greg as the extremely perceptive Kerry sniffs out what’s happening and threatens to pick him apart like “string cheese.”

In a new interview, Winters opened up about her research before shooting the botched audition tape, and it apparently involved watching a whole lot of Laura Ingraham and Tomi Lahren. She was particularly interested in Ingraham’s off-camera behavior and Lahren’s blatant attempts to turn on the “charm,” which is not Kerry’s strong suit.

“I watched a lot of Laura Ingraham when the camera cuts, mistreating people, getting different information in her ear than she is from the prompter,” Winters told Variety. “Tomi Lahren has this very loud, heightened, fast way of presenting. I just took little bits and pieces from conservative political commentators. I didn’t want her to be good. I wanted her to be trying.”

As for Greg’s note that a non-existent focus group didn’t like what she was doing with her arms, Winters credited the writers for hilariously reacting to her audition tape performance, but it also made her self-conscious for a bit.

“I knew it was just them being funny,” Winters said. “But I definitely thought for maybe a day and a half, ‘How do my arms hang? Are they seeing something here about the way my arms hang?’”

The final season of Succession airs Sunday on HBO.

(Via Variety)

Usher pulled a cruel April Fools’ Day joke as a headliner at Dreamville Festival, leaving the Raleigh, North Carolina crowd briefly believing that Beyoncé was joining him on stage.

Drake wasn’t playing around with his co-headlining set on Sunday, April 2. He actually brought out 21 Savage, GloRilla, Lil Wayne, and Lil Uzi Vert. Dreamville boss and co-headliner J. Cole also made an appearance to close things out sentimentally.

“I’m such a fan, and I feel like I’m speaking for all of us when I say this, bro: We are f*cking wowed, amazed, blown away by your greatness, bro,” Cole said. “It gives a n**** chills to see you do this sh*t at the highest level, nonstop, and constantly serve us and bless us with the f*cking soundtrack to our lives, bro. I’m f*cking blown away by your greatness, bro.”

Drake and 21 Savage are preparing to head out on their It’s All A Blur Tour in June. Prepare yourself by checking out Drake’s Dreamville Fest 2023 setlist (as noted by setlist.fm) and footage from his performance below.

1. “Sicko Mode”
2. “Over”
3. “Headlines”
4. “HYFR (Hell Ya F*cking Right)”
5. “Started From The Bottom”
6. “Energy”
7. “Know Yourself”
8. “Nonstop”
9. “God’s Plan”
10. “FNF (Let’s Go)” with GloRilla
11. “XO Tour Llif3” with Lil Uzi Vert
12. “Just Wanna Rock” with Lil Uzi Vert
13. “Marvins Room”
14. “Wu-Tang Forever”
15. “Practice”
16. “The Motto” with Lil Wayne
17. “Uproar” with Lil Wayne
18. “A Milli” with Lil Wayne
19. “Knife Talk” with 21 Savage
20. “Rich Flex” with 21 Savage
21. “I Will Always Love You”

Cardi B is one of the most sex-positive entertainers out there; “WAP” is all about being biologically prepared for intercourse, after all. That said, Cardi believes that when it comes to frequency of the act, it reaches a point where it’s “not a flex” anymore.

In an Instagram Story video shared on March 31 (as HipHopDX notes), Cardi addressed women who say they’re having sex “three times a day.” Cardi clarified that surely doesn’t mean three times a day every day,

If your man wanna have sex with you four, five times a day […] and we do that every single day, it’s like, girl, your mans is on percs. Your mans is on percs or your man is trying to convince himself that he likes p*ssy.” She added, “That is not a flex. Go stitch your p*ssy up. Go stitch your p*ssy up. Your man is sick.”

On a more family-friendly note, Cardi recently revealed that she, Offset, and their kids Kulture and Wave are set to star in Baby Shark’s Big Movie. In February, she also spoke about the positive experience she had doing community service.

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

Tyler The Creator‘s latest video from Call Me If You Get Lost: The Estate Sale is a laid-back, stripped-down affair. Much like its song, “Heaven To Me,” the video is a one-take shot that sees Tyler rapping the lyrics from the unreleased track in his home studio before taking a walk outside — while he keeps rapping — to enjoy the sunshine, one of the themes of the reflective lyrics.

The song finds Tyler rhyming over the Kanye West-produced beat from John Legend’s 2006 single “Heaven.” In the first verse, he takes stock of his current blessings, and although he certainly has a few luxury items to flex, he seems to be appreciating the simple things as well. “We nappin’ in parks, we in the sun gettin’ darked up,” he grins.

The second verse is a hopeful look at T’s future, with a wife and a son, a big backyard, a yacht on the dock, and a helicopter to fly his mom in. But still, his number-one hope is something more elusive: “That’s really heaven at forty,” he asserts. “N****, havin’ good health.” The third verse is a nostalgic rumination of the things that made Ty happy in the past, such as “Peglegs, Ice Cream shoes, the Mr. Krabs watch,” but when he stumbles over the flow, he just keeps it going, showing that the fun is as much in the process as the product.

“Heaven To Me” is Tyler’s fourth video from the deluxe version of his Grammy-winning 2021 album, following “Dogtooth,” “Sorry Not Sorry,” and “Wharf Talk.”

Call Me If You Get Lost: The Estate Sale is out now on Columbia Records. Get more info here.

The Succession Report Card is a weekly recap feature where we attempt to assign grades to the important people, things, and themes from each episode of Succession. The grades are entirely subjective and the criteria for scoring will change from week to week and occasionally mid-week. Someone might get detention. It’ll probably be Roman.

SEASON 4, EPISODE 2 – “Rehearsal”

Connor

Connor:

• Is singing Leonard Cohen songs at karaoke after his fiancée left the rehearsal dinner in a kind of weird panic
• Gave just the saddest and most heartbreaking speech you’ve ever heard about not needing love or family
• Watched his big payout evaporate because his siblings are dipshits who are somehow more broken than he is

It’s not great.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Giving and/or receiving love

Shiv

Shiv is tanking the whole deal with Matsson. Just blowing it up. She’s the one who got this ball rolling, too, even if Kendall went ahead and kicked it forward in a weird and pathetic way that we are going to talk about in a minute. She did all of this for two reasons, neither of which are good but both of which are understandable given the disastrous family dynamics at play.

REASON NUMBER ONE: She spent years listening to Logan tell her she’s the smart one and went ahead and believed it and now is running around with a mountain of unearned confidence about business and life things that causes her to torpedo things sometimes out of nowhere.

REASON NUMBER TWO: She just wants to screw Logan for any number of reasons, including but not limited to Logan being a manipulative monster and Logan advising Tom on the impending divorce.

This is not great either.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Situational awareness

Kendall

When did you realize Kendall was going to tank the deal with Matsson? Was it when he took that phone call in the subway? Was it when we saw Matsson’s unshaven face and realized things were generally just not going great for either of these guys? Or was it just after that when we saw the weird broken little boy smile on his face as he wrapped up the call and saw his opportunity to throw a wrench into things because, if you can count on Kendall Roy for anything, it’s to just do the dumbest possible thing at any given moment?

Just take the money.

JUST TAKE THE MONEY.

GO.

LIVE YOUR LIFE.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS.

TAKE THE MONEY.

COME ON.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Pretty much everything

Logan

The tricky thing here is that Logan is kind of right about the deal with Matsson. He did get a good number and everyone is going to get very rich and pushing is the wrong play, probably, for reasons we saw on that call with Kendall. The man has done deals his entire life and it’s the one thing he does well and it’s got to be infuriating to watch his entitled bozo kids mess it all up in a desperate cry for attention.

But…

He’s also a manipulative old creep who cannot be believed for one second, ever, especially when he’s talking about love or relationships, and he appears to be filling the post-sale crater in his soul with a new and much more active role in the day-to-day operations of ATN. This is so deeply sad. The man cannot stop. He’s just incapable of it because if he does he’ll have too many quiet moments alone to ruminate on things and realize he has no one and nothing after a life spent handling every personal relationship in his life like a zero-sum business transaction.

Other than that, pretty good.

GRADE: F

MUST IMPROVE: Maybe don’t do petty helicopter revenge maneuvers when the only endgame of it all is making three of your children late for the wedding-related festivities of your fourth (and often neglected!) child

Greg

Oh my god.

The meeting with Kerry about the tape was a shipwreck. You knew it was going to be one, too. The second Tom passed that bomb down the ladder from Logan — “I’m not involved” got a legit lol outta me by about the third or fourth time he muttered it like a coward — Greg was doomed. You can tell it was bad because I’ve typed two sentences in this paragraph and compared Greg’s night to a maritime disaster and a man holding a ticking bomb. Maybe the bomb is on the boat? I don’t even think I know at this point.

Greg never had a chance. I want to feel bad for him but he’s so far off-course that I don’t know if he can be saved.

GRADE: D

MUST IMPROVE: Confidence, backbone

Kerry

Kerry is:

• Getting mocked behind her back by basically everyone she knows because of her atrocious audition tape
• Trying to insert herself into the Roy family dynamic as some sort of Logan-to-English translator
• Maybe starting to realize this was all not a great idea

She can still bully Greg, though. He provides a service like that. Just a constant gangly reminder that no one is lower on the totem pole.

GRADE: D

MUST IMPROVE: Inappropriate smiling

Tom

The thing about Tom is that he has mastered the art of being in the middle of the food chain. He evades the predators — Logan always, sometimes Shiv, Kerry this week — while making a meal of anyone even a little weaker than he is. It’s fascinating to watch him work. I am coming to appreciate this weasel a little bit, even if he still is constantly on the verge of failing.

GRADE: D

MUST IMPROVE: Giving speeches to the troops

Various low-level employees of ATN

Logan taking a more active role in the news division is going to be disastrous for these poor saps. Looking over their shoulders while they tap out emails, shouting numbers at them, just a mess. I would feel worse for any of them if they weren’t working for a soulless enterprise that exists to tear the nation into little divided shreds.

GRADE: D

MUST IMPROVE: General life choices

Matsson

Hoo buddy. Did you see his face during that call with Kendall? That is not the face of a guy who is doing great. I make this point every week but everyone on this show is broken in such weird and specific ways and, while I have yet to figure Matsson out in the way I have figured out most of the Roy family, I would happily watch a weird standalone episode about his backstory that takes place as he is starting his career as a young little eccentric maniac.

I kind of love him a little.

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: Getting even a little sun

Gerri

Gerri slides into the middle of the proceedings this week mostly because she continues to do an impressive job of sidestepping explosive situations. Logan is losing confidence in her a little, which is actually fine seeing as spending less time with or around Logan has never been a bad thing for anyone. I remain convinced she could hit 7 out of 10 free throws at any given moment, even in a business suit and sensible heels.

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: Getting busted giggling at her embarrassing video tapes

Sandi and Stewy

ON ONE HAND: Awful little finance vultures. I hate them and everything they stand for. The world would be a better place if both of them had fallen down an open manhole cover while they were popping up for that “surprise” visit outside Connor’s rehearsal dinner.

ON THE OTHER HAND: I kind of missed Stewy? I don’t know. I have a lot to consider here

GRADE: C

MUST IMPROVE: Not conflicting me so much

Various Karls, Franks, and Karolinas

Maybe my favorite moment of the whole episode: Karolina hanging Hugo out to dry in the conference room with the Kerry tape and then making a little face about it afterward. I could watch all of these people shank each other for the full hour every week.

GRADE: C+

MUST IMPROVE: I’m tempted to say “playing nice with others” but I’m enjoying it all too much, so… let’s just move on

Roman

It remains the position of this report card that Roman is both the smartest and most human of all the Roy children under all of his childish behaviors. He was the one who wanted to stay in the deal because he’s not constantly waging a hopeless war with Logan. He’s the one who was, like, actually kind of concerned about ruining Connor’s day, even if he couldn’t help himself with the insults. He’s a decent guy under… you know. All of… that.

Which is what made that ending such a bummer. The kid is just getting yoinked and yo-yo-ed around by whichever family member is in front of his face in any given moment. Shiv and Kendall are bullying him and demanding to look at his phone because he had the gall to say happy birthday to their dad. Logan is looking him in the eye and telling him he’s a smart and special boy, which is all he’s ever wanted from anyone, even if it’s being used against him in bad faith here. I honestly don’t even think he cares. If someone gave him a single, real, lengthy hug, I think he would fight it with sarcasm and crude jokes for a while and then melt into a little wet puddle on the ground.

GRADE: B-

MUST IMPROVE: Getting pulled in every damn direction by anyone with a little authority in their voice

Karaoke, generally

What is your go-to karaoke song? Don’t say you don’t have one. Don’t try to give me that. Karaoke is a blast. Get in there. Do it if you haven’t. Or even if you haven’t recently. Don’t be self-conscious about it. Have some fun. You deserve it. Pick an easy song. My favorite is “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis Presley because you don’t even have to be a good singer to do it well. You just have to do like a B- Elvis impression and point at the crowd and maybe egg them into singing the backup parts a little bit. Easy way to fake both talent and charisma, which, in the long run, is juuuust about as good as having talent and charisma in the first place.

That’s a little tip from me to you.

GRADE: B+

MUST IMPROVE: Some people try to show off too much like it’s American Idol or something and they need to chill out

Sergio the Driver

Sergio:

• Got out of driving Tom around after Tom leaped out of the car in the tunnel
• Probably turned the music up real loud and drove around the city at night after that, which is actually a decent way to make a living
• Is named Sergio

We like him very much.

GRADE: B

MUST IMPROVE: We need to get Sergio a faster car, like maybe a little Lamborghini, which would not be as functional for chauffeuring purposes as the big black SUV but would be substantially more fun for him and me

Willa

I very much wanted Willa to just disappear into the night and run off and live a happier life somewhere in the suburbs while Connor keeps monitoring the dot on his phone like a hopeless little cyberstalker. “She’s going to Target again.” Yeah, dude. She is. And she is thriving. Leave her alone.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: Escaping

Jess Jordan

Jess Jordan remains my favorite character on this entire show, mostly for the faces she makes in the background while everything around her is going to hell. I would absolutely watch a spinoff about her life outside of work. Or maybe the rest of this final season could just focus on her instead of these other goons. That would be fine, too. Jess Jordan rules.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: Nothing

City rats

Good for them.

GRADE: A

MUST IMPROVE: LEAVE THEM ALONE, LOGAN

Kelsea Ballerini followed Madonna’s lead at the 2023 CMT Music Awards last night, April 2.

Last week, Madonna added a December 22 Nashville stop to her Celebration Tour (featuring special guest Bob The Drag Queen) with plans to protest “the oppression of the LGBTQ+” community and Tennessee’s proposed ban on drag performances. (US District Judge Thomas Parker temporarily blocked the law last Friday, March 31.)

The 2023 CMT Music Awards were held in Austin, Texas, but the setting doesn’t matter when protesting against oppression, especially given that Nashville is universally accepted as country music’s home base. Ballerini served as the evening’s co-host alongside Kane Brown and took the stage to perform “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too).” Her backing dancers were drag queens: Kennedy Davenport, Manila Luzon, Jan Sport, and Olivia Lux.

“Just like all these amazing country music artists, we drag queens are also artists,” Luzon told Entertainment Tonight. “And we deserve a space to be ourselves, express ourselves, and create something wonderful for everyone to enjoy.”

Lux added, “Kelsea made it really clear in the rehearsal room … she was like, take up that space, you know, this is your time as well, and amplify the fact that you’re here. Even the song, if you’re going down, I’m going down, too — it is about the celebration of being a community. I think that’s what we did on stage tonight, and I really hope that transcended some people as well. It felt like it did.”

Ballerini emotionally opened the CMT Music Awards by honoring the six victims of The Covenant School shooting in Nashville last Monday, March 27, and condemned “the 130 mass shootings in the US this year alone.”

“I wanted to personally stand up here and share this moment because on August 21, 2008, I watched Ryan McDonald, my 15-year-old classmate at Central High School, lose his life to a gun in our cafeteria,” she said. “Tonight’s broadcast is dedicated to the ever-growing list of families, friends, survivors, witnesses, and responders whose lives continue to forever be changed by gun violence.”

She continued, “I pray deeply that the closeness and the community that we feel through the next few hours of music can soon turn into action — like, real action — that moves us forward together to create change for the safety of our kids and our loved ones.”

Watch Ballerini’s “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too)” performance above, and watch her sobering opening monologue below.

Vince McMahon likely fancies himself a modern-day Walt Disney, “the last person who’s created something that is this inescapable of childhood,” as a former WWE writer once said. This is, of course, nonsense, but McMahon and Disney do have at least one thing in common: distracting mustaches.

On Monday, McMahon officially announced that the World Wrestling Entertainment will merge with Endeavor Group, the parent company of UFC, to form a new publicly traded company. “The deal values the newly combined company at over $21 billion: UFC is worth $12.1 billion and WWE is valued at $9.3 billion. Endeavor shareholders will own 51 percent of the newly combined company, while WWE shareholders get 49 percent,” CNN reports.

Vince McMahon will retain his current WWE title of executive chairman at the new company, which doesn’t yet have name. He said in a statement that the new company “will be well positioned to maximize the value of our combined media rights.” He also said the new company could expand by pursuing other mergers and acquisitions “to further bolster our strong stable of brands.”

McMahon, who stepped down as CEO and chairman of WWE last year following sexual misconduct allegations before returning as executive chairman in January, went on CNBC where he probably said something about the merger enhancing sponsorship monetization, developing new forms of content, blah blah blah. I can’t say for sure what happened because I, and everyone else, was busy staring at his Rocky and Bullwinkle villain mustache.

(Via CNN)

Jacob Chansley, a.k.a. the QAnon Shaman, has been staying at a halfway house in Arizona per the condition of his early release from federal prison, and his fellow residents are reportedly surprised to learn about their “famous” new roommate.

“What? He put on the horns? Holy s–t,” one of Chansley’s roommates told the New York Post. ““He’s quiet and [keeps] to himself.”

Thanks to the wild photos of his outfit, which the internet dubbed the “Chewbacca bikini,” Chansley practically became the face of the January 6 attack as he was seen howling inside the Capitol building while wielding the American flag like a spear. However, after his arrest, the “Shaman” denounced both the QAnon movement and Donald Trump while his lawyer declared that Trump should take care of the “jackasses” that he “f*cked up.”

While his roommates are shocked to learn that Chansley is the horn guy, that surprise mostly comes from the fact that he’s been pretty mild-mannered and downright polite:

Another resident, Shywanna Grimes, told The Post she wasn’t aware who Chansley was, either. “I didn’t know that,” Grimes said. “I just got out [from behind bars]. I didn’t watch TV.”

She said Chansley has been nice, noting he waves to her and says hello. “We all have a background,” said Grimes, 34, who was imprisoned for smuggling. “We are all human. We all make mistakes. We are not perfect.”

Chansley reentered the news cycle in early March when Tucker Carlson aired heavily edited footage from the January 6 attacks, which prompted Elon Musk to demand Chansley’s release, but that had no factor in the decision. The reformed shaman was already headed for early release due to good behavior, which is reportedly extremely common for federal prison sentences.

(Via New York Post)

Sunday night, during J. Cole’s headlining set at Dreamville Festival, the North Carolina rapper shouted out Kanye West. Just ahead of a performance of the fan favorite “Villematic” from his star-making 2010 tape Friday Night Lights, Cole implored the mercurial producer to clear the sample on the song; on it, Cole raps over Kanye’s Rick Ross collaboration “Devil In A Blue Dress” from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

Cole has repeatedly addressed the absence of his two breakout tapes, Friday Night Lights and its predecessor, 2019’s The Warm Up, from digital streaming platforms. In 2019, he tweeted “10 years ago The Warm Up dropped. Thanks 2 all that have listened 2 the foundation of my whole journey. My catalogue on streaming services don’t even look right until this & FNL are up. workin on it.”

In 2020, he posted a similar anniversary recollection on Instagram (which has since been deleted). “This one defined me as a artist,” he wrote. “Thank you forever for the love … My dream is to one day have this on DSP’s where it belongs.”

Unfortunately for J. Cole, Kanye has become more unpredictable than ever in pursuing grudges — and he has good reason to be upset with Cole. In 2016, Cole’s track “False Prophets” drew attention as he called out an unnamed fallen hero of rap many assumed to be Kanye, who was then cozying up to Donald Trump. Late last year, as Kanye immolated himself with antisemitic rhetoric, “False Prophets” trended on Twitter as fans noted that Cole appeared to have predicted his hero’s downfall.

Ye isn’t likely to have taken that kindly; while he did eventually clear a sample for Drake, who was in a similar position with So Far Gone‘s sample of “Say You Will” from 808s And Heartbreak, since then, Kanye has only gotten more surly. Cole might just be forced into a situation like Chance The Rapper or De La Soul, releasing the project to DSPs with a slightly altered tracklist.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the geographically challenged congresswoman who floats harmful impossible statistics and notoriously ranted (also harmfully) about “jewish space lasers,” received her very own sit-down profile with 60 Minutes over the weekend. As one can imagine, this didn’t go over well in advance with people who were outraged that the show gave the QAnon cheerleader a platform (therefore posing the danger that her extremist views could be seen as normalized), and that outlook hasn’t changed.

For sure, 60 Minutes did itself no favors by promoting this interview by tweeting that Greene “isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how intense and in-your-face they are,” as though a “fearless” vibe was all that’s going on here. And onscreen, Greene was allowed to repeat her well-known repertoire of conspiracy theories and falsehoods without much pushback. Greene even straight-up likened Democrats to “pedophiles” while declaring, “Democrats support — even Joe Biden, the president himself — supports children being sexualized and having transgender surgeries. Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children.” In response, Lesley Stahl puffed her cheeks in disbelief, but as Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett noted, she did not push back, nor did Stahl point out the falseness of these accusations.

And it’s no wonder that The Daily Beast and a chorus of upset Twitter users are referring to the profile as a textbook “softball” interview.

On Monday morning, following her high-profile interview, Greene appears to be emboldened after receiving said platform. She fired off a tweet that matched the theme of her false accusations against Democrats, and she’s also coming for Budweiser and the Country Music Awards for “caving to the Trans agenda” after Kelsea Ballerini performed onstage with Drag Race stars.

In other words, no lessons have been learned here, and Greene is absolutely thrilled to have spread her far-right propaganda into into living rooms across America.