One thing we won’t know about Usher’s Super Bowl Halftime Show performance this weekend until it actually happens is what it will look like. Before then, though, Usher at least offered a bit of insight into the thought process behind his show.
“Rihanna’s was fire because of the choreography and the way they did something that felt like a concert. It actually was a great deal of inspiration [for] how I began to think of my show. If you ever came to my residency, it was all about being immersed — being immersed in an experience that is all of these things that wouldn’t necessarily go together.”
He also noted that his performance will be 15 minutes long instead of the usual 13, saying, “I can’t explain why, but it’s a funny thing that I was able to do and craft. That was a huge strategic thing that happened between me and my agency.”
Usher also noted, “I would hope that people would feel excited — whether they knew my music or they just got to meet me for the first time — and that I’m all passion, man. And that this 8-year-old, who now is a 45-year-old, feels just as free as the first time that I thought any of this could be possible.”
Learn more about how to watch Usher’s performance here.
The Oscars announced a new category for Best Casting this week. It doesn’t go into effect until 2026, but Dune: Part Two should still be allowed to win. Look at this cast: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem, and the sandworms are all coming back from the first film, while newcomers include Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, and Léa Seydoux.
There’s a rumor (via Fandom Wire) that the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga actress plays Alia Atreides, Paul’s younger sister, in Dune: Part Two. Nothing has been confirmed, however, so take the report with a grain of sand(worm). But Alia has been depicted on screen before, most notably in David Lynch’s Dune where she was played by eight-year-old Alicia Witt. Taylor-Joy is, uh, not eight years old, so it would take some timeline futzing to work.
Here’s more:
Dune: Part Two will explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.
A prominent if ironic feature of the late information, or digital age, a time when humans have turned ever more inward, is a large and perhaps occasionally crippling existential awareness. Just about everything you’d ever want or need to know, in some cases what you wish you didn’t, is available to you at all times. The sheer volume of information is at once affirming and conflicting, rewarding and worthless, very fun and strangely depressing. With so many notions about how to live, or the fundamental truths of the world and what we’re doing on it, we’re left with no absolute or discernible truth, pondering the point of it all at the speed of our digital connection.
Another prominent feature of the late information age is Wordle. Or, puzzle games and the seemingly insatiable thirst for them.
How the two features collide over Jakob Poeltl — an affable, 7-foot Austrian center — may not hold the secret to our observational existence, but it does get down to one of existence’s most crucial threads: human connection.
The NBA player guessing game, Poeltl, was launched on February 25, 2022, four months after Wordle debuted and seared deep into the collective psyche. If you’ve never played, Poeltl offers eight guesses to narrow down one current NBA athlete, with categories of team, conference, division, position, height, age, and jersey number for hints. Those categories are highlighted green to indicate a match and help narrow down your next guesses. If a category is highlighted yellow, it means you’re close. If you’re really stuck, there’s also an optional silhouette prompt that reveals a shadowy outline of the person in question.
Gabe Danon, the game’s creator, was a producer on the excellent Dunktown podcast, and a daily player of Wordle. He credits it, and games like it, for offering another way to feel a sense of connection with friends and the wider world, especially when the pandemic loomed large. Danon describes the moment the idea for the game came to him as less of an aha and more of a gratifying click.
“I think it was just a moment where the two things connected in my head, where you could use that kind of mechanic to guess a basketball player instead,” Danon recalls over the phone.
In “a fit of inspiration,” Danon got to work. A web developer by trade, he had a basic prototype by the end of the first day and debuted it to the Dunktown Discord. The group became the game’s beta testers, spotting bugs and offering suggestions for improvement. The name also came from the group, Danon initially used a placeholder of “Basketbadl,” a “terrible name” he’d forgotten about. In two weeks — which is incredibly fast, though Danon says humbly he doesn’t want to claim he did it faster than anyone else could have “but it was certainly my focus at that time” — Poeltl was published on the Dunktown website. Danon figured he’d see a few hundred people pick it up.
“I originally thought of it as something just for listeners to our podcast at the time to enjoy, but, it definitely blew up much bigger than that,” Danon chuckles.
By mid-afternoon on the day it launched, Poeltl’s very first mystery player, Nikola Vučević, had shared his enthusiasm on social media over the debut answer. By the end of Poeltl’s first week public, Danon could see that thousands of people were playing the game at any given time. It was discussed at length on NBA podcasts, Reddit users were sharing and strategizing their best opening tactics, and by March 2022, the NBPA had reached out to Danon. Players also continued to revel in it. Karl-Anthony Towns went live on his YouTube channel to play a round that stretched over a harrowing 10 minutes and had him Googling “nba divisions” and Kyle Lowry’s number — to Towns’ credit, when a viewer told him about the game’s silhouette mode, he immediately and correctly guessed PJ Tucker on his fifth try. Tyrese Haliburton, who had to wait patiently until July 2022, expressed delight when the answer was finally him.
FINALLY
Poeltl 133 – 1/8
— Tyrese Haliburton (@TyHaliburton22) July 7, 2022
“There was so much excitement around it,” Danon says. “People were sharing it so much. You’d see players posting their scores and saying, when they were the answer for the day, tweeting like, ‘Finally!’”
The feedback remained positive, which in the online NBA world is a bit of an anomaly. Most of the emails Danon got, and still gets, were from people of all ages thanking him for making the game. The most critical feedback remains people telling Danon that heights for certain athletes are incorrect — which, though no doubt annoying, feels endearing in that arguing about an athlete’s physical metrics seems to be the online NBA fan’s Sisyphean task. That persistent quibble is also a good example of what makes Poeltl no small task to maintain.
“The five-letter words in the dictionary don’t change that much, but the rosters in the NBA do,” Danon says.
In other words: Poeltl is a living game. When rookies enter the league or vets leave it, when players are traded and stats shift, the game requires maintenance to reflect those changes. Danon says the game’s constant evolution is what keeps it engaging, but “to maintain a game like that over the course of two years was a lot of work.”
Jakob Poeltl found the game like most people in the NBA community did: because it was blowing up on social media. Friends and family were also sending it to him. But initially, the strangest thing to Poeltl, the person, about Poeltl, the game, wasn’t just its naming convention.
“I’m a fan of those games and then all of a sudden, there’s a game like that that’s named after me — it’s a weird feeling,” Poeltl says.
Like Danon, Poeltl is a puzzle game aficionado. He plays Wordle, Connections, and other games he deigned too niche to mention daily. He’s such a fan that he’s part of a Toronto Raptors group made up of players and staff dedicated to the competitive pursuit of puzzle games.
“The whole connection with it,” Poeltl continues, “with me enjoying games like that and [Danon],” Poeltl pauses and makes a face that, for lack of an exact word to chronicle the sequence, can only be described as the Alonzo Mourning acceptance GIF — a sort of happily self-effacing look of real-time recognition that what you’re saying ceases to make logical sense even if the emotional truth is there, though there’s probably a German word for it. “He probably doesn’t know that, I don’t know how he would know that I like puzzle games — him picking that name because it sounds like Wordle. The whole coincidence of how it came together is pretty cool, I think, and unique.”
The NBPA thought so, too. Both Danon and the Players Association wanted the game to grow, but after running it himself since the launch, Danon welcomed the operational — and clerical — help the NBPA could offer in taking on the day-to-day operations of the game. Poeltl (the game) never went away, but has now relaunched on the NBPA’s website with an arcade-game style makeover, a global leaderboard, future in-person events and prizes, including physical player memorabilia.
NBPA
Poeltl (the person) is excited about the opportunity to reinvigorate one of his daily puzzle favorites by “refreshing everyone’s memories.”
“Games like that, they have their ups and downs. They’re trending and everybody’s playing it, then it falls off a bit, and then it comes back for whatever reason. The internet’s a weird place,” Poeltl chuckles. “To try and control or predict what’s going to be popular tomorrow is very difficult. So that’s what I’m really excited about, is with some new updates and promotion, getting the game out there again — people are still playing it — but at its peak, games like that were doing insane numbers.”
The biggest leap, for Danon, is the game’s namesake now acting as its official ambassador — something he calls “incredibly surreal” — and collaborating with him on content and creative operations.
“It wasn’t even something I had ever considered at all, when coming up with the name,” Danon says, when asked about the official relaunch of Poeltl with Poeltl. “It’s very cool for the community around it to grow, and for people to have fun with it. Those kinds of games are such an important part of people’s daily routine now. I can speak for me personally, that it’s probably the first thing I do when I wake up, to wake up my brain, is to play all my puzzles.
“To see that grow and to have the resources of the NBPA behind it,” he continues, “that’s just very rewarding to me.”
There are plenty of existential detours that come in discussing a game named after someone with the person it’s named after; who has gone from occasional enjoyer to habitual participant to creative stakeholder. For example, has Poeltl ever gotten himself in Poeltl? (He hasn’t — “I missed the day, and I know it’s been myself, but I did not participate that day so unfortunately I’ve never gotten myself,” he says.) Also, is he good at it? (He’s confident but pragmatic — he does well in the team’s puzzle group but is sure “extreme NBA fans would crush me at it.”) Is Poeltl a Poeltl purist? (Yes, and says, “I think the silhouette guessing is damn near cheating.”) And does Poeltl ever think about people waking up, firing up Poeltl, and perhaps in some fleeting way, thinking of him? (“It’s probably different for other people, but for me, I don’t look at it and see my name, I more see the game.”)
Though maybe the most existential — that is, relating to the day-to-day experience of existing — is the way that the game has become part of people’s routines and in doing so, shaped our brains.
To be a fan is to already interact with your rooting interests, in athletes or teams, on a daily basis in some capacity. Whether in reading trade news or player profiles, listening to podcasts or watching games, you confer mental and emotional space and the responses that come, from deep in the brain’s limbic system, aren’t necessarily logical but allow for feeling and release. Puzzle games, brief and inconsequential as they seem, light up the frontal lobe and provide finite, solvable experiences. Studies have shown that the more puzzle games you do, and the more variety there is to them, the more synapses your brain creates — making it healthier and better able to ward off cognitive disorders. Essentially, guessing a mystery basketball player is really good for your brain.
Human connection is too. Our brains are hard-wired for it, seeking it out for safety and comfort, to adapt and relate. Even if you’re not a person who happily shares your puzzle game scores with the world, we all know what those ubiquitous green and yellow blocks presented without context mean. For Poeltl (person), Poeltl (game) functions at a similar level, as a means of connection within NBA fandom, and potentially reaching beyond it.
“Not only did it now connect me and the NBPA with a guy that developed a basketball game, it’s connecting fans that are a fan of games like that to the NBA,” Poeltl smiles. “And it’s all done through a website that is just meant for a little bit of fun. I think that’s cool, to see how a game like that, when it blows up and when it becomes popular, is connecting different circles of life. And hopefully, bringing joy to those people.”
The second season of House of the Dragon will arrive sometime this spring on HBO. At that point, the Targaryen Civil War is officially on, and Westeros will be asked to line up on the side of newly appointed King Aegon II or Viserys’ true chosen heir, Princess Rhaenyra. This will get bloody, obviously, and George R.R. Martin has alluded to HBO having a total of four seasons mapped out.
When it comes to streaming TV, however, there’s no time like the present to plan for the future, or rather, the past. Additionally, HBO is going to start filming a House of the Dragon sequel series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, later this year, and that show will be mostly Targaryen-free. Still, they aren’t done with the blondes yet. A House of the Dragon prequel show — based upon Aegon Targaryen I’s initial conquest of Westeros — has moved past the “well, maybe” stage and is now in active development, and according to Hollywood Reporter, a pedigreed writer stepped up to the plate:
HBO is partnering with Mattson Tomlin, an in-demand scribe who did uncredited work on Matt Reeve’s The Batman and is co-writing its upcoming sequel, The Batman Part II. He also wrote the Keanu Reeves action comic adaptation BRZRKR and an animated Terminator series which he is also showrunning for Netflix.
The story will involve Aegon and his two sisters (also wives, because that’s what Targaryens do) zooming around Westeros and gathering the Seven Kingdoms under their rule. Actually, make that only six of those kingdoms, but you gotta have a defiant kingdom in the mix. This is GRRM, after all, so we shall see what happens. If that wait feels too long, then we can at least rest assured that it’s not another cookbook troll job. Small blessings.
Disney has a blank check, baby, and they’ll write Taylor Swift‘s name.
Earlier this week, Swift revealed that Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, her record-breaking concert film documenting The Eras Tour, is coming to Disney+. “This week is truly the best kind of chaos. I’m thrilled to let you know I’ve found a streaming home for The Eras Tour Concert Film, and that home will be @disneyplus,” she wrote on Instagram, a few days after announcing her new album. “For the first time we’ll be showing the entire concert (including ‘cardigan,’ plus 4 additional songs from the acoustic section!!) and I’m calling it, huge shock, Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version).”
The streaming rights didn’t come cheap.
Puck reports that Disney was in a bidding war with Netflix and Universal for The Eras Tour until CEO Bob Iger “decided to take the film off the table, paying the Swift family more than $75 million to stream it on Disney+.” Taylor’s brother, Austin, was involved in “a lead role” during the negotiations.
For those keeping score, Swift’s AMC Theatres deal gave her more than half the box office for the self-financed film, which grossed $261 million worldwide. Then it did well on PVOD via Universal, and now it generated another fat check from Disney+.
Another factor working in Disney’s favor — besides a big, fat paycheck — is that Swift is making her feature directorial debut with Searchlight Pictures, which is owned by, yes, Disney. Swift has enough influence that if she asked to remake The Aristocats with her cats, at this point, Disney might say yes. And they should.
Steven and Ian start today’s episode with an in-depth critical analysis of one of the hottest songs in pop right now, Ice Spice’s “Think U The Shit (Fart).” Probably too in-depth, really. But the song is truly a rich text. From there they do the inevitable Sportscast on this weekend’s Super Bowl game. Anyone who gets their sports news from indie rock podcasts will want to hear Steven and Ian’s predictions. They also wonder how the brewing Taylor Swift backlash (if such a thing exists) might karmically affect the outcome. In the fantasy draft update, Ian marvels at the performance of the new Brittany Howard solo album and Steven wonders whether the controversy over Mannequin Pussy’s recent AI-assisted video will impact his team.
Next is a conversation about 2000s era indie folk spurred by new music this week from The Decemberists and Iron And Wine. Are the guys yay or nay on these acts? They also talk about a recent article outlining the behind-the-scenes fallout from the Pitchfork layoffs. In the mailbag, Steven and Ian reflect on the breakups of two bands, Tokyo Police Club and Hot Hot Heat.
In Recommendation Corner, Ian goes with Bill Ryder-Jones (formerly of The Coral) while Steven picks two records from David Nance and Mowed Sound and Ducks Ltd.
New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 175 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.
André 3000 was on The Late Show in January. While there, he and Stephen Colbert taped a “Colbert Questionert” segment, in which Colbert asks his guests a series of general questions in an attempt to get to know them better. These segments usually air a couple weeks after the guest’s initial Late Show appearance, and André’s segment finally played last night, February 8. Colbert’s questioning actually unearthed an interesting piece of trivia: André once auditioned for a Fast & Furious movie.
One of the standard Questionert questions is, “Do you have a favorite action movie?” Nothing came to mind for André, so Colbert playfully followed up, “Why haven’t you been in one of the Fast & Furious movies? I could see you driving a fast car, off a cliff or something into a boat.” André responded with a bit of a laugh, “I would have but I think Ludacris took the role.” He added, “No, I actually tried out. I tried out for Fast & Furious and Ludacris actually took the role,” which took Colbert by surprise.
Ludacris’ first time portraying Tej Parker in the Fast & Furious franchise was in the second film, 2003’s 2 Fast 2 Furious, so it would seem that’s the movie André auditioned for.
Colbert asked André if he was angry about not landing the part and he responded, “No, not at all. I mean… ’cause I wasn’t ready. […] I remember that audition. I was so nervous, man, like I wouldn’t have hired me.”
André went on to have a fine acting career, though, with roles in movies like Four Brothers, Semi Pro, and Jimi: All Is By My Side.
Check out the full “Colbert Questionert” segment above.
In January, Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign announced that their collaborative album Vultures was a three-part project, with the different volumes set to drop on February 9, March 8, and April 5. I wrote at the time, “While those dates in February, March, and April are certainly worth keeping an eye on, if nothing materializes on those days, it won’t be the world’s biggest shock.”
Given how often the release of Vultures has been delayed, that wasn’t exactly a surprising or especially insightful thing to say. Well, today is February 9, and as of this post, the first volume of Vultures is not available on streaming services, even after Ye and Ty’s listening event last night. There’s still plenty of time left for West and Ty to release it today, but given that new albums tend to drop at midnight, it feels likely that Vultures has once again been delayed and the first volume will ultimately not be released on February 9.
West is a trending topic on X (formerly Twitter) this morning, with users complaining or making jokes about Vultures not being out yet. One user, for example, shared a photo of a clown using a computer and wrote, “How I look checking Spotify to see if Kanye West dropped Vultures.”
It’s been a minute since GloRilla dropped music. But tonight (February 9), she’s back with the heat. GloRilla just released “Yeah Glo!,” another dirty south anthem bound to be on repeat for the foreseeable future.
On “Yeah Glo!,” GloRilla reminds us that she’s not disappearing from the rap game anytime soon. “Big Glo, where you been at? / Mane, everywhere, I’m workin’ hard / Maybach and G-Wagon trucks, got M&M’s in my garage,” she raps on one of the song’s verses, letting everyone know she’s taking time to enjoy the fruits of her labor.
But don’t push her. This doesn’t mean she’s softened. In fact, if you ask her for a collaboration, she just “might embarrass you.”
“Yeah Glo!” arrives nearly two years after the Memphis rapper dropped her breakthrough hit “FNF (Let’s Go).” Since then, she’s released quite a few heavy-hitting anthems.
Last August, Glo teased her full-length debut album in an interview with Good Morning America. While she didn’t reveal two many details, she did say the songs would be equally, if not more catchy, as her previously released earworms.
“I’m excited about it,” said Glo. “I plan on going number one. I gotta make another song that’s gonna have all the girls screaming — and another anthem.”
In the meantime, you can listen to “Yeah Glo!” above.
Gen-Z pop king Conan Gray is heading to the dancefloor. And this time, our Uproxx cover star is bringing the brokenhearted lovers with him. Tonight (February 9), Gray has dropped “Lonely Dancers,” the latest single from his upcoming third album, Found Heaven.
On “Lonely Dancers,” Gray finds himself mourning a past love. But he’s not the only one. Seeing others not knowing what to do, Gray forms new friends, finding solace on the dancefloor among fellow heartbroken companions.
“We’rе lonely dancers / Join me for thе night / We’re lonely dancers, baby / Dance with me so we don’t cry / We’re lonely dancers / There’s no need to hide / I know the answer, baby / Dance with me so we don’t cry,” sings Gray on the song’s chorus
In the song’s accompanying video, Gray is seen in a club, moving through flashing, colorful lights, before he dances the night away with a newfound group of titular lonely dancers.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Gray opened up about Found Heaven and the inspiration behind the record.
“I fell in love for the very first time. Then got dumped,” Gray said. “It changes you.”
You can see the “Lonely Dancers” video above.
Found Heaven is out 4/5 via Republic. Find more information here.
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